August 7, 2018 Show with Chris Strevel on “The Lord of Glory: The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this seventh day of August 2018.

I'm so delighted after knowing about this individual for many years, going at least back to the 1990s, that I am finally having on the program for the very first time

Chris Strevel. He is an author and he's the pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church of Buford, Georgia, which is a congregation within the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. He's also a blogger at fromthepastorsdesk, and today we are going to be discussing his book,

The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Chris Strevel.

Thank you, Chris. It's my honor to be on the program today. Now I just, I should have done this before we went on the air, but is it

Strevel or Strevel? It's actually Strevel, that's fine. Okay, I had a feeling

I messed it up, especially when I was, I actually pronounced the word privilege like Barbara Walters, so I knew that I messed up before I even got to your name.

I was a little tongue -tied there. Well, before we even go into the book today, let our listeners know something about Covenant Presbyterian Church of Buford, Georgia.

Well, we started as a very small Bible study back in the mid -80s, and the

Lord has basically, I think, brought the folks together here over and around a love for his word and the love for each other, and the

Lord's blessed us with growth, and it's encouraging to see our second, even in some cases third generation, here growing up within the church in this very suburban area.

The Lord's really blessed and thankful for his grace in our lives. Praise God.

Well, as I normally do when I have a first -time guest, I have them give an account, a summary of their account of how they were saved.

Obviously we're all saved in the same way, by the blood of Jesus Christ and by his grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

But as far as your own personal experience, what were the providential circumstances that rose up in your life that drew you to himself?

Let us know something about your religious upbringing, if any, and how this all came to be.

Yeah, so I was brought up in a very Christian home. Both my parents are believers.

My father's with the Lord now in glory, but he was very faithful in training us and in the scriptures and family worship, and we went over Atlanta looking for faithful preaching.

I remember when I was probably eight, maybe nine, I came under a very strong conviction of personal sin and my need of a

Savior, that I was going to stand before God one day. That grew, that conviction grew through my teenage years.

Probably at 14, 15, somewhere in there, I really came under a conviction of my need to memorize and meditate upon Scripture.

I had no thought of going into the ministry, it was just a matter of, I needed to take my faith, my

Savior seriously, and of course he said that if my words abide in you,

I abide in you, and you ask what you will and I will do for you. So family, preaching,

I remember hearing some very convicting messages in the little primitive Baptist Church we were in, and then in the

Presbyterian Church that we were in as an older teenager, the Lord really used the word to draw me to Christ.

Praise God, and in fact, as much as I have some differences with my primitive

Baptist friends on some areas of Calvinism, where I think they go a little high, if you understand what

I'm saying. Absolutely, absolutely. I happen to say that I absolutely love acapella primitive

Baptist hymn singing. That's beautiful, they know how to sing. Yeah, they sure do.

And the harp singing, are you familiar with the harp singing? Oh yeah, very much, very much. Yeah, I love that stuff.

It's really beautiful. Well, we are going to be discussing, as I said moments ago, your book,

The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Christ Jesus. Before we get into that, let me just give our email address for listeners who would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Chris.

It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And since our guest today is a pastor, I can understand why some people might have a pastoral question that involves a personal and private question that you don't want to draw attention to your identity.

But other than that, please, if it's just a general question on theology and so on, please give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And I want to read for our audience an endorsement or a commendation by a very good friend of mine that I've known for many years,

Pastor John Otis. I've had him on this program a number of times. Pastor John is an author himself, and in fact,

I don't even know if you know this, Chris, but years ago on the old Iron Trip and Zion Radio program that was broadcasting out of New York, I interviewed

John Otis on Freemasonry, the cult, if you will, of Freemasonry, because he wrote, from what

I understand, is the most exhaustive critique of Freemasonry written by a

Christian, a Bible -believing evangelical Christian in all of literary history.

But after doing that interview, he got contacted by a listener in Dublin, Ireland, who actually eventually arranged a debate with John in London, England, with a high -ranking

Mason, who also happened to be a Swedenborgianist. And that debate was held,

I guess, it was back sometime in the late 90s, I think, but... Yeah, that rings a bell.

Yeah. Actually, I'm sorry, not in the late 90s, more like the 2009 or 10 or something.

But anyway, John has been a dear friend. In fact, John, I was so delighted that, just to fill you in about a little something personal to me,

I actually, a number of years ago, went to an alcohol rehabilitation ministry in Boone, North Carolina, because I had fallen off the deep end with the sin of abuse of alcohol, and I went to this ministry,

Hebron Colony Ministries, in Boone, North Carolina, and John and his wife,

Christine, were kind and gracious enough to make the long drive to Boone to be there in the audience when

I graduated from that ministry. Ah, wonderful. So, but anyway, John says, in regard to the

Lord of Glory, the transforming presence of Jesus Christ, the book by Chris Strevel that we are discussing today, he says,

I want to highly recommend Pastor Chris Strevel's book, The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ.

Over the years, I have read quite a few theology books, but Pastor Strevel's books is one book, is one of the best

I have ever read. Unfortunately, today, there are many Christians who want to make a distinction between doctrine and practical living, as if there is such a distinction.

The Scripture, on the other hand, teaches us that sound doctrine leads to godliness. The central focus of the

Christian life is our personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul expressed this importance when he said in Philippians chapter 3, verse 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death.

Pastor Strevel has done a marvelous job of showing how practical it is for us to fully understand the work of our precious

Savior. Understanding these magnificent doctrines of Christ's work is truly spiritually transforming.

Read and reread this book, and you will be blessed. And once again, that was Pastor John Otis.

Oh, and he also adds here, Pastor Strevel is one of the best preachers you will ever hear, and he is equally one of the best

Christian writers. And we thank you, Pastor John Otis, for providing us with that wonderful commendation for the

Lord of Glory. Well, obviously, there are books on the presence of Christ and the transforming power of Christ that have been written by authors both living and long in glory with Christ in eternity.

Why the need for this specific volume that you wanted to add to the other volumes already in existence?

Well, that's a good question. There's nothing new in this book.

There's no new formulas, no new...it really grew out of just my own sense of personal conviction that we relate to Christ in terms of His Word.

He teaches us throughout that we must hear His voice, and so that when we read the Gospels, and a lot of this book is taken from Gospel scenes, sayings of our

Lord, ways that He worked, that these are not just relics of things that happened 2 ,000 years ago.

They're His living power recorded for us in Scripture, and these things have gripped me as I thought about them and preached about them over the years.

It's very much a collection of essays, some new, some old, on aspects of His personal work, and that He is the living, resurrected

Savior, and therefore we know Him through the Word.

I think an author that really helped me is an old Scotsman, Hugh Miller, who wrote a biography of Simon Peter, or Hugh Mark wrote a biography of Simon Peter, and also a book called

The Abiding Presence, which is probably where I plagiarized the title from, or the subtitle, but just that we know

Christ in His Word, that the things are recorded for us in Scripture, this is who He is, this is the way that He relates to us, this is what we can expect of Him as we walk humbly and walk in faith.

So I guess to answer your question shortly, that it's just my conviction that we need to take the

Word seriously, and we don't need anything in addition to the Word in terms of knowing

Christ, we don't. We just need to take the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture seriously, progressively walk with Him, daily walk with Him in that Word, and expect

Him to be who He is as He has revealed Himself. And you have broken up this book into six parts, and the parts include

Glory Incarnate, They Crucified the Lord of Glory, Exalted, Extolled, and Very High the

Lord of Glory in His Kingdom, Christ in Us in Union with the Lord of Glory, Transforming Glory, Walking with Glory.

And if you could, other than the very first portion or segment of this book, every other heading includes the word

Glory, oh actually I'm sorry, it's in every segment because Glory is the first word in the first segment,

Glory Incarnate. Tell us what you mean by Glory, because that is a word that is used in different ways.

Our Pentecostal and Charismatic friends seem to use it quite often. They may mean something different by it on occasion, but what exactly do you mean by this word

Glory? Just the biblical sense of God's weightiness,

His awesomeness, His majesty, who He is as He has revealed

Himself in His Word. There's no, I don't have any, there's no specialized definition of Glory here.

Probably John 1 14, they beheld His glory, His majesty,

His awesome nature, His divine glory. Amen. Well, let's start with the first section,

Glory Incarnate. In fact, I just had on the program very recently, twice actually,

Dr. Stephen J. Wellam, I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Wellam of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, we were discussing his new book on God the

Son Incarnate. But your first section is Glory Incarnate, and if you could tell us about, in a summary form, the different aspects that you deal with under that heading.

Of course, to understand Christ, you have to begin with His eternal person, as the

Son of God, and so the section Glory Incarnate is broadly, the broad theme would be the glory of Christ as God's eternal

Son. I take a look at that beautiful passage in John chapter 1, some of His I Am statements that would touch on this, some of His power as the

Son of God, and really the idea that our Redeemer, as the confessions and the creeds of the

Church and catechisms, that our Redeemer had to be fully God. And so appreciating the glory of the cross and the transforming power of Christ in our lives, we have to see first the divine glory of the

Son of God, very much Paul's way of arguing, and Philippians 2, that even though He was in the very nature of God, everything

God was, He was, yet He took upon Himself the form of a servant, so that the higher that we see

His person, the more awestruck we'll be by the depths to which

He sank in order to redeem us at the cross. That's why I begin with, I mean, nothing new there, but just begin with His glory as the

Son of God, and that He's not...some of it deals with some of the historical, you know, creeds of the

Church, that He is God of Himself. He is everything God was. Amen.

We have a listener in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

We have Susan Margaret who asks, I know that we who are

Reformed are very leery of our evangelical brethren who are constantly referring to their feelings, and of course there are completely deceptive moments when people are trusting in their feelings, such as the

Mormons who are convinced that they have the truth because of the burning in their bosom, and other silly and superstitious ways that people put an overemphasis on feelings.

But, having said that, do you believe that there are certain feelings that we as Christians are to expect when we are actually experiencing the transforming presence of Jesus Christ?

I say this because I have met many Christians who appear to be dead in their orthodoxy and have no life in them.

Wow, that's quite a question. So, easy answer, yes.

So I look at a passage like, and I think one of the essays is just on these three verses,

John 15, 9 through 11, where our Lord says, I have continued my father and have remained or abided in his love, and then he turns and says to the disciples in the upper room, if you continue in my love, if you continue in my obedience and you'll remain in my love, and then he says,

I think in verse 11, I've said these things to you that my joy may be fulfilled in you.

Obviously, you know, feelings, our feelings are fallen, our feelings are no more reliable a guide than any other aspect of our humanity.

Our feelings need to be redeemed, just because we have a feeling doesn't mean it's a legitimate guide for our life.

At the same time, Jesus Christ is a real and a living person, and therefore in communion and fellowship with him, not just in John 15, but in other places, he talks about, my peace

I leave with you. These are, these certainly have an emotive, emotional aspect to them, so that as we live in fellowship with Christ, as we walk in obedience to him, even in very dark places, he can extend to us in ways that probably we would not otherwise learn, but in that dark valley, his joy, his peace, and even the statement in Hebrews 12, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross.

So our Lord didn't, and you know, it's funny about our Lord too, you know, most often men don't want to be around morose and, you know, disguise -falling, chicken -little theologians.

I mean, he, people wanted to eat and drink with him. He said that about himself, hey, I came eating and drinking. He didn't come, you know, morose and negative, and certainly he had times and seasons of tremendous heaviness as he bore our grief and sorrows, and our salvation, of course,

Gethsemane and the horrors that faced him as he looked at the cross, but there was still in him an indomitable joy that, though this is costing me, and I really feel it deeply,

I'm sweating great drops of blood just looking at the cup of judgment and the sword of justice that's about to fall on me, and yet there was a higher, and one of the essays is about this, there was a higher joy in him that, it's my pleasure,

Psalm 40, you know, quoted in Hebrews, it's my joy to do the will of my

Father. And I think it's probably difficult in this life for us, kind of like looking at this beautiful, you know, well -appointed, incredibly lit mansion, and we're looking in the door of, wow, it is our highest joy to walk in obedience to our

Father. And I think that probably has not been preached enough, and that's probably why, if this questioner asks, there's too much dead orthodoxy among the orthodox, just the failure to take in the significance of God created us to hear his voice and to walk in obedience to him, and nothing about technology, or phones, or entertainment, or markets, or microscopes, or satellites,

God doesn't, he hasn't changed anything like that at all, or the way that we find our consummate happiness over time as his creatures, and that is to devote ourselves to his obedience.

And of course that's not in any sense meritorious, or Jesus is the only meritor, and he, you know, purchased our redemption, but he gives us his

Spirit, writes God's law in our heart, so that as we make some progress, then like he, and Father, not my will, but your will be done, then we know some of our

Savior's joy, some of his peace, and the other aspects there. So that's kind of a long answer, but it's a real important point.

I think that's one of the reasons why obedience and duty have fallen on such hard times in our day and age, and the broad evangelical church is looking for constant spiritual stimulants that are quite artificial, and over time will prove to be quite ineffectual against the devil, because we've forgotten that the old, old gospel, and Jeremiah spoke of the old paths, those are the paths of joy, because God knows what's best for us, and he knows that what's best for us is to obey him with a thankful heart for his grace to us in Christ.

Yes, and even the so -called frozen chosen Presbyterians who drafted the

Shorter Westminster Catechism, Westminster Shorter Catechism, I should say, very first question, what is the chief end of man?

And the answer? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

That's right, that's right. And it seems that a lot of people who would confess or profess that the

Westminster Confession and Catechism are their own seem to live like they never read that first question in the

Shorter Catechism. Well, yeah, I guess, and of course we can't discount, you know, we can't discount that our

Lord certainly, you know, has very distinct moments of anger, even

Mark chapter 3 verse 5, heaviness. We, of course, we're strangers and pilgrims.

We're not in heaven yet, so there's gonna be fears. I just, that has to be balanced with, you know, it's easy to fall into the, oh woe is me, what's the next bad thing happening?

And of course in our culture, you know, people make a lot of money selling fear, selling it's the end of the world, you know, as we know it, and yet somehow as Christians, you know, our foreheads are marked because we, like Ezekiel says, we weep over the sins of our land, but at the same time, like our

Lord said in John 16, I believe 33, in the world you're gonna have trouble, but be of good cheer, because I've overcome the world.

So we're kind of in both quadrants as Christians, or both realms.

Yes, we're strangers and pilgrims, we bear the cross, we have our individual crosses that we carry, we look around the world, we're free over the hardness of men's hearts, and at the same time,

God doesn't make sad sermons. I mean, Paul even told the Corinthians, he said, hey, God's made me happy.

I didn't write that first letter to you to make you sad, but if you sorrowed under repentance, that's a good thing.

So we've got to keep these things in mind, that yes, there's heavy -heartedness, yes, there's trial. Christians are not fools who walk through life, you know, not feeling anything, not going through difficulties, not weeping.

We do, we do all those things, our Lord did. At the same time, because we're in communion with Christ, and we take our cares and our griefs to Him, there's also that, you know,

Psalm 28 7, my heart trusted in you, and I'm helped, even by the trusting, even by the casting my cares upon you.

You see that throughout the Psalms. David begins with a, you know, ah, I can't stand this, what's happening?

I feel bad, and at the end, he's praising God, and I think that the progress there is, he sends in some cases, or asks help from his enemies.

In other cases, but at the end of it, he's hoped in God, and so therefore, he has been helped.

So we're strange creatures, Christians. I mean, we've got this treasure, you know, of grace and glory, but at the same time, it's in, you know, it's in clay pots, so we're fragile at the same time.

Yes, and I in no way intended by my comment to insinuate that, as some of our charismatic and Pentecostal friends do, or even just evangelicals that are emotion -driven,

I'm not trying to assume that if you walk into a church and people are reverent and orderly in their worship, and sometimes even solemn, that they don't have the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit, or that the Spirit is not present in that worship service, and that is a slander by many people who walk into worship services that are more traditional, and where people, in their efforts to take what is occurring very seriously, and to view it with awe and reverence, that they are not to be viewed as automatically being those that are dead and lifeless when it comes to the

Spirit. Absolutely. And by the way,

Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, you have won a free copy of The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ, compliments of our friend,

Pastor Chris Strevel, and the publishers of this book. It's a beautiful hardback book, it's a little over 220 pages, and we hope that you enjoy that.

We will need your full mailing address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in order to have that shipped out to you, so we look forward to hearing from you very soon with that.

Let's see here, oh, we have to go to a station break right now. This is our first station break, and if anybody wants to take advantage of this time to write your questions for Chris Strevel about The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

So don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Chris Strevel and more of The Lord of Glory.

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We are now back to our interview with Chris Strievel, and he is author of the book

The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. We have

Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Christopher says, when you refer to the transforming presence of Jesus Christ in the title of your book, what do you mean by transformation?

I think that you may agree with me that very often in modern evangelicalism, and even elsewhere in Christendom, you have people who believe they are

Christians, and they have not been transformed at all in the way that they think or act or live before they made this profession.

Isn't there something more to Christianity that involves this transforming presence? Well, certainly.

We, Matthew 121, you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

I suppose that one verse would very well summarize what I mean, at least, by transforming.

What I do not mean by it is that your circumstances will be transformed, or you'll have your best life now if it's commonly turned into a fairy tale or something along those lines.

What I mean is that the Son of God incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ, the mediator of the covenant, he took upon himself our sins on the cross, he's removed our condemnation, he rose bodily from the dead, he's ascended to the right hand of the

Father, he's poured out his Holy Spirit, and through that Holy Spirit he progressively transforms us, giving us the

Roman Six, the walk in newness of life, to put away our sins, to fight against our sins, especially those sins that so easily beset us, and so that there is, in union with Christ, a very tangible transforming.

It's progressive, it's not perfected in this life, but it's unto, you know, taking delight in those things that God delights in, holiness and obedience.

So yeah, a Christ that doesn't transform or that leaves me in my lust of various kinds is no

Christ at all. Praise God. Well Christopher, you have won a free copy of The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ by our guest

Chris Strievel. Please give us your full mailing address in Suffolk County so that our friends at CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship that out to you.

The second section of your book involves one of the most pivotal events in earthly history.

They crucified the Lord of Glory, and the mystery, wonder, and awe is one of the things under that subheading, if you could.

Yes, so the second section deals with the glory of the cross, why the cross is, like you say, pivotal, transformative, and it's because of who died on the cross.

The Son of God incarnate, the mediator of the covenant, and he bore our curse.

And the wonder of the cross is not, again if I could just borrow a few historical, you know, it's not

Jesus the great moral example, it's not Jesus the great teacher of love,

Jesus the great sacrificing martyr. The wonder of the cross is that the

Son of God should take upon himself a form of a servant and be our Passover lamb, our burnt offering, our scapegoat, and should be, as Isaiah 53 10 says, it pleased the

Lord to crush him. And that is, that's what's gripped, not only gripped emotionally, intellectually, but also gripped transformatively, that's what's gripped the church, who it is that died on the cross.

That's why the Apostles were transformed, as these things begin to dawn on them, as he taught it after his resurrection, and certainly after the

Holy Spirit was poured out, you know, then he opened their eyes to understand what was in the scriptures all along, that the

Christ the cross had to suffer and rise again. And so, and of course the reason the cross saves us, the reason we only have one offering, one sacrifice in the

Christian faith, biblical religion, is because that by that one offering, he has perfected forever those who are being made holy.

So that's what the second section is dealing with, the wonder of the cross, because of who it is who died for us on the cross.

Now, I don't know if you go into the uniqueness of the Reformed understanding of this monumental event, but I think that nothing in Christendom comes close to the

Reformed understanding of the Atonement, which would include particular redemption, which would include definite

Atonement, and of course, as it's commonly called, limited Atonement, not because it's limited at all in its power, it's the opposite, that it is unlimited in its power, but limited in its intention, and limited in its scope of for whom it will be applied.

Am I right on that? Absolutely. And don't you think that one of the reasons why our Reformed understanding is such a more amazing and wonderful and glorious understanding, or the event itself is more amazing and glorious in its truth, the way that it is historically being understood by Reformed Christians, is that it is not a theoretical work, it's not a hypothetical work.

Christ came and completed the work that he intended from eternity past.

You might as well hang a banner on the cross, mission accomplished, he said it himself in his own words, it is finished, and therefore everyone for whom he died, those that he intended to redeem, will certainly be redeemed, and their sins will certainly be atoned for because of that death.

There is no theory. He did not just die to make men savable, did he? No, he died to save his own in time and in eternity by his death on the cross.

Amen. So the essays in that section, and predicated upon that understanding of what happened at the cross.

It's not opening a door for me to be saved, it's not, you know, painting some kind of initial peace with God so that I could go in and earn the rest of it.

It's not opening the door so that my efforts at self -atonement will be effectual before God.

You know, the glory of the cross, and really why the Church historically, when she has come to consider these things with more specificity, the reason she's come to this conclusion is because of who he is.

It's impossible for the Son of God incarnate not to have accomplished salvation by his death on the cross.

Isaiah prophesied it, the Passover of the Old Testament pointed to it, Jesus, John pointed him out, this is the

Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So this is just warp and woof historical

Christianity. Admittedly, we perhaps today feel the need to modify that a little bit, dress it up a little bit, but that's not because that truth has lost any of its power, it's because it's lost its hold upon us, and perhaps our faith has grown weak, and maybe we're part of that virgin group that's fallen asleep.

But what will rekindle is a full -orbed understanding, biblical understanding, of the power of the cross to save sinners because of the power of the one who died.

Praise God. We have, let's see here,

John in Bangor, Maine, who says, is your book seeking to correct misunderstandings of many in the

Church at large in regard to the presence of Jesus Christ? What are prominent failures in the understanding of modern evangelicals, can you cite?

That's a good question. The book is not, it's not, if I can say like this, it's not essentially negative, meaning it's not prompted by ten errors that I wanted to go against, speak against, correct.

Some of that certainly comes up in there. I think that the heart of, to me, the heart of the, you talk about the presence of Christ, and you know, for a lot of people, the presence of Christ, I had a dream.

I mean, dreams are making a huge comeback as being somehow normative for, you know, our faith and personal experience, or you know, relate to Christ by a mystical encounter with Him, local, you know, very prominent preacher here in Atlanta, you know, it's come out, don't base your faith in Jesus on the

Bible, because if the Bible comes under attack, then, you know, you'll lose your faith in Jesus, and so what he's really promoting is that each individual

Christian has an existential encounter with Christ independently of the

Word, which is kind of a strange thing, especially since, for example, in Luke 4,

Jesus goes into the synagogue in his own hometown, takes the scroll of Isaiah in his hand, knows where the passage in Isaiah is, finds it, reads it, puts his finger on it, and says, this is here in your midst now, and of course

John 15, and if this is, if I could encapsulate, Christ indwells us by, you know, with His grace and glory and life and all these things the

New Testament teaches, as we abide in His Word, as we take the revelation of Himself in His Word seriously, as we pray it, apply it where it's appropriate, follow

Him, obey Him. His example, 1 John 2 .6, you know, he says he's in Christ to walk, even as he walks, so that the presence of Christ and its transforming power is, hey, let's just do what he said, let's take his own

Word seriously, let's abide in that Word, let's meditate upon that Word, let's, you know,

Psalm 119, 113, I hate vain thoughts, but your law, do I love, let's, you know, if we're struggling with less, let's go to war against it by taking seriously the fact that the

Word of Christ is the sword of the Holy Spirit, meditating upon that Word, memorizing it, using it, praying it, so that's the heart of my own, you know, passion for my own life, just my own life, and then certainly for God's people.

This is how we know the presence of Christ, and it's not straight lie, it's not formula, formula -matic, it's not just existential, you know, you assume the right lotus position and boom, you get a lightning strike from heaven, you know, it's painful, it's,

I mean, Jesus, you know, his own encounter with the devil in the wilderness, I mean, we look at that, it's like, this was not a picnic for him to have these temptations, for even allowing himself to be subject to the movement of the devil on his own body, and yet his every answer was from Deuteronomy, you know, and man shall live by every word that comes to mouth of God, but if we take his own example, if we want to fight temptation, we've got to pick up the very word that he used.

And so, you know, a lot of the estates, you know, are looking at this from different perspectives of, how do we use his word here?

How do we take seriously his word in this particular context, in terms of the way we, you know, relate to God, relate to each other, etc.

We have, we have an anonymous listener who says, I'm a member of a church that I love, but one thing that depresses me on occasion is when we are gathered in prayer, it seems that this

Reformed Church looks down upon an overemphasis of praying for healing.

Now, I understand that you can be overly focused on that, but at the same time,

I think that we should be praying with expectation of God answering our prayer.

When you said earlier that transformation does not involve our lives getting better, while this not may be necessarily always true on this world, isn't it often true?

Doesn't the Lord often bless his children with answers to prayers in the way that they desire, and doesn't he often restore marriages, and give people better sources of employment, and improve their health, and do many other things while we are on this earth?

I am not echoing John Osteen's heresy of your best life now, but at the same time,

I don't believe that our lives after becoming Christian will necessarily remain just as miserable as they were before we were saved.

No, I agree. What I meant by the earlier comment, not to enter into debate, but was simply that, yeah, was distinguishing the idea of transformation from, if I do this, then my circumstances are always inevitably going to change.

Sometimes the Lord, you know, obviously brings things into our life that his answer is not,

I'm going to take this away, but his answer is, I'm going to be with you while I keep this here. So allowing for that, and yes, at the same time, obviously the

Lord is pleased very often to answer prayers in a variety of ways. Now, on the specific thing of healing,

I agree, and I think we talked about this somewhat here, that we certainly need to take

James 5 seriously, which, yeah, if anyone is sick, let him call for the elders of the church.

The idea that God's will is always for healing, obviously, we would say, no, that's not true, we know it's not the case.

Nobody would ever die if that was the case. Yeah, that's right, exactly, yes. I mean, and at the same time, sickness is not unto death, but you know, the gift of the

Apostles, in that sense, you know, we're not in that age of the church, so I think we just, yes, we pray expectantly, yes, we believe,

I am the Lord who heals you, and all the while we're believing that and praying that, not with a doubt component, but with a humility component,

Lord, your will be done, because what we don't know, what your will is here.

Your will may be, you may answer this prayer for healing by bringing this brother or this sister to heaven.

Now, that's not gonna make my heart, at least on earth, you know, fully happy, but it's gonna make their fully happy, and I think when we pray for things, we often forget that our personal experience in this life is kind of like a blip, one little dot on a number line, in comparison to the, you know, the duration of our eternal existence in heaven forever.

So we've got to take that into consideration that, you know, Lord, yes, I'm gonna heal this brother,

I'm gonna bring him to heaven. I'm gonna heal this sister, I'm gonna bring her to heaven. I mean, for us, we would like all of our prayers for healing to result in healing.

But sometimes God has bigger healing in mind. Amen. In fact,

I think it bears quoting John MacArthur here, when it comes to Joel Osteen's book,

Your Best Life Now, John MacArthur once brilliantly said, not long ago, that if your best life is now, that means you're heading for hell.

I mean, if you're thinking logically and consistently, if your best life is right now, then your eternity doesn't look too bright.

But we are going to our elongated break right now. This is an elongated break because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida requires of us an elongated break in between our two major segments, because of the fact that they air their own commercials and public service announcements during this time.

So we have to go to this elongated break. So take this time to not only write down questions for Chris Strevel, author of The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ, but also take this time to write down the information provided by our advertisers, because the more information that you have from our advertisers written down, the more likely you are to successfully patronize them, and the more likely then subsequently they are to continue advertising with us if you patronize them.

And of course, we depend upon the longevity of our advertisers, because those funds are what enables us to keep on the air, in addition to your generous donations.

But don't go away, God willing, we're gonna be back after these messages with more of Chris Strevel and more of his book that we are addressing,

The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ.

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I'm so delighted that from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, my friend

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Before we return to Chris Striegel and our discussion on the Lord of Glory, the transforming presence of Jesus Christ, I just have a couple of special announcements to make.

Coming up November 9th through the 10th in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual Quakertown conference on Reformed Theology.

The theme this year is the glory of the cross. I intend to be there, Manning and Iron Sharpen's Iron Exhibitors booth, and the speakers include

David Garner, Ray Ortlund, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Nguyen.

If you'd like to register for this event, once again it's November 9th and the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

Go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, and then you click on events and scroll down to the

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The third section of your book, Pastor Chris, is

Exalted, Extolled, and Very High, the Lord of Glory in His Kingdom. And there is also disagreement amongst

Christians about how we are to understand the phrase kingdom, but if you could give us a more precise definition of this subtitle.

Well, I would say that ought not the Christ to have suffered and to enter into his kingdom.

And so it is ascension. We can look at that as his monarchical procession to the right hand of the

Father where he went up to the Ancient of Days and received universal dominion, power, and authority.

And he has been reigning and will continue to reign at the right hand of God until all of his enemies are made a good stool for his feet.

Now years ago, many years ago in the 90s, early 90s I believe it was,

I had the privilege of seeing and hearing in person preach the late

Dr. Greg Bonson. And I remember him in a sermon lamenting that Christians, although they may on paper believe in the ascension of Christ, they really don't focus on it enough.

They don't view it enough as a vital aspect of Christ's person and work and the history of Christ and even as a part of the gospel itself.

Would you agree with Dr. Bonson on that? Yeah, I mean historically we, you know, confess in the

Apostles' Creed, crucified, dead, buried, he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven.

And that very frankly without the ascension the cross won't do us any good.

So there is, and what the ascension signifies that heaven is not closed to us anymore, we come to a reconciled

God because we have a sympathetic high priest. That high priest is also like the great type of the

Old Testament Melchizedek. He unites the kingship and the priesthood in his own person to powerfully apply the blessings that he obtained by his death and resurrection to our lives.

So the ascension is, again, a very important connection and a difference in the

Christian faith because we don't worship a dead Savior. We don't worship a great hero, martyr.

We worship and serve and are in union and communion with a living, resurrected, reigning

Savior. And so I do think that that is what we, maybe it's there somewhere in the back of the consciousness, but it needs to be brought, you know, daily front and center because, you know, why do we believe when we pray

Jesus is going to help us? Well, because he's the ascended King and Savior. Why do we not, you know, fall in with the fear mongers in our day?

Well, because we believe he is reigning at the right hand of the Father, not in theory, but, you know, as John sees in Revelation, he's actively marching and making wars.

So that's really what the third section of the book is about, the ongoing active presence of Christ reigning and ruling both in our lives and in history and over everything that we see transpiring around us.

Well, you said something about when the King marches to war. If you could elaborate on that a little bit, because that's not an aspect of the person and work of Christ that many modern evangelicals would even bring up in a pulpit or in discussion.

They seem to have this idea of a perfectly passive or exclusively passive Jesus, a meek and mild

Jesus, a Jesus where war is the farthest thing from his heart and mind.

But if you could tell us what you mean by when the King marches to war. Well, it comes straight out of Revelation 19, present tense verbs used there, verses 11 through 15.

Let me just kind of put it like in 2018 language. We look around at what's happening in the world today.

We look perhaps at how, and again people read this differently, but upon how our own country manifests clear deviations from its

Christian, at least moorings in the past, general connection to Western Christianity.

We wonder about the madness of some of the decisions that are made. Again, I don't, from my standpoint reading

Scripture, I don't look at that as, oh dear, we are very likely provoking him.

That's true. But I look at it as he is driving his enemies to self -destructive decisions.

He is also, in other words, this is the way he's marching and making war. You want to know what it looks like? Open your eyes.

Read the newspaper. Look at what he's doing in the city of man. Look at what he's doing in what we often call natural disasters.

Look at what he's doing in the abortion holocaust. I mean, yes, men are accountable for murdering their unborn children, but it also says in Scripture that Jesus killed the children of his enemies that he did not intend to save.

And I realize that's a huge mouthful, and we can easily kill that with a thousand caveats, or we can just recognize the vision that John sees in the opening of Revelation.

This is Jesus upon his breast. John reclined in the upper room, and yet he looks at this ascended, exalted

Christ, eyes like a flame of fire, knows everything, pierces every veil, his feet like steel, brass, just pounding his enemies.

And then throughout Revelation, it is the wrath of the Lamb that is falling upon his enemies.

And, you know, it's funny, Paul even says to the Thessalonians, he says, you know, you fled to Christ for refuge from the wrath to come.

We don't believe in Jesus. You know, a lot of times today, somebody finds a restaurant, oh, best restaurant there ever was.

You know, all of us have got to have our Facebook post of I found the best thing. You know, and sometimes we bring that into our faith, and it's like, you know,

Jesus really means this to me. That's great. And he does need to mean more and more to us.

But we need to remember, there's a higher reality than my taste, likes, feelings, how fulfilling something is, and that is there's an ascended, risen, reigning

Savior who is crushing his enemies, including modern nation men who reject his gospel.

And Scripture everywhere teaches this. I do not believe in a passive reign of Christ. I do not believe he's a king in waiting.

I believe everywhere the expectation is set forth in Scripture is what motivated the apostle.

As one has motivated the church in her great missionary endeavors at various periods, as well as the suffering of her martyrs, has been

Christ, not man, is king. And therefore, whatever our fortunes may be on earth, if we're to have everlasting life and peace with God, we must stand for the king, die for the king if he calls us to do it, and never compromise his truth.

And I think probably the failure to have a, in all of us, me too, just a sense of the active, present, kingly reign of Christ probably explains the ease with which, you know, we desperately try to be relevant and to get our voice at the table of public opinion, and in some quarters, you know, try to modify the old doctrines to make them more palatable.

That's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to warn men that there is the wrath of the

Lamb coming, and if you do not submit to him, when he comes in judgment, you're going to pray for the earth to swallow you up and the rocks to fall on you.

Yeah, and in fact, that reminds me of a powerful song by Michael Card, The Lamb is a

Lion Roaring with Rage. I don't know if you're familiar with that song. Yes, yes. Very powerful song by Michael Card.

And the very powerful truth that you've just uttered, because many people, whether they are

Christians or not, seem to only delight in the

Jesus in the manger on Christmas, fragile, delicate, helpless, meek and mild baby, or a figment of their imagination created by what they've seen in TV and movies and greeting cards where Jesus is just a cosmic hippie, and they don't really fear him.

And fear is an important element of our relationship with God. We're not to be, as his children, constantly cowering in terror from him, but we are to fear him, are we not?

Yeah, I like to think of it, it's not the fear of a child, you know, before an abusive parent, it's always making threats, and so every time the parent walks in the room, the child cringes, or, you know, in the old days, every time the master walked in the room, the servant cringed.

It's not that kind of fear. This is a fear of wonder. It's a fear of love.

It's a fear of deep appreciation for grace. If you think about Titus 2, 9 through 11, where the apostle says there that the grace of God has appeared, so he talks about God's kindness,

God's grace to us, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and then he says, same sentence, teaching us to deny ungodly lusts, that we should live sober, righteously, and godly.

That word godly there is just the old Greek word for a God -fearer. So that, and of course, same thing he says in 2

Corinthians 7, 1, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. And so it's a fear of wonder at grace, a fear of thankfulness, a fear of love that we have.

And that, of course, we all need to grow in that.

Calvin used to say a line, I always love in Calvin, that we should, sinning against God's warrant should fill us with more dread than dying a thousand horrible deaths.

Wow, yeah. That is the contrast also, well, we need to contrast,

I should say, the way that a child of God, a regenerate believer in Christ, there is a difference between the way that we fear

God and the way that his enemies should fear him, but all too often do not.

I mean, the picture that you were painting in Revelation, the pulpits of America and other parts of the world are sadly not striking terror in the hearts of God's enemies, and they should be, don't you think?

Well, yes, I mean, it requires, I mean, it comes back to me too, but it requires spiritually my good man in the pulpit who fears

God to preach God's word as one who handles the sword of the

Spirit, and it requires that fear on the part of those who listen to, yes, the preacher may be weak, he may not be the greatest in the world, we have access to 10 ,000 other preachers today we may like better than our own local preacher, but at the same time, this is

God's word, and the Lord Jesus by his Spirit is present to preach the

Father's name in the midst of his brothers. So we don't go to church for group therapy.

We go to hear the voice of the Lamb of God through human instruments, very weak, of course, we could test all things, and all that's true, and hold fast to what's good, but the core conviction is, you know, we come to be judged by the word, we come to be judged by the

Lamb so that we're not condemned along with the world, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. Praise God.

Well, we have to go to our final break right now. It will be briefer than the last break. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after these messages with our final segment of today's interview with Chris Strevel and the

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

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We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do, than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

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You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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I'm so delighted that from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, my friend Chris Arnzen will be heading down to Atlanta for the next

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That's WRBC .us. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Chris Sorensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years. His name is Dan Buttafuoco.

Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer, but not the type that typically comes to mind.

Dan cares about people and is a theologian himself. Recently, he wrote a book titled Consider the

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.nyc. Have a great day. Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually.

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Spread the word about FirstLoveRadio .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes and the next 20 minutes or so to go, our guest today,

Chris Strevel, has been discussing and will discuss the Lord of Glory, the transforming presence of Jesus Christ.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com.

And the fourth section of your book, Chris, is titled,

Christ in Us is in union with the Lord of Glory. If you could tell us more about what it means to be in union with Jesus Christ.

Yes, it's an ongoing joy of walking with him. I take various episodes in the gospels and his directives about everything dealing with peace to joy to dealing with despair and how walking in fellowship with him that we cast our cares upon him, how we can walk with him in everyday life.

The governing idea in that section is that our union with him is a covenanted spirit field union that at any given moment in our

Christian experience, our life experience, we may not feel it as intently as at other moments.

But, you know, as Zephaniah says about God's love in chapter 3, verse 17, God's love is set and it's fixed.

And so the same as our union with Christ, that it's at one level, it's not dependent upon how we feel at a given moment or what our circumstances look like.

It is a sworn, take me seriously. I will not leave you comfortless.

I will come to you. I will shepherd you. I will give you joy as you walk as I walk in obedience to me.

So trying to bring out against the heavy existentialism of a lot of Christian experiential literature today, that this is an objective work of Christ in all of those men, women, children who are in union with him.

It certainly grows progressively as it did in the life of the disciples and as collectively in the experience of the church.

But it's a real union. It's a real union of life, grace, glory, the life to come in which the

Lord Jesus progressively unfolds his life in us. And this is our privilege as Christians to walk with him and to know his power and his life in us.

Like Paul says in Colossians, that his grace labors in us mightily.

Colossians 3, I believe, verse 4, when our life, not as just a fleeting idea, but in a very real tangible sense.

He's our head. We're his body. He's our husband. We're his wife.

We're bound to him, and he has bound himself to us and sealed that with the

Holy Spirit who unfolds the life of Christ in us individually and collectively.

In your section, Transforming Glory, which we've already touched on some of those elements since it's in the subtitle of your book, but there is an area of Scripture.

In fact, the chapter heading in your book is You Did It Unto Me. That is an area of Scripture that those within Christendom have had much dispute and division because there is an element of what we would call

Christendom. The Church of Rome, who I believe has a false gospel, will use

Jesus' separation of the sheep and goats as proof that we cooperate with Jesus in saving ourselves and that we will enter heaven, at least in part, because of what we do.

But if you could explain how and why that is false and what you mean in this chapter by You Did It Unto Me.

Right. Well, perhaps in doing the second part we'll hit the falseness of the first part.

Interestingly, in that judgment, in that final division of the sheep and the goats, the sheep are somewhat surprised that perhaps in their own eyes their little trifling works of clothing or a cup of water, these kind of things, are a little bit surprised because those things should be brought back up again.

Lord, when did we do this to you? That's interesting, that contrast. In that contrast to Matthew 7, where Jesus gives the warning to these great wonder workers,

Lord, didn't we do thus and so in your name? And didn't we, you know, traverse heaven and earth to, you know, preach the gospel?

Jesus, get out of here, I don't know you. You practice lawlessness. But in His saints, who are reconciled to Him, who are not thinking about, clearly, and this would touch on your first part, they're not thinking about, oh dear,

I better do enough. I haven't merited enough. I haven't, you know, borrowed enough from the treasury of the saints' merits.

This is love for Christ. This isn't any, you know, I'm trying to earn anything or trying to work, you know, to get some, you know, brownie points to be admitted into heaven.

This is love for Christ, and that's how He takes it. He takes it as, you've done this unto me.

And so I think, you know, my purpose in that section of the book was not so much dealing with the

Roman heresy, although it certainly applies, as it was perhaps bringing us back again to this idea that we're looking for the great, the dramatic, something that's postable, you know, on our social network, recordable for all time, that, you know, these are the things.

Maybe we've all watched too many, you know, movies like Braveheart and whatnot where we're, you know, let's draw swords again.

But Jesus here, He, in terms of His life in us, you know, the mundane, when you look at the people in the

Gospels, He reached out and touched. He healed. This isn't sentimentalism.

It's a fact. Those who, yes, we don't need that. We don't need a position. Great. You don't get one because, you know, you're righteous in your own eyes.

But, you know, the weak, the lowly, and so in terms of our lives in this world, we ought not to, the mother of children who is just keeping her home and every day she's trying to keep a good spirit, and she's asking the

Lord Jesus for grace and strength, the man who's doing His work, you know, hardly unto the Lord, the young person who, you know, keeps himself pure, the man who doesn't click on the silt.

Lord, I'm weak here, but I want to do this as unto You. A lot of these things are not, you know, that He mentioned, are not observable in the sense of we don't do them on parade.

And yet I think a lot of times today the environment in which we live encourages that let me be seen, you know, mentality.

And very often when Jesus was surrounded with that kind of thing, He withdrew Himself. He didn't want to be, you know, reduced to, you know, some public manipulable figure that could, you know, the masses could get what they want out of Him.

And I think we just have to be careful that the grace and the power of Christ is often in the very little things that we do unto

Him that maybe we're not even aware of. You know, we're not thinking about ourselves.

You know, we pick up after a child and we just do it because it needs to be done and we don't put a spotlight on ourselves, we don't tell everybody in the house, hey,

I picked up after you again. I mean, those things, you got your reward, you know, if you're going to trumpet it.

But anyway, that's the point, you know, that I was trying to make in that section. You know, to your point,

I mean, you're getting into the whole, you know, the whole reason for the

Reformation, and that is if obtaining a right standing before God is based in any measure upon any work that I ever do, then the cross is in vain.

And it overturns the whole edifice of the Christian religion. And as we see in Rome today, and it's taken time, you know, perhaps to reveal the full hideousness of this.

And the full apostasy of this, it's a different gospel. It's a different, you know, it's not the

Church of Christ. Amen. And in your final section of the book,

Walking with Glory, you actually list three sayings that are chapter headings that have become, and of course

I am not at all implying that you are doing this, but as you are very likely aware, you list three chapter headings that are used as cliches today.

And I would love for you to bring more rich and robust and biblical meaning to these phrases.

The phrases that I'm speaking of are bearing the cross. We've all heard people, even the unbeliever, speaking of the fact that we all have our crosses to bear.

And they use that for describing any kind of discomfort that they may be experiencing in life or when they're trying to console somebody else who's having some kind of a trial of some sort.

Then you also have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that has become, unfortunately, a modern evangelical cliche.

And the other would be light in the darkness, which has also been used and abused and has lost its true meaning by overuse and misuse in the jargon of modern evangelicalism.

But you have, obviously, biblical truth behind these titles. If you could talk about, for a moment, bearing the cross.

Well, bearing the cross is not they ran out of your hazelnut syrup at Starbucks. Well, that is an obscure reference there.

It's not. You know, when Jesus, his discipleship call, and that's really what the last section is about, kind of recovering this sense, you know, he says this repeatedly, follow me.

I mean, John 10, if you want to look at one passage in Scripture, follow me. My sheep, hear my voice.

I know them. They follow me. They follow me. They follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Again and again.

If any man will come after me, repeatedly in the Gospels, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

There is a very personal sense, I think, in which each believer is going to have, and what

I like to look at is little splinters of the cross, not redemptively, but in terms of walking after Jesus, little taste of that.

And not all believers will have the same degree of that. Not all epics of time will have the same intensity.

But that's the cross he's talking about, that obstacle, that burden, that challenge in your life and in my life and in the church's life collectively that we have to carry in order to come after Christ.

I think one of them that I think of is, you know, we're going to have to, the true church in this age of compromising with whether it be, you know, the fornication of our society or the sodomy and lesbianism of our society, we're going to have to take up the cross there and say, yes, certainly, you know, such were some of you.

The Lord Jesus saves people out of that. But that's exactly the point. He saves people out of that.

And even that message is just going to be looked at in a very derogatory way, and the church is going to be very sifted and tempted to say, wait a minute, are we going to, you know, again, we're back to who gets to speak with authority?

Is it God and his word? Is it man and his scientific paradigms, which are always changing?

And so we've got to take up the cross. We can't say, well, let's find a way to make it easy.

So that's what I mean. The second, you know, those burdens, those reproaches, we're not going to find a version of the gospel that the world is going to like.

It does not exist. And any time the world feels at home with us, something's wrong with us.

Or God has sent a tremendous revival, and the world is not the world anymore, but it's seeking admission to the church.

So we're just going to have to get over that and get some thick skins, and, you know, the world's not going to like us.

And like, you know, C .S. Lewis and many others have said, the more relevant we are, the sooner we're irrelevant.

And the only thing that's really relevant is the eternal truth of God.

I think you mentioned the second one, a personal relationship. So that comes in very closely to this.

See, I had a lot of that growing up too. I don't think our relationships with Christ are personal enough.

Right. I think when that's used, it's oftentimes used, as you say, in a cliche -type way, where it's, you know, here's this formula, here's this prayer, here's this thing, come to this service, follow this paradigm, and there you go.

But, you know, in the scriptures and in Jesus' regular use of abide in me, abide in my word, set your affections on things above where Christ is, there's a very personal,

I mean, Jesus knows his sheep by name. Now, you know, to us, how is that possible that he knows all of his sheep by name?

But, again, that's part of his glory is not only, you know, the incarnate

Savior but also the eternal Son of God, that he can relate to each one of us and knows our needs.

And so it's our privilege, not just for preachers or missionaries or teachers, but it's a privilege for the sheep to know their master, to know our

Savior, and to walk with him personally. That, for example, you know,

I personally in the morning wake up and I remember here, I'm just talking about for the disciples.

Christ has redeemed me, you know, praising him for that, Lord, not my will today but yours be done,

I've been bought with a price, help me to glorify you with children, work, whatever, you put in front of me so that there's a, there is a coming after him.

That language is very, very vivid. If any man will come after me, and I think part of the reason we lose our first love and our hearts do grow cold is that we forget that being a

Christian is not a matter of having, you know, yes, we've got our set catechism or we have our tradition, it is an active coming after Christ.

Coming to the Father in his name, seeking, you know, the fulfillment of those, of his promises in our lives.

And probably to, you know, the light in the darkness idea, you know, that he is the light.

It's not that, you know, we come up with some new paradigm or new way of interpreting the Bible that Christ is the light of the world.

That's why when we abide in him, he says, you're the light of the world. Not that the church has got this, you know, her light source in herself, except that it's

Christ. The hope of glory, and that if we walk with him, you know, you can reach your children.

You can reach, you know, other people as they see light in you. But again, that is things that we're walking with him.

It's interesting, if you read Acts, there's that sub -theme, the word of God grew and multiplied.

The word of God grew and multiplied. Here's this struggling band of believers.

They, you know, didn't have any of the, they didn't have a radio program like this that could reach anybody.

And yet, they walked with Christ. They considered it a privilege to suffer for his name.

They could not help but speak the things they had seen and heard. And that word, the word of Christ, grew in them and multiplied.

It was the work of God. And again, we can share in that again. He's doing that in various places.

And through your radio program and many of the preachers that you support.

And the Lord's doing a great work. And we need to make sure that each one of us individually are walking with him in that way, so that, you know, whether it be our prayers or giving or just a little seed of Scripture that we drop with a co -worker, this is the power of Christ.

Our lives are, you know, we live and die unto him. So that's kind of the idea behind that last section.

And what do you mean in that section about seeking new meat? Well, that's taken from the

John passage where he says, labor not for the meat that perishes but for the meat that endures unto everlasting life.

And I think in there just how prevalent we are, how attentive we are, how prone we are to go after, you know, the new, the apparently relevant.

And whereas Jesus said, labor for the old meat, the meat that doesn't perish.

Communion with meat. So when I said at the beginning of our time together, I really appreciate the time with you, there's nothing new.

I mean, I don't have anything new. I mean, somebody's looking, somebody gets this book and says, I'm looking for something new.

You're not going to find it. Not only because there's nothing new under the sun, but because the newness of the

Christian faith is that Jesus Christ is crucified, buried, resurrected, ascended, reigning, and indwelling by his

Holy Spirit. And each generation, we all have the responsibility to grow in that ourselves, to confess it anew, and to, in some respects, find him anew.

Yes, and one of my guests recently talked about the importance of contemporary voices today, echoing voices from the past in the faith.

We continually declare to the world that our faith is an ancient faith, it is a faith that is an inspiration, breathed out faith from God himself.

And if you came up with something very new and novel, I would be very suspect of it as being something dangerous to read.

Right, absolutely. And if you could, in about a minute's time, just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners right now.

That Jesus said, Abide in me. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will bear much fruit.

It's not God's will for us to bear little shriveled apples.

His heart is generous. Zephaniah 3 .17, he rejoices over us with singing.

He delights in the prosperity of his servants, and not in a prosperity gospel sense, but that's because he delights in us in his

Son. And so, as we take Jesus seriously and abide in his word, we're going to bear fruit.

It's impossible to know and walk with Christ and follow him and not bear fruit.

Amen. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the contact information they need, not only to get a hold of this book, but to get a hold of you.

First of all, Triumphant Publications Ministries, the ministry founded by my dear friend

Pastor John Otis. That website is triumphantpublications .com,

triumphantpublications .com, and I encourage you not only to look up the book by our guest

Chris Strevel, The Lord of Glory, The Transforming Presence of Jesus Christ, but also look up titles by John Otis that I have interviewed him on over the years.

Also, we don't want to forget about Christ Covenant Church in Buford, Georgia, which, as I said earlier, is a congregation in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. That's covenant -presbyterian .church, covenant -presbyterian .church.

Thank you so much, Pastor Chris Strevel, for being our guest. I want to thank you. I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions. And I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater