Righteousness by Faith

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Bier, and David Kasson, and Andrew Hudson. And we're gonna have

Dave read our first question for this episode, if his technology will help him out.

Oh, here we go. So, the question was, you being Michael, recently preached a sermon on Romans 4, where Paul's key argument was that Abraham was justified by faith before circumcision.

This righteousness, or this salvation, must be by faith. No good works, no works of the law.

But this is just one verse, at Genesis 15. But Paul builds his entire argument on it.

So this verse is important. God only has to say something once for it to be important. In the same service, however, we sang a portion of Psalm 106, verses 30 to 31 specifically.

And they say that the actions of Phinehas in Numbers 25, who stood up and intervened, and then stopped the plague, were counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever.

Is this some kind of contradiction? It's just one verse, but it appears as if you do something really great, even your generations will be righteous.

How do we reconcile these two items? I mean, one of the hallmarks of our faith is that righteousness is by faith, not works.

But here we have Psalm 106, which appears to say something the opposite. What do you guys think?

So, when we're reading through Psalm 106, we get this story about the ups and downs of the people of Israel with whom

God made covenant, and the problems that they often faced in the rebellion and complaining, their transgressions, their idolatry, their sins against God who redeemed them from Egypt and was being faithful to the promises he had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And how often was God on the cusp of destroying them according to his intentions stated in the covenant, that he would judge them, that he would consume them, that he would tear them apart because of their covenant unfaithfulness.

But then Psalm 106 will time and again point to someone standing in the gap.

For instance, long before we get to Phinehas as an example, we're already reading about Moses.

So, verse 23 in Psalm 106 says, therefore he, meaning God, said that he would destroy them had not

Moses, his chosen one, stood before him in the breach. You see, so Moses is playing the role of mediator.

He is playing the role of intercessor. He's interceding for them, and he is God's chosen one.

Now, in this, we understand that Moses is foreshadowing Christ, not replacing him, not being an alternative to Christ.

Peter tried that on the Mount of Transfiguration. We'll have a tabernacle for Moses, and one for Elijah, and one for Jesus.

Peter tried that, no. No, well, someone greater than Moses is here, right? There was an old mediator, there was an old covenant, but now

Christ has come. But Moses' role is important because he's pointing forward to something in like manner.

When we come and read about Phinehas, we read that he does something. There was adjoining to Baal of Peor, verse 28 of Psalm 106, the eight sacrifices made to the dead, thus they provoked him to anger with their deeds, and the plague broke out among them.

What's going on there is sexual immorality with Midianite women.

This was the advice of Balaam to Balak about how to trip Israel up, and it was working.

And the plague had broke out among them, and God's judgment was coming hard upon them.

And then Phinehas stood up and intervened, verse 30 says, and the plague was stopped. Now, we're gonna go to Numbers 25 and see how he intervened and what that all was about.

But verse 31 is very important. And that, this intervening, that was accounted to him for righteousness to all generations forevermore.

Now, it's interesting that in this particular case, the emphasis of generations, the generations forevermore is being emphasized here.

So with that in mind, we need to go back to Numbers 25, and look at that story, and see what the psalmist is getting at, how he is bringing together several themes and then describing what happened.

So the problem, of course, was that Israel, verse three of Numbers 25, we hear this in Psalm 106, verse three of Numbers 25 says, so Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the

Lord was aroused against Israel, just like the psalm says. So now the Lord says to Moses, verse four, take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the

Lord out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.

So those who are responsible, not every, take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders.

So each of you, the leaders have to kill all the men who were joined to Baal of Peor. So all of these people are slated for judgment.

They all must be killed because of their crimes against God. Verse six, and indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a

Midianite woman in the sight of Moses. Talk about high -handed sin here. And in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting.

Why are they weeping? The plague's on them. How many more men have to die before the plague is stopped? Well, apparently one more.

Now when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through her body.

So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. And those who died in the plague were 24 ,000.

So out of all of those who died amongst the plague, obviously God killed 24 ,000.

Many more men were taken and they were hung out in the sun before God.

The idea is that they were put up on stakes before the face of God. But Eleazar, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, Phinehas did something.

He's the grandson of Aaron, the high priest, and he did something especially notable.

And so God says in verse 11, that Phinehas turned back my wrath from the children of Israel because he was zealous with my zeal among them so that I did not consume the children of Israel in my zeal.

Therefore, say, behold, I give to him my covenant of peace.

And it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood because he was zealous for his

God and made atonement for the children of Israel. So when you put this into context, you could take some of these terms that are very important to us out of context.

And we could come up with an idea that Phinehas made atonement, meaning that these people were forgiven of all of their sins and went to heaven because Phinehas made atonement for them.

Or we could leave it in a specific situation and say there was a breach between God and the people of Israel because of this sin, but Phinehas helped to bring that in a very spectacular way to a conclusion and stopped it with his zeal.

And everything after that stopped, he was able to help bring a stop to the sin, and therefore the wrath did not consume the people of Israel, therefore

Phinehas, because he was zealous, made atonement or atonement for the children of Israel. And this covenant of peace is described as a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, meaning, hey, the priesthood, the

Aaronic priesthood, comes down from Aaron to Eleazar, it's gonna go through Phinehas. It's gonna go through Phinehas and it's his descendants that are gonna be the priests before me in the life of Israel.

And this is accorded to them because of Phinehas. Phinehas's actions are going to bless all of his descendants.

And he says, and God says, I've determined this because he was especially zealous in acting in such a way as to return peace to Israel by being covenantally faithful.

Now, if you think it's strange that Levites are killing people, read a little bit broader. Okay, in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the

Levites were pretty handy with the sword and they were encamped around the tabernacle.

They were a ring around the tabernacle and then the other tribes camped around the tabernacle outside of the ring of Levites.

And the Levites had to keep things pure and holy and sometimes they were instructed to strap on their swords and just start killing people and turning back rebellion.

Why? Because the wrath of God was upon the people of Israel and until the men of Israel stopped all of their idolatry and their sinning,

God was bringing massive covenant retribution upon them because of it. Now, this is what it was like to live in the old covenant.

But what Thinneas did, however, is telling us about somebody else.

Thinneas is acting in the shadow here of a substance, the substance being Christ. Thinneas threw a javelin through Zimri and Cozbi and killed them.

And by this zealous action, turned back the wrath of God and helped deliver

Israel from destruction in this moment. And God made a special covenant with Thinneas and said, this covenant of peace for you and your generations, all of your descendants are priests.

But you know what? This is telling us about someone greater than Thinneas. Someone greater than Thinneas is here.

And he has done something far more zealous, far more amazing, that he himself in giving himself upon the cross and dying and taking the wrath of God in our place and for our sake, he is the one who makes atonement in not just in a specific instance, like this was just one specific transgression of Israel.

Notice that Thinneas' atonement here didn't help them out at Meribah and Marah, didn't help them out like later on when they were worshiping

Molech in the Valley of Kidron. Not atonement for all situations, just this situation. And that's why this is a shadow, but Christ is a substance.

He wants for all time, Hebrew says. Through the eternal spirit. Yeah, we don't have to have another priest after Christ.

He's the great high priest. And guess what? All his descendants, all those who are in him, all his generations, they're all priests.

And there's a whole lot more than Thinneas' descendants. So again, we have this comparison, but it's also a contrast from the lesser to the greater, which is one of the most common ways that Jesus and the apostles interpreted the

Old Testament. They would say someone greater than Solomon, someone greater than Moses, someone greater than the temple, so on and so forth.

That's just the model that they read through from shadow to substance. So in particular, when we read this in Psalm 106, yes, 100%,

Thinneas did do something that was accounted to him for righteousness that affected his following generations, just like Numbers 25 said.

He did make atonement. But these words of righteousness and the accounting of righteousness and these words of atonement and so on are specific to the situation, but they are exemplary and in a sense, forth -telling, if not even foretelling, of the greater.

It's a good question to ask, but it's important to remember the Old Covenant context in which

Thinneas is operating in. So you have two individuals, Abraham and Thinneas, both of which have taken action.

It's counted them as righteousness. In Abraham's case, his faith is shown by going into the land that God will show him, looking forward to something even greater, and of course, the

New Testament tells us a little bit more about what he was actually looking for, the heavenly city.

And you have the same phraseology for Thinneas, but in Thinneas' case, it's very specific.

It was specific for that event, that action, and it shows the wrath of God on sin and the necessity of having someone stand in, and we see example after example throughout the scriptures of somebody, some great man taking an action and his whole line being blessed as a result of it, or somebody doing something horrible and his line being cursed as a result.

What we do does echo into our ancestors. We're not responsible for their stuff, but there are generational curses that, there are effects, and people can break those things, but.

I would say within the Old Covenant, there is. Granted, yes, yeah, within the context of the Old Covenant, and Abraham in the context of the

Old Covenant, but Paul takes this, and you brought this out in Romans 4, that the idea of righteousness by faith, that just shall live by faith, that faith is the foundation of the

Christian life. This was an older idea. This is not something new.

Paul was just, because of who Christ is and what he has done, brings it into a greater and fuller light, and that's, if I understand correctly, that is something that we should be doing, both with the narrative of Thinneas, narrative of Abraham, Psalm 106, it's pointing towards, from different directions, it's pointing towards something greater,

Christ himself. So we shouldn't put ourselves in the place of Thinneas.

We shouldn't put ourselves in the place of Abraham and try to say, well, I should sacrifice my son because God will stop me, and then

I'll save the ram. So I should place myself in the role of Thinneas and stab the people that are causing the plague on our current generation.

No, no, no, the story isn't actually about you. It's about Christ. Well, we get that with Thinneas, too, right?

He was zealous for the Lord. He was zealous for his God. It's not that Thinneas was making this thing about himself, but that he was zealous for the

Lord's righteousness, and that's why the act was done. Yes, so notice that within the framework of, even the story of Psalm 106, as you read it, it's all about that particular relationship between God and Israel, and the things that he called them to, the way he delivered them and rescued them, how they failed to live faithfully, and the resulting wrath blooming upon their covenant transgressions, and how much of a savior they need.

Time and again, they're in this situation. This is a huge part of the story of Israel, and it's not a story that ever is completed until you come into the new covenant, and you begin to see how all of these different lines, either by comparison or contrast, end up being fulfilled in Christ.

When you think of what Thinneas did, you have to remember the old covenant construct.

Why was it pleasing to God, and right for Thinneas to do what he did?

Can we imagine any other modern situation today where we would like to go all

Thinneas on someone or something, and say,

I think I have biblical warrant for it, and this great zealous act can't be anything other than pleasing to God, and wouldn't

God bless me and my family for doing this? If I just had enough faith, if I had the faith of Thinneas, then

I would do these very outrageous things. But such a question fails to take into account the old covenant and what was entailed in it.

Again, God had instructed Moses to talk to the leaders of the tribes and of the clans of the tribes to start killing people who were breaking the covenant, and Thinneas was simply obeying the instructions that were given to him, but he did it very zealously, and he became an example, and then the

Lord was showing Israel something about, hey, if you are covenantally faithful, I'll bless you.

These arrangements are ultimately resolved in Christ, who is the perfect covenant keeper, and all the blessings are in him to us through faith in him, and he's the one who is born the curse and taken the curse out of the way.

So these things are resolved in him, so I encourage people to rest in Christ in that.

Well, we wanna move on to that next question. I think that's a pretty good lead in there. So we thought that this question here that we're about to read had a lot of relevance to the discussion around Thinneas and his act to deliver or atone for the

Israelites in that certain very specific scenario. So the question reads, as far as governmental authorities are concerned, should we ever respond with violence?

Corruption is so woven into the fabric of our government that it doesn't function without it anymore. The absolute worst is that millions of babies are being genocided.

We have been taking friendly fire for so long that I wonder if we are just too comfortable and selfish to fight for those who can't.

All right, so let's talk about some of the background understanding of this question, because there are, so for instance, governmental authorities, that's a pretty broad brush.

Now, of course, we've gotta use generalizations in order to communicate, but we're talking about governmental authorities who need to be challenged and so on and so forth.

Who are we talking about? That's a whole lot of people in a whole lot of different roles. So let's keep that in mind. Should we ever respond with violence?

Obviously, as someone once said, government has a monopoly on violence, but the idea is, of course, if you don't pay your taxes and if you don't show up to court when they tell you to and so on, at some point, the end of that conversation is gonna be a gun pointed at you.

And that's, okay, we remember from Romans 13 that the state bears the sword as it's supposed to be a minister of God to bear the sword against evil doers.

Now, the question is, should we ever respond with violence? Violence towards what? Well, a little bit later on,

I think the focus is the sore nerve, the hot button issue of abortion, okay?

So I guess some sort of violent act at some level, whether against property or persons in regard to the abortion mills and the abortion industry.

Now, governmental authorities, again, is a very broad, broad stroke, but I don't think we're talking about the dog catcher. You know, probably not talking about a city alderman, alderwoman, maybe we are,

I don't know. It's a whole lot of people in a whole lot of different roles. But it says corruption is so woven into the fabric of our government that it doesn't function without it anymore.

Now, I would say, yes, corruption is very much woven into the fabric of government. I mean, the

Bible tells us that that's the case and boy, has it ever been the case for a long time. It's interesting that it says it doesn't function without it anymore.

When did it not is the question, right? Yeah, when did it not function with it, yeah. Returning to some golden age. This is something that we have to think about carefully because part of the thesis of the idea is that things are now getting so bad, there's a progression of corruption that is so much more worse now than before that now certain types of actions are warranted whereas before they were not.

Now, that premise needs to be examined and especially given Paul's instructions and Jesus' instructions concerning how we understand the governing authorities, not as omniscient and all worthy of all obeisance, not at all, but also there is a sense in which we don't see a lot of armed insurgency being taught by Christ and the

Apostle Paul, right? Right. Yeah, they don't teach that, do they? Now, I would say that the folks that arrested

Christ put him through the court case, the trial, so -called trial and it's interesting, you know, the folks who do the historical background showed how many of their own laws that they broke.

Right, yeah. You talk about corruption. Multiple kangaroo courts. Yeah, and the amount of corruption that went on in Jesus' trial and this is the worst thing that anybody has ever thought of doing.

I remember Paul Washer one time saying, it's like, you know, men are so evil that if they had the chance to kill

God, they would do it and we know that they would do it because they did it to Jesus. That's how evil we are and all the corruption that you see involved in the murder of Christ, okay, and what did

Jesus say to Pilate? If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would do what?

Would be fighting for me. That's right. You know, Peter at the head of the phalanx, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, mis - Chopping ears off. Yeah, mis -aiming his sword, you know, but Jesus, he didn't say his kingdom wasn't in the world, he said his kingdom wasn't of the world.

Just like he says in High Priestly Prayer in John 17, I do not ask that you would take them out of this world.

They are in this world, but they're not of this world. His kingdom is in this world, but it's not of this world because it's not like those empires of man in Daniel chapter two, the statue of man with his feet firmly on the ground of Babylon, Medo -Persia,

Greece, and Rome, not like those kingdoms, not those empires. No, Christ's kingdom is not of this world.

If it were, then yes, of course, this is the exact moment in time at peak corruption and peak crime against all humanity, killing the son of God, that you should take up arms.

There was already precedent for this in Israel, the Maccabean Revolt. Yes, yeah, bring the hammer.

Is it time now, is it time to restore the kingdom? Should we pick up arms and do this?

Yeah, bring the hammer, and so Peter took a shot at it, and Jesus said, no, no. He's the one who told him to have the sword in the first place.

He said, no, Peter, not like that. Yes, you have a sword, because at some point, the governing authorities aren't gonna give you any protection, and you're gonna have to have your own protection against thieves, and so on and so forth.

Before, I told you, don't take extra sandals, don't take extra stuff, but now I'm telling you, be prepared, because you're gonna be an outlaw as you're trying to preach the gospel.

He says, that's gonna happen. You gotta have self -defense. But no, Peter, put that thing away, right?

So we already have the most crucial moment. In the most crucial moment, Jesus is saying, my followers don't do armed insurgency, right?

He's already said that. Now, that doesn't mean self -defense. He's saying, in a case of corruption and crime being committed, something happening, my followers don't do that.

Now, government's been corrupted a long time, and the U .S. government has not, has often portrayed itself as pristine, but it's not.

Yeah, look at the legislature, the U .S. Congress in the 1800s, I mean, it's worse than it was today.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The only thing that gave me hope during the 2020 election was that I had read about the 1960 election.

Like, yeah, it's been worse, folks. So corruption is not getting technically worse.

Maybe we're becoming more aware of it in an age of information, but it's not worse. Now, the absolute worst, of course, is that millions of babies are being genocided.

Yes, this is not something that we should ever approve of, that we should ever refrain from condemning in the strongest terms.

We shouldn't do anything that would be directly supporting this or promoting this.

This is not what we should be about. Now, it's interesting that the feeling of the questioner is this, and I know

I have felt this before, too. It says, we have been taking friendly fire for so long that I wonder if we're just too comfortable and selfish to fight for those who can't.

Now, I'm assuming the friendly fire is Americans killing Americans. I was thinking maybe he was talking about the pro -life.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. But I didn't know. Maybe that's what the questioner means, that the friendly fire from people who are saying to abolitionists, you're too extreme.

Too radical, yeah. Too radical, be quiet. Or it's our own government. It's like, it was supposed to protect us. It's now coming after us.

I don't know what he means by friendly fire. Yeah, and friendly fire may be like in terms of, we're good citizens, we're

American citizens, and when we're trying to protest this, that they arrest us and throw us in jail and they ruin our lives simply because, and that could be considered like.

And we're trying to do it peacefully. Yes, exactly. And they're using the FACE Act in illegal ways and Trump's pardoned a lot of people regarding those false charges, too.

In trying to understand what the friendly fire thing is, are we just too comfortable and selfish to fight for those who can't?

Now, given this, what is our responsibility concerning the young ladies ordering chemical abortion kits, having them mailed to their house, which is in Oklahoma.

Okay, this is where we live. This is what's currently happening. This is what's happening. We're number five as far as how many pills are flooding into the state.

Number five amongst all the states. So abortion is alive and well, going full steam ahead in the state of Oklahoma through the means of chemical abortion.

There's billboards on the way down to Texas. I think there's like four or five of them that I've counted just driving that route multiple times and that's what they're trying to promote are those kits.

You have a choice. Yes. And that's a terrible thing. Now, what is our responsibility? Do we need to go find the chemical plants that are making the drugs and blow them up?

Do we need to tear down those billboard signs? Do we need to find out the mailing list of where these pills are going and then try to blow up the

US mail, taking it from one place to another? And then the last resort, are we invading these people's houses to take away their pills and assaulting these women who are trying to be murderers?

Should we become Phineas and stop this plague? Exactly. Operation Javelin, right?

Is this legitimized in any fashion? No, it's not. Why not? Well, again, this may feel a little odd, but we are not in covenant with these people.

We're not covenanted to them. Their transgressions are not cursing us. We're not bound to God in some sort of covenant relationship where we have to force them to do righteousness or everything fails.

Somebody in - What about our nation? Sorry, but what about the nation? Yeah, well, what about the

American empire? Yeah, what about it? Yeah, well, somebody in Moscow, Idaho, you know, when you're talking to where there's no nation, there's no

American empire, you know, they just felt a tremor in the force to say that we are not in covenant with our nation.

Yeah, we're not. We're in covenant with Christ and he is the ruler of the kings of the earth and they're accountable to him.

And if the magistrate is evil, if the magistrate is evil, do you know who's going to judge him?

It's not like he's gonna escape judgment. No, no, Christ is going to judge him. He's gonna smash him like a clay pot with a rod of iron.

He's gonna take care of that. I trust the ruler of the kings of the earth to do right. I trust him to do right all the time.

And in the meantime, I can leave room for wrath. Vengeance is the Lord's. He will repay. And again, when a woman kills her child and she murders them with the tacit approval of the state of Oklahoma, who clearly cites in the homicide code that when we talk about ending someone's life, although this applies to the unborn child of a mother, we don't prosecute that.

This will not be charged as homicide. In the homicide code, it very clearly states that. When that all happens,

I'm not responsible to go violently disrupt any of that.

I am responsible for Christ to pray for that, ask God to stop it. I'll not be involved in it.

Preach against it. I will preach against it. I will say that is unrighteousness, that is wicked, that is evil. I will say that's murder.

I will say that a woman who does that is a murderer and not all sins are equal.

And murdering people is worse than calling someone a name. So there are different levels of sin here and murder is a terrible, awful sin.

And I'll be saying all of that. But I am not in some sort of covenant relationship with these people doing that.

Their sins, their criminal acts, their sins before the face of God in no fashion bring condemnation upon me in Christ.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So when abortion is going on in the state in which

I live, in the American empire in which I live, I do not have to repent of the abortions being committed by those people.

I don't have to repent at all. I'm against it. I protested it. I've been at the abortion mill.

I've prayed against it. I've taught my children about it. We've done what we can to support

Hope Pregnancy Center, options for adoption, all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's like, hey,

I don't have to repent from anything. I've been dead set against it. But we are being told by some that this ongoing abortion crisis in our nation is bringing the curse of God upon us.

It is all these horrible things are happening to us because of it. And then this pressures us to do something about it rather than rest in Christ and know that he's going to do something about it.

Now, again, they're not coming into my home. They're not coming into our church services.

They're not playing the Herod card and coming into my home or our churches and trying to kill our infants, right?

Right. If the state does that, then - It's on. Yeah, it's on. Jesus said, carry the swords.

And when we pull the swords out at that point, if they come to try to take our children and kill our children and kill our wives and so on and so forth, then we're gonna be a little bit like Jesus and defend our bride.

And we're going to protect our family and protect our children as good Christian men ought to do, as we've been instructed to do.

And we've talked about self -defense on this podcast before. And if Herod himself decides to do that,

Herod's gonna find out that he has no sovereign rule here. And we're back to the doctrine of the lesser magistrates and the

Magdeburg Confession and all the rest of it, which we've gone through before. I don't want to quibble, and hopefully this is not too much of a hypothetical.

I think the intent of the person who asked this question, they don't see any difference between some woman ordering an abortion pill and then killing their child in their own home and you walking down the street and seeing someone ready to shoot someone else and you refusing to take action.

Should you repent of refusing to take action, refusing to do what you can to help stop that assault?

You can see the parallel that they're trying to make because someone who has been violently assaulted and murdered on the street and a child in the womb is being violently assaulted and murdered there, do we not have an equal responsibility to try and stop that?

So what's the difference between those two situations? And I understand the argument and I think it's been used a lot.

So why is this apples and oranges and not apples and apples? What makes it different? Why do we treat them differently?

I think a lot of it. I don't know, I'm gonna be perfectly honest. If I had the ability to stop someone who was getting ready to murder someone on the street and I had the ability to shoot him, you know, that was okay, boom, done.

I wouldn't walk into a woman's house and shoot her in the head to stop the abortion. I just killed two people.

You know, that's murder. You know, I'm murdering someone, but in the other case, I'm actually killing someone before they kill someone else.

So help me make sense of this. Because no, I would absolutely stop, well, as much as my ability, if I could,

I would stop that assault on the street. But no, I wouldn't go into a woman's home and hold a gun to her head and say, don't take the pill.

One, it wouldn't do any good. Don't kill your child or I'll kill you and your child. Yeah, I mean. I mean, obviously not advocating for that.

But my question was, the person who asked this question equates those two because you're still having a loss of an innocent life.

Why would you not try to stop it in both cases? So what we're talking about here is if you were in the position and you had the ability to stop an imminent assault on somebody else, you were able to do it, you were equipped to do it.

And at this point he was like, I don't care what the consequences are. I want to stop this person. Third party encounter.

Yeah, I'm trying to stop it, okay. You can actually do something about it and you can be effective in doing it.

And you were able to stop it and do good. Okay, right? We're getting into just war theory here, if you can tell.

In this other situation, you can't. Because you don't know the time or the place most of the time, right?

You can't do anything about it. You can't, yeah. Now, the analogy therefore is not the person being assaulted in the street when you have the means and the opportunity to stop it.

That's not the analogy. Because you don't have the means and opportunity to stop abortions.

The analogy is the guy that's assaulting the person on the street is part of a gang and you know kind of some of the houses that they like to be around a lot.

So what you do is you go firebomb those houses to try to disrupt all the violence and all the societal disruption that they get involved with.

So you're gonna go do some violence and - Preempt it. Yeah, you're gonna preempt by, okay, maybe

I drive by shooting or you're gonna firebomb what you think is their headquarters and you don't know all the different places in there necessarily where they, and oh, the reason why they're a gang and they have their money and they're so violent towards people that I know they've assaulted people on the street.

I've heard about it. It's in the news. They just can't catch them because they're not doing anything about it and they're just taking funding for stopping gangs but they never actually do anything about it.

They're just taking the funding. It's all corrupt. I'm gonna go stop it. I'm gonna go firebomb those houses. That's the analogy, stopping the woman in her house and firebombing the gang.

Yeah, but they live there with their women and their children too. You see what just happened? This is where it's like I want to stop it and I want to believe that I have the ability to stop it and do something about this but there has to be a humble reckoning of saying there are some things

I can't do. There are some things I can't do. There are some things I can't stop and I wish

I could and they make me crazy but this is the come back to the instructions of right before we're told what the job of the state is, we're also told that the state is not to be all powerful.

The state is not supposed to have all the solutions because we leave room for wrath and yes, the state can be used as a tool for vengeance.

It's been given the sword. Yes, it's been appointed by God. Yes, it's a servant of God. Yes, but it's still made up of people.

Yeah, it's still made of people. So who's our trust in? God. The final judge. Yeah, absolutely.

Do you think that we get a bunch of chariots together and we get a bunch of horses together and we're all gonna go take care of ourselves?

That's what we're gonna trust at night. Yeah. But in that situation, there's a compelling, yes, we're doing something, we're taking action but sometimes we're not actually called to go take action.

We're called to wait on the Lord and we're called to pray and trust in Him and it's the harder thing to do and yes, you could say, well, that's up to God.

I wanna get involved with that sticky wicket, that kind of problem. I don't wanna have to deal with that. So I'm just gonna say,

I'm gonna leave it up to God. Let go and let God. And yes, you can use that to hide behind, to be a coward and to be lazy.

Yes, indeed you can but you don't have to. You can wait on the Lord and trust in Him and His timely vengeance and know that He's gonna do a better job of handling that both in the now and the hereafter than I could ever get close to handling myself but I'm not gonna be lazy in this.

I'm going to do the hard labor and the hard work of opposing it how

I can, teaching, instructing, supporting the alternatives.

I can be diligent. I can be diligent in small things that others will despise but I know that it pleases my

Lord and I'll be diligent in prayer and I'll be courageous too. I will go speak to my representative.

I will communicate with my representatives and I will tell them what's most important around these parts and it's not potholes although I hope they do take care of that.

I will tell them what the most important things are and I'll be courageous and I'll say that to their face and I'll hold signs.

I'll be courageous in the ways that I can but it's good to remember that Christ's kingdom is not of this world.

I'm not under condemnation because I have evil neighbors who kill their children.

That doesn't condemn me. I'm free in Christ. I'm right in Christ. So that doesn't condemn me.

It concerns me because I'm to love my neighbor but it doesn't condemn me and I can be concerned without being condemned.

You can do that and at the end of the day, I do not sit around thinking that I'm a part of,

Isaiah was right to be concerned in Isaiah chapter six. I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the

Lord of hosts, the Lord of glory and I'm doomed because he was part of a people. He was accountable.

He was impacted by the sins of his people, corporate sin in the old covenant. Yes, but very expressly, it says that's not how it works in the new covenant.

Very, very clearly, it says that's not how it works in the new covenant and so we are a kingdom among the nations and we are a priesthood among the churches.

And we are a brotherhood among the families. It is an inappropriate use of the old covenant which it inappropriately puts us back into old covenant framework when we treat the

United States like a new Israel. And so that is not the relationship that we have.

We are not to look at the example of Phineas and say if we do this,

God will bless our land. We are in the new covenant and as we have said again and again, the old covenant is obsolete.

It has passed away. It is not to be revived. It has served its purpose and we are in the new.

We can learn things from the old, but we are not Phineas. Now our nation was founded on old covenant idealism.

True. The Presbyterian revolt as the Brits said. Putting the hand on the open

Bible when you were sworn into office, the hand on the open Bible on Deuteronomy 28, blessings and curses.

That's how our, that was the mentality of the founding of our nations. We're very Presbyterian in our origins.

So long before there was ever a revival of the idea of the old covenant in Israel, the modern state of Israel, long before 1948, there was 1776.

And a big idea that we are a special nation under God, well, you know what?

God does rule over all nations and it's good to acknowledge that. We should be acknowledging God. We should be saying, you know what?

He's in charge. He's our maker. He's our creator. He's King, even of Oklahoma. That's right. He's King of Oklahoma.

We should acknowledge that. That's good. So legislators, bow the knee. Amen. Kiss the sun.

And we're all for that. We are all for that. However, in a new covenant sense.

If they don't, does that make me cursed? No. Means they're in a lot of hot water. I think one of the weird outflows of this presupposition of a lot of covenantalism that we're seeing or we're talking about here is it also allows you not to think as wisely or strategically when it comes to politics and trying to navigate some of these issues.

If it's all based on a covenantal framework, then it must play out and be fixed as a covenant would be fixed or played out.

Like there's no wisdom applied to the politics. Hey, you might be living in a nation of people who don't believe in a final judgment.

They don't believe in a final judgment for these people who are murdering children. So they're not going to play by your rules.

They're not gonna play by your covenantal games. And in the same way, some of the arguments that I've seen online between people who think covenantally about this and then those who are trying to apply some sort of wisdom to the politics in order to get the desired result of no more babies being murdered is why don't we deal with immigration first where we can actually still vote and have a nation still, and then we can deal with the abortion on the backside.

Well, covenanters, they'll argue, they'll say, the reason we have abortion is because, or the reason we have immigration is because we're killing babies because that's how it worked out in the old covenant.

Yeah. Your nation will be overrun by strangers and foreigners. Yeah. This is the covenantal curse coming true. Yeah, and that's kind of one of their confirmations.

They see that happen and they say, well, this is the curse because you've had baby murder in your land for decades.

So this is what we get. So you have to deal with the baby murder first and you can't deal with the immigration first. And it's really strange to me because consistently applied, that seems pretty consistent to apply it that way, but to do it, you're gonna lose your country to even have the possibility of no more abortion.

So it doesn't make a lot of sense when it's consistently applied. I thought immigration was handled.

I thought it's down like 99 % or something like that. Maybe the immigration, but the deportations have yet to begin in earnest.

Yeah, so I think the continent of Africa with its many nations is a place that a lot of people are not trying to illegally immigrate to, would you say?

Mostly they're - They're leaving. Yeah, they're leaving, right. So they have lots of abortion. Oh yes.

In amongst the nations in Africa. And sometimes it's after birth. Yeah. And so, but they're not having lots of people flooding in and ruining their system.

So they actually have a lot of people leaving. But the U .S. is the center of all of God's universe, so.

But anyway, yeah, so that's - Yeah, that's a lament. That is a lament. So we should do whatever we can.

We should do everything that we could within the context of our laws and systems and just understand there's limits to what we can do, but don't use some old covenant examples to justify violence and think that because it worked then, we'll get the same result now.

It's a different covenantal context. Just think of Peter. He thought he could stop it. He saw injustice.

He saw betrayal. It was the worst night of his life. With a kiss. It was the worst of the worst of corruption and betrayal.

Here's the moment to do something. He tried to do something, and he really couldn't do it.

One sword against a mob, he wasn't gonna be able to succeed anyway, but Jesus told him, stop. Those who live by the sword are gonna die by it.

He said, don't do that. Do it differently. And that's been a really important,

I think, guiding principle for us. This is a conversation that is, again, more complex when you think about the history and the ways in which nations that were declared to be

Christian nations and how they would take up arms and go to war in the name of God and so on, and there's a big, broad conversation about that, but we have to come back to some of these simple teaching moments where Jesus was explaining what his kingdom's really about and what his followers are to be really about.

And that can be very helpful in clarifying to us as, once again, we're not called to get ourselves so lost into large, all -encompassing issues that keep us from living faithful lives in the things that are right in front of us.

We need to be diligent while our master is away. He has gone on a long journey to a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.

And if we get too caught up into big, abstract, terrible issues that we really can't solve in and of ourselves, then we're not gonna be about the things that he does want us to be about.

Now, we are to be concerned. We are to know what to say about these things. We know what to do about these things, and it's important that we connect our everyday actions as their significance to actually helping towards stymieing the sin and being against these problems.

But again, we can get so caught up into these big ideas of, oh, I'm gonna go be

Athenius. Well, actually, you don't need to be Athenius. Someone has come and done all the

Athenius that we need for us, and he did it better than Athenius. So trust in Christ's atonement, trust in his wisdom, trust in his righteousness.

Amen. Well, I think that wraps that up, so why don't we move on to recommendations, Michael? I picked up a four -volume series called

The New Answers Book. This is the Answers in Genesis four books of questions and answers about apologetics concerning science objections and so on to the scriptures, and they just have a collection of articles.

They're all fairly short, and they've got illustrations in them. So I would say probably you're looking at high schoolers, high school -level reading, and it's enough to keep you interested and written by a variety of authors, but they touch on everything.

Now, this is the 31st printing of this series. Wow. It first came out in 2006, and this is the 31st printing in 2022, and I picked up my set off of eBay, but I'm reading through article by article, and some of this stuff is things that I've already thought about and worked through, and some of them are new and interesting.

It is not a hard read, but it's a refreshing read, and it just tunes you up on some of those issues that perhaps you need a little bit more precision on when you're thinking about these things and teaching them or arguing them.

All right, Dave. I recently finished another book by Bodie Bauckham.

I think I've recommended maybe like four of his over the last about two years. I just seem to keep coming back to him.

This was written in 2015. It's expository apologetics, answering objections with the power of the word, and I really enjoy his style.

I like his style of writing. It's like a lot of apologetics books.

It goes through some of those defenses for your faith, but what he wants to do is he's actually using apologetics in an evangelistic sense.

This is about talking to people and helping them see their own presuppositions, identifying your own, and actually talking through with someone in a winsome manner, actually having these kind of conversations, and he definitely goes through 1

Peter 3. We talked about having a reasonable defense, why people are, why do they believe, what is that?

He uses the Apostle Paul as an example of just asking questions and answering them, and so it just flows kind of naturally.

One word of, I wouldn't say warning, just full disclosure, as a Reformed Baptist and a full subscriber to the 1689, he does really promote creeds, confessions, and catechisms as foundational, especially for children and new believers, that rote memorization is very helpful in this respect.

It helps to kind of clarify your thinking, and it's given me kind of a renewed appreciation for some of the old creeds and some of those catechisms.

Yes, it was just surprising that he would actually use this. No, this is actually really useful, and not just useful, but in his view, foundational, before you can really have some of these conversations that you need to have that kind of doctrinal training, but he just wants everyone to see themselves as an apologist.

You should have a defense. If you're going to be speaking with people about Christ, you should know what you believe and why, and be able to engage with them in a reasonable manner.

He actually tells a couple of stories of where he came in with the full hammer, and he says, this is to my shame.

It needs to be done in a much more winsome manner without compromising on the truth. So I found it very helpful, and Andrew, just the people that you speak to just on campus, these are the encounters that he was kind of describing.

So I actually just had a recent encounter with someone who was just staunch atheist, asked a biblical question, says, why are you guys picking and choosing which biblical laws you want to follow?

So he's like, well, sure, you don't like this, but you're also eating ham on Easter. I can -

Yeah, that's right, Easter ham. He was like, okay, let's go through some of the laws, and let's talk through what each one meant, and this is what it's pointing towards.

This is why. And he'll kind of work through, because he was trying to point out inconsistency, and Vodhi actually addresses one of those issues, that exact scenario, how people pick and choose.

They accuse you of picking and choosing. Actually, they're the ones doing that. It was an interesting exchange. So I got to read about it in this book, and then a few weeks later,

I'm encountering it firsthand. So I enjoyed it. It is Expository Apologetics, Answering Objections with the

Power of the Word by Vodhi Bhakam. All right, Andrew? I kind of want to talk to this guy now.

No, I don't have anything. Yeah, semester is wrapping up. If you hear this, if you could pray that I would be able to recall the things that I need during my exams, and that I would finish strong, and enjoy my time, that would be helpful.

Yep, we're praying for you, Matt, too. All right, well, my recommendation for this week is

Brightest Heaven of Invention, A Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays by Peter J.

Lightheart. It goes through Henry V, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Taming of the

Shrew, and Much Ado About Nothing. It was actually a really enjoyable listen. I'm gonna end up buying the hard copy at some point to go through and see where I disagree with him on certain things, but I really enjoyed his analysis of the story and Shakespeare's obvious Christian beginnings and writings as well, and his framework is, the drama is biblical almost every single time.

All the comedies are always biblical dramas that are reflective of the divine comedy, and many of the tragedies are ripped either from old

Greek tales, but they'll have Christian twists on them or Christian references in order to, not necessarily baptize it, but he's delivering these things in a way to a

Christianized audience in London in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

So, Lightheart's analysis on these plays is really enjoyable.

It does come with a lot of his, I guess he's an Anglican now, or I can't remember if he's

Presbyterian, but it comes with a lot of that angle to it as well, but I thought it was really well done, and not real long, and it was easy to listen to, but it sounds like it's gonna be easy to read too.

So, I really enjoyed that. Michael, what are we thankful for? I am thankful for the opportunity to learn as a child of God while teaching my children, and how often the lesson of the day, something that I'm already reflecting on and trying to learn myself, and so talking with them and keeping that in mind.

How is my father teaching me? How can I teach them about caring for what has been entrusted to me, and how to love others, and how to be patient, and how to have integrity?

And I'm thankful for that opportunity to be a parent, to be a father, while also still being a child and keeping that in mind.

Do you ever have any of them ask you why you're teaching them a certain way? Maybe not yet. They ask it in ways without asking it, mostly trying to see the fairness of what's going on, not, you know, your response to my whatever seems way too much, you know?

And like, why, that seems unfair. It's shattering to their plans and expectations, and so I will see that, and I don't want to provoke them to wrath.

I don't want to provoke them or exasperate them in some way, so I will try to explain why we're doing it this way.

It's like, you know, I would rather not be having this conversation with you. I'd rather us be having other types of conversation, but, you know, when they were younger, it was a different type of interaction sometimes.

Right. You know, the discipline was more direct with an eye to the long term.

This is going to pay off, and you have to keep telling yourself that because in the long term, it does pay off.

Amen. Dave, what are we thankful for? On Saturday, April 19th, my father turned 80.

Wow. I am thankful for him. I was very thankful to be able to be in town on the 18th.

I had finished up a trip and was able to take him to the headquarters and put him into a sim, and we got two hours of just him and me, and they actually had an instructor with us.

They were actually able to find one and got me an instructor to actually run this thing. When most people who come and do tours can go in, even sit down, even have some of the visuals, but he got the full experience, closed that door, and you would have thought he was 12 years old again.

It was. Beautiful. It was amazing. I'll show you guys some pics offline.

They are magical. I mean, it's just wonderful. It was a really nice day. I got to do it the day before.

He and I went to breakfast, and then we went over, and he's never seen me fly.

He's never seen my job, and so that was very special. This is a man that we pray for every week.

I believe his day is Saturday. I think that's right. We just have a different, that was Amy's idea, just a different family member each day of the week, and so we pray for him and his wife

Connie. This is also the man that when we sat down for lunch before Amy and Elizabeth arrived, he took me aside and says, hey, would you do me a favor and not pray in public?

It embarrasses me. That's who he is, so that's one of the reasons we pray for him, and he is very anti what

I believe, and he is a man who needs the grace of God to break through his heart without a doubt.

Love him, respect him, and I will enjoy every second that I have with him, but he is someone that I continually pray for, and like with me and like with us all, it would take an absolute miracle.

So I am very thankful for my father, for everything he has taught me. I am very thankful for the people who moved heaven and earth to get him this time.

Very thankful that I got to show him some things that nobody else in the family could do for him, and when

I asked him if he agreed that I am now his favorite kid, he's like, yeah, you're now the favorite.

Had him over a barrel. That's right, so I love him a lot, so I'm very thankful for my dad.

Amen, Andrew? The other day, Emily and I, my wife, we were discussing the difference between lifespan and healthspan, and I know that the

Lord has numbered my days, but I introduced this idea because I thank God for home -cooked meals, and I was telling my wife,

I don't know how many years of health that you give your family every single day by choosing to make food from scratch here at the house, devoted to loving her family that way.

I don't know if she's ever thought a bit like that, but all those who care for their family enough to actually make food for them, it demonstrates love, and who knows how much healthier we are because of that.

It's one of those things that's like, I can't know what the other side of that coin looks like, but I can thank

God that I don't know what the other side of the coin looks like, so I thank the Lord for that. I thank the

Lord for my wife. Amen, that kind of reminds me of Ernest Hemingway and one of his wives that he had.

When they were living in Paris, they always talked about dressing plainly in order to eat like kings, so they would buy cheaper clothes so that they could go and eat the best of the food that Paris had to offer, and that's a little bit of the philosophy that I can poach from him a little bit, but it's more of a like, we're actually gonna get the best ingredients that we possibly can, and we're going to try to eat like kings in our double wide every night.

This is how it's gonna look, and I mean, I'm thankful for times where we don't have enough financial capability to do that, but when the

Lord has given it to us, I want to give the apex of healthspan to my children that I possibly can, and that includes good ingredients and home -cooked meals, so I really appreciate being thankful for that right there, but I'm also thankful for seasons.

Growing up, my life was, it revolved around sports seasons, so once you finish one, you're entering another one, and a lot of times, they overlap by like two or three weeks, so by the time you got done toward the end of playoffs, you know, shooting a basketball, you're already like in shape throwing a baseball, so my seasons always overlapped, but I think it was actually really good training for us now as adults to watch how certain seasons, being adults, being fathers, being mothers, in churches with other family members, how they kind of overlap, they kind of revolve, and then you never stay in one spot, but I'm thankful even like with work,

I have seasonal work still, and you know, eventually, I'd love to get away from seasonal work, but I really don't think you're meant to ever get away from seasonal work altogether.

There are jobs to be done around the house that require you to do it during winter. Specific season, you bet.

Yeah, like the pipes freezing, because that's not gonna happen in summer, that's gonna happen in winter, so that's a job for wintertime, but those seasons, they remind you of a lot of the goodness of the

Lord, and all good weather, which I think all weather is a good thing, but being thankful for all these different times that we can enjoy all of the

Lord's goodness in every single season that He's given to us. And that wraps it up for today.

We are very thankful for our listeners, and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?