Gospel Shrewdness and Discernment Ministries | Theocast

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Today is a conversation that John and I wanted to have because we look around at the Christian landscape broadly.

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We even consider members of our own churches. And it seems that many of us operate out of fear and are so concerned with going in aberrant directions theologically that it's possible that we hinder our ability to partner with other sincere, well -meaning

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Christians to promote the gospel. And it's possible that we even stunt our growth and our ability to learn from others who might be outside our tradition, who have said some really good things about a lot of topics in the

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Christian life. So this is two pastors processing things in real time. And we hope this conversation is helpful, freeing, comforting for you.

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Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. You ever felt like the

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Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy? That you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what

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Christ has done for you. It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

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Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

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And we have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it. And we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

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Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

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Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it at our website.

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Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Your hosts today are

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. And I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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And if you skipped those intros, some of you might be in our town. And I've heard this, where you've skipped it for years, and three years into listening, you realized we were in your town.

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So there you go. If you wanna know what we're about. That's what you get for skipping. If you wanna know what we're about, what we're doing. We just wanna pull the clutter off the gospel.

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And we wanna show you how awesome our king and his kingdom is. So that's the goal. That's the goal today.

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And Justin, we've got a couple announcements for them. We're getting closer to our conference.

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It's starting to, people are already starting to come in. So tell them a little bit about what we're doing in April in your town, in your hometown.

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So true. April 11 and 12. God willing, in the year of our Lord 2025, we are gonna have our first planned like theocast conference.

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Like this is, we've had some small events in the past, like single day things that we've kind of slapped together in the 11th hour.

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But this is the first time that we've tried to get out in front of one and plan a conference. And so that's what's happening there. We'll probably be like a pre -conference hang on the

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Thursday night, the 10th. But this will be a Friday morning pre -conference, like meet and greet with the speakers, live podcast recording, and then

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Friday afternoon and evening, Saturday morning and afternoon sessions. We're gonna be considering the law and the gospel and things related to that.

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Subject matter that's near and dear, not only to you and me, but I trust all the people listening, probably part of the reason you tune in.

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And care what John and I have to say. And so we've got a couple of friends joining us, Chad Bird, who many of our listeners will be familiar with.

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And Ken Jones, who many of our listeners will be familiar with too. Both of these guys are our brothers and friends that we've had on the podcast before and are really excited for what they'll bring.

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So I'm looking forward to it. I mean, it's gonna be a great time. Spring is a good time to be in Asheville, North Carolina.

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There's a lot of good food and drink in this town. And there's gonna be a lot of time baked into this event to just hang together, get to know each other, be encouraged.

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You come to the conferences kind of for the talks, but also largely for spending time with like -minded people, man.

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It's the fellowship. And so register. The registration is live. That you can sign up for that,

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I'm sure, at theocast .org, maybe other ways, but certainly in our website. And we do have limited spots available.

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So we hope to see you next April. Yeah. Speaking of fellowship, another way that people are asking questions, being encouraged from outside your church.

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Please always go to your church to find your discipleship encouragement accountability. Be underneath the shepherding of your elders.

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But we can encourage one another globally. The Theocast community, it's an online community.

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You can access it through your computer and a phone. It has classes that we've taught, all of our past episodes, sermons, conferences.

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So you can go check that out. If you'd like to support us, that's a simple way of doing it. Yeah, you can. Justin, today is one that's kind of, you know, it's,

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I would say, well, I'm gonna let you introduce it, but it's definitely kind of born out of experience in ministry, experience in life, and experience in being podcaster.

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So talk a little bit about what we're gonna talk about today. People have probably seen the title.

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I wanna clear up any misunderstanding. This is not gonna be a podcast about discernment ministries directly.

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This is gonna be a very free -flowing, unscripted conversation between two pastors.

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Now, John and I never really script our conversations, but today, we really do want to let you in on what a conversation would sound like between the two of us when we're just off the cuff, popcorn and ideas around, and talking to each other, talking to each other like we do on the phone about what's going on in our lives or what's going on in our ministries.

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So yeah, we're podcasters, obviously, and we're pastors of local churches, and we get criticized.

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I mean, that's not a shock to anybody. It's not a shock to us either. I mean, it's not a deterrent, but it is interesting, the things that people get really concerned for and things that really do get people worked up.

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And so John and I wanna talk today about being shrewd in promoting the gospel, like the clear, unobscured gospel and the sufficiency of Christ or being clear on the law and the gospel, promoting that kind of theology, that message.

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We wanna talk about being shrewd as it pertains to that. We wanna talk about being shrewd in partnering with other like -minded ministries, but then we wanna talk as well about the reality that there's a lot of stuff, speaking about Christianity broadly or even evangelicalism broadly, there's a lot of stuff that people disagree on.

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And so what do we do with that? Are we able to engage with people from different traditions?

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Are we able to read people from different traditions who, from our vantage point, might be sincerely wrong about some not unimportant stuff, but then also might be very helpful when it comes to particular things?

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And are we able to read and engage with those people with discernment, eat the meat, spit out the bones?

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What does that look like? Is that something that should be frowned upon? How should we look at that as Christians?

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And I think part of our goal, I'm just gonna say it, is to help us not only be wise and shrewd and discerning, but I do hope that this conversation today is helpful to people in thinking about how to calm down.

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And that's not meant to be a shot at anybody, but it is very interesting to me how worked up people can be.

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It's like how hair trigger. It's like, man, everybody is on pins and needles and ready to pounce over anything that seems remotely, like, well, that could, in some conceivable universe, be concerning, and so that's what we're gonna do.

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And I think we'll start, John, if you're cool with it, let's start by talking about shrewdness in gospel promotion.

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So we're gonna be pretty direct in this conversation, too. I mean, we're gonna mention some folks by name that we have had conversations with or we've gone on their shows or whatever it may be just so that people are not like, what were they, that was kind of veiled and cloaked, and I'm not 100 % sure what they were talking about.

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We're gonna try to be pretty clear on this. So like, for example, John, we'll start here. Recently, you and I went on a program called

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Remnant Radio. We were asked by their hosts to come on and talk about the law and the gospel, law and gospel distinction.

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And Remnant's got a pretty large platform. The guys that are the hosts have some views that we certainly do not agree with, and we have views that they don't agree with.

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And we're very clear on all that. The response to us going on that show to talk about the law and the gospel has been interesting.

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Not surprising, but interesting. And so what's our thought process, bro, about going on a show like Remnant Radio and talking about the law and gospel distinction?

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Some people would ask you, hey, John, you're a co -host of Theocast. You went on Remnant Radio to talk about the law and the gospel.

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Why'd you do that? Well, we've been doing this for years. I mean, you and I have been going on podcasts separately and together for, well,

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I don't know, five, six years now. And, you know, we've gone on all different kinds where it would be

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Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, OPC, URC. I mean, it's been all kinds of different.

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Anglican, yep. Yeah, we were recently on an Anglican podcast. So each one of those, we would have,

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I would say, secondary and tertiary issues where it's not a primary gospel problem, but we would definitely disagree with, you know, almost the majority of the podcasts that we're guests on, we probably would disagree with, right?

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So - Yeah, on some of those secondary and tertiary matters, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, once in a while, we get to be on a

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Reformed Baptist podcast, but not often. We're really kind of, it's a broader, and because the

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Ocast, it can cross -pollinate. We do talk mostly just about the sufficiency of Christ for all of life.

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That's, you know, what does it mean to rest in Christ? And really all denominations can benefit from that. Yeah, and let me interject briefly.

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I mean, we're doing that from this position. I mean, so we are confessional Baptists.

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We subscribe to the Second London Baptist Confession. We are a part of something called the Grace Reform Network that is a confessional network of Second London Confession Baptist churches.

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I mean, so we are definitely like planting our flags in certain places when it comes to our theological framework.

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So we want to be very clear about that. But then what we're talking about here is something different. Like we can, from the perspective and with the posture of a confessional

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Baptist, understanding ourselves to be planting our flag within the Reformed tradition, there's a lot that we can say regarding the sufficiency of Christ and Christ for you that, man, a lot of people who have nothing remotely to do with the

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Reformed tradition could agree with and might find actually very encouraging and comforting and hope -giving.

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So that's a lot of the aim. Which is, you know, like for instance, you and I both have been on and spoken at different 15, 17 conferences.

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We've done a conference with Chris Gordon and people would say, well, they kind of, they fit in the Reformed camp. Remnant Radio would be an example of maybe someone that would be more charismatic.

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Yeah, Pentecostal. Pentecostal, and they definitely fit in the Reformed camp. Okay, so this is true.

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We would agree. I think they're Calvinistic. I appreciate those brothers. I think they mean well. I think they do believe,

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I think they are disciples of Christ. I think they're genuinely wanting to lead others to Christ.

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They're not, I don't think there's ill intention. I wouldn't say that about other people that are famous on the internet.

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I think we've made our thoughts clear on that. But Justin, what about, what about?

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Let me say, let me briefly on this and then I'm gonna go where I think you wanna go. Yeah. So for us to go on Remnant Radio in no way means that we are agreeing with or endorsing their entire theological platform.

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Just like, let's use an example. If we were on a podcast with a friend, Chris Gordon, who is a part of the

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URCNA, or with Chad Byrd, who is an LCMS Lutheran, nobody would ever think that we are, that we have now left the

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Second London Baptist Confession and have become Pato Baptist reform guys or have become Lutheran.

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Like, nobody would think that. But then yet, it's interesting how, it's almost like, oh,

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I mean, you guys were on a podcast with more Pentecostal, charismatic -leaning dudes. Is this an endorsement of their theological platform?

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No. We're not trying to do, in terms of things that we disagree with them on, no, that's not what the goal was.

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But like you said, from our vantage point, these guys trust Christ. They do seem to be

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Calvinistic. There's a lot of things about which we agree. And they are sincere disciples of the

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Lord Jesus. And it's like, yeah, there's a lot of good things we can do together. Absolutely. Another brief example, before we go where I think you wanna go, is, so Sean DeMars is a

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Calvinistic Baptist pastor who does a podcast called Room for Nuance, where he talks with all kinds of different people.

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I mean, this is, he's a good example of trying to do this sort of thing, where he sits with people with whom he does not agree often and has conversations about things.

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Well, Sean's a friend, and Sean hit me up a few months ago and was like, hey, I would love to have a Room for Nuance with Theocast and talk about assurance and everything related to it.

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What do you think? And I was like, yeah, I'm open to it. I'll talk with John. And Sean was like, look, in the secular podcast world, people do a lot of really good shrewd cross -promotion stuff.

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We should do the same thing as Christians, to which I was like, absolutely, man. I mean, Luke 16, we should be shrewd.

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As sons of light, we can operate in a way where we aim to promote this message of the sufficiency of Christ, which is what you and I are trying to do.

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All right, now take us where you wanted to go. Right, I mean, in this conversation you and I were having,

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I was in my truck, you'd even mentioned, like if someone famous like, who did you say?

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Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen. I'll run with this for a second. I would even say, you know, Joe Rogan.

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You know, I'm like, oh, well, sure. Speaking of Joe Rogan, if Joe Rogan ever does want to have us on, the answer would be yes.

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We're just waiting for him to call. Absolutely, that'd be a great hangout. Hey, Joe, bring us on, Joe. But here's the deal,

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I think a lot of, like for Joe Rogan, wouldn't upset people. But if you were to be on a show or a podcast with somebody who claims to be a

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Christian who is a false teacher, that's a very different thing. And I think what, like if Joel Osteen said, so let me try to explain the distinction.

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If Joel Osteen said, hey, guys, I want you to come and talk about, like I've heard a few of your episodes.

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Not this is ever gonna happen, but who knows? The Lord does miraculous things. Like I've heard a few of your episodes, and I think that the things that you are saying about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ as a savior have some merit, and I've been affected by it.

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Or I think the things you're saying about the law and the gospel, or the things you're saying about covenant theology and how the Bible hangs together.

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Like I'm somewhat persuaded that what you're saying is true, and I'd love to have you guys on and interview you about that. My answer to that is without hesitation, absolutely.

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We're gonna go and do that. Why? Because whether it's Remnant Radio, or using a very aberrant example, like a

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Joel Osteen or somebody with a huge platform. Or Babylon Bee, we were on the Bee, y 'all. Or Joyce Meyer, or pick your person,

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I don't care. It's like if they wanna have us on to talk about law and gospel, or the sufficiency of Christ, or something that is a message that not many people hear, and a lot of people that would never hear it otherwise are gonna hear it.

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Why in the world would I not do that? I mean, Paul went to Mars Hill, man. He went to Areopagus and is reasoning with the philosophers.

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And it's like, we're happy to do that and be winsome. But then, if I can, last comment here.

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I also gave this example. Because right now, ex -evangelicals and deconstructing the faith, all this is like a buzz, right?

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And there are a lot of podcasts that are effectively out there just deconstructing the historic

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Christian faith. Well, what if, like one of those podcasts that was really big, large, influential, were like, hey,

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John Justin, we'd love to have you guys on and just have a real meaningful debate and dialogue about the

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Christian faith. You and I, again, the answer to that would be, sure. All right, here is a distinction

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I would draw. If we were to go on a podcast that was about deconstructing Christianity and we participated in deconstructing the historic faith, that's terrible.

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We should absolutely, I mean, that's really bad. And people should absolutely raise significant concerns.

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But if we went on said podcast and were defending the historic faith and also making comments about, hey, here are some things that we think lie underneath this whole deconstruction project.

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Like, you think that you can have peace without grace. You think you can have peace without forgiveness.

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This thing is a problem from Jump Street, and here are our thoughts on that. If we got on the podcast and were saying those kinds of things, then

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I think that is actually a good, reasonable, and upright way to use our voice and to use our platform and to try to bring some light to a conversation that is full of a bunch of confusion and darkness.

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And so that's how we view it when it comes to our appearing on other shows or whatever.

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I'll give a shout out to John MacArthur. He's been doing this for years, going on the different news broadcasters.

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Larry King. Larry King, yeah. I mean, goodness, yeah. Yeah, and so look,

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I think there's a way that you can go on there and speak truth and you're not affirming everything that that particular network podcast or person is associated with.

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And so if there is some confusion, we'd like to clarify that. We're sorry for any confusion of any podcast that we've ever been on.

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But we've, I can't think, we've never been on an unbelievers podcast. I don't believe that's ever happened, not knowingly.

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That doesn't mean that we agree with every host they bring on. We were on the

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Babylon Bee and they have brought on all kinds of, they brought on Elon Musk. They brought on all kinds of people. It doesn't mean we agree with everything that they do, but they wanted to talk to us about law, gospel and resting

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Christ on the bee. And we're like, sure. We don't know how many people will hear that. We'd love to talk about that.

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And they, and I think they fairly represented us and they played the clips that represent our theology.

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And I think Remnant did the same thing. And anytime we've done any other kind of partnership. So I just, what we want to,

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I just, I'm going to go a little bit more direct here. Some people have a hard time. I understand. So I'm going to,

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I'm going to speak to this. I understand when you see maybe a ministry or a denomination or a movement that has hurt you in the past.

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Sure. And then you see someone like us partnering with them. That's like a, it's like, you know, oil and water.

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It's just really hard for you to want to stomach that. And so I want to say, look, I understand that.

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And there is this ex -smoker syndrome where that comes out of people where, you know, you're going to be hypercritical.

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You know, you were a chain smoker for 30 years and you broke it. And you're going to be hyper critical of a guy that would like to have a cigar, you know, once a month.

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And it's just really hard for you to understand. And so, and I am actually very sympathetic to that.

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At the same time, Justin and I are, we don't see, I don't think we're leading anybody into sin or into confusion.

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And we're using it as an opportunity to proclaim the truth in places that, you know, they may not have that clarity yet, or they not have had, they haven't had people on their podcast.

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And Remnant, to be frank, they don't bring a lot of law gospel guys on the pod. They do not. So this was a good, unique opportunity for us.

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I agree. And I want to say this. I hope this is heard and not skipped over. What John and I are talking about right now is entirely in the realm of wisdom.

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This is not, thus saith the Lord. And John and I, we could be wrong in how we think about a wisdom call, one.

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So don't hear us saying that we are just, without any shadow of any doubt, we are absolutely right about this.

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And if you disagree with us, you're wrong. That is not what I'm saying. We're just having a conversation here. So we could be wrong about a wisdom call.

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But then, like, I think what we're trying to do here too is promote a kind of good, shrewd, gospel -promoting, like ecumenical kind of posture, and even a charitable posture where we can celebrate the good and appreciate the true things that are said by people that might disagree with us about other matters while operating with discernment and discretion when it comes to the things that we might disagree over.

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And I just want people to understand that we are not here saying that our perspective is the only perspective that a

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Christian should hold and that you're wrong if you disagree. We could be wrong about this, but this is how we approach this wisdom issue.

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And so I hope the listener understands that this is not meant to be a pronouncement of the only way to view these things.

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You might disagree with us. You might generally agree with our posture here. This is also important.

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And you might disagree with us about a particular case, and that's fine, because so many of these things are case by case.

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It's like, well, hey, guys, I think I do agree with your general posture and the spirit of what you're saying, but I think the decision you made in this particular instance was wrong, and here's why.

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Or I think what you did here was problematic, and here's why. That's entirely legitimate. And I would happily have that dialogue, preferably via phone call.

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I mean, you're probably not gonna have that dialogue on social media. But yeah, I mean, those are things we've just gotta be able to do with one another as Christians.

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Hey, guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this, and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

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So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

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Theocast Community, and we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

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You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. We wanted to talk a little bit about engaging in Christian material,

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Orthodox Christian material. And one of the questions we get often, and maybe we just, one of my dreams is to one day have a page that we can put this together.

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So if you're listening to this and you wanna manage the recommended book and commentary page, let us know.

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We'll put you in charge of editing it for us. And I'm sure someone's gonna contact us.

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I'm excited to hear from you. But that probably is one of the questions that ends up in the community a lot.

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Do you guys have a recommendation of a law gospel distinction or covenantal or whatever it is that they're looking for, reform view of the

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Bible? And there isn't necessarily one commentary that we can point to. And I wanna take 30 seconds to talk about how we are to use resources, understand how they work.

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Resources are written in kind of really three categories. You have what's kind of like a pastoral category where this is like a guy's sermon or a devotional.

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It either comes from a guy's sermon or it is a devotional. And it's not meant to be an actual like commentary as much as an application.

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Like they're taking what the text says and they're applying it to you in a devotional sermonist type.

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And then you have more of what I would say a general commentary where you aren't gonna get into the Greek and Hebrew and the textual criticisms and you're gonna get into the history of it.

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So a lot of the reform commentaries can kind of be this way. Calvin, his commentary would kind of work this way where he's gonna give you some general comments that are theologically.

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So he's using his framework to kind of drive it theologically. And then you have critical commentaries where they are dealing with the structure of the text, nuances, cross -referencing, are there textual variants?

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Are we dealing with a historical influence? Like, is there something in that city during that time, during that culture that would influence?

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Something like greet each other with a holy kiss was something I was recently looking into, like trying to determine was that cultural?

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Is it not? Things like that. So to say that there's one commentary that can house all of that, it's called everything that's ever been written and then you have to use filters.

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So Justin, you and I, when we preach, let's say you're going through, what are you going through right now?

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You're going through Exodus, right? I just finished Exodus. All right, so you went through Exodus. My guess is, let me get my hand on the camera here.

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My guess is your stack of books started like this and then by the time you got done with Exodus, you found the ones that really were helpful.

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Probably came down to like that, right? Now that's a whole other conversation, dude, when it comes to commentaries and preaching.

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But yeah, you're exactly right. I will start, when I'm beginning to prep for a series, you start with a number of volumes and then yeah, you end up finding the one or the two that generally not more than two that are helpful in any way.

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And I don't need to get into that whole thing. That might be a different shop talk for preachers kind of podcast. But your point is well made.

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There are different kinds of Christian resources produced. I'm talking written resources. You talked about like the pastoral, kind of the theological and then the technical, so to speak.

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And then even books of theology in general. There are different kinds written, whether they're of a systematic nature or a biblical theological nature or just a particular topic that they're trying to unpack.

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So let's talk a little bit about this, John, because being straight up, if we were only ever going to read from people that are thoroughly reformed, law and gospel distinction, covenantal,

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Calvinistic, that were at least significantly all of those things, ordinary means of grace, confessional, like if we were only gonna read from that pool, that pool would be quite small.

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Now, there would be a lot of useful stuff to read there and it's safe and it's good. And you and I absolutely enjoy reading from our stream and we wanna drink deeply from that.

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But you and I also would be advocates, excuse me, of reading from other traditions and reading from individuals with whom we might have very sincere or even strong disagreements about other theological matters.

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But on this particular topic, they're helpful. And I think that we would definitely stunt our growth and stunt our learning, stunt our development if we are only ever able to read from a very small pool of resources.

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We have to trust the Spirit of God to minister in the church broadly, that there are

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His people in various traditions with whom we will spend forever in eternity with the Lord who have really useful contributions to make.

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And they might have spent a ton of time studying and thinking and reflecting and expounding upon subject matter that maybe people in our own stream have not thought a lot about for the last 100, 200, 300 years.

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And there are reasons for that. And we need to be open to reading with discernment, eating the meat, spitting out the bones, and that needs to not be something that freaks us out, that we need to be afraid of doing.

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No, when I was, anytime, just what, I know you do the same thing, Justin, when you get ready to do a book, so I just finished 1

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Peter, getting ready to go into 2 Peter. First thing I do is I wanna know the general outline and what are my problems. Like, what am

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I gonna face? Is there problem passages? Is there textual variance? Has there been disagreement through history? And guess what?

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The Reformed, because there's a thing called progress where we, over time, our theology progresses.

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And I don't mean like, that sounds so bad, but it is true. We're building upon what we've heard before. We're standing on the shoulders of those who came before us.

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Yes. And so, depending on what topic or issue I might be dealing with, the

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Reformers and post -Reformation Puritans may not have addressed those issues, all right?

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So, for a number of reasons, who knows what they are? It may not have been an issue or it may not have been discovered or whatever.

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So, I have to go in and look at different commentaries, and they're gonna be ones that sometimes,

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I'm like, I don't even know if this person's a believer, but they're powerful in linguistics and this is a linguistic issue, and I need to get down to the bottom of what the issue is.

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And so, I'm gonna use this resource to help me out to find out, make sure I interpret this correctly, and then

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I can see how it's been interpreted in the past. So, you just have to understand, there are times where it's helpful.

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I've been doing a lot of research and thinking over the last few years just on the spiritual realm and angels and demons and thinking about, when

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Paul says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, and, you know, there is some principalities and powers.

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That's right. I have found certain resources that are not reformed, but I found very helpful. I found recently one that was a dispensationalist brother.

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I reached out to him, he's a professor, and I was like, hey, can we talk? I really appreciate what you wrote. I'd like to ask you some questions about it.

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But I don't agree with him on a lot of his theology, but in this area, I felt like he wrote some things that were very helpful to me, and they're very clarifying, and he used scripture appropriately in this particular subject.

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And so I am really looking forward to talking to him. And so I think it's healthy to remember that God has gifted and used people in ways throughout history.

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Bondage of the Will is a great example with Luther. That's just a powerful book, right? But there's not everything that Luther wrote that I would just dive into and agree, you know, and ask you to promote.

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Same would be true of Calvin or John Owen, even in the reform world. Pick your favorite theologian.

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It's like you're gonna disagree over certain things. And, you know, of course, we wanna have -

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Keller's that way for me. There's a lot about Keller I disagree with. There's a lot. I think The Meaning of Marriage is one of the best books he's wrote.

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I mean, it's a powerful book. I appreciate it. So, you know, and for me, this is how

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I process things. It's like, all right, I have a very significant appreciation, as I know you do too, for the history of the church and what the church has deemed orthodox and heretical through history.

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So we have those categories. And we also, because of the fact that we understand that the same Spirit of God has been ministering in the church for 2 ,000 years, if I were to read something that was utterly new, meaning,

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I don't mean like, oh, well, we've got more modern categories now, and this is a different way of articulating it new.

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But I mean, like this whole concept is entirely new. There's a fourth person to the Trinity. There's a quadruple.

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Right, or whatever. That's entirely different. Like those things are out of bounds. But when it comes to stuff that has been written about in the history of the church before, like there have been other saints who have seen this, and maybe we are re -articulating it or articulating it now in a newer way, given that we live in the 21st century, that's fine.

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We have more categories, whatever. This is the kind of discernment that you need to operate with where, has anybody ever said this before?

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Has this been deemed heretical through the history of the church? But if there have been orthodox Christians who have held these views before, then it's fair for me to wrestle with and engage them.

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And then I want to process things based upon my understanding of the scriptures wholesale.

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I want to process things through the filter of my confession of faith. Are these things inherently contradicted with the confession, et cetera, et cetera.

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This is how we do theology. And we shouldn't fear reading and wrestling and studying and thinking like that.

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Certainly not as pastors, but I mean, this is even true for the listener out there. And you have pastors and you have a local church that can also serve as a safeguard and a sounding board for you on these matters as you're wrestling with them.

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But I do think, John, there is a tendency in our day, I'll just say it this way, to, if a person, if a theologian or a pastor has aberrant views on things, but then has written some potentially good things on other subjects, because of the aberrant views that that person holds, it's kind of like, well, we should just never read them.

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Or certainly we should never in any way speak a positive word about them.

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Because that's gonna confuse people and it's gonna make people think that we're just promoting their entire ministry platform and we ought not do that.

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Well, again, I just, I don't think I hold that position. And again, I could be, John, you and I could be wrong.

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This is a wisdom call. It's case by case. And certainly, may the Lord give us wisdom and may

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He be gracious and merciful to us. But this is the angle that we're coming from. I remember, I'll give this example. This is more personal for me.

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I remember in my years in D .C., some who listen know that I was on staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church with Mark Dever.

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Well, Mark, I think, modeled really well this paradigm that you and I are advocating for today, like being able to read things that are certainly way outside of his tradition.

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And there could be some sincere disagreements about some stuff, but it's like, hey, this over here is really helpful.

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I'll give an example. There was a book, I think the title was very long, something like Good and Bad Ways to Think About Religion and Politics by Robert Binney.

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And Robert Binney was an ELCA Lutheran. So if people are familiar with this, ELCA is kind of the liberal

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Lutheran church, broadly speaking. But Binney had written this really good book from a generally

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Lutheran two kingdoms perspective on the church and politics that Mark thought was absolutely excellent.

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And Mark would commend the book all the time. He had Robert Binney on nine marks pastors talk stuff to just discuss this stuff.

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And it's like, Mark, are you trying to promote liberal Lutheranism? No, he wasn't.

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But he's like, no, this over here and talking about the church and politics, religion and politics, it's actually really good for the saints to hear, particularly evangelicals who tend to collapse these categories and get all kinds of things confused, this might be beneficial.

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And so I think that's maybe an example that's not as scary as some others that we could give maybe. But I think if we're not doing that, we're hindering our growth and we're maybe depriving ourselves of some really helpful things that other

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Christians have seen, even if they're way outside of our own tradition. Well, and I would go back to saying this is why confessionalism becomes very healthy and helpful for me.

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When I am dealing with theology and I'm like, wow, this is very strange. This is a different way of thinking about it.

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I ask myself, does this go against the confession? Because if it does, it does make me very nervous.

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Anytime something goes against our confessions, it calls for great, great pause to go, good faithful brothers have thought through this.

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Now I will say this, and we're gonna do a podcast on this soon. I'm just gonna throw this at you now. We haven't talked about it, Justin. Our confessions do not cover everything.

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It does not cover every subject theologically or even in life exhaustively.

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So there are times where we're gonna wander into theological questions and the confession just doesn't even talk about it.

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Period. And so we're gonna have to use great wisdom and discretion to discernment. It could make reference to it, but here's a fun one.

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This is out of left field, but what are the biblical requirements for marriage? What do you think about it?

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Man and a woman. There are very few, bro. Man and a woman. And if you're a

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Christian, you need to marry in the Lord. You need to marry in the Lord. But as far as like, you can literally just walk for the congregation and go, hey, we're committed now.

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Like there's no instructions there. You know what I mean? And so you can't even go to the confession for it.

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So there are times where like, no, the confession is very general and ambiguous about a lot. You know, how do you instruct your children?

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How do you discipline your children? You know, all this kind of stuff. There's a lot in there that we have to use wisdom.

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What does the confession say about dating and courtship? Not nothing, you know, for example. No, there's a great book that my church is recommending right now on discipline and how to discipline your children in light of the gospel.

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It's a really, really helpful book. I wouldn't consider it law, but if you want like shrewd wisdom of like, you know, how do

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I take the gospel, the truth of Christ, their heart, the wickedness of the world, and how do I encourage through, you know, when

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Jesus said, when Paul says to raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, like what's a practical wisdom way of applying that?

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I can recommend this book. It's a great book, but you know, people would say, well, is it in our confession?

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It's like, well, no. And this is where we can go outside the confession or we can go outside and look and go, have there been godly people who've written good things for us to use?

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And so I think it's healthy. And this person who wrote it, I don't agree with everything that they stand for and don't agree with everything that they believe, but in this particular subject on children,

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I felt like they did a fantastic job. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, this doesn't even touch on a number of other things, like there's all kinds of room for people within the same tradition to disagree over material.

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I mean, you and I, as close friends as we are, John, and standing firmly within the same tradition, we might have different takes on different authors or different theologians, and that's entirely fine too and healthy, right?

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Like we haven't even touched on all those kinds of things where there needs to be the genuine exchange of ideas.

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All right, so a parting shot from me just kind of as an example of the way that we as contemporary

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Christians in the social media world tend to operate and the way that I think discernment ministries have affected us all,

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I'm just gonna give this example, and this just so happens to involve a friend of ours. So Chris Gordon, many people know, is a friend of the show.

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He's a pastor out in Escondido, California. He's a part of the URCNA, and he does Abound in Grace radio.

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Well, Chris recently, because of all the, man, the kerfuffles and dustups and all the things pertaining to church and culture and Christian nationalism and theonomy and how, here's the thing, how this affects the clarity of the gospel and the purity of the mission of the church.

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Chris had Doug Wilson come to Escondido and along with Jared Longshore and had a conversation with those guys and was,

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I mean, attempting to raise issues and even confront some things that Chris, and we would agree with Chris, see as errors.

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And there were so many people, there have been so many people, I can defend Chris on our show,

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I'm not gonna defend us per se, who have just, I mean, torched

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Chris and are burning Chris down, metaphorically speaking, for even having

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Doug come and even having a conversation with Doug Wilson. Like, why would you ever have a conversation with this man?

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And it's like, brothers and sisters, that is not how we should operate. I think any opportunity to sit and engage with somebody and to try to clear up misunderstanding, to try to point out error and to really engage and demonstrate where that error might lie and how it might affect the clarity of the gospel or the mission of the church,

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I think that's a good thing to attempt and a good thing to do. And so let's not be so reactionary and just so visceral in our responses about, oh, well, you sat down across the table from this person, that means we need to write you off, or you appeared on this show and so that means that we need to write you off, or you think that this author is helpful on this subject matter, therefore we need to be very concerned about you wholesale.

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Like, that's just not the way that we should operate from my perspective.

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I know you agree, John. And again, we could be wrong about some of these wisdom calls, but let's deal with one another in charity.

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Yeah, hopefully this is encouraging for you as you're just kind of navigating the internet. Talk to your pastors, talk to your elders.

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God's put them in life and listen to what they have to say. Remember, we're not your pastor, we're not your elder, we're just another brother in Christ that's trying to encourage you to love your church and love your pastor.

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And hopefully that was the case. So Justin, next week, tomorrow, whatever,

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Lord willing, whenever this happens, next week we have another podcast and we're gonna go ahead and advertise it to you now because I'm pretty excited about it.

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We're gonna talk about reading the Bible through law gospel lenses. How do we read it and not get tripped up on some tough stuff like poetry and Old Testament narrative and like how do we handle this stuff?

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So we are gonna have a fun introductory conversation on law gospel reading. We'll see you next week.

41:56

Hey everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you. And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it.

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