May 10, 2017 Show with Jonathan Masters on “The God We Worship: Adoring the One Who Pursues, Redeems & Changes His People”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 10th day of May 2017.

In studio with me is my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, it's good to be here again. And today we have back on the program someone who I really thoroughly enjoyed interviewing the last time he was on, Jonathan Master.

He is Professor of Theology and Dean of the School of Divinity at Carne University, and it was nice to have them manning an exhibitor's booth right across from mine at the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology recently, Cairn University, or Carne University, and I'll get my correction in a moment, is located in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

And Jonathan Master is also the Editorial Director of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and host of the Alliance podcast, Theology on the Go. He's the author of A Question of Consensus, The Doctrine of Assurance After the Westminster Confession.

And today we're discussing a book he edited for PNR Publishing, also known as Presbyterian and Reform Publishing, The God We Worship, Adoring the One Who Pursues, Redeems, and Changes His People. And that features such authors as D .A. Carson, Brian Chappell, Charles Drew, Michael Haken, Michael Horton, Albert Moeller, Richard Phillips, Joseph Ryan, and Philip Graham Rykin.

And I believe I've interviewed every single one of those individuals, and in fact I know I have, with the exception of Joseph Ryan. But we're also going to be promoting today a conference coming up that our guest will be featured at, along with a number of other speakers.

That's the Banner of Truth 2017 U .S. Ministers Conference in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at Elizabethtown College. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jonathan Master.

Chris, Buzz, thank you for having me. It's great to be back with you.

Oh, it's great to have you back. And before I continue with our topic at hand, and I will eventually get this pronounced correctly, but is it Karn or Cairn?

Yeah, it's Cairn, like air. Cairn University. But listen, you're not the first and you won't be the last, and I can keep reminding you as long as you get it wrong. And tell us about Cairn University. Cairn's been around for over a hundred years, and we are a Christian, fairly conservative Christian university, still firmly committed to the inerrancy of the Scriptures and the centrality of the personal work of Jesus Christ.

I like the way you said, still, because unfortunately more and more seminaries and Christian colleges so-called Christian colleges are no longer defending and proclaiming that truth.

Well, you're right. I mean, sadly, that is the case. And so I'm grateful for the fact that we are still firmly committed to that at every level, number of different majors that students can pursue, but every student who's an undergrad does 30 hours, 30 credit hours of Bible and theology.

So while they are not all technically Bible majors, it sort of infuses the whole place. So it's a place I love. I would encourage anyone there who's listening who's thinking about college or who has kids or grandkids thinking about it to look us up, CairnUniversity, Cairn .edu.

And for quite a while, we have been promoting a lot of the events orchestrated by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and have been interviewing speakers involved in their events. Tell us something about the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, where you are editorial director.

Well, the Alliance is a coalition of pastors and scholars and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith, and whose desire is to see an awakening of biblical doctrine in churches today.

And so to that end, the Alliance sponsors a number of conferences, and you've been in a few, I think you were recently at the flagship Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. There are others beyond that one.

The Alliance also has a number of websites where we offer free content to people, Reformation21 .org, the one that I had the privilege of helping to found, Place4Truth .org, Mortification of Spin. We also have some podcasts.

I host Theology on the Go, which is one of our podcasts. You meet the Puritans and one called ChristWord Collective. So the Alliance is doing an awful lot of things, but really the aim of it is biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening.

And tell us about your podcast, Theology on the Go.

The idea behind Theology on the Go was to do brief interviews, usually they're around 15 minutes, sometimes they go a little longer, sometimes a little shorter, on particular theological topics or themes, or sometimes figures, they're sometimes biographical.

And so it's one person, one topic, a brief little sort of snapshot of that, and we find a lot of people say it's the perfect sort of length for their commute, or for just something to listen to on the way to and from walking the dog or something like that, and that's really the aim.

We call it a brief interview about an eternal truth.

Yeah, I just had an idea flash into my head for someone who might want to start a fast food restaurant where people go through a drive-thru and the lady yells out to the chef, a cheeseburger, a large vanilla shake, and A .W. Pink tracked!

Yeah, well, what we hope is, it's a funny image, what we hope is that we're providing something a little more spiritually nutritious than you might get at your average fast food place.

Yeah, I was not meaning to give a demeaning remark there about what you're doing. Well, I'm going to give our email address right away for our listeners who would like to join us on the air with a question.

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 of the USA.

And I love, absolutely love the title of this book that you've edited, The God We Worship, Adoring the One Who Pursues, Redeems, and Changes His People. This seems to be a summary of the Reformed faith.

In fact, if this were an Arminian book, I imagine it would be called, The God We Worship, Adoring the One Who Pursues, Tries to Redeem, and Tries to Change His People. But we don't believe that God tries to do anything, do we?

It was very intentional, and you don't have to remember...

Are you there, brother? Yeah, I'm still here, I'm still here. Yeah, that was just a computer noise here.

No problem, no problem. That happens to me all the time. No, so your question, or your observation is a great one. We were intentional with the language. You know, the God of the Bible accomplishes His purposes, and so He's not some figure who's trying or who's making an effort.

He accomplishes what He purposes to accomplish, and so you are absolutely right to read the kind of definiteness of the language in the subtitle, and that's certainly a big part of what we're trying to communicate in the book.

Yeah, my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries has often said that he fails to see the appeal of building churches that are seeker-sensitive, and he says, why are you building a church for people that don't exist?

Because the one seeker that does exist is God. He's the one, as you say in your title, who pursues.

Yeah, I mean, I've always, you know, I think we all know what people mean when they talk about, sort of, the seeker, but the truth is, as you well know, the Scriptures are clear. No one seeks after God, and so, you know, well, again, I don't want to belabor the point because I think we understand the kind of thing that's intended by it, but you're right.

Theologically speaking, it's God who seeks us.

The Holiness and Glory of God

In fact, I want to go through every important word in this title to go through the contents of what we are discussing today, and it may seem silly, but I think that starting with the word God is important because not everybody has the same understanding of who God is.

In fact, not even every professing Christian, unfortunately, and I did say the word professing Christian, not every professing Christian believes in God the same way, but let's start with God. Who is the God that we worship?

Well, I mean, I think the way that we start in this particular book is to talk about God's holiness and to show how the Bible reveals God as a holy God who dwells in unapproachable light, a God who is, in one sense, you know, awe-inspiring, and this is terrifying in our conception.

I think if you wanted to give a more concise definition, this isn't exactly where we begin in the book, although I would argue it's implicit. You'd say something like, God is the one who is infinite in being and perfection, He is body, parts, or passion, which we could grasp, but what we focus on here is the holiness and the glory of God.

Amen. And He is not a God that paces back and forth, sweating and wringing His hands, filled with anxiety, hoping that people come to Him, hoping that people respond to the Gospel message the way that many outside of the Reformed faith paint that kind of an image of God, of Jesus, oh, He wants you to come to Him, and it's up to you, it's all up to you to finalize this contract to become saved, and this is obviously not only the antithesis of Reformed theology, it's the antithesis of the Scripture.

Well, you're right, Scripture does not portray God in that kind of a frustrated fashion. The Bible does give a call to repentance, where Paul can stand on top of Mars Hill and say, quite simply, God commands all men everywhere to repent, so we're right to give a universal offer of the Gospel, but nonetheless, you're absolutely right, God Himself is not frustrated and as you say, pacing back and forth, wondering what's going to happen, hoping something, someone might possibly, that's just not the picture of the God of the Bible.

Corporate Worship and the True Object of Worship

Now, we, I think is an important word too, because in a day of rampant ecumenism, going mad, you have those who are professing Christians, you have pastors, you have seminary professors, you have seminary presidents, you have media personalities, really blurring the lines between true and false religion.

And you have ecumenical gatherings of those who profess to be Christian, offering prayer and worship to an unnamed God, along with those who are pagans and Christ rejecters and so on. Now, the we in your title there, aren't we to be worshiping this God with those who are truly His children?

Well, absolutely, I think that's a great point, you know, that this we is the people of God, these are actual believers in Jesus Christ who are approaching God as He has revealed Himself in His Word and through His Son, and there is no other way to look at the we and the significance of it is to say it's in contrast simply to I.

It is true, of course, that we are called to repent personally, we are called, you know, to profess in Jesus Christ, but at the same time, the picture of worship that we get in the Bible is a corporate picture, and the picture we have of worship in heaven is a corporate picture.

So I think both things are implied. I think what you're saying is very important, that we're talking about the living body of Christ, those who are genuine believers approaching God in and through His Son and guided by His Word, and also that is a corporate entity, not simply an individual kind of soul between oneself and the Lord.

In fact, I could have even, going along with that concept of being in contrast to the modern ecumenical movement, I could have even started with the word THE God because of the fact that you have a lot of people today, even some professing Christians, who are saying that it is not really important that we get the details straight on the deity we worship like the Trinity and the deity of Christ, as long as somebody is worshiping a Creator up there in the sky who is more powerful and majestic than we are.

That's all that really matters, and you have even professing Christians going to drug and alcohol rehabilitation meetings where they will link arms with those who deny Christ and pray with them to an unnamed God.

You see this happen all the time at sporting events and public events where those outside of the Christian faith are gathered with some Christians and they all join together in giving some kind of a recognition to some kind of a God, but this does not honor THE God that we Christians worship, does it?

Yeah, no, I think it's an excellent point. I mean, if you just look at the Old Testament, none of the enemies of Israel, all the enemies of Israel, are the kind of God. And the Lord did not say to His people, link arms with those who are at war because they are worshiping a higher power, and so are you, between all the other false gods of the nations and the living and true Creator God of the Scriptures.

And that is equally true today, that we are not talking about one God among many, or that it's simply good enough to believe in some kind of higher being, however you conceive of that, but rather we are talking about the Creator God who has revealed Himself preeminently in the person of Jesus Christ and has revealed Himself to us in His Word, and that's the God we worship.

Amen. And, well, let's move on to worship. What exactly does worship mean? Because it's been interesting, I have been, since 1995, I have been involved in orchestrating debates between Theologically Reformed Protestants and Roman Catholics among representatives of other religions, like Muslims and so on, but when it comes to the Roman Catholic debates that I've orchestrated, it seems very often when the issues of Mary and the Saints come up, the Catholics seem to redefine worship in subtle ways to make their honor to Mary and the Saints more palatable to Protestants, and I think that they are giving different labels to things that are really the same thing.

But if you could define worship for us.

I think at a basic level, worship is ascribing worth to God. I mean, that's just kind of an etymological definition. I think when we talk about worship, though, at least in this book, we're talking about approaching God with His people according to His Word.

So, when we immediately talk about worship, and I think this gets to the point you're making, Chris, the minute we begin talking about worship, we really have to talk about how God has revealed Himself in His Word, and to approach, to think we can approach Him in a way other than that is really simply to...

And what would be the elements of true worship that God's people are incorporating into those acts of devotion?

When we gather together corporately, and I'm thinking now again of corporate and public worship, I think the Scriptures have given us good guidelines for that, and certainly we need to be praying together, we need to...

God's Word has to be at the center of everything, so both the preached Word, the red Word, Paul is very clear to give attention to the public reading of Scripture. I do think it's appropriate and biblical for us to be engaged in singing when we gather together to worship.

And I do think the Lord has given us these words, supper and baptism, but you know, I think that the other really deep issue is when we gather together for worship, we have to understand the God whom we're approaching, so I know I'm kind of circling back to the point you made earlier, but...

Are you there, brother? Is this God we're worshiping? Yeah, you cut out there for a second, so I don't know why, but if you could repeat what.

You said. I don't know where I cut out, but I would say at a deep level, apart from the basic elements of worship, I think we have to be really clear on who God is when we approach Him, and the only way we can know that is by studying His Word.

And would you not say that when you are attributing to an entity, being the source of grace, being the source of blessings, being the fountain of mercy and forgiveness, and all these things that the Roman Catholics are offering up in prayer to Mary, are they not worshiping her irregardless of what they are saying?

Many of them will say that they do not worship Mary, they merely venerate her. They are not, and of course they give her a higher level of veneration than the other saints, but is this not worship regardless of what they would call it?

Well, I think it is, and I think you could tackle that at least two levels. First of all, I think the very bribing things they are asking for from Mary or other saints would be associated with worship.

But at another, even deeper level, by not following the prescriptions of the Scriptures, by not attributing all of those things to God, they are robbing God of the worship that He is due, and in so doing, are entering into a kind of idolatry.

So I think I agree with you about your read on what is actually happening there, but even if someone were to say to me, no, no, I refuse to accept the idea that I am worshiping Mary or something else, but you are not appropriately worshiping God, and so regardless of what you think is going on with Mary or the saints, you are in a sense robbing God of the worship that is due to Him.

The False Unity of Ecumenism and the Reformation's Recovery of the Gospel

Yeah, I'd like to, just because of the fact that we are talking about a God that we who are Christians are to worship, and there are many who profess to be Christians who would claim that those who deny the deity of Christ and deny the Trinity are, they would claim that they are also worshipping God, just because of perhaps some imagined connection to the Old Testament before Christ was revealed more clearly in the New.

We have in the Catholic Catechism, paragraph 841, the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us, they adore the one merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.

This is not true, is it?

Well, no, it's absolutely false, and more than that, it's destructive, because it's not only telling people a lie, it's really giving false hope to those who need a clear presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ made to them.

What we can slip into in this whole topic is, the God we worship, we can sort of get caught up in the elements of what worship feels like or means at an individual level out of the Bible, and he's the only one who's deserving of our worship.

But yeah, I mean, at a basic level, you're absolutely right, what you read is not only false, it is sadly destructive for so many people.

Yes, and that is in the primary catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, which is very disturbing and should shake evangelicals out of any delusion that we can have true ecumenism with them. Now I have to repeat that I believe that there are going to be many Catholics in Heaven, but I believe that is because they have believed the true Gospel in spite of the false Gospel proclaimed by Rome.

And in fact, I believe not only will there be many Catholics in Heaven, I believe that there are going to be many professing Calvinists in Hell. So I am not trying to be a bigot here, I am a former Roman Catholic, I went to Catholic school for eight years, was an altar boy, and I have many people still enslaved in the false religion of Rome in my family, so I do have a very strong passion and burden to see them released from that false religion.

And I know that those words may sound strong to a lot of people, but I just happen to believe that you cannot defend that religion as a biblically faithful religion when they have so many very serious and glaring errors in spite of those things that they believe that are true, that they believe along with us, like the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ, and the bodily resurrection of Christ, and so on.

I mean, we have the Judaizers in the book of Galatians, we have Paul in his letter to the church at Galatia condemning the Judaizers just for adding one thing to the Gospel, circumcision. And that was enough for Paul to announce an anathema upon them.

Do you think I'm being too strong here in my wording?

No, I don't, and I mean, certainly given what you've experienced and the close contact you've had with many who are deceived by, I think, the church teachers, I think your language is entirely warranted.

I mean, to be honest, if you felt that way and didn't express it that clearly, you know, someone could question your sincerity about it, but it's obviously, you know, something that you know from hard-won experience.

And any, and I think as well, anything that cloaks or muddies the waters of the Gospel that's revealed to us in the Scriptures is something we have to resist with every fiber of our being, as Paul does in the letter to the Galatians and, you know, maybe most clearly in Galatians chapter 1, where he says, if anyone comes with the Gospel contrary to the one that was preached to you, whether I or an angel from heaven, he's to be accursed.

Yes, and of course, I think this is appropriate to be speaking about during the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, because people are going to want to know when we mention, oh, I'm going to this conference that is in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, or my congregation is having a special Reformation Day celebration for the 500th anniversary.

People are going to be asking, well, what's that about? Why is this Reformation so important, etc.? And it is much, much more than a quaint custom that you want to give special honor to your specific denomination or something.

This was really when the light of the Gospel was unearthed after having been buried for centuries by tons of false religion and heretical practice and works righteousness superstitions that the Church of Rome heaped on what was once openly declared as the true Gospel, not only in the Scriptures but even in the early Church, and among their own Church Fathers, the ones that they claim as their own.

Yeah, I mean, it had so many effects in so many different areas, and people can, you know, I read an article over the weekend about the effects of the Reformation on education or the effects of the Reformation on our conception of politics.

Very important things, I don't want to minimize them, but of course, what you're saying is at the core, the most important features of that movement of the Lord were in the area of the renewed clarity about the Gospel of Grace.

And we have to go to a break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. If you have a question for Jonathan Master, and we look forward to hearing from you after the break.

Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with more of Jonathan Master and the God we worship.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with about 90 minutes to go, is Jonathan Master, and we are discussing a book he edited for PNR Publishing, The God We Worship, Adoring the One Who Pursues, Redeems, and Changes His People.

And our guest, Jonathan Master, is going to be one of the speakers at the upcoming Banner of Truth Ministers Conference this May 30th through June 1st. That's Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June 1st, at the Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

And joining Jonathan at that conference will be, God willing, Joel Beeky, Jeff Thomas, William Vander Waard, Mark Johnston, Carlton Winn, and Ian Hamilton. And the theme is going to be The Living and Enduring Word.

For more details on registering for this 2017 U .S. Ministers Conference, go to BannerofTruth .org, BannerofTruth .org, click on Events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference. And if you could, before we return to our subject, Jonathan, if you could explain in a little bit more detail what you are going to be speaking on at the U .S. Ministers Conference.

My titles are, the first address is entitled Living and Active, and the second, of course, sharper than any two-edged sword. And that's, of course, taken from the book of Hebrews and its description of God's Word in Hebrews 4 .12.

So both of these addresses are going to deal with situations in which God's Word showed itself to be alive and continues to show itself to be able to do the work of God in the world. And so I'm going to be dealing with an Old Testament text and a New Testament text, both of which, again, set the efficacy and sufficiency of God's Word.

Amen. Well, I look forward to seeing you there at the 2017 U .S. Ministers Conference in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. That's the Banner of Truth U .S. Ministers Conference on the theme, The Living and Enduring Word, Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June 1st.

Go to BannerofTruth .org, BannerofTruth .org, click on Events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference. We do have a question for you, Jonathan, from Slovenia. We have Joe in Slovenia who says, Dear Brother Chris,.

I've been struck deeply again by the level of intensity that Jesus requires of us to identify with Him as the very source of life as He labors repeatedly to convey that He is the Bread of Life in John 6.

Please ask Brother Master to speak to Jesus' repeated references in this passage that we are redeemed by God's sovereign mercy as He draws out of ourselves into faith in Christ. I guess he's meant to say as He draws us out of ourselves and into faith in Christ.

Father, Son, and Spirit are all specifically mentioned in the work of God for our salvation. What are some concise pointers and advice for applying this great truth from John 6 to our daily lives?

Good question. You're right about John 6 being such an important chapter in our understanding of how it is that the Triune God redeems us in Christ. A couple of significant verses there. Jesus says in verse 37 of John 6, All that the Father gives to me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

That's kind of an interesting formulation, because it shows very clearly that the initiative is that of God. It's the Father giving to the Son, and yet in time the way it works out is individuals come to Jesus.

Whoever comes to me I will never cast out. So there is a mystery there, but it's clear that the initiative is God, and in a sense behind the scenes everything that's happening is a work of God, and yet what we see are individuals, men and women, coming to Jesus, and Jesus promises that the ones who come to Him won't be cast out.

And then later on in verse 40, Jesus says that those who believe in Him have eternal life and are raised up on the Lamb. He's very clear in saying, can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

So, you know, a couple of takeaways I think that are very clear. First of all, it's God's work from beginning to end. Secondly, those who truly are trusting in Christ for their salvation, He will receive and He gives promises to, so there's a security, an assurance that's bound up in that chapter as well.

And then, of course, we know that from beginning to end the work of our salvation is the work of God.

Yes, and it is interesting that during conversations with some of my Roman Catholic friends, they will say that this chapter is primarily revealing how difficult it is for those outside of the Roman Catholic faith to accept transubstantiation in the Mass, and that is why many people who were following Christ before departed from Him because they could not accept this idea of transubstantiation.

But it's interesting, as I point my Catholic friends to in the text, Jesus says, no one can come to me unless it has been granted Him from the Father. As a result of this, many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.

So it was really unconditional election and an irresistible grace that is being taught by Christ here, and that is the reason why people walked away, nothing to do with transubstantiation. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. I think that's crystal clear in the text, and you're right, that's what causes people in John 6 to walk away. It's the words of Jesus that cause them to stumble, and then specifically His words where He says, and you quoted it in verse 65, no one can come to me unless it's granted by the Father, and after this, many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.

So the cause and effect there is pretty clearly spelled out.