Special Event: Andy Stanley vs Jeff Durbin

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Well, today on the show, we're asking, is it time to unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament?

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My guests are Andy Stanley and Geoff Durbin on the show today. Andy Stanley is a pastor, communicator, author, and the founder of North Point Ministries.

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And North Point Community Church is one of the largest churches in North America. His latest book is

00:18

Irresistible, reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed for the world. Andy says that to make

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Christianity the irresistible force that it was in the lives of the first followers of Christ, we need to be clear that the

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Bible isn't the foundation for faith in Christianity. Rather, the events documented by the

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New Testament, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the foundation. But too often, says

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Andy, Christians try to defend and incorporate the Old Testament into their faith. And we simply don't need to do that.

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We need to effectively unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament. Well, as you can imagine, since preaching on that topic and publishing the opinion has been split.

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I read some Amazon reviews ranging from pure heresy to one of the most important books you'll ever read.

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And of course, Andy has had a number of people who have responded online on blogs, podcasts, and elsewhere.

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Well, one of Andy's most vocal critics joins me on the show today to talk about the book. He's Geoff Durbin, pastor of Apologia Church in Arizona and founder of the popular

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YouTube channel Apologia Studios as well. He says that Andy is acting a bit like a modern day

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Martian, cutting Christianity off from the foundation of the Old Testament. And Geoff believes that the

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Bible, both old and new, are the inspired and inerrant word given to us by God. And Christians are called to believe it and defend it all.

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So today we're looking at Andy's book, Irresistible, and asking, is it time to unhitch Christianity from the

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Old Testament? So, Andy and Geoff, welcome along to the show. Yeah, thanks for having us.

01:46

Thank you, Justin. It's fantastic to have you both joining me on the show. Really been looking forward to this. First time for both of you joining me on the show today.

01:54

Let's start with you, Andy. I've been aware of your ministry for a long time. I was delighted to discover recently,

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I think it was on the back of my other podcast, the Ask NT Wright Anything podcast, where your name came up in relation to some questions that were being asked of NT Wright that you also have listened to Unbelievable and so you're somewhat familiar with the show.

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I guess you've kind of been interested generally in apologetics, from what I can tell, for quite a long time, haven't you?

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Yeah, I mean, this started for me almost 40 years ago, studying under Dr Norman Geisler in seminary and yeah, it's been a framework for preaching, teaching, ministry really ever since.

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And in that sense, would you say that that need has become all the more apparent in recent years? I know that you've preached a lot of sermons where you've talked about the problems that exist for those who are having difficulty reconciling faith in the modern day with the claims of the

02:49

Bible and so on. Absolutely. And I think what we're going to discover, and it's why

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I so appreciate the fact that three of us are talking about this, is this really is a difference in approach, it's not a difference in theology.

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But I understand because of some of my language, as I've worked to clarify this message, why there's confusion, because anytime someone talks in different terms about the

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Bible, all of us should sit up straight and pay attention and be concerned. So I get the criticism and hey,

03:19

I appreciate the opportunity to kind of tease some of these ideas out. Before we come to Geoff, a quick intro to him, and we'll give you time to spell out the thesis of the book as well,

03:28

Andy. You kind of come from well -known preaching stock, of course, with your father, who's had a long time radio ministry.

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In fact, we broadcast him for many, many years here on Premier Christian Radio in the UK. But when you sort of set

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North Point up and that kind of thing, you were kind of trying to reach, as I understand it, a bit beyond, as it were,

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I guess a more traditional framework for church. You very much see yourself as reaching the next generation.

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How do you see that manifest in practical ways in what North Point's doing and you're trying to do through it?

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Well, when we launched 23 years ago, I can't believe that, 23 years ago, especially in the southeastern

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United States, there were not really, I don't like this phrase, but it's the phrase people use. There weren't really modern churches.

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The southeastern United States is so extraordinarily churched. In fact, we were told this isn't going to work because when people think church, they know what a church is and they've already made up their mind.

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So basically, we did student ministry for adults because all of us who helped start the church all those years ago, we were all working with teenagers and college students.

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And we thought, hey, let's just do for adults what we've been doing for students. And again, none of it was original.

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I think we pretty much copied what some other people who'd come before us had done. But yeah, but the heartbeat of our church was not to have a church growth strategy.

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And unfortunately, I think some of the things that we did back then have been re -categorized as, oh, church growth. It really wasn't about church growth.

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It really was about creating churches that unchurched people love to attend, love to participate with, and hopefully love the fact that we were in the community.

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So that has been the driving force really from the very beginning. It's really evangelism.

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And then setting up the church as a partner in the process of evangelism for the average

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Christian. Well, we'll come back to the book and how you see that as part of that process of reaching people who are unchurched and who maybe have certain barriers to the gospel in a moment's time.

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Because I believe there really is a kind of a big apologetic push behind this book. But obviously, it's one that Jeff, who's joining us on the program today, perhaps understands the motivation, but doesn't agree with the method by which you arrive at it.

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So Jeff, welcome to the show yourself. Tell us a little bit about Apologia Church and studios, because you do all kinds of things.

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You're a very busy man producing all kinds of videos. Tell us a little bit about where this all came from.

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Yeah. First of all, I appreciate so much what Annie just said. And I've been a big fan of Unbelievable for a long time.

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So I'm excited about being on today. So Apologia Studios, Apologia Church really began about a decade ago.

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I was the full -time chaplain pastor at a drug and alcohol rehab and hospital.

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And so Apologia Church came to life out of a drug rehab. And so I was sitting and preaching the gospel to people who were on detoxification medicine, who were in halfway houses, and they were coming to Christ, and we needed a place to care for them.

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So the church that I was pastoring in at the time sent me. And so we planted Apologia Church inside the hospital, actually, at the drug rehab.

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And so that was about 10 years ago. God's done amazing things since then. Apologia Studios formed out of that as really a ministry outreach arm for evangelism and apologetics to engage the cults, to engage different cultural issues.

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And God's blessed it. It's humbling to see what God has done with it. And out of that also came End Abortion Now, where God has allowed us to help to equip and to raise up about 400 local churches across the

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United States of America who are out actually saving lives. And we've seen God save thousands and thousands of children through that ministry.

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So lots of stuff happening, for sure. It's really interesting. And you've been someone who's been on my radar again for a long time, and people have asked for you to be on the show.

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Of course, your mentor, James White, has been on the show many times over the years. And in many ways, you guys are doing more and more together.

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And in fact, I think you were sitting in on his regular Dividing Line show when you last responded to Andy's preaching and books on this front.

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Yeah, actually, Dr. White, his book was the first Christian book I ever read in 1996,

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Not Being Raised in a Christian Home. That was the first book I had read. And it was the King James only controversy.

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When I moved to Arizona, I ran into him at the Mormon Temple doing evangelism. And so yeah, he's been a teacher, a mentor, a friend.

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And now, many people don't know this, but actually, it's a very recent thing. Dr. White is now an elder at Apologia Church, which is really a weird thing.

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That's amazing. Yeah, it's been an amazing journey. And I've had James White on the show very recently too.

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So people who are regular listeners to the show will be very familiar with him. One thing that I was really interested to discover tucked away in your biography,

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Jeff, is that you've been like a martial arts expert and have appeared in action films like Mortal Kombat, I think was one of the titles you were in.

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Yeah, I was a world champion martial arts competitor. I traveled across the country. That was just kind of my career for a long time.

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And I played Johnny Cage and Nightwolf in Mortal Kombat, the live tour. And I did the stunts and choreography for Ninja Turtles, the franchise, when they were doing some television stuff.

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I played Michelangelo and Donatello for the franchise for that. Do those ninja skills ever come in useful in pastoral ministry?

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I know that Andy's been a pastor for a long time, so he knows you have to resist.

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You have to work on your sanctification. That's come out. Anyway, good stuff.

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It's always fun to know the interesting past lives of pastors and what they've got up to.

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But the topic today is Andy's book, this question of unhitching

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Christianity from the Old Testament. Let's start with you, Andy. Is that a fair assessment?

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Do you use those words specifically of what you're doing in this book? Because I've had lots of people with different opinions on what you're doing.

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Tell us what the book is about, firstly. Well, do you want to start with the book or with the word unhitch?

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Well, let's start with unhitch. What do you mean by unhitching Christianity from the

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Old Testament? I don't want to spend too much time on this. Just interrupt me if this goes too long.

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That was a term I used in a particular sermon in a particular series,

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I guess, actually a year ago. I'd just done a 12 -part series through the life of Jesus leading up to resurrection.

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It was going well. So I thought, hey, I'll spend three weeks and just keep the story going narrative -wise through Acts.

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So I spent three weeks on Acts. So in the message in Acts 15, where I talked about the Jerusalem Council and this momentous decision to, and the word

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I used was unhitch Christianity from the Sinai covenant, from circumcision. Again, whatever.

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I mean, everybody knows something happened there that was of extraordinary significance for the church. I used the word unhitch.

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And then to tease my next series, which was called the Bible for Grownups, I made the comment, hey, and perhaps those of us modern

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Christians, I forget the exact words, we need to consider, we need to unhitch our Christianity from the Old Testament as well.

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Kind of paralleling that there was a momentous detachment from what it meant to be a Jesus follower for Gentiles, that perhaps we need to think through some of those things ourselves.

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It really was a tease. In fact, in the message I said, and we will come back and talk about this more in the next few weeks.

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Well, and understandably so, people took that phrase and it sort of became the banner under which

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I do all ministry. And interestingly enough, in our churches, everyone was scratching their heads like, why is this such a big deal?

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Because I teach from the Old Testament all the time. In fact, that next series was a four -part series from the

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Book of Genesis. So in terms of my track record, nothing could be further from the truth that I don't teach from the

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Old Testament, don't believe the Old Testament, don't think the Old Testament points to Jesus. All the things people keep reminding me of on social media,

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I'm like, I know. And if you actually paid attention to my history of preaching, you'd know that.

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But again, hey, we're all busy. I don't expect everybody to drop in and listen to all my sermons. So that's kind of the history of how that word came associated with my whole view of Christianity.

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I do use the term within a specific different context within the book.

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And then of course, and you guys can appreciate this, then the next rumor was, well,

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Andy wrote Irresistible because of all the flack he got from the sermon. Well, the sermon book came out in September and nobody knows anything about publishing.

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You don't get a book out that quick. So that's kind of the brief history of the term and my tainted reputation that perhaps

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I earned, but my communication style in our local church is super specific and I'm pretty consistent.

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And I understand people could drop in from time to time, may misunderstand my approach and I take responsibility for that.

12:40

Well, thanks for explaining, obviously, some of the background too, because it was about a year ago now, as you say, that you first preached the sermons, as it were, that initially caused some controversy.

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And then obviously the book, if you like, was the more full explanation of where you were going with that.

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As I understand it, the book is really actually what your primary concern is, is with reaching the next generation, a post -Christian generation, which as far as you can see, just doesn't necessarily buy into the idea that the

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Bible is the word of God and so on. And you have to start at a different place in that case. And you're trying to say, well, actually, we need to go back to the early church because they didn't have the

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Bible as we have it either. And just take us through that, what you're responding to, how you think that we can, in fact, make the gospel irresistible again for this next generation.

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Yeah, a little bit of the backstory is about nine years ago,

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I was watching a video of Sam Harris. He was at a university setting, you know, doing his Sam Harris thing where he dismantles the

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Bible and there goes Christianity. And it occurred to me, wow, there is a false assumption that skeptics for generations have leveraged and have baited

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Christians into this debate. And really what I think is a false assumption, and the assumption is as the

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Bible goes, so goes Christianity. So if you dismantle the Bible, Christianity goes away, you've undermined

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Christianity. If it's a 66 house of cards, if you pull out Genesis, pull out

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Leviticus, pull out Revelation, the whole thing comes tumbling down, which is just not true. And I thought this is, you know, once upon a time, maybe this didn't matter because you had to buy tickets to debates, who's going to read their books.

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But now every middle school or high school or college student has access to all that misinformation.

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And now you can find out what else is in the Bible, think about this, without ever opening a Bible or owning a

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Bible or even holding a Bible. And so I just felt compelled, this is really about nine years ago, to step back on sort of the classical apologetic method that I was taught.

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I mean, I didn't make any of this up, you know, 35, almost 40 years ago, to say, hey, I would like to, the way

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I say it is, I would like to tether the faith of this generation to the event that created the movement that eventually brought us the

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Bible, to tether their faith to the event that launched the movement that eventually brought us the

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Bible. So none of this is new, it really just is a different approach. And it's really putting the spotlight in terms of the foundation of our faith on the event of the resurrection, which every apologist who ever debates any of the new atheists or anybody else, eventually they get to the issue of the resurrection, because the documents documenting the resurrection aren't dependent on an inerrant scripture, they're just dependent on a historically reliable scripture.

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So, you know, that was the thing that motivated me. And so I've been talking about this for many, many years.

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And I kept being misunderstood as people kind of dropped into specific sermons. So one afternoon,

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Dr. Geisler, he's 86 now, he called me at home, I remember standing on the front porch, he said,

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Andy, you have to write about this. I'm like, I don't want to write about this. That's, that's not my thing. I mean, that's technical.

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That's a, you know, he says, no, you're going to continue to be misunderstood. If you don't write about this, it's not enough to talk about it.

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So I did a little short ebook called Why the Bible Tells Me So Isn't Enough Anymore, and then eventually wrote

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Irresistible. So my heartbeat or the reason I did all of this really is to shift the approach, to shift the conversation and to really,

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I mean, I ask church leaders all the time, what's the faith of the next generation worth? And I think it's worth everything.

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And so I just began to want to help church leaders tether the faith of this generation to the event of the resurrection that brought us the movement, the church that eventually brought us the

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Bible. So it's nothing new. It's really just sequential. And anyway, but I understand why it's a little bit, you know, well, it makes people nervous.

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I get that. Sure. And obviously a large amount of the book is given over to the whole question of how are we to treat the

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Old Testament as regards the New Testament and so on. And ultimately, as I see it, the sort of the position you come down on, and I'll give a quote from the book here is you say,

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I'm not suggesting the two testaments are not equally inspired. My point is they aren't equally applicable.

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And that's the big difference for you on this, in this argument. That's certainly one of the differences.

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And I'm glad you brought this up because all the book reviews make it sound like the whole book's about the Old Testament. And it's not.

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My discussion about the Old Testament is really taking people on a journey to understand really the distinction from my perspective of the

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New Covenant and the Old Covenant and that the New Covenant is supported primarily by the resurrection, which, and the other way

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I'd say this is, you know, the Old Testament is at the beginning of our book, but it's at the back of our apologetic method that we take the

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Old Testament seriously because Jesus did, and we take Jesus seriously because of the resurrection. So again, it's a bit sequential.

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It's out of order for most Christians because when we're children, they give us the whole thing. Old Testament, New Testament, nobody tells us it's arranged around covenants.

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It's God's holy, inspired, infallible word. You know, be careful in there. And, you know, most people don't read it anyway, which of course is unfortunate.

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Yeah. Well, look, let's just say if you're listening and you would like to respond to anything you hear on today's show, you're more than welcome as usual to send in an email.

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That's unbelievableatpremier .org .uk or go in touch via social media at UnbelievableJB on Twitter, facebook .com

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forward slash UnbelievableJB as well is a way to get in touch with the show. And you can find today's show and all the ways to get in touch from the show page

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PremierChristianRadio .com forward slash Unbelievable. Jeff, let's bring you in at this point.

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One of the things that Andy says in his book is in light of the post -Christian context in which we live, it's time to stop appealing to the authority of a sacred book to make the case for Jesus.

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In the information age, that habit unnecessarily undermines the credibility of our faith.

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It makes our message unnecessarily resistible. And so a lot of what I think

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Andy's getting at, which then the Old Testament kind of comes into, is this idea that we can't speak to sceptics from a position of asking them to accept the inerrancy, infallibility of the

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Bible. We've got to start on this ground of, OK, well, let's look at this as a historical document. Are these do these claims stand up historically as true?

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What do you make of that particular approach, I suppose, to apologetics generally? And obviously we'll then start to talk about how it keys into the

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Old Testament stuff. No, thank you very, very much. I think it's important. Andy said that it's not a difference in theology, it's a difference in approach in terms of approaching the law of God and these issues.

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I think it's important because I think it is deeply theological. The theology underneath us as a foundation will lead to practice and to methodology.

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And in terms of where we're at today with the culture, that's where it's at today. I think we need to get closer and closer to the worldview and the theological foundation of the apostles that were preaching in the book of Acts and how they were approaching the world.

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And in order to do that, we have to go to the text itself. And I think what you can see just universally throughout the is an appeal to the self -attesting authority of the word of God, always and in every case, even when bringing up something like an example like the resurrection of Jesus.

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Peter actually says, and Andy refers to this in some of his work, in 2 Peter 1, 16 through 19, when he refers to the fact that we were eyewitnesses to his glory, he then goes on to say, but we have something more sure, the prophetic word.

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And so he bases actually the certainty and the surety of his testimony, not on the fact that they were eyewitnesses.

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He, of course, mentions that we were eyewitnesses to him, but he has something more sure, the prophetic word.

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And I think this is interesting too, and I would just say this with, and I love and respect Andy a tremendous amount, but I think it's providential, brothers, that in this moment, we have just behind us in the last week or so, we have

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William Lane Craig, who is a brilliant, brilliant man, who I think is probably the best out of any of us to talk about the historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and all those things.

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He's a brilliant man. And he was talking to another brilliant man that I've actually had on my program, Ben Shapiro.

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And he was talking about the resurrection. Now there's a, yeah, anybody can go see this online. I'd encourage you to do so.

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When Dr. Craig points this to the historical evidences and the logical, logical consistency of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, at the very end of this strand of amazing evidences and logical argumentation,

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Ben Shapiro's answer is, I find that uninteresting. And I think that goes back to the issue of, it's where Andy says, it's not a difference in theology, it's a difference in approach.

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And I think that it is an issue of theology and the condition of man, because in that case,

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I think we need to look what the scriptures say about someone like, say, Ben Shapiro. When there's an argument of historical evidences and logical consistency, the problem, according to the apostle

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Paul in Romans chapter one, is not a lack of evidence or knowledge of God. Paul says that we all know

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God, that the problem is that we're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness for that which is known about God is evident within them.

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And here's what it says, for God has made it evident to them. So the problem is a sinful suppression of the truth, not that we're neutral towards God, that we just don't have enough evidence or lighter information.

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The problem is actually breaking through that sinful suppression of the truth. And it's not to say that we don't use historical evidences and have those things.

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It's to say that that's not really the problem. The problem is that we won't take God at his self -attesting word.

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We won't believe God. We don't want his word. And I'll just say one final word on that in terms of what we build on.

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After the resurrection, so post -cross and post -resurrection, when Jesus is on the road to Emmaus, there's a moment where he chastises these people who now see him alive from the dead.

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And what does he chastise them for? He chastises them for not believing all that the prophets and Moses had spoken concerning him.

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And so there's a consistent theme throughout the scriptures of the self -attesting nature of the word of God, and that the problem with fallen humanity is not a lack of evidence, insufficiency of evidence, a lack of good logical argumentation.

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The problem is that we are rebels against the king. We don't want God in our thinking. And so what we do is we exchange him for an idol.

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And again, you see just this consistency throughout the Old and New Testament that the problem is that we will not accept

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God at his word. And the answer from scripture is Romans 1 .16.

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It's the good news. The gospel is the power of God for salvation. That's what God uses to raise people to life.

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But I think we need to ask ourselves the question, do we believe that Christ is the foundation of all knowledge, all knowledge, or not?

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And I'll just say one final word here so I don't go on too far and take too much time, that when we talk about approaching the current atheistic or unbelieving or agnostic culture and worldview with the

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Christian worldview, and we try to cater our theological approach or apologetic methodology to it,

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I think that we're losing the strength of the biblical worldview in the gospel when we step into the unbelievers' position, and we assume neutrality along with them, and we try to actually borrow from their standards and methodology rather than actually showing them that without the biblical worldview, without starting with Christ in your thinking, there is no meaningful appeal to logic.

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There's no meaningful appeal to evidences. We don't have uniformity in nature, which is the foundation of all appeals to evidence whatsoever, without the biblical

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God. So if we don't start with the self -attesting Word of God under our feet, standing on it, we don't even have a coherent appeal as Christians to laws of logic, to morality, ethical appeals, or to an appeal to any evidence at all.

25:20

Well, thank you very much. I mean, you've helpfully sketched out, I think, a significant difference between you both, and that is that, obviously, you take this, what is often called presuppositional approach to apologetics generally,

25:30

Jeff, and I'd be interested to hear - Can I just say one thing about that? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead,

25:35

Andy. I agree with most all of that. Again, I don't know,

25:44

Jeff, we've never met, but I've watched a bunch of your stuff. I'm sorry.

25:52

Do what? I said I'm sorry. No, no, no. I wish I could preach for an hour. I want to know who's taking care of the children for an hour, but hey, you must be an extraordinary leader to recruit those kind of volunteers, and that didn't even count the music, so I don't know how long your services are.

26:05

So my hat is off to you in that way. You have this super famous sermon and story that's just fabulous about standing around the corner at an abortion clinic, and you get in the argument with the atheist, and then your friend kind of gives up, and he stands out front and leans on the sign, and the guy's inside and prays, show me a sign.

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I mean, it's so providential, so wonderful. And the thing I just want to go back to is when you found yourself in an argument, or going back and forth with the atheist guy, you chose an approach that allowed you to meet him where he is.

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You don't know if he's one of the elect. We don't know what's going on in his heart, but you're having a dialogue, and you did exactly what a good evangelist would do.

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You met him where he was, and I used similar lines. You said, hey, when he said you were wrong, you said, well, you've lost that argument already because you're an atheist, and it's

27:02

Stardust meeting Stardust. How do you appeal to right and wrong? So, you dropped into an apologetic approach to keep that conversation going, and of course, the story's great, because at the end, he said,

27:13

I don't agree with you, but I like you. So, that's really all

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I'm arguing for, is that in terms of approach, that your Calvinistic framework, my sequential framework, hey, when we're having conversations like this, it's interesting.

27:30

We can disagree. We can look at scripture together, but when you and I, and you're so good at this, face the world with the presuppositions of the world, the world views that you just went through pretty quickly, suddenly, because we love people, we accommodate to their capacity, and we adjust our approach to wherever they want to begin or end the conversation.

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That's all I'm arguing for. I was going to say, let's go to a quick break, and then

27:56

I'm going to see what Jeff has to say in response to that. It'd be good to sketch out some of these issues around the way we do apologetics to begin with, and then obviously, we'll get into some more of the meat of the book as to how that comes out in terms of the way we approach the

28:10

Old Testament as well. But today, here on Unbelievable, we've got a fantastic conversation between Andy Stanley and Jeff Durbin.

28:16

We're talking about Andy's new book, Irresistible, reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed for the world. Do we need to rethink our approach to the

28:24

Bible, to the New and Old Testament? Is it about unhitching Christianity from the

28:29

Old Testament? We've already heard Andy qualify what exactly he meant by that, but we're talking about that because it has created quite a bit of controversy since Andy preached on this and the book was published.

28:39

It's great to have both Andy and Jeff with me on the show today to sort it out. I'm sure by the end of today's show, we'll all be in complete agreement about it all.

28:49

Well, we'll see. But anyway, this is Unbelievable. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll be back in just a short moment's time.

28:55

For more conversations between Christians and sceptics, subscribe to the Unbelievable podcast. And for more updates and bonus content, sign up to the

29:03

Unbelievable newsletter. Welcome back to today's show. On the show today, Andy Stanley and Jeff Durbin join me.

29:10

We're talking about Andy's new book, Irresistible, reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed for the world.

29:16

In it, Andy says we need to be clear the The Bible isn't the foundation for Christianity, rather the events it documents, particularly in the

29:23

New Testament, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those are the important things. Those are the foundation.

29:29

And too often we try to defend and incorporate the Old Testament into Christian faith, and we simply don't need to do that today.

29:36

Well, these comments that Andy's made in the book and on some of the preaching he's done have stirred a certain amount of controversy.

29:43

And Andy was just saying there's a difference in how we pronounce that particular word. Your version sounds way smarter than our version.

29:50

Way, way smarter. No, no, no. Anyway, this is a common myth that somehow the

29:55

English accent makes Americans think that we're 10 % or 15 % smarter or something.

30:01

But anyway, it's nice to have a completely unjustified edge in that way.

30:09

But Jeff, coming back to you. So what Andy there in that last segment was kind of saying, look,

30:17

I don't think we're that far apart as you might think we are, Jeff, because even when you're out on the street doing apologetics, you have to meet people where they are.

30:26

You're not going to, you know, we can't assume that they're going to believe the same things about the Bible and everything else. And that's all

30:32

I'm really trying to do here is say we need to change the way we approach people with the claims of Christianity without expecting them to kind of buy the whole package from the outset.

30:42

So what's your approach to that, Jeff? I appreciate that. And I love Andy a bunch.

30:48

And actually, Andy, I cut my teeth as a new believer on your dad's teaching. So this is... Me too.

30:54

Yeah. So there you go. So I think it's important and I mean this with a lot of respect.

31:01

Andy, after we went through that last discussion set at the very end, I agree to all that. And of course, of course,

31:07

Andy and I both accept both the Old and New Testament as the word of the living God. Both of us do.

31:12

That's not a question here. And so, but I think it's important to actually dig into that a little more. And we say,

31:17

I agree to all that. You mentioned something at the beginning, Justin, you mentioned that we're tethering it, according to Andy, we're tethering it to an event rather than to the word of God.

31:29

And I think that is actually a difference in approach from what you see consistently throughout the entire

31:35

Bible, whether it's the Old or New Testament. And just to point something out here, I think that we need to grapple with in terms of that as an approach, tethering it to an event rather than to the word of God.

31:47

This argument, I think, has been addressed in scripture before, tethering it to an event.

31:54

Someone rises again from the dead. And it's actually mentioned by Jesus in the story of the rich man

32:01

Lazarus. When the rich man says, you know, just, you know, let's get someone to go back from the dead.

32:07

The response is, if they have Moses and the prophets, they have the word of God.

32:14

If they're not going to listen to him, if they're not going to listen to the word of God, then neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead.

32:22

And I think that that's critical. And again, in light of even this recent discussion where this methodology is being tried out, when

32:29

William Lane Craig brings up these amazing evidences for the resurrection of Jesus, Ben Shapiro's immediate response is,

32:36

I just find that uninteresting. Why would you find it uninteresting that someone rose from the dead?

32:42

That's insane. And I think the problem is because we're not actually believing the self -attesting word of God.

32:48

And what the early Christians were doing is they were actually appealing as they preached the gospel to the word of God as the foundation of their apologetic.

32:57

So whether it's in Acts chapter two, where the apostle was preaching the gospel, Pentecost happens, all of the grounding for the message is found in the text from the

33:07

Old Testament that prophesy all of this. And then as the gospel first goes out to the Gentiles, as it goes out to the

33:14

Gentiles for the first time that's recorded in scripture, we have an, again, an appeal to the prophets and the foundation of the word of God.

33:22

And so we don't see the resurrection detached from the self -attesting nature of the word of God.

33:29

And I think this is critical that the Bible comes to us, not just in little parts and pieces, but as an entire message.

33:35

There's an organic unity to the entire Bible. And you see from beginning to end, whether it's in the Old Testament, Proverbs chapter one, verse seven, that the fear of the

33:43

Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Knowledge isn't even truly possible without reverent submission and awe to God.

33:51

In Colossians chapter two, verse three, it says, in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

33:56

It's in Jesus. And this is critical too. Jesus, when he was in the midst of controversy in his ministry, he did appeal at times as he was addressing error in his day, he would say, you've heard that it was said, dealing with their twisting of the word of God, but I say to you, so he would of course appeal to his own, his own authority as God in the flesh.

34:20

But when he's dealing with controversy in his day, in Matthew 19, with the Helilite and Shemite marriage controversy with the, for any cause divorce, he says, have you not read?

34:32

So he grounds his, his fighting against that controversy in the word of God. In Matthew 15, there's another controversy in his day where they're allowing their tradition to twist and distort what

34:43

God has said in his word. And he says, thus you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition. He says this, here's, here's how he deals with the controversy.

34:50

He says, Moses says, but you say, so he says, thus you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

34:58

So he takes the word of God as the soul and fallible self -attesting grounding of, of coming against any controversy.

35:07

And I think you do see that not just with Jesus dealing with Jews who accept the authority of the word of God.

35:14

You see it throughout the scriptures is that it's assumed they assume the authority of the word of God with whoever they're dealing with, whether it's a

35:23

Jew or whether it's a Greek, whether it's somebody who's not a believer in, in the old Testament.

35:29

The apostle Paul at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, he does just that. He assumes the word of God and the biblical worldview as he approaches these unbelievers and their perspective.

35:43

And then he even steps into their worldview and he shows them, look, even your own pagan prophets and poets have said these things.

35:50

And so he stands and is grounded in the word of God as his foundation. So I think that it is deeply theological.

35:57

And I think that theology matters and our theology and our view of the fall and people's condition and their capabilities does impact our apologetic methodology.

36:09

And I think, and I mean this with, with so much love and respect to Andy, truly. If we go to unbelievers in our day of whatever stripe, and we just start kicking out evidences at them, we're assuming a position of neutrality that actually removes our ability to have an effective approach that brings them to the gospel.

36:26

Because if you throw out the evidence of the, of the resurrection to a Jew who rejects the ultimate authority of the scriptures in many respects, they're going to come back and say,

36:37

I just find that uninteresting. Not because it is, but because there's something else going on.

36:42

It's a simple suppression of the truth. Okay. Good. Lots to engage with there, Andy. I suppose my question is, interestingly, you know,

36:53

Jeff brings up the Oropagus and the way Paul interacts there in Acts 17. Yeah, the sermon where Paul never even told them who he was talking about.

37:00

Right. And you use this as an example in your book of the, you know, to support your case. I think,

37:06

I mean, I think Jeff, I think you just went in a circle. So let me ask you a couple questions.

37:13

I mean, what, see, here's my opinion. If Christ has not been raised, your preaching and your faith is useless, right?

37:25

Yes. It's not original with me, you know that. And also you don't believe, oh,

37:30

I shouldn't say that. Do you believe Peter and John believe Jesus was the

37:36

Messiah between the crucifixion and the resurrection? Or did something happen to their faith after the resurrection?

37:43

I mean, and people always go to the Luke, is it Luke 16? Yeah, Luke 16 passage, yeah,

37:50

Luke 16, which is so silly to me, okay, because Jesus is in a parable.

37:57

He's talking in a parable. Let me read the verse right, let me read the verse right before this. The law and the prophets, this is,

38:05

I mean, now this is Jesus, these are Jesus' words teaching. The reference you just gave us was within the context of a parable about Abraham's bosom and all that.

38:14

The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John, John the Baptist.

38:20

Since that time, the good news contrast, since that time, the good news that the kingdom of God is being preached and everyone is forcing their way into it.

38:31

So, I mean, I get the parable thing, we can talk about that and you and I both spend our days exegeting scripture, but more to the point is the

38:40

Apostle Paul saying, okay, if there's no resurrection, Christ isn't raised, if Christ isn't raised, game over.

38:46

He doesn't say, but we have the law and the prophets and we still have the Apocalypse of John, which hasn't been written yet, of course, we still have it.

38:52

In other words, the whole thing is the resurrection, and to your point about William Lane Craig's conversation,

38:59

I agree with you. What's going on in the hearts of men and women in terms of their response or openness or their election, again, we have no control over that.

39:08

I'm just talking about how we approach them with our conversation, and I doubt we would take a very different approach, not talking about approaches, but in terms of actual conversation.

39:19

So, when my kids were little, not little, when they were going into high school and college, I said to them, look, you know, when you get in a literature class or biology class and people bring up questions about the

39:31

Old Testament or some of the what may be considered odd stories in the Bible, I said, don't get in a big spitting match with them about this.

39:39

Here's your answer. You know what? Yes, that's strange. Yes, that's odd. No, I can't explain that, but you know,

39:46

Jesus believed that, and I just figure if somebody can predict their own death and resurrection and pull it off, I just go with whatever that person says.

39:53

Now, that's not a convincing argument. It's tethering our faith to the event of the resurrection that, of course, confirmed what

40:01

Jesus taught, and it confirmed what Jesus taught about the law and the prophets. So, again, it's sequential is the difference, and anyway.

40:09

So, I get back to my question. So, do you believe anything happened to Peter and John after the resurrection?

40:15

I mean, because again, I think where you're incorrect or where you kind of smoothed over it, the sermons that we find at the beginning of Acts are all about the resurrection.

40:24

They're not repeating the sermon on the mouth. They're not repeating the story of the Good Samaritan. It's you crucified, you know, you murdered, you killed the author of life.

40:32

God raised him, and we've seen him. So, those early sermons were all about the resurrection because something extraordinary had happened.

40:40

So, anyway, and you know all that. I'm not, this isn't new information. This is just what we emphasize and how we sequence it.

40:48

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Jeff. I'll work my way backwards, Andy, and I appreciate all those questions very, very much, and I'll just stand on the one point when you say, you know, if somebody rises from the dead,

40:57

I'm going to go with what they say. I'll believe what they say, and I think this does go back to fundamental principles in terms of how do we approach the world and miracles and signs and wonders.

41:07

In the law of God itself, we have a standard, a principle by which we're told by God to test prophets and those who claim they're from God.

41:16

In Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses 1 through 5, God even tells his people, he says, even if someone comes and they have signs and wonders, so they have signs and wonders, it looks legit.

41:27

It looks like the miraculous is happening. He says this, but they lead you after other gods, gods which you have not known.

41:34

That's how you know they're a false prophet, and God says that you're not to listen to the voice of that prophet. God is testing you to see if you love him, and so God has even at that point in history given his people a principle that you test all things, even miracles, by the foundation of God's own previous revelation of himself.

41:55

Come on, and the gospels. Look, I mean, you know this. This is history. I know you believe this.

42:01

Of course. They go to an empty tomb. They assume grave robbers, and then

42:07

Jesus appears, and their faith comes back to life, and their message is about what we've seen.

42:13

We are witnesses, and we have seen it. Andy, they were chastised for that. Don't forget that. We're missing that.

42:18

That's important, and I don't think we should smooch over that. They were what? Jesus on the road to Emmaus with their confusion saying, oh, we thought he was the

42:27

Messiah. We thought he was going to want to rescue Israel, all those things. What does Jesus say to them?

42:32

He says, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. He actually chastises them,

42:39

Andy. He chastises them for not believing what? Believing in his own word, the previous revelation of God, and so whatever their confusion was at that moment,

42:49

Jesus chastises them for not believing what the prophets had spoken about him.

42:57

I don't get the connection, but I mean, yeah, but that's not really the point

43:04

I'm making, but anyway. Well, and just back to the signs and wonders issue, when you say if someone rises from the dead,

43:10

I'm going with them, Andy, you know as well as I know. No, no, no. I'm tying this specifically to the resurrection of Jesus.

43:16

No, I know, and I'm making a point on that. What is the foundation of your faith? I mean, why do you believe what you believe?

43:23

The word of the living God. Okay. I mean, in that sense,

43:30

I'll just come in here, Jeff, when you are actually evangelizing, speaking to someone about Jesus, about Christianity, how does that make a difference?

43:42

Because for Andy, as far as I understand it, he's going to tell them about Jesus, about his life, death, and resurrection, and he's going to say, you should trust this man.

43:52

You should trust in this, and he's not going to say, and I'm also going to tell you everything about the

43:58

Old Testament and everything else in the scriptures, because there's a certain whole other set of stuff you need to believe.

44:05

I'm assuming you're also going to tell them about Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection, but how does your presuppositional approach kind of make it any different to the way

44:14

Andy's going to introduce people to the gospel? No, I really appreciate how you asked that,

44:20

Justin. It's important because yes, that is exactly what we do. When we go out to the Mormon temple, when we go out to downtown

44:26

Phoenix, when we go to the abortion clinic to go and minister to the mothers and fathers there, we're preaching

44:32

Christ. We're preaching him crucified and his resurrection. We're calling people to repentance and faith, but what we're talking about here is actually how we begin to engage in the defense of the faith, because that's what we're talking about.

44:44

We're talking about apologetics, and what I think we need to recognize is that, again, the Old Testament, literally from the book of Genesis onward, there's the assumption of the self -attesting word of God as the foundation of the proclamation, and so what

44:58

I'm saying is that we're not basing it upon a neutral position of saying something like, well, there's this person historically that people say rose from the dead, and so I'm going with what they say.

45:09

No, we're saying it's actually much stronger than that. There's a stronger appeal at the bottom of that. Let me ask you this question.

45:15

Would there be a Bible if there had been no resurrection? Can you explain that a little more?

45:21

Would there be a Bible if there had been no resurrection? We have the Bible, but not the Old Law and the Prophets, but I mean this extraordinary piece of literature we call the

45:30

Bible, the Hebrew Bible or Jewish Scriptures, whatever you call it, and the New Testament documents. Would that even exist for us if there had been no resurrection?

45:39

Well, I would say it'd be impossible for there to have not been a resurrection. The first century church had a

45:48

Bible. One of the things that you talk about, which I think— Well, but would we have our Bible if there had been no resurrection?

45:55

Well, again, when you ask the question like that, it's interesting because the

46:00

Greek Septuagint, which the early Christians had— No, but just answer. This isn't yes or no.

46:06

I'm trying. No, actually, I'm answering the question. That Bible that they had, that they actually knew about, that was held up in the temple, that they all had access to—

46:16

The Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets had prophesied the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was a guaranteed and sure event in history, but of course, if Christ had not been raised from the dead, then we'd be—to be pitied.

46:31

There'd be no faith, of course, but we— There would be no Bible. Well, there would be nothing to, in terms of believing in this man who said he was the

46:40

Messiah. There would be, but there would be no Bible, correct? Well, the Old Testament said that the

46:46

Messiah was going to rise again from the dead. Right, sort of. Nobody expected a resurrection, but if there had been no resurrection, there would be no the

46:55

B -I -B -L -E, and you and I would know virtually nothing about the Law and the Prophets, because we learned everything we learned about the

47:02

Law and the Prophets in church, and it would have been relegated to the Enuma Elish, or some other

47:07

Babylonian myth, and we just studied it in school, but there would be no Bible if there had not been a resurrection.

47:14

Well, I think that that's a non -sequitur in terms of trying to create a disjunction between the Old and the

47:19

New Testament. No, no, no, it's not, no. It's this one unified revelation, and I think that's actually the major point of conflict between us, is that Christians historically have seen that there's an organic unity between the

47:31

Old and the New Testaments, and the Sovereign. I agree, because Jesus rose from the dead, and his story was worth telling, and Gentiles began to take the

47:43

Hebrew Scripture seriously, because they took a Hebrew script seriously. Jesus, again, it's sequential.

47:49

Can I, before you come back, Jeff, before you come back, Jeff, I just wanted to kind of get

47:54

Andy to tease that out a bit for those who maybe aren't completely following, but I mean, this is kind of,

48:00

I think, summed up in one bit of your book, where you talk about the idea of Jesus' first Bible, second

48:06

Andy, and for you, you kind of make the point in the book that those first Christians, they didn't have the

48:14

Bible we have. They were literally doing the stuff that would end up in the New Testament, and so for them, obviously, it was the news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection that was forming the basis on which they were inviting people into this, and to trust in Jesus, and so on, and so when you have passages like from Paul, you know, 1

48:34

Timothy, all scripture is God -breathed, and so on, you think we have to understand that he's referring to the

48:41

Jewish scriptures, and we're not expecting everyone to kind of take this on wholesale in order to be able to join this story.

48:52

That's a secondary issue for you, ultimately, whether people ultimately kind of come to the belief that the

48:58

Bible is fully inspired and authoritative in everything that it claims. Well, we know that there was no the

49:07

Bible the way we think of the Bible in terms of all of this scripture mapped, and wrapped, and collected, and protected.

49:13

I mean, the history of how we got our Bible is extraordinary. There's no way to explain it other than supernatural intervention from my perspective, but for, you know, the first 380 years or so, the church, in fact, the church accomplished more before there was the

49:30

Bible than the next 300 years in terms of even surviving temple and empire, and I've heard Jeff talk about some of that before.

49:36

So, I'm not, I mean, I'm not discounting the Bible. I'm just saying the foundation of our faith is not a text.

49:42

The foundation of our faith is an event. Paul said that. There would be no, in other words, when Luke at the beginning of his gospel says, this is amazing, many, think about this, many have endeavored to write an account of the events that happened among us.

49:57

Many. How many people are going to endeavor to write the accounts of my life? Not many, okay? So, something happened.

50:04

There was an explosion of interest. They're doing their best to document it. Miraculously enough, we have four accounts of the life of a, you know, a

50:14

Nazarene rabbi. I mean, the whole thing's extraordinary, and something new began because of the event of the resurrection that gave, where we all agree, extraordinarily new context and, you know, fuel and interest in the

50:31

Jewish scripture. Gentiles did not take the Jewish scriptures that seriously until they began to take a particular

50:37

Jew seriously, Jesus. So, again, we get it all at one time. I'm not discounting the inerrancy, infallibility, inspiration, or importance of that.

50:45

Again, the person who taught me this wrote and edited the book, Inerrancy. He, you know, so there's no, there's no space.

50:54

It's just a matter of what do we want to tether people's faith to, and I believe we need to tether their faith to the event that took the coward

51:03

Peter and John and the guys that ran off to the, you know, brought them, we find them in the book of Acts, staring down the barrel of the very people who crucified

51:11

Jesus, and they were amazed at, you know, their boldness. So, I just tie it to an event.

51:16

And when it comes to that, in that sense, you feel that too often the church is trying to do too much work when they approach the skeptic and the non -believer by kind of having to try and defend vast reams of scripture.

51:30

Right, right. And that's the point, is we, the pressure is not on us to defend everything in the

51:36

Bible. In terms of, again, if we're having a conversation with somebody who will give us enough time to even have these conversations, which we all know is rarer and rarer, the issue is, and here's where we all agree, the issue is, who is

51:48

Jesus? And if, I mean, that's it. That's the most important question anybody can ask, who is

51:54

Jesus? And, you know, that's where it begins, and once that question's settled, honestly,

52:01

I don't care if they become Calvinist or covenant or dispensational. I don't really care. I just want people to embrace the fact that Jesus, Paul said it, he died on the cross for a buried, he rose from the dead.

52:13

So that's the issue, and then how we organize it, how we categorize it, those are interesting conversations to have, but I think where we all agree is, how do we get people to engage in that conversation and arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is who the

52:27

Apostle Paul believed Jesus was? Well, I think it's important, if I could just bring in here, Justin, that in 1

52:33

Corinthians 15, when the Apostle Paul talks about if Christ is not raised and our faith is in vain, I think it's important to point to where he continues to go from there.

52:42

The foundation of his hope with the resurrection of Jesus Christ is based in the Old Testament prophecies he mentions.

52:50

No, it's not. No, it's not. Andy, let me finish. It's based on an event in his life.

52:57

He, listen, he was the first. Let's allow Jeff to finish his thought there,

53:03

Andy, and then I'll bring you back in. Yeah, so he then goes on to tell a story. My point here is that the resurrection itself is not just an event in history.

53:12

It's an event in history that's connected to the promises of God, which you would agree with, Andy. I know that you will, but you're creating a disjunction at this point, and you're saying it's just the event in history.

53:21

You just need to know about this event in history. The Apostle Paul, in fact, does in 1 Corinthians 15, yes, he does quote

53:28

Scripture, Psalm 110 .1, he must reign until he's put all of his enemies under his feet.

53:33

The last enemy is death, and that's when he delivers the kingdom over to the Father. So he does actually connect the

53:40

Old Testament prophecies of Messiah right inside there. It's in tandem. My point here is that you have to see the resurrection the way that the early

53:49

Christians did, and that is that it has meaning because it is connected to the promises of God in the biblical worldview.

53:58

It's not just in a miraculous event out there in the world sort of suspended. I agree with all that.

54:04

Let me finish the thought, and this gets back to before I didn't get a chance to finish the thought.

54:10

When God gives a test of a prophet, he says even if they have signs and wonders, but they lead you after other gods.

54:17

What's that mean? God's previous revelation of himself is the standard. It's the testing point.

54:24

So even if you have somebody rise again from the dead, and Andy, you and I know we're pastors.

54:30

You and I know that we have to deal with people who are deluded today by a lot of this, you know, these people who are doing these false miracles and making legs grow and, you know, bringing people up on stage that have been preset to come up there and stand up and all those things.

54:47

Well, there's signs, there's wonders, there's miracles. There are people who have even claimed in history to have raised people from the dead.

54:54

Just because there's a sign and wonder doesn't mean that actually accords with biblical truth. The standard is the word of God as the starting point that gives meaning to the resurrection of Jesus.

55:06

Okay, and come back on this, Andy, and then we'll go to a quick break again. But Jeff, I mean, it starts there by saying but all of Jesus' resurrection finds its meaning in the

55:16

Old Testament promises and scriptures, and obviously Paul, throughout his letters, he is referring to the Old Testament in the way in which

55:22

Jesus is that final fulfillment, unexpected admittedly, but fulfillment of those messianic promises and everything else.

55:30

And you say you've got no problem with that, obviously, Andy. No, no, not at all. So what's the disagreement?

55:35

Where's the disagreement as you see it between you and Jeff? Well, I can only guess where the disagreement is.

55:42

I don't know where the disagreement is. I can tell you where it is. Go on then,

55:48

Jeff. If you'd let me, I mean, I mean this humbly, not in any way arrogantly, but you don't have to keep apologizing.

55:55

Well, the thing is, is Andy, you and I are on a British, a British English talk show.

56:00

It's got to be very polite. Absolutely. I'm sorry. I want to apologize for interrupting.

56:08

I'm just making sure that we're making sure that we don't sound like arrogant Americans. So I think the point is, is that Andy and I would both confess together.

56:21

We would be, we'd stand hand in hand together that there's prophecy of Jesus. These prophecies give meaning to the resurrection of Jesus.

56:29

My point is, is that I'm saying stand there as the grounding at all points. And Andy is arguing that we just need to have an event driven just to announce the event.

56:39

The event is what gives it its foundation. The event happens. And what I'm saying is, is that if there's no grounding underneath that event that gives it meaning and context, then it's just a miraculous event claim.

56:53

And it's just as easily dismissed by someone like Ben Shapiro who says, I find it very uninteresting.

56:59

Okay. Quick response, Andy, and then we'll go to our final break. I think that that's not what

57:05

I believe. I think the event of the resurrection gave the apostle

57:11

Paul and Peter, and again, referencing the road to Emmaus conversation, suddenly they recontextualized.

57:19

They looked at their own scripture differently. They saw things they'd never seen before. They connected dots that had never been connected.

57:25

But for the apostle Paul, the ultimate Pharisee, it took a Damascus road experience for him to acknowledge

57:31

Jesus was who Jesus claimed to be. And once he got straight with that, then he was able to see the law and the prophets in a different light.

57:40

I'll point everyone to one place there, and that's in Acts chapter nine, directly after the apostle

57:46

Paul's conversion as a Jewish rabbi. It says that he takes a beeline for Damascus, and he does what?

57:52

He goes directly to the synagogue and does argue with the Hellenistic Jews, proving that Jesus is the

57:59

Messiah. How is he doing that? On the basis of the Jewish scripture. Not saying, hey guys,

58:05

I saw Jesus alive from the dead. Believe me, he went there and he argued on the basis of the word of God.

58:13

That they took very seriously. Right. And he did that with everybody he spoke to. I'll come back to you,

58:21

Andy, because we'll continue this conversation after the break. Because obviously, just in what you were saying there, in that context, of course,

58:29

Paul spoke to his Jewish audience from the scriptures. And the question, I suppose, is do we take a different approach as perhaps

58:35

Paul did in different contexts? So we're coming back to this in a moment's time. Fascinating discussion today.

58:41

Looking at Christianity, the Old and New Testament, Andy Stanley's new book, Irresistible, has caused some controversy.

58:47

Jeff Durbin from Apologia Church and Apologia Studios is with us to talk about it on today's edition of Unbelievable.

58:53

And we'll be back in a moment's time. If you listen to Unbelievable with Justin Briley on Premier Christian Radio and enjoy the conversations between Christians and sceptics, then this is the perfect app for you.

59:05

For the latest updates, podcasts, videos, articles, bonus content and much more, download the

59:11

Premier Unbelievable app today. Welcome back to the final part of this week's edition of the show.

59:20

Extending things out a little bit this week because there's such an interesting conversation today between Andy Stanley and Jeff Durbin.

59:26

We've been asking, is it time to unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament today? That's in light of Andy's new book,

59:32

Irresistible, reclaiming the new that Jesus unleashed for the world. But in fact, I mean, a lot of the conversation today is actually revolved around how we do present the claims of Christianity and to what extent we see the belief in the

59:46

Bible as the inerrant, inspired, infallible word of God is somehow primary or whether it's, if you like, the events that are attested to in those scriptures that are the foundation, if you like.

59:56

And that's been where a lot of the conversation has revolved around. I do want to get, though, to the issue of the Old Testament a bit more specifically in this last segment, folks, because inevitably,

01:00:05

Andy, that's where a lot of the controversy and confusion in some ways about the book and what you've preached has come.

01:00:12

People thinking that you're effectively saying rather, as I mentioned, like Marcion, that second century heretic who said we just need to ditch the

01:00:21

Old Testament. You know, it was almost a completely different God for the Old and New Testament. And as I understand it from what you're saying,

01:00:28

Andy, you're not saying anything like that. But in that last section, Jeff was saying, hang on, when

01:00:34

Paul went to the synagogues, he showed them that Jesus was the Messiah from the scriptures.

01:00:40

And we've got to start with the scriptures. That's why he says you're missing a point there if you think we start with the event. No, we start with the scripture, which the event is, if you like, the fulfillment of.

01:00:50

But then, so what's your problem with that? And if we're not speaking to a specifically

01:00:55

Jewish audience, does that give us a different reason, a different methodology, Andy? I think, again, these are not the

01:01:04

Apostle Paul's words, but I think this was his intent. Whatever it takes by,

01:01:09

I mean, the Apostle Paul, these are his words, by all possible means that I might win some.

01:01:15

So if the Old Testament is an on -ramp, great. If the resurrection is an on -ramp, great. If my personal experience is an on -ramp, great.

01:01:22

If brokenness and tragedy in a person's life is an on -ramp, great. If a sick child is an on -ramp,

01:01:27

I mean, whatever the on -ramp is to faith, I'm all for it. And I think we would all three agree with that.

01:01:33

And so for some people, the Old Testament is an on -ramp. And I would, of course, never discount that.

01:01:39

The interesting thing is my Jewish friends who are Christians, all of them came to faith, two of them came to faith, all of them came to faith in Protestant churches, none of them came to faith through the

01:01:51

Old Testament as an on -ramp. But I had a professor at DTS, Dallas Theological Seminary, who did come to faith as a young Jewish college student through the on -ramp of the

01:02:02

Old Testament that was presented to him as by a Christian. So I'm not, I mean, an on -ramp to faith and recognizing who

01:02:10

Jesus is and that spark of life that comes to life once they hear and how they're going to hear if somebody doesn't go.

01:02:15

I'm 100 % for all of that. So again, I think we would all three agree with that.

01:02:22

So I'm certainly not trying to remove any sort of on -ramp to faith, for sure.

01:02:27

But what I'm getting, though, is that in your view, for a post -Christian society where there may be very...

01:02:33

You can't start with the Bible says the Bible, I mean, you can, the Bible says the Bible says but here's the thing, everybody else now knows what else the

01:02:41

Bible says. So now I'm beginning to spit and match on a six -day creation, young earth, old earth,

01:02:46

Levitical law, homosexuality. I mean, it's like, oh gosh, the issue is who is

01:02:54

Jesus? That's the issue. And if you get that straight, the dominoes start falling in good directions for the most part.

01:03:00

I think the only way we can get there, Andy, is by saying the Bible says. No, we don't have to say that.

01:03:06

If I could finish the thought, the Bible says that Jesus rose again from the dead. No, it actually doesn't say that.

01:03:12

That's how you know Jesus rose from the dead, because the biblical witness gives you that testimony that Jesus rose from the dead.

01:03:18

You just changed terminology, which is a very subtle but important shift in terminology.

01:03:25

I didn't. That Bible is where you get the message that Jesus rose again from the dead. No, it's not.

01:03:32

Well, explain that, Andy, explain that. What do you mean by saying the Bible doesn't say that Jesus rose from the dead?

01:03:38

Because the Bible doesn't say anything. John did. Moses did.

01:03:44

David did. And that's in the Bible. Paul did. But it was only in the Bible once it got put in the

01:03:50

Bible. Here's the way of thinking about it. That's incoherent, Andy. Well, let's allow Andy to finish his thought there,

01:03:57

Jeff. Yeah, go ahead. You don't put something in a safe to make it valuable.

01:04:02

You put it in a safe because it's valuable. The New Testament documents were collected and protected and meticulously copied because very early on they were recognized as valuable.

01:04:16

And in the fourth century, these pre -existing valuable witnesses and documents were collected and put in a document that somebody, we don't know who, titled the

01:04:26

Bible. So, sequentially, that's how we got our Bible. And so, this is one of the things

01:04:32

I argue for in my book. In fact, I've been teaching this for seven years. That when we preach and teach, instead of citing the

01:04:38

Bible, we just drop back and say, John, an eyewitness of the resurrection says.

01:04:44

Paul, who steps onto the pages of history as someone who hated the church, says. Jesus said.

01:04:50

You know, we cite James, the brother of Jesus. What would it take to convince your brother he was the son of God? James said.

01:04:56

Drop back, cite the authors. And again, it's just a different way. It's a different approach.

01:05:02

And obviously, it's more accurate. And before you come back in, Jeff, you believe actually that this is a more evangelistically effective way of presenting the claims as well.

01:05:13

It is, because I've been doing it for years. And I hear the stories, read the emails and get the thank you notes.

01:05:20

Hey, I finally brought my brother. And yes, it's more effective. And it's what the early church did.

01:05:26

So, it's what Jesus did. Sometimes Jesus said the law and the prophets. Sometimes Jesus says Moses. Sometimes Jesus says

01:05:32

David. So, you know. And I suppose this is the point, Jeff, is that the early church, they were, you know, doing the stuff that we now see as this authoritative, infallible word in the

01:05:44

New Testament. So, they were by definition, they weren't referring to all of the documents that you would now say are the word of God, Jeff.

01:05:53

So, I think this is the point Andy's driving at, is if they could do it, so can we.

01:05:58

We don't have to, as it were, say the Bible says, it's the testimony of who the

01:06:06

Bible then records that's the important part of that. But, you know. Right, who is inspired, yeah.

01:06:12

Yeah, and there's just a difference in perspective here. And this controversy actually goes back to the time of the

01:06:18

Reformation in terms of, is it the scriptures that create the church? Is it the scriptures that have the ultimate self -attesting authority?

01:06:26

Or does the church recognize and declare the scriptures to be the authoritative word of God?

01:06:33

Which way are we going? Which part is the foundation? And I think that's critical. We would agree 2

01:06:40

Timothy 3, 16 through 17 says all scripture is theanoustos, it's breathed out by God. So, the origin of scripture is from God.

01:06:48

The Holy Spirit of God carries people along to write what they write. And it's interesting. So, why don't we just cite the people that were carried along?

01:06:56

Well, let me just point this out. That in the time of the apostles, after Jesus' death and resurrection and ascension, the apostle

01:07:04

Peter refers to the writings of the apostle Paul that were happening in his day. And he says in 2

01:07:10

Peter 3, 16, he says, talking about things that Paul is writing that are difficult to understand.

01:07:16

He says, there are some things in them that are hard to understand. What's the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures?

01:07:26

So, what's interesting is that in the time of the apostles, during the writing of these works, the apostle

01:07:32

Peter equates the letters of Paul, the writings of Paul with the other holy scriptures.

01:07:38

He's equating the writings of Paul with the Old Testament scriptures. You're making my point.

01:07:44

No, I'm actually going against your point. What I'm saying is that they weren't just writing letters and then the church comes later and says, well, yeah, we recognize that as authoritative.

01:07:53

What they were giving was theanoustos, breathed out words of God. So, what I was saying was, is that you are telling people today that Jesus rose again from the dead because why?

01:08:03

The authoritative word of God tells me so. That's where I get it, from that word of God. And I think it's important to recognize that distinction, is that it is,

01:08:12

I think, appropriate, and I don't think we should shy away from this, to be able to tell the world, well, the word of God says.

01:08:18

I don't think we should shy away from that. And I think that's one of the concerns I have with this apologetic methodology is, is teaching

01:08:23

Christians to actually be afraid to say, well, God says. And I think that is the ultimate concern of many who would take the view that Jeff does, that if the

01:08:34

Bible is true, inspired, a living word, we should be able to stand on it and preach from it without having to kind of bow to the neutral ground, as Jeff puts it, of, you know, as though we're required to do that.

01:08:47

But it's not incorrect to say, the apostle John wrote. It's not incorrect to say,

01:08:52

Luke wrote. It's not incorrect to say, the apostle, I mean, I'm not incorrect.

01:08:59

It's just different terminology. And again, whatever on -ramp gets a person into the text and keeps the conversation going,

01:09:06

I'm all for it. Let's talk about an on -ramp that sometimes puts people off, which in your view is often is the

01:09:13

Old Testament. And it's the fact that a lot of people maybe have issues with that and that they don't understand it.

01:09:19

There's mysterious, there's bits that are hard to make sense of in today's contemporary culture, Andy. And this is where I think a lot of the debate has revolved around.

01:09:29

I think we've actually covered a lot of the underlying issues in this discussion so far. But when it comes to the words of Jesus and the way he refers to himself and the

01:09:39

Old Testament, he obviously says, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it.

01:09:44

So to what extent, you know, is what you have in your mind that idea that the law is no longer binding on Christians today, that it's obsolete in that sense?

01:09:55

Because a lot of people, I think, have then assumed you're also saying that about the Old Testament. The Old Testament is somehow an old thing.

01:10:01

It's obsolete that we don't kind of need to worry about or think about it anymore. Well, the word obsolete is, as you know, is not original with me.

01:10:09

So who would say that? Only the author of Hebrews. But anyway, and he meant something by that.

01:10:16

And it's pretty clear that the challenging thing for most Christians is they don't make a distinction.

01:10:22

And it's preacher's fault, a distinction between the Sinai covenant and the Old Testament. The Old Testament includes more than the

01:10:30

Sinai covenant, but from the Sinai covenant forward to Malachi, everything's happening within that, I will, if you will, relationship between God and Israel, other than Jonah, other than some other literature.

01:10:42

So but no, God made a covenant with Israel. I mean, you know, you can read it in Exodus.

01:10:49

And we weren't there. And it wasn't a covenant with me. And it wasn't a covenant with you. We are blessed by God's covenant with Abraham through the nation of Israel.

01:10:58

God will bring about Messiah, and we've all been blessed through him. So the differentiator to me is the Old Covenant, the

01:11:04

Old Covenant being the Sinai covenant and the New Covenant established by Jesus. And we've been invited to be included in the

01:11:09

New Covenant, thanks to the God's providential work from the time of Abraham on.

01:11:15

So to me, again, this is it's just very sequential. It's very simple. And to what extent, in your view,

01:11:22

Andy, does that make some of the Old Testament laws like, for instance, the Ten Commandments irrelevant? Because you say, you say that Here's the thing.

01:11:30

Everybody agrees. Everybody agrees that we don't keep the Sinai covenant in total.

01:11:36

Everybody agrees with that. Most of it's illegal in the United States, the UK and Canada, not most of it, but much of it.

01:11:42

So then we're down to which, what do we leave in? And what do we leave out? What do we leave in? What do we leave out? And that's where the disagreement is.

01:11:48

And there's groups that believe we can have categories, the moral law, the ceremonial law, the civil law.

01:11:54

And then there's others that say, no, it's just one. We can't. We don't get the privilege of slicing and dicing. This was

01:12:00

God's covenant with the nation of Israel. And we're not Israel. And we have a New Covenant. So, I mean, we can talk about that a long time, but there are just different ways of differentiating.

01:12:11

I mean, you talk in the book about the fact that you find it almost strange that some people want to put up monuments to the

01:12:18

Ten Commandments in their churches, when we've got the commandments of Jesus, which, in your view, have superseded that old covenant in that way.

01:12:26

Well, and we have the writings of the Apostle Paul, who teases out and fleshes out what Jesus meant when he said, I'm to love you as God through Christ loved me.

01:12:33

I mean, it's just better. It's clearer. I mean, this sounds, again, I don't want to go off topic.

01:12:39

You can keep all the Ten Commandments and be a terrible husband, terrible friend, terrible employee. But you can't take 1

01:12:45

Corinthians 13 or the fruit of the Spirit and be a terrible friend, father, mother, husband, or wife.

01:12:51

So, the fruit of the Spirit, the manifestation of God's Spirit in us is manifested through love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self -control.

01:12:58

I mean, those attributes connected to what does it look like to love as God through Christ loved us are so compelling and they're so powerful.

01:13:06

I just don't know why people would want to go back and say, I keep the Ten Commandments.

01:13:11

If you're walking in the Spirit, you're going to keep the Ten Commandments. But the Ten Commandments are like a safety net.

01:13:18

That's kind of a how low can you go like civil law is. The fruit of the Spirit and loving as God through Christ has loved us, that is inspirational.

01:13:27

Again, it raises the standard like Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount. But that's a different way of looking at the

01:13:35

Sinai Covenant and the New Covenant. Okay, Jeff, your turn. What do you make of the way Andy parses between the

01:13:41

Old Covenant and the way that we as Christians are supposed to live in light of what Jesus has revealed? Well, I think this is such a vitally important discussion to have because it kind of goes back to the grounding we were talking about before.

01:13:54

And I'll get to some of those points that Andy made there in terms of why would you want to go back to these commandments when now we have the

01:14:00

Spirit of God? I think that's exactly the point, though, is that the promises in the

01:14:05

Old Testament about the coming Kingdom of the Messiah, about Christ coming to bring salvation to the world, were not just about forgiveness and salvation.

01:14:14

There were bigger promises to that. And they were promises not to the Jews, not just to the Jews, but to the world.

01:14:20

Those promises are for us. And if we make it disjunctive and we say, well, those are all just from Sinai and they're just to the

01:14:29

Jews, they're not to us, then we actually lose the benefits of the promises of the empowering of the Spirit of God to keep the law that are contained in those very books.

01:14:37

Just a couple of examples. We don't have a lot of time to do them all today. Jeremiah 31, 31, the promise there before it even gets to forgiveness and salvation is that God says he's going to do something new, not like he did before.

01:14:50

And this is the new thing. Not he's going to dissolve the law, do away with the law. He says he's going to put his

01:14:55

Torah, his law within them now. He's going to write it now, not on stone tablets outside the people of God, but now he's going to write that law, the law within the people of God.

01:15:08

And they would be careful to obey it because now they actually relate to God in a new way, empowered by God's Spirit with his law written within them.

01:15:16

Isaiah 2 is another spectacular promise about the coming kingdom of the Messiah, where this is where it's not just Jews.

01:15:22

It says the nations are going to stream up to the mountain of God. That's not just Jews. That's the nations.

01:15:28

And it says that Isaiah chapter 2 clearly says that the law, the

01:15:33

Torah was going to go forth. That's a constituent element of the kingdom of the Messiah and his salvation to the world is the law itself is going to go forth from the people of God.

01:15:43

Isaiah 42 is another critical promise about the Messiah, about him coming to bring not just salvation, but establishing justice on the earth.

01:15:53

And then it says that the coastlands wait for his Torah, his law.

01:15:59

Ezekiel 36 is, I think, the answer to what Andy is asking for in terms of Spirit filled

01:16:05

Spirit empowered obedience to God himself. But it's interesting because Ezekiel 36 talks about sprinkling clean water on us, cleansing us from our idols.

01:16:14

Praise God for that. And it says that he removes a heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh, and he puts a spirit within people and causes them, he says, to observe his statutes.

01:16:24

Well, which statutes is Ezekiel referring to? Well, the constituent element again, there is the law of God is part and parcel to what

01:16:31

God is going to do. That's new in the new covenant is we're going to relate to God in a new way. Not that the law is thrown away.

01:16:37

The law now is within us, and we're empowered by God's Spirit to bear fruit to God in obedience to that law.

01:16:44

But this is critical. There's a reference point here that's being missed. When we say the

01:16:49

Ten Commandments are irrelevant, we're disagreeing with the apostles who quote from it repeatedly. When we say that the law of God is no longer obligatory towards us today,

01:16:58

I think that we're violating what is so clearly taught in the New Testament. And I'll just give you a couple of examples.

01:17:04

Maybe you can maybe you can respond to some of these, Andy. When you say that we're no longer obligated to accountable to the

01:17:10

Ten Commandments, you're not accountable to the Jewish law. We're done with that. God has done something new.

01:17:16

I would say, well, tell it to the apostle Paul in Ephesians six, verses one through two, where he just assumes the continuity of children, obey your parents and the

01:17:25

Lord honor your father and your mother. Now, he doesn't do it by saying now, brothers and sisters, we know that this is obsolete and done away with and we're no longer obligated to that law.

01:17:34

We're not under that law. He just assumes the continuity of that law within the new covenant.

01:17:40

And by the way, that's post cross, post resurrection and post ascension. He also he doesn't just assume the animal, the sorry, the

01:17:47

Ten Commandments. He assumes animal husbandry laws, animal husbandry laws.

01:17:53

In First Corinthians nine, eight after the resurrection, he says, do I say these things on human authority?

01:17:59

Does not the law say the same for it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.

01:18:06

Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does this is interesting timing wise. Does he not certainly speak for our sake?

01:18:15

It was written for our sake. What was animal husbandry laws, how to treat things that are laboring for you?

01:18:23

And he assumes the continuity within the new covenant of that principle within animal husbandry laws.

01:18:30

He does it with judicial law in First Timothy five, 19. He says, don't receive an accusation against an elder unless it's on the basis of two to three witnesses.

01:18:38

That's judicial law. He assumes the continuity of the rightness of the death penalty and judicial proceedings in Acts 25, 11 by saying, if I've committed anything for which

01:18:48

I deserve to die, he says I do not seek to escape death. He does it even with and I'll end with this one, keeping the festival in First Corinthians five, eight.

01:18:59

He doesn't say now go back to the shadows, go back to the dress rehearsal, go back to the the training wheels.

01:19:05

He says, because of Christ, this is how you now to view the festival. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

01:19:18

What we were supposed to see according to the New Testament and the New Testament gives us the interpretation.

01:19:24

We're supposed to assume the continuity of God's law unless, of course, the law giver gives us divine revelation of how we're supposed to see it.

01:19:32

We're supposed to see now that those shadows, those training wheels are fulfilled in Jesus and you're to see it in a new way.

01:19:41

But he doesn't say, so throw it out. It's over with. That's why we still have a priest today. That's why we still have a temple today.

01:19:48

That's why we still have a sacrifice today. But now we have it and it's fulfilled non dress rehearsal way.

01:19:56

But it's assumed throughout the New Testament. So just to summarize that there's an awful lot, says

01:20:02

Jeff, in the Old Testament, which we're in continuity with in the New Testament and which Paul and the apostles are quoting from and using as a basis for the life in which they then call people to experience that in a new way, in a fulfilled way.

01:20:17

What's your view on that, Andy? Well, again, he went in a circle and he ended up with we have a different kind of temple.

01:20:23

It's new, new, new, new, new, new, new. I agree with the his conclusion.

01:20:29

I mean, he doesn't keep the Sabbath, I guess. I mean, I mean, we and again, where do we get permission to slice and dice the

01:20:38

Sinai covenant? And we're going to keep the Ten Commandments, but we're not going to keep the penalties that go with those commandments.

01:20:45

And I mean, we just nobody lives that way. And if you want to, that's that is an approach to the

01:20:51

New Testament. There's a much simpler approach. Jesus established a new covenant. He said, here's your marching orders.

01:20:56

Here are the terms and conditions. You are to love others, not the way you choose to love. You are to love as I have loved you.

01:21:04

This is written in your heart. You don't even it's not you don't even have to commit it to memory. You just memorize it.

01:21:09

You are to love as I have loved you. The next day, you know, he put on a demonstration of love that, you know, took their breath away, took his breath away and rose from the dead.

01:21:19

And the church has been going ever since. And it's so interesting that he brought up the Ephesians passage, because everybody brings up the

01:21:25

Ephesians passage, you know, love, you know, children obey your parents. It's the only one they bring up that specific from the

01:21:31

Ten Commandments, because it's really the only one that seems to be taken. But it is not the basis of his argument.

01:21:37

The basis of his argument is to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. That's the theme of that passage.

01:21:44

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Or at the beginning of the chapter, walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

01:21:56

And then everything that flows from those thematic verses are simply applications. And he references the

01:22:02

Old Testament law, but not as an authority, but as an application of submit yourself to God out of reverence, submit yourself to one another out of reverence for Christ.

01:22:10

So, again, you know, we can talk all day long about the sequencing of Scripture and how to interpret

01:22:16

Scripture. And if a Christian wants to figure out how to integrate the

01:22:22

Sinai covenant into the New Covenant, knock yourself out. But the other thing that, you know, your listeners either know or should know is that in the first century, first century

01:22:34

Jews felt no compulsion to abandon the Sinai covenant. It was still their covenant.

01:22:39

So, of course, they lived it out. I mean, throughout Acts, we find them going to the temple. It meant something different.

01:22:45

They were trying to figure out how do I integrate my newfound faith with my, you know, my previous way of life.

01:22:53

But yeah, in fact, Messianic Jews, I mean, that's the point of being a Messianic Jew. They still embrace a version of the

01:22:59

Sinai covenant. Well, of course, they should. They're Jewish. It just never included me to begin with.

01:23:06

So, again, that's just a different way of seeing all that. But I'm not discounting the importance. I certainly know it's

01:23:11

Messianic through and through. So, there's no space there. And at the end of the day, we treat our families and we treat people the way that God and Christ has treated us.

01:23:23

That's from whom we take our marching orders, not the old covenant, the new covenant, the teachings of the Apostle Paul.

01:23:29

So, I'm going to give a chance for you both to just give some final thoughts. So, Jeff, I'll start with you and then I'll have

01:23:35

Andy finish up. Well, I appreciate it so much being with you, Andy, today. Again, I love and respect you.

01:23:40

I'd love to maybe come hang out with you sometime and hash these issues out. Although I read in your books an analogy that I really hated because you used a golf tee analogy.

01:23:50

So, it can't be golf because I think it's from the devil. Yeah, I don't play golf. So, I don't hunt.

01:23:56

I don't fish. I'm the greatest husband because I don't have any hobbies. I'm just home all the time doing chores.

01:24:01

Okay. Well, I'll just say that I don't think Andy really responded to any of the substance of the argument that I made.

01:24:08

And when he says that our command, our marching orders in the New Testament are to love as I have loved you.

01:24:15

The question is this, how did Jesus love them? He loved them according to God's law, which says,

01:24:22

Master, what's the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus says, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

01:24:28

You should love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And you should love your neighbor as you love yourself. That's quoting from Leviticus, by the way.

01:24:34

It says, all the law and the prophets are built upon these. So, if we're going to love like Jesus, then we're going to have a love for God and love for one another.

01:24:43

And what's that look like? Well, according to Jesus, all the law and the prophets are love God, love neighbor.

01:24:48

The Ten Commandments, love God, love neighbor. Even down to the judicial law and animal husbandry laws have to do with love for neighbor.

01:24:57

So, I think we have a problem when we disconnect that. We say, well, Jesus teaches a really supreme and valuable way of love that's so different from that harsh

01:25:06

Old Testament law. No, Jesus teaches us what the law was pointing to all along.

01:25:12

This is how you love God and love neighbor. And when he talks about the

01:25:18

Old Testament law not quoted in the New Testament as an authority, I think you're going to see, again, different from what

01:25:26

I just quoted from in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 8, even down to something that can be seen as so irrelevant to Christians today when we read that, animal husbandry laws.

01:25:38

He says this, do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say it the same?

01:25:44

And he quotes the law and he says, does he not certainly speak for our sake? It is written for our sake, not on human authority.

01:25:51

On what? God's authority. And so I think that it's important to recognize that the, again, 10

01:25:58

Commandments are quoted with the assumption of continuity, but you're supposed to see it now in a spirit -filled

01:26:03

New Covenant way. And if somebody says, well, how are we supposed to know that?

01:26:09

I would say the New Testament gives you divine revelation on how you're supposed to view these things.

01:26:14

Judicial law is assumed as continuous. The death penalty, festivals, all of that.

01:26:20

And so, and this is the final thing I'll say, and this is, I think, so critical. In Ephesians chapter 2, the apostle

01:26:27

Paul is addressing the issue of the holiness code. Like, what are we supposed to keep? How come not the dietary laws, the holiness code?

01:26:35

And the answer is so clear from the New Testament. It's all throughout. Those were dress rehearsals.

01:26:40

Those were training wheels. Those don't apply anymore because now we have the substance who is

01:26:45

Christ, and now we're filled with the spirit of God. But what's interesting here is as Paul's addressing that very issue in Ephesians chapter 2 about the holiness code and all the rest, and throughout, he says in Ephesians 2 .11,

01:26:59

Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember, and this is critical here, guys, that you were at the same time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to thee.

01:27:18

He says this, covenants, plural, of promise, singular, having no hope and without God in the world.

01:27:25

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

01:27:31

For he himself is our peace who has made us both one and broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances.

01:27:40

And so what Paul does there is he says that in Christ. You just made my point.

01:27:47

Well, actually, I haven't. I've made the opposite point, because what he says is that now you were once strangers to these covenants, plural, of promise.

01:27:55

You were strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, but now you've brought near to what? To the commonwealth of Israel, to the covenants, plural, of promise.

01:28:05

If we've been brought near to the covenants of promise, then we've been brought near not just to the Abrahamic covenant,

01:28:11

Andy, but to the blessings of what God gave to Moses, to the blessings of the Davidic covenants in Christ.

01:28:17

We've been brought near to the blessings of all those covenants, including the land. Right. And this is what

01:28:22

I would say. Well, now the Bible teaches us by divine revelation that that promise is actually the whole world, not just the land.

01:28:31

That's what the Bible teaches us. But it also says this, and this is where I'll end. And this is something I encourage everyone to go read.

01:28:37

Deuteronomy chapter four does not see the law of God the way that Andy describes it, merely as sort of like, you know, law and harsh and just, you know, it's just a temporary covenant kind of a thing.

01:28:48

It says that the nations were supposed to see this law and say, what kind of nation is this that has a

01:28:54

God so near to it as this and has rules and statutes, a law so righteous as this law?

01:29:01

The law of God was supposed to be seen as a blessing to the world. It was justice and righteousness and goodness that the world can look in it and say, what kind of God is this that has a law so perfect as this?

01:29:13

Yeah, I think when we when we cast that away, I think we lose the benefits that are promised in Jeremiah 31,

01:29:20

Isaiah 2, Isaiah 42, and Ezekiel 36. Okay, thank you. The Sinai law was so superior to the

01:29:28

Canaanite, Egyptian, Sumerian laws at the time. That's a great point. And irresistible.

01:29:34

I talk about how much better it was for women, for foreigners, for everybody. It was superior in every way.

01:29:42

And it pointed to and it substantiated and supported the idea that Israel would eventually be a light to the

01:29:48

Gentiles. So I agree with all that. I just don't think that you and I are, you know, connected to that covenant.

01:29:55

We weren't there. It wasn't for us. I mean, I'll give you your final moment here now, Andy. One thing that did make me laugh when

01:30:01

I was reading your book was you obviously anticipated that people like Jeff and many others would disagree with you, or I guess, in your view, misunderstand what you're saying.

01:30:12

At one point, you said, why would I blow up my career by writing this book, which made me laugh out loud?

01:30:18

Yeah, I saw it coming. Yeah, but okay. But we've heard Jeff, you know, essentially laying it down and saying this, you know, we, in so many ways, we're connected to that Old Testament law, all of what

01:30:32

Jesus has done is fulfill and help us to live it in this new way. And often you're saying, I agree with you,

01:30:38

Jeff, but obviously you've got a different sense of how exactly then we're meant to do this. Well, we disagree over continuity and discontinuity.

01:30:46

So let me just read what Jesus said. A new command I give you, which means we miss this.

01:30:53

I am stepping in front of Moses. This is something, I'm giving you a new command.

01:30:59

As I love one another, to which they thought, well, that's not new, to which Jesus would have said,

01:31:04

I'm not through because I'm about to redefine it. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

01:31:10

And then here it is. I mean, we've all preached it and taught it, memorized it. By this, by this one thing, by this, everyone will know that you are mine, not

01:31:19

Moses. By this, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another the way that I have loved you.

01:31:26

And then again, he gave his life and defined love. We don't get to define love. So you can go the complicated way and try to figure out continuity and discontinuity.

01:31:35

Those are fascinating conversations. Or you can just go the simple way and say, my responsibility is to love you the way that God and Christ love me, which is sacrificial.

01:31:46

It's never self -serving. It's always honoring. It's always you first. He punctuated it by washing the disciples' feet and say, now, if you ever get too big for your britches because you're

01:31:56

Peter and Paul and the rock stars and the book of Acts, you just remember this night because in my kingdom, not like the

01:32:02

Gentile world, if you want to be great in my kingdom, you must be a servant. You must be a slave of all.

01:32:07

You get in the back of the back of the line. That's what it's going to look like. And that got the attention ultimately of the empire and the world.

01:32:16

We are going to leave it there. Gents, thank you so much. It's been a long one. I went a bit long today.

01:32:21

So if you're listening via radio, go and check out the podcast for today to get the full thing. But Jeff and Andy, thank you so much for being with me on today's show.

01:32:32

I'm sure there'll be lots more involvement and discussion about this after it's aired and gone up online.

01:32:39

If you're listening via podcast, we're going to make the video of today's show available as well. So do go and check that out at the Unbelievable YouTube channel.

01:32:45

And do go and check out the book. It's called Irresistible, Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the

01:32:51

World. You can get it wherever you look for books online. And if you want more on Jeff, ApologiaStudios .com

01:32:57

is the place to go for more of their resources and videos and so on. But for the moment, Andy and Jeff, thank you so much for what's been a really, really interesting conversation today.

01:33:06

For more conversations between Christians and sceptics, subscribe to the Unbelievable podcast. And for more updates and bonus content, sign up to the