Friday Night Live! (Keith Answering Emails & Audience Questions)

Sometimes I feel the weight of the world fall down on me

And I need a friendly voice with some good theology

Calvinist baby speaking So I mix a manly drink Pepsi and shoe polish

And I hit the YouTube link Don't say hit, that sounds violent And I feel my troubles all melt away

It's your Calvinist podcast with Keith Polosky Beers and bow ties

Laughs till sunrise It's your

Calvinist podcast with Keith Polosky He's not like most

Calvinists He's nice Your Calvinist podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

Welcome to Friday Night Live The first ever of this show on the Your Calvinist podcast with Keith Polosky I want to thank you for joining me if you are joining me live

And if you're catching this at a later date on a recording I hope you are doing well But hopefully we'll have some people joining us live tonight

Because I will be answering live questions as they come up in the comment box But what

I'm doing with this is I'm going to begin doing this more regularly

Because I'm getting emails more regularly And I'm thankful for those emails I'm thankful for people that want to hear what

I have to say And have questions about the Bible or about church life And about ministry

A lot of pastors send in questions And so I'm going to Instead of doing a regular mailbag episode

I think I'm going to try this for a while Try a live show Maybe once a week Maybe once every two weeks

We'll see how the intervals go With how the emails come in But this is my first time doing this

And as I begin the show today I just want to thank you for joining me And again, my name is

Keith Polosky And this is normally the Your Calvinist podcast But today it is Friday Night Live And just a few things to remind you of This show is sponsored by Well, it is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church Which is in Jacksonville, Florida If you'd like to learn more about the church

You can go to our website sgfcjacks .org And also we have a shop

Where we have merchandise for the show And it does help support the show I got a new shirt today

So I wore it so that I could share it with you This is the set of the

Dude Abides This is the Nice Abides shirt Hashtag Team Funny Man And this is the picture from the opening crawl

And it's just a fun shirt But there's a lot of other cool shirts We got a Reformator shirt on there

Which has got this poster behind me On the shirt We've got the Warning I'm Just Barely Saved shirt

Which is really funny I wore that earlier this week Posted that A lot of people got a kick out of that So it's available

You can find it in the link in YouTube Or you can just go to KeithFoskey .com And all the links are there

And that's also where you send emails If you have questions that you want answered Go to KeithFoskey .com

And that's where you will get the email And be able to It goes right to me

I usually answer them from my phone So I mean it's literally coming right to me It's not going through any type of a service

As of yet Not using any type of Any screening or anything Just comes right in So send me an email if you have a question

I'm thankful to have people watching I see Duane out there Thank you Duane I see the guys at WatchWell out there

It's good to see you guys So thankful And I want to jump right into it Because I got a lot to get to tonight

Last thing before I do though Get out of the introduction Is don't forget that we are sponsored

By tinybibles .com They are such a huge help to the show And such a huge supporter of the show

And we want to support them So if you want to support the show One of the ways you can do it Is buy yourself a tiny

Bible Use the coupon code KEITH at checkout And you will get a percentage off So What am

I doing? Well Today I'm going to be answering questions On emails But first I do want to address the

Main issue of the day And Want to kind of start with just sort of A disclaimer

Yesterday was a very difficult day And it was difficult For two reasons

One I had a person that I love very much Invite me to lunch A person I've known for literally all my life

And told me some very difficult news From his own life And We wept together We had

A wonderful talk We talked about the Lord We talked about life And so that was a difficult

Opportunity for ministry But I was thankful that God opened that door Get out to my truck Call my wife

And she says Hey did you see the news About Steve Lawson? And I said no

I hadn't And so Immediately Began to look and see what had happened

And It's It's It was heartbreaking And I have to say

The last 24 hours have been really tough And I want to say this

I I have a friend Matthew Henson He's been on the show He's my Not Yet Calvinist friend And one of the things we talk about a lot

Is a 48 -hour rule And basically the 48 -hour rule is that Anytime A Situation happens

Like a big huge news story or something Especially where someone is in a scandal Or something like that We We say you know what

We're going to give it 48 hours Before we say anything publicly Before we post anything about it Or anything like that Because we want to see

You know What's really happening A lot of stuff comes out at the beginning That's untrue or incorrect Or bad information

And so I know I haven't reached the 48 -hour mark yet And I am saying something So I am breaking the rule slightly

But I want to say this One This show is not about Steve Lawson That's not why I did this show

And that's not what I want to talk about But I am going to address Because I did get an email question about this

That I think deserves an answer But when it comes to the situation with Steve Lawson I'm going to say these things

One I'm not going to speak about anything that's unknown And everything that is known is public

So if you want to know anything about the situation You can go look it up His church has posted something His ministry

One Passion Ministry has posted something And So if you want to know What I know

Just go read that Because that's all I know And I'm not going to add anything else to it Secondly We need to remember the promise of 1

John Which says that if we confess our sins God is faithful To forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness

And so we should pray that for him We should pray That Everyone involved

Including his wife His church All of the people who are affected Close and far From Steve Would be

Would be During this time That they would be kept In the faith That they would be encouraged

That they would In this brokenness That they would pray for him We We need to Manage this well

And godly And And be loving As we As we see this So The last thing about it

Is the question that I received The email question It's going to be our first email question of the night And that is The question

Regards The handling of his materials That we have Obviously Steve Is Has Confessed to a sin

That's public But what do we do now In regard to Things like His books

And his videos And he was pretty prolific He's everywhere I mean I've talked about him many times on the show

In fact I did a whole series Called Not Only Water Where I was teaching How to prepare sermons

And in that series I referenced Lawson a lot Because I had taken An online course

That he had taught On sermon preparation So There's even a lot of material

That I've done That includes Lawson's name And Lawson's Thoughts And Lawson's Ideas And so The question is

Well what do we do And the person who wrote Said Basically I'm rewording it slightly

But basically was Should we just go ahead And be done with him And be done

You know Not read his books Throw things away What should we do And this is my answer to that Nothing that he has done

Makes any truth That he said Untrue So let me say that again

Nothing that Lawson Is guilty of doing No sin that he has committed Makes something true

That he said Not true Therefore If he wrote books And there are true things In those books

Then Those true things Are still true things The true things That he said In videos

And in sermons Are true Now As same as they were then So therefore

I would not be Tossing out his books I would not be Jettisoning his literature Now there is going to be

Some adjustments In In regard to publishing And things like that I understand Ligonier Removed him as a

Teacher And I'm sure there's going to be Some adjustments In The publishing Side of that But we can't

Control that But if there's a book That Steve Lawson wrote That benefited you In the past It can still benefit you

In the future Please don't Just immediately start

Throwing things in the trash Or anything like that That would be my Encouragement to you And I want to address

One other thing And this may be This might Get me into it a little bit

But There's a lot of people Who are Against Calvinism I get that I understand

The issues I understand the debate Maybe I don't want to say

Maybe more than More than others But I understand the debate Because I've been in it And I've been a part of this And I've been

Professing to be a Calvinist As a preacher now For almost 20 years And so I've Seen a lot of stuff

And One of the things That's being said right now Is what Lawson preached That God is sovereign

Over all things So essentially He was just doing What God made him do

Because God made him do this That is not What Calvinism teaches

At least that is not What I teach As a Calvinist I can't speak For every Calvinist I can't speak for every

Person Who claims to be a Calvinist I do believe That God decrees All things

But that does not mean That God is the Is the immediate cause Of all things

The Confessions address The idea of secondary causes And it talks about God not doing violence

To the will of the creature Meaning that we believe That man's will Has the ability To make choices

In fact, that's the whole problem Is we choose evil It's God who restrains us It's God who

Keeps us from evil And if God Is In this moment Working in Steve's life

And doing something In Steve's life That Is Allowing this

For a purpose We don't know What that purpose is But We cannot Lay this at the feet of God And say

God You did this Steve is responsible For what he did And that has to be understood I think he would say that I think any

Calvinist Would say That we are responsible For our sin And there is a tension That we hold

And that man is Responsible And God is sovereign But we have to hold

Both of those in tension And believe both of those Because the Bible Clearly teaches them And so That's as much as I'm going to say about that I hope

I didn't say too much But I And again I've not spoken about him Or his character

Or anything like that Except that I have benefited from him I love him

I pray for his Complete repentance And I pray For his dear wife And his church

More than anyone right now So Because they're the ones Who are hurting the most Okay All right

So we're going to move on To other questions Because That That's just a lot

To deal with All right So Totally different subject

Completely Off the subject Moving to Our email questions And I want to say

I try to keep these In order of when I receive them But sometimes I move them around To put them in categories

So Let's Let's Begin with The The one that's

The longest back This is an older question This came to me A couple weeks ago And I've just been Filing it away

So Number one I would be interested In hearing a discussion On the law

Of first mention All right So that's the question And if you don't know What that means

This is dealing With a hermeneutical Principle Now sometimes People call it a hermeneutical law

It's not a law But it is a hermeneutical principle That some people employ And I have

Even I heard about this When I was in seminary Going through hermeneutics class People mentioned it

Talked about it And some even endorsed it But I I don't

I do not endorse the law Of first mention But Because the person asked I want to respond And so what is the law

Of first mention I'm going to read A definition here This is from Got questions If you're familiar with Got questions I just wanted to get a definition

So I pulled it off their website It says The law of first mention says That to understand A particular word

Or doctrine We must find The first place in scripture That word or doctrine Is revealed And study that passage

The reasoning is That the bible's First mention of a concept Is the simplest And clearest presentation Doctrines are then

More fully developed On that foundation So to fully understand An important and complex Theological concept

Bible students Are advised to start With its first mention So for instance When you want to know

What blood is referring to In the bible When it talks about blood Go to the first place Blood is mentioned

Study that And you'll learn About what the bible Talks about When it talks about blood Throughout the rest

Of the scriptures And I know there are A lot of people Who support this idea

There are even A lot of websites As I was researching For tonight's show They were saying

This is a proper Hermeneutical method Some people again Called it a righteous Or a law

A hermeneutical law And I think it's I think it's poppycock

I just don't agree And I know Some people might get mad at me

For saying that I just I don't get it I think context

Is so much more important Than how a term is used In a different book

Or in You know like If Moses uses a term It might be used Completely different By David in the

Psalms It might be used Completely different by Jesus In the New Testament Or by Paul And so the law of first mention

Doesn't resonate with me As having very much value Now I will say

That in a pericope Or a passage That I'm studying If a term is used

Multiple times That might be something Worth saying Okay well

How is it used the first time That might have some value Within the context of a passage

But again Context is key When you're studying When you're teaching When you're proclaiming

God's word Context matters most So the idea that there's a Something About the law of first mention

If there's any value to it It's very little I don't think it has much And I want to recommend someone to you

And if you don't know Who this guy is You should His name is Jonathan Burris He is a pastor Who has a great

YouTube channel He did a whole video On the law of first mention And he is basically saying

Some of the same things I am But he goes a little deeper So if this is a subject You want to dive further into Look up Jonathan Burris That's B -U -R -R -I -S

And check him out Look up the law of first mention With Jonathan Burris And hear what he has to say And I think that's as far

As I'm going to go on that question Except to say I will try after tonight's show To link

Jonathan's video In the notes So I'm going to go back And I am going to time stamp this video

When I'm done I'm going to time stamp all the questions So That is

That's the plan Time stamp everything And with this

I'll include the link to his video Alright Number two Getting on number two

Well let me just say this I see the comments coming in And I just saw A friend

Listening Servants Ministry Said I'm a charismatic Christian But I love your videos Well thank you I appreciate that word of encouragement

And so I appreciate that so much And Rob you're saying I'm pulling a

Mike Winger Hey man Mike Winger Is not the first dude To ever answer emails live online Okay However I do think my

I think a lot of Mike I think a lot of his stuff is good And so You know if you're going to If you are going to copy somebody

Copy the good guys right Yeah so I'm not necessarily copying him But I mean

Gabe does this too Gabriel Hughes Of the When we understand the text He does a regular email response

So I'm not just copying him I'm copying everybody You know what the difference is Between plagiarism and research

Is plagiarists copy from one person And researchers copy from everybody That's the rule

All right All right And Biblical Baptist said I don't have the Winger counter I don't know what that means

But we'll We'll move on I guess I don't watch Mike enough To even Even know what What that's referring to Okay Moving on to question number two

What is your position On miraculous images Or cloths From church history

Would it change the reform position On the second commandment violation And The person who wrote this email

Wrote a lot more He was talking about The Shroud of Turin He was talking about Images of Mary That had been seen

In Different places Glass and in the sky And things like that And He's asking about These miraculous images

For the most part My understanding Is that The vast majority

Of these things Are Simply to be written off As coincidental

You know Something that looks like The Virgin Mary I remember one time Years ago Virgin Mary Was burned into A piece of bread

Or something You know Something like that Just seems to me To be Grasping At best

You know It's like a person Looking at a Cloud And You know One person says

They can see something Another person Doesn't see it And it's really just To me It's not There's very little

Value there Now the Shroud of Turin Is a little different Because it's actually A physical It's something physical

We can handle And look at And see But I still don't Believe that it's The Shroud that Jesus Was Wrapped in Personally I don't

Believe that And For multiple reasons But Just outright

I don't Accept that That is The burial Cloth of Jesus Having said that I want to Say this

Because the question Goes on to say Well If these are Images of If the

Shroud of Turin Has a You know The Image of Christ On it Or if the

Image of Mary Is found on Something Or you know In a picture

Or you know Sky or something Does this mean The second Commandment Violation is Out Well Here's where I would

Maybe Differ from Some of my Reformed Friends And reformed

You know Within the Reformed camp There's different Views on this I don't Believe that Every image Of Jesus Like a

Drawing Or a Painting Or something I don't Believe everyone Violates the Second Commandment I know There are People who do I have

Done a show On this With a very Good friend Of mine Who's a Presbyterian He held The position That every

Image of Christ Every Drawing Everything That is Meant to Represent Christ Is a Second Commandment Violation I sort

Of take Sproul's Approach I don't Think that's Correct Sproul Believed That you Could have

An image Of Christ And it Not be a Violation Of the Second Commandment Because of Christ's Human Nature Because that's

What's being Depicted as Human Nature So there There There are Some Differences here

There's Differences Within the Reform Camp Of how This is To be Understood So ultimately

The second Commandment Violation Question to Me is I would

Answer it Differently Than maybe Someone from The position Who would Say every Image of Christ Is a

Second Commandment Violation However saying That I do Also think That shows

Like the Chosen Are not Good Not because Necessarily that They're breaking

The second Commandment But because Shows like That are Creating in The minds

Of people That this Is what Jesus was Like and It's not What the

Second Commandment Is I Answer it

Differently Than maybe Someone from The position Who would Say every Image of Is a Violation However saying That shows They're breaking

The second But because Shows like That are

Creating in Answer it

Differently Than maybe Someone from The position Who would Creating in The minds

Of people That this

Is what What the Violation However saying They're breaking

The second But because Creating in The minds

Is what Jesus Like and Answer it

Than maybe However saying That shows Shows like That are

Creating in The minds So But at the same time, I do believe he is teaching things that are not according to Scripture.

I've done videos teasing him because he talks about having witches in his church and stuff. I don't know what his doctrines are specifically, but if his behavior is indicative of his doctrine,

I would say it's pretty dangerous. And yes, it was Benny Hinn, not

Kenneth Copeland—thank you, too legit to quit, by the way, awesome name—said he apologized.

Benny Hinn, you're right, that's who I was thinking, not Kenneth Copeland, so thank you for that. And so I would say false, and certainly is hanging out with false teachers and has some dangerous doctrine.

All right, number three. This question I was a little concerned about answering because I have a feeling my answer is not going to satisfy a lot of people.

But I'm not here to satisfy people, I'm here to try to speak the truth as well as I can, and be according to Scripture.

So number three from the mailbag question is, for those of us who are unable to get their children out of public school due to different circumstances, what can we do to combat the junk they are taught?

Could you please give some practical things we can do, since most times the kids shan't mention anything that they heard at school when asked to make sure they are equipped?

I'm sorry, that was a little weird because they put a parenthesis in there. The kids aren't answering the question, what are you learning at school?

So how can we be equipped? And so right away, I want to address the immediate response that some are going to give, and that is that everybody should homeschool, everybody should do homeschool, and if you're not, you're sinning.

I don't believe that's the case, and let me give you a couple of just very quick examples.

Number one, some people cannot homeschool because of the situation that they are in with a divorce.

If a person has been divorced, and they have children that are now, the parents are divorced, and they're being required for that child to go to school, that's one situation where they may have to go to school, and it may have to be a public school.

Or it might be like I had the situation with my children. My first two children were adopted through foster care, and because we adopted them through foster care, while they were being fostered, they had to go to public school during their foster care.

So when they were finally able to come out of foster care and become our adopted children, we were then able to school how we chose, and we eventually did choose homeschooling, and then we have done private schooling as well.

So we've done all three. We've done public school. We have done homeschool. We have done private school, and somebody said that's extreme.

There are people who believe that if you don't homeschool, you're in sin. I don't believe that, and I just gave you two examples as to why.

Some people can't homeschool for these reasons, and there are other reasons why homeschooling may not be available to someone.

So what do you do if your children have to go to public school? That's the question, and that's the question

I want to answer. Some people say, well, they should never have to go to public school. Well, that's not the case, and so let's deal with what is, not with what you think should be.

And I want to say I'm speaking from two positions of,

I would say, somewhat, not necessarily positions of authority, but positions of knowledge. One, my degree is in teaching.

So I have a doctorate in ministry. I have a master's degree in theology, but my bachelor's is in social science with a concentration in education.

So that's my educational background is on teaching.

And I spent all of my time in seminary. I worked for a high school as a paraprofessional.

While I was doing seminary, I was also working at a high school and serving as a youth pastor, so I was doing all those things simultaneously.

So I have worked in a high school as a paraprofessional working with special needs children for several years. Then when

I became a pastor, I took on a job as a substitute teacher where I served for eight years in public school working as a substitute teacher in middle school and high school, primarily middle school.

And I did that for all of those years. So I have a lot of experience in the public school system.

And are there things that are taught in public school which are antithetical to our faith?

Yes, there are. But there are Christian teachers that try to be good public school teachers.

So one of the things I could say, if you're a person whose children have to go to school, my encouragement to you is to get to know your children's teachers.

When they're younger, it's easier because they usually only have one or two teachers. They don't change classes as much.

When they get into the high school level, it's going to be a little harder to get to know their teachers. But if your students are going to go to school anyway, and you have to send them to school for whatever reason—like

I said, we've already talked about a couple of reasons—if they're going to go to school anyway, then ultimately, get to know the teachers as best you can.

Let the teachers know you. And if there is, in that interaction as you're talking to them, if you come to find out that the teacher's a

Christian, great. Then you can have those conversations with them about things that are being taught. If the teacher's not a

Christian or opposed to Christianity, then you may then be able to help navigate your child in that class.

Let me give you another thought. I'm public school.

I was taught through public school. I am a product of public school. But it was small -town public school.

I know people say, oh, well, that doesn't matter. Well, it kind of did for me. The first time I ever heard anyone who really challenged evolution was my science teacher in,

I want to say, middle school. His name was Mr. Kelly. Mr. Kelly was our football coach, but he was also the science teacher.

In his science class, he said, the book says men come from primates.

He said, but I don't believe that because I'm a Christian. I believe we were created by God. This was my science teacher in school telling me this.

I had never heard anyone challenge that because, again, I grew up in a church.

I was in the Disciples of Christ Church, so doctrine and theology, and especially creationism and stuff, wasn't a big thing that was taught.

I had the benefit of a school teacher who actually told me, hey, I believe that this is wrong and what your book says is wrong.

I was like, man, that's great. My point is, get to know your teachers.

Get to know your students' teachers. Be on the lookout for things that are going to be things that would disagree with our worldview and help your students understand that.

Also, reinforce in them a biblical worldview. You have the responsibility to be your children's discipler.

Our church is family integrated, and therefore our church does not practice a youth ministry, but we do try to equip families, particularly fathers, to disciple their children.

I've made this joke before. I've said our church doesn't have a youth pastor. We have 40 youth pastors because every father is a youth pastor if he's a father.

That's our situation. My point is, your responsibility as father or mother is to instill that worldview in your children.

If you're sending them to school, they are getting the other worldview pushed into them, so your job is going to be harder.

Get to know their teachers, do your best to continue to reinforce that worldview, and pray for them.

Pray that God will save them. God saved me, and I was a public school kid. Now, I want to address what

Gina said and Akilah. I think I'm saying that right,

Akilah. We have two. You have Gina, who said, Florida is in the

Bible Belt, not in New England. Up here, public school is pretty rough. I imagine that is true.

I don't disagree with you. Akilah said the same thing. I'm in San Diego. California public school is pretty wicked here.

I imagine that is absolutely true, and I'm not trying to give a pie -in -the -sky answer.

I'm really not. I'm saying, if this is the situation you're in, the very best you can do is to get to know your students' teachers, reinforce in them a biblical

Christian worldview, love them, teach them, pray for them, and trust

God with them. That's my answer, and I pray it's a helpful one.

Hopefully, there's at least some insight into what I said about getting to know the teachers. I think that's very helpful. I think that's very helpful because, again, you'll know more about who and what you're dealing with and perhaps who your friends and foes may be when it comes to worldview.

All right. Hopefully, that was helpful. Now, moving on to number four.

You know what I'm not doing and I said I was going to do? I said I was going to write down the timestamps for these, and I didn't. Well, timestamp 35 for this question, going into question number four is a question from a young man.

This is actually the son of a listener. He said, my son wants to know your thoughts on women being silent in church, and would that also include singing?

That's a very good question, and hopefully, the parents of this will see this, will show this to the child.

I just want to say, great question, insightful question, and it's one that I think a lot of people don't even think about when they're wrestling with the question of what does the

Bible teach about the differing roles of men and women? So, the question of, well, does that affect women singing?

So, let's start back at where does this question come from? First Corinthians 14 says that women are to be silent in the church.

That is a passage which creates an awful lot of argument and frustration with people, and some people don't really know how to respond.

They get upset about it. They say, that's just Paul being a sexist or something like that, which is not true, but it does address the question of what did

Paul mean when he said that women are to be silent in the church, and if they have questions, they should ask their husbands at home.

There are differences of opinion on how this is interpreted. Certain scholars come to different conclusions about what

Paul is actually addressing in the Corinthian church, that there was, some people believe there was a cohort of women who were trying to take over the services, and Paul is not silencing all women, but he's silencing those women who were trying to serve the services and things like that.

There's not a lot of information in the text to deal with that and come to that conclusion.

Some of that is speculation. Some of that's basing it on the use of the language and how

Paul is using that language, but we can go back to 1

Timothy, and we can say that Paul clearly says that women are not to exercise authority or usurp authority over men or to teach, but they are to remain quiet.

It's not as if this is only said once, and it's not as if this is only said in one congregation, because again, when

Paul's writing to Timothy, he's writing to a different church and different congregation, different context than he says in Corinthians, and as Mary just mentioned, as in all the churches, that's pretty clear.

Yeah, okay, that's right. So, I do believe this prohibition does refer to women of all time, for all time.

It didn't go away with the women's liberation movement or feminism of the 20th century or any of that.

None of that made these commands go away. So, what we have, I think, particularly in 1

Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2, is we have a prohibition of women speaking authoritatively in the assembly.

Therefore, they would be prohibited from preaching. They would be prohibited from teaching men and women in the church—men and women together, not women specifically, but teaching men and women in the church collectively.

So, the corporate body, when gathered, should not be taught by or authoritatively led by women.

That would be my answer to what does it mean when it says women are to be silent.

It does not mean that a woman cannot speak at all in the confines of the church building.

It doesn't mean that a woman can't have a conversation. It doesn't mean that a woman can't even say amen during a sermon, depending on the context of the church.

Some churches, they don't allow for that anyway. Because, you know, whole frozen chosen thing.

You don't amen in this church. But in regard to the issue of a woman singing,

I think that women and men should be singing in the corporate worship service, that they should both be singing together in the corporate worship service.

And I do not believe 1 Corinthians 14 or 1 Timothy 2 are a prohibition against that, because, again, the type of speaking that's being referred to there is referring to teaching and is referring to speaking authoritatively.

Singing corporately is not the same. I don't even think a song being sung from the front would violate that.

There's some debate about that, though. I'll give you our church's position, and we could argue with how this works itself out.

But we have worship leaders who help us to sing on Sunday, to help us to sing songs, and the person who leads is a man.

But there are other people up there who are helping sing, and they are women. In the same way, some churches would have a choir, which would have men and women.

And that's what I've said. I've said there's not much difference between a choir and a worship team. Other than on a worship team, it's usually less people than a choir, and they're all holding a microphone.

But you still have people up in the front who are still leading the music with their voices, encouraging the congregation to sing.

One thing we don't do in our church a lot is we don't do a lot of special music. So you normally wouldn't see one person up there singing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but we just don't do it a lot. In fact, I don't remember the last time we did it.

It's just not a part of our liturgy. We want the singing to be corporate.

We want it to be all together. But when I was away this past two weeks ago,

I was at a conference, and they had special music that was sung. I didn't think that that was wrong.

One was done by a man. One was done by a woman. I thought it was fine. It was beautiful. It was encouraging. It was devotional.

I didn't think it was wrong. It's just not the way we do it at our church. That's my answer to the question about should they sing.

I do believe they should sing. I believe there's nothing wrong with them being in front singing. I do think a man should be leading the service, and we take a pretty firm stance on that.

I lead two Sundays a month, and Brother Adam, who is our deacon and does music, but he's a police officer, so he's out twice a month.

He would do it every Sunday, but he's out twice a month, so I lead when he's gone. When he's there, he leads twice a month and does a great job.

If both of us are out, usually Brother Jerry, our drummer, will step from behind the drums, and he'll lead.

That's how we do that. We want a man to be the one telling the congregation to stand, telling the congregation to sit, giving the instructions to the congregation.

We prefer that to be a man. That's how we do it, and I certainly don't think we do everything right.

Let me move on now. The question about head coverings has come up.

I will say this. That is a difficult question, and it's not difficult because I don't have an answer.

It's a difficult question because I think that addressing the issue of head coverings requires a little bit more than I'm able to do right now, but I will do this.

I will link a sermon that I taught on the subject. I preached through First Corinthians. I think it took me 18 months to preach through First Corinthians, and I did do a sermon on head coverings.

I do not believe that it is required in all churches for all times, but I understand those who do, and I understand their arguments, and I'm sympathetic to their arguments.

I just have come to a different conclusion. Like I said, I can't break everything down right now just because of time, but I will happily link my sermon to anyone who's interested in my thoughts.

So, but a person who is convicted and chooses to wear head covering, we would certainly not discourage them in any way.

So, that's where I'm at on that. All right.

Moving on to question number five. We've got a couple more. We're at 44 minutes.

I was hoping to do this for about an hour, so I think we're doing very well. Let's see.

Number five. This came from an associate pastor who is being a little overwhelmed with his preaching schedule and a little overwhelmed with how much he's preparing, and based on what he told me in the email—and again,

I'm not going to read the whole email—based on what he told me in the email, I get it. Currently, he's preaching sometimes four times a week, and he's trying to preach expositionally four times a week.

Therefore, he's preparing four Sundays, four sermons or four lessons a week, and he's not even the pastor.

He's the associate pastor. So, it's interesting, whatever the dynamic of the church that's leading him to that, that's a lot.

And moreover, his pastor does not preach expositionally, but his pastor preaches topically and has told him, hey, stop preaching expositionally.

It's taking you too much time. Preach topically, and it'll be easier.

So, let me answer this.

Basically this. Whether you're preaching one sermon a week or you're preaching four sermons a week, preaching is difficult if you do it right in the sense that it takes time to prepare.

It takes diligence. It takes discipline. It takes setting aside the time to do it and keeping your knees under the desk while you're doing it.

I know sometimes when I'm studying for a sermon, I'll realize I haven't stood up in four hours, and I'll finally stand up, and my legs almost don't work.

I shouldn't do that. I need to get one of those things that people wear on their wrists that say, hey, get up and walk around every hour, but I get so engaged in what

I'm doing, I turn around and I'm like, man, I haven't stretched my legs. I haven't stood up, and my legs are asleep.

And again, I'm not saying, oh, look at me. I'm a hermeneutical Superman or anything. No, I'm just saying that's just the reality of it, right?

There's a mosquito in here. Perfect. It's a live show, swatting at mosquitoes. So the reason why

I'm saying this is

I understand it's hard, and it's certainly hard if you're doing it four times a week. I teach.

I have my sermon on Sunday, and that's my primary focus, right?

Yep, Gina, live from the shed. That's right. We're in the Theo shed, and that's where there's mosquitoes flying around. I have my primary

Sunday message, and then I used to do a Wednesday night, which was an exposition as well.

And then Thursday, I teach at Set Free, and I used to do a completely different lesson at Set Free, which is a men's ministry that I go and preach at.

It's a men's recovery ministry. And then we have our academy. Now, the academy isn't every week, but it's eight weeks at a time, and then we take a break.

But the academy is Sunday afternoon. So that's four times a week, but all of them are not expositions, and I have learned some things to help me make it work better for me.

The primary thing that I have done is I've learned that you can be a good expositor and still work efficiently.

You have to. You have to learn how to work efficiently. In fact,

I recently talked to a guy who told me he was spending 30 -something hours on his sermon, and I said,

I think you should try to work on bringing that down. Not that you want to reduce your quality, but you want to become more efficient, because if you're having to preach two or three times a week and you're taking 30 hours or so on one sermon, you're going to kill yourself, and you're never going to do—you're going to have great sermons, but you're going to die a young man.

You've got to learn how to work efficiently. And so I've taught some lessons on this.

I mentioned earlier my series called Not Only Water, which is still available on our church's

YouTube page. Just look up Not Only Water, Keith Foskey. I'll link it below. I talked about how

I study, how I prepare observation, interpretation, application are my three focuses.

I spend most of my time in observation. The more I do in observation, the less I have to do in interpretation, because observation leads to right interpretation.

Right interpretation leads to right application. So there's methods that you can use to make yourself better. You become more efficient with time.

Something else I have done is I have adjusted some of my schedule. For instance, on Wednesdays, we have moved to a sermon review rather than a different sermon.

The reason for that is because I was finding that on Sunday morning, I wasn't getting to everything I had studied.

There was so much left over that I still wanted to talk about from the text, but for the sake of continuing to move through the book,

I didn't want to just continue to make every sermon three sermons. So what I do now is I take what

I didn't get to talk about on Sunday into Wednesday night, and we do a review of what we learned on Sunday, and then we talk more about what we learned on Sunday and how to apply it.

We have five questions we talk about. What does this text teach us about the character and nature of God?

What does this text teach us about the character and nature of man? How does this text point us to Christ?

How does this text help in our sanctification, and how can this text be used to present the gospel?

So those are five questions we start with looking at the text that I preached on Sunday. So we're diving into it.

We're talking about it, and I go in there having thought about these things. It's not that I didn't prepare anything, but it's less time to prepare, but when

I go in there, we're really digging in to what we did on Sunday, and I think it's making

Sunday better. That's what I think is happening. Even though we've only been doing this for a couple of months, people are looking forward to it.

They're loving it. They're saying, hey, this is making me understand better what we learned on Sunday. So if there's any way to work more efficiently, if there's any way to bring things together,

I think that those are helpful. Not to eliminate study, but moving it in a way that maybe brings things together, and again, making your study very efficient.

I'll tell you one thing I do, and this might get some disagreement from people, but I'm going to give you my thoughts, guys, and you can take it for what it's worth.

When I am thinking about preparing and when

I'm looking at all I have to do and preparing my sermons and everything, when I'm thinking about—

African sheep just asked a great question. I'll come back to that in a minute. But we're talking about the subject of preparing.

We're talking about the subject of putting all these things together. A lot of guys will say, oh man,

I read 40 commentaries. I read 20 commentaries. I read 30—whatever, whatever. They have so many commentaries they're going to.

When I start a book, like right now I'm in 2 Corinthians. Before that I did Colossians. Before that I did—I don't remember, but I know that because I did

Colossians for I think it was a year. I've been in 2 Corinthians now for a year. I go kind of slow through the books, but I start with several commentaries, but I don't end with several commentaries.

I find that as I'm studying through the book, some commentaries really resonate and are really helpful, and some commentaries are not helpful and not as useful.

It saves me time to not have to read every single commentary. If this commentary is not useful, I'm going to get rid of it.

I'm going to use the ones that are useful and the ones that are helping me. I look for certain things in commentaries.

I want exegetical commentaries rather than commentaries that are just men's sermons. A lot of commentaries are just a guy's—basically somebody else's sermon.

You're just reading somebody else's sermon. That to me is not as helpful. It can be.

Illustrations are helpful. Outlines are helpful, but ultimately I want to know what does the text say? What does the text mean?

How am I to understand if this is an indicative or imperative or if this is an interrogative? How to understand this and why?

Just last week I was in a text where the Greek construction could have been an imperative or an indicative.

It wasn't based on the construction. It was based on the context. I was looking at two different interpreters, interpreting it two different ways, two different commentaries, and I had to come to a conclusion.

I simply say all that. Some guys think, well, if I don't read 14 commentaries,

I'm not doing my job. That's not true. Spend the majority of your time in observation.

Spend the majority of your time with the text, observing the text, and then use the commentary to correct yourself.

If you've observed something and you've come to a conclusion and then you read the commentary and the commentary shows you that you're wrong, that's when the commentary is useful.

But the commentary shouldn't be what you're using to understand the text. You're studying the text to understand the text, and then the commentary comes along and it's a corrector.

So I hope that's helpful. I did a video a couple weeks ago with Richard Roden, 10 Steps to Better Bible Study, and that's one of the things we talked about is the proper use of commentaries.

So hopefully that's helpful. Believer's Bible commentary is great. We use that for the academy.

Hey, you're in the academy. Great. So you know that. Okay. Let me go back up. There was a question.

Hope it was a blast for you. That's too legit to quit being funny. Where was the question?

Somebody had a question. Oh, how long is normal sermon prep? You know what? I'm going to give you the answer, and the answer is there's not a normal time.

I remember guys saying, again, man, I spent 40 hours working on one sermon.

Dude, can you read? I mean, seriously, 40 hours on one sermon? I just don't think that's realistic.

Again, they're going to find you dead next to your keyboard, bro. The reality is

I spend the first two days of my week, Monday and Tuesday, working on my Sunday morning sermon, and if I don't have it pretty much together by Wednesday, if I haven't got it pretty much together, that means

I'm really wrestling with a text, or I've been really caught off guard with some things that have pulled me away from my desk.

But if I take two days working on a sermon, I should have it pretty well put together. Then I have three or four days, because I have

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, to be thinking about it, percolate on it, and be ready to preach it on Sunday.

I've got my sermon ready to go for Sunday. Tomorrow night, I'll pull it out with a pen, and I'll make some additional notes.

I'll go back and write a few questions with little answers, but it's done. It's preachable by Thursday, and that's me.

That's the way I do it. I hope that's somewhat helpful. I can't give you an hour mark.

If somebody said, well, could you nail it down to an hour, 15 hours would be a reasonable way of saying it, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, depending on the text.

But I'm not going to say that's the absolute. Hey, All Things Theology, K -Dub, man, it's good to see you.

Love you, brother. Glad you're there, and thanks for dropping in. Okay, a couple more quick ones, and then we're going to end, because we're getting close to that hour mark, and I don't want to go too far over the hour.

I've been trying to interact with you guys. I know some of you asked questions that I've missed. If you want me to throw in one or two last questions from the comments, drop them in the comments now, because I can't scroll back up and find all the questions from before.

So if there's a question I haven't answered, and you want me to try to answer it, drop it in the comments. It's a little bit more to manage than I thought.

Hey, RefTunes is here. Man, I love you guys. You are so talented. Thanks for dropping in.

I appreciate it. Humble Clay, is that a question? Does Calvinism equal Reformed?

The answer is no, but it's part of it. But if that was a question,

I would say it's not exactly. Oh, that's

Rob. You asked a question about presuppositional apologetics. All right, Rob, I'll answer that, and this is it.

Rob MC said, Can you elaborate any more on why you don't prefer presuppositional apologetics? I don't know where that comes from, because I would consider myself a presuppositionalist.

I don't know what I said to make you think otherwise. I can't think of what it may be.

So let me simply say this. If I've been confusing in the past, or I haven't been clear enough,

I do consider myself a presuppositionalist. However, I'm not opposed to referencing the use of evidences or something if I'm in a conversation with someone, but I believe presuppositionalism is the foundation, and everything else flows out of that.

And again, as a presuppositionalist, that doesn't mean I can't use other arguments—classical arguments or evidential arguments—but my overarching presupposition is that God exists, the

Bible is true, Jesus is the Son of God, and everything the Bible says is correct. And so there's more to presuppositionalism than that.

I taught through John Frame's book in my class on apologetics a couple years ago, and I love

Dr. Frame. I loved his explanation of presuppositionalism. It's a distinct from the Vantillian Greg Bonson presuppositionalism that a lot of people are familiar with, but it's good stuff.

So I would put myself pretty squarely in that category. But thank you for asking, and if I did say something about it, and you can find it,

I'll either correct myself or explain it better, because you mentioned I said something being too content. I don't think

I said that, but maybe I had somebody on who said it. I think I remember

Radim Zumer saying something about that, but maybe I'm misremembering that myself.

Okay, let me get to these last two questions on here, on the email bag. Number six, my church has absolutely no stance on the millennium or end times.

However, its majority premill, should a church have a stance on the millennium? And my answer is,

I don't think so. I don't think a church has to have a stance on the millennium, but whoever your elders are, they probably agree.

So whatever the elders believe is probably what is going to be the flavor that is taught.

So if this is an issue for you going in, you need to ask. Like at our church, we don't have a statement that says we are amillennial.

However, it's pretty well documented that I'm amillennial. I'm the king. But our other elders are amillennial as well.

And we had a man who was in our church. He came. He visited with us for about five months.

Great dude. But I finally preached on the subject of amillennialism, and I kind of let it rip that we were amillennial.

And he was a dispensational premillennialist. He got really upset and he never came back, even though we tried to reach out to him and said,

Brother, you can be here and not hold the same millennial position that we have.

But he didn't feel like he could. So I think people can be in the same church and hold to a different millennial position.

The only one that would be difficult if a person was like a hardcore pre -trib, premill, dispensationalist, and they were in with maybe a postmill person, that might be such a wide divergence.

Or an amill person, and that might be such a wide divergence. But I think it can be people in the same church.

When it comes to the three circles, the things that are definitional, the things that are denominational, and the things that are adiaphora, the third circle,

I put the millennium on the third circle. I say I'm the king of the amillennialists because Eschatology Matters was funny enough to crown me king.

But at the end of the day, I don't hold that as a point of fellowship at all.

Thank you, brother, about that. I appreciate it.

Let me go back and see if I can take it off. Thank you, Parker.

I guess probably that's you from Watchwell. I appreciate that. I am not a professional.

I'm doing this for the first time, so doing my best. So ultimately, amill is a whistle stop on the road to postmill.

Maybe, but I'm not there yet. So we'll see what the Lord does in my heart.

Okay, last question, and then we're going to close with any final comments from YouTube.

And this is the question, if it has come time to depart a church and my departure will be met with an irate and angry response, how should

I proceed? Okay, so I'm very sympathetic to this question, and I think

I know why the person wrote it to me. And it's a longer email. I condensed it to one sentence. The whole email talks about how they're in a church where the pastor's very aggressive in his words and difficult to talk to.

They told me a lot more in the email that I'm reading. I'm just giving the simple answer or the simple question, which is, you know, if it's time to depart, based on what they said in the email,

I do think it's time to depart. Question is, how do you do it if you have an irate, heavy -handed leader?

And that's part of the reason why you're leaving. Ordinarily, and in almost every case, my recommendation is to talk to your pastor before you leave, because he has been given charge over your soul.

His responsibility is to care for your soul, according to Hebrews 13. He is to do so joyfully, and you're not to make it difficult for him to do that.

So in that case, my recommendation is, as best as you can, if you have to depart a church over a doctrinal issue or over an issue of whatever the issue is—if it's a biblical issue or even if it's just a personal issue, you need to leave a church—do so graciously by talking to your pastor and telling him the situation, listening to his counsel, but at the same time being firm enough to say,

I'm going to be leaving. However, if your pastor is an abusive man, if your elders are abusive and bullish, then my recommendation may change.

And it changes only in the sense that I do not believe that elders and pastors should be bullied.

I preached on this just last week, the danger of pastors who are bullies, and I couldn't believe how many people came to the defense of the bullying pastors.

I posted a 59 -second clip, and I said, you know, Paul was not a bully. He was corrective but not abusive.

And man, people came out of the woodwork. No, no, no. Jesus turned over tables and blah, blah, blah. I said, yes, that's true.

Jesus turned over tables. But Jesus was still not a bully in the sense that he did not mistreat the people of God.

He did have to use a stern hand with the people who were abusing the people of God, but he himself did not abuse the people of God.

And so with that being said, if the leaders are heavy -handed, if they are abusive, and there are heavy -handed, abusive leaders—and

I hate to say this, but I'm going to say it—in the Reformed community, these guys exist because there is a certain amount of power which is invested in the elders in the

Reformed community. Elders are very much respected and revered and put in positions of authority, and sometimes they overuse that authority.

Sometimes they abuse that authority. And when they abuse that authority, that is not godly.

And if that is happening and you have to leave because of it, I do not think you have the responsibility to continue to suffer the abuse by going and and taking it one more time on the chin.

However, any time you leave a church, I think you should say why you're leaving. So if you're going to leave your church because your pastors are heavy -handed, because your pastors are mistreating the flock, they should know that.

Now, how they come to that, how you tell them that, it can be through a letter.

It can be through some type of written correspondence, even digital email, but you need to make sure they know this is the reason.

And be prepared for whatever fallout comes because they may try to say something about you on social media.

Hopefully they wouldn't, but I don't believe ghosting is the right thing to do. Just run away and never tell them why.

They need to know what they have done that's wrong, and prayerfully they might see your words and repent.

That would be my prayer. So that's my answer, is

I don't think you have to go and be abused again, but I think they need to know part of the reason why you're leaving is because there is abuse happening.

And not necessarily abuse in the sense of like physical abuse, but it's just heavy -handed, unloving, coercive and manipulative leadership, which should not be happening from the pulpit.

And I agree with WatchWell podcast. Parker just posted this, humility isn't weakness, it's gentle strength.

And amen, brother. I agree 100%. Well, guys, that is the last email that I have.

I'm going to draw everything to a close. I think an hour and seven is a great length.

And for those of you who have hung out this whole time, man, I'm so thankful. Thankful for those who chose to be with me.

And I just want to say, thanks guys. Y 'all are the best. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have people who actually were listening.

And so as I used to have a great teacher who said, if there was nobody to teach, there would be no reason to teach.

And so I'm thankful to have this opportunity to teach because people are willing to listen.

So thank you for that. And if you have email that you want to send in, go to kiefoskey .com,

send the email, goes directly to me, and maybe we'll do it again next week or in two weeks. We'll see how many emails we get this week and see how often we need to do a

Friday night live. But thank you guys. I love you. And I'm now going to sign off.