June 21, 2023 Show with Chad Bird on “The Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 21st day of June 2023.

I'm thrilled to have as a first -time guest today someone who, although being a

Missouri Synod Lutheran, was recommended to me by several Reformed Baptists, of which

I am one, and his name is Chad Byrd. He is an author, scholar in residence at 1517, and co -host of the popular podcast 40

Minutes in the Old Testament. Today we're going to be addressing his book, Limping with God, Jacob and the

Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Chad Byrd.

Thank you, Chris. Glad to be here. Oh, it's a thrill to have you on the program. I thoroughly enjoyed your book.

There were a couple of disagreements I had with it, which I will bring up at some point. But all in all,

I was blessed by it richly, and I recommend it to our listeners. First of all, tell us about 1517.

Yes, 1517, as those who know the history of the Reformation know, that was the year in which we typically say the

Reformation began. That was when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses on the church door, the spark that set off the

Reformation. 1517 gets its name from that year. We are an organization, non -profit, that's based in Reformation theology, and so that's the name.

Basically, what we do is we take the good news of Christ crucified and resurrected for us, and we just get it out there in as many ways as we can, whether that's through podcasts or through our publishing house, through in -person events, through videos, free academy courses, you name it.

We're in all those various areas, taking the message of the Gospel to people.

What I do is, my background is in Hebrew and the Old Testament, and so as I like to say, I teach the

Gospel with an Old Testament accent. So whether I'm writing books, such as this one about Jacob, or whether I'm podcasting or in -person events,

I will draw upon the Old Testament as a way of confessing the good news and bringing that to people in whatever form that might be.

So apologetics, theology, Bible, all of that is kind of what 15 .17 is all about.

And for more details on 15 .17, go to 15 .17 .org.

In fact, some of you, after this live program is over, you might want to go to the

Iron Sharpens Iron radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com, and type in the archive, or should

I say the search engine for the archive, Scott Keith, and you will hear an interview

I conducted with Scott, who is with 15 .17 as well.

You will hear an interview I conducted with him on January 8th of 2018 on his book,

Being Dad, Father as a Picture of God's Grace. So I hope you enjoy that program as well.

Well, before we get into the actual book, Limping with God, Jacob and the

Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship, this book was not written in a vacuum.

Your own personal experience as a person who views himself as a sinner saved by grace helped to give birth to this book.

I mean, that really exuded throughout the book. And you actually were honest enough to discuss at least briefly at some point in the book some of your own failures as a

Christian, as a husband, and so on. If you care to mention any of that so we get an idea, so our listeners will get an idea, the frame of mind and the experience that you have had as a

Christian that led you to write this book to begin with. I'd be happy to.

So to tell a little about my background, I was raised in a church -going family. As Southern Baptists, we were in church every

Sunday. I'm very thankful for the fact that I had a very godly mother and father who introduced me to the Word of God, took me to church, took me to Sunday school, so that I was immersed from an early age in the scriptures.

In fact, it seems as if when I was even a little boy, I had a fascination with the Old Testament. At one point,

I memorized all of Genesis 1, and that I guess was an early indication of the fact that the

Old Testament was always going to be at the forefront of my heart and mind. Later in life, later in my young adult years,

I went on to university and seminary, served as a pastor for a while, and then

I was actually called back to the seminary to teach Hebrew and various Old Testament courses. It was a great job.

It was really my dream job. To get to what you were alluding to earlier was during that time that really pride got to me.

As we all know, pride goes before fall, and mighty was my fall. I basically ruined my life and was left without many friends, without much of a reputation, without a marriage, and also only seeing my kids a couple weekends a month.

It was a very, very dark and trying time in my life. God used that in order to humble me, as well as to work, as He always works, to conform us to the death of Christ and to raise us to the newness of life.

Also during that time, He began to really put me in the Psalms, so that I learned there the language of the languishing, and I learned that in our darkest times is often when we see the light of Christ most clearly.

That was a formative period in my life. It was at the end of that that I began to work for 41517, part -time first and then full -time.

I've been with them for about three years now. What I'd like to say is that I draw upon my academic experience at Hebrew Union College, where I worked on a graduate degree, and my pastoral experience, as well as my experience in what

Luther calls the tentatio and the struggle, the cross -bearing of life.

In order to pull all these together, pastoral experience and teaching experience, and this real -life experience, in order to take the

Scriptures and to bring out of them this message of hope, as well as the call to repentance that we have in books like Genesis, in the life of Jacob, and whatever else it might be.

I'm grateful now for how God used my struggles and failures in the past in order to break me down and to reshape me into what

I hope is a faithful servant of the Word and one who can communicate that to others.

Amen. Only the Christian can find hope and peace of mind in the fact, in the promise, that Romans 8 .28

offers. Romans 8 .28 is often used in a cliché manner, unfortunately.

It's used as a placard. It's thrown out there very often in greeting cards and other things to anybody that may be going through a trial, may be going through grief, depression, failure, or what have you.

But only the Christian can claim that all things will work together for the good for those who love

God and are called according to His purpose. And that's all things, and that includes our sin, doesn't it?

It doesn't mean that that gives us a license to sin. It doesn't mean that that gives us a motivation, oh,

I should sin because God's going to use it for my good. But we don't have to look at our past sins and say that I have no hope for a future,

I have no hope of being used by God, I am a failure, and I should just be discarded in the trash heap of humanity.

We know that God can even use our sins for our good. Is that correct?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we see that exemplified clearly in the cross of Christ, but we see that already exemplified in the book of Genesis with Joseph.

I mean, Joseph makes it explicit, right? You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

Yeah, so God was able to use these backstabbing brothers who sold their own brother into slavery and lied to their father and broke his heart and did all these terrible things.

God was able to use that to put Joseph where He wanted him in order that through Joseph He might bring life to all of those people that He saved by planning for the upcoming famine.

And we see that same thing throughout the Scriptures where God is using broken humanity, rebellious humanity, and He's using these things in order to work toward His ultimate goal of bringing salvation to us in Christ.

Yes, your views of the sovereignty of God over even human sin are making me wonder, are you sure you're not a

Calvinist? Well, we have a lot in common, let's put it that way.

Well, I'm glad to hear you say that because I have grown to know many Lutherans over the years, and although I think the majority of those that I know have that view, there are some that have a real antagonistic view towards Calvinism and Calvinists.

But I'm glad that you are not among them. As we have a tradition of doing on this program, we have first -time guests give a summary of their salvation story, although we have one gospel and one

Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ, and one Word of God, we do have different stories of how

God and His providence have led us to Himself. So we'd like to hear something about your story in summary form, the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and the kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. Yeah, as I mentioned a few minutes ago,

I was blessed to be born into a Christian family. And so, as I was just discussing with a friend of mine earlier today, there never was a time in my life when

I can remember being outside church in the sense of never going.

So from my earliest years, I was always in the pew singing the hymns, many of which

I still know by heart, going to Sunday school, learning these foundational stories. And every meal, my family would have a prayer.

I saw the life of the Christian exemplified in my own mother and father.

And early in my life, probably actually very, very young for the tradition in which

I found myself as a Southern Baptist, I believed, I confessed, and I was baptized. I think

I was probably five, maybe six years old, which is very, very young, at least at that time, very young for someone who was a

Southern Baptist to, as they would say, to make a public profession and then to be baptized. But I contribute that to the fact that I was hearing the gospel.

I was hearing about Christ crucified and risen for me, and the Spirit does what the Spirit does. He uses that word to work faith in the hearts of men and women, as well as little boys and girls.

So as a little boy, the Spirit used that word to work faith in my heart. And even that young,

I can still remember the day in which I knew that I believed, and then I was later baptized.

So I'm grateful for that foundation that I had. There have been many times, as I was talking about a few minutes ago, many times in my life where, due to my own sin and rebellion,

I strayed from that path. But God, His mercy brought me back. Like the end of Psalm 119 says,

I've gone astray like a lost sheep, and God brings me back. He goes and puts that one lost sheep on His shoulders.

Sometimes that has been me, and He brings me back home. So I've always been part of the

Church's life. There was a period during my life when I was upset, confused, shamed, and did not go to Church as much as I needed to.

But again, God was patient with me. He restored me. And I'm grateful now to be one who not only is part of the faith, believes and goes to Church, but also is privileged to be able to share that with others, to give them hope, to give them the comfort that we have in Christ.

Amen. I'm going to give our listeners our email address if you would like to join the conversation with a question of your own for Chad Bird.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We would ask of you to do that, but obviously if there is some kind of a personal and private question that you have, especially since we are dealing with in this devotional

Limping with God, we're dealing with how God uses broken people.

That just because someone has sinned miserably and failed miserably in this life, if they repent and return to God, he can use them in many powerful ways.

I mean, even when we view the Apostle Paul as a primary example. But obviously that may lend itself if you're listening and you are one of those people.

Perhaps you just are at a point in your life where you believe God is through with you.

You can never be used of him in any significant way or in any way at all again, and you have a question that would compel you to remain anonymous.

We understand that, but if it's a general question, we just ask of you to please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Jacob is a very interesting character in the Old Testament and the entirety of the scriptures.

Actually, obviously, a Calvinist's heart starts beating very quickly when they hear

Jacob, because it's one of the primary figures scriptures that we use when we are defending our own understanding of unconditional election.

And Jacob, I love, and Esau, I hated. But why is it that in this book you decided to use

Jacob as a poster boy, if you will, for the average disciple as a as a person who we can connect with?

Unless, of course, the self -righteous among us who likely are not regenerate, if they really are, they're not going to see a connection because they don't view themselves as a sinner.

But we should, as you probably agree, echo the

Apostle Paul's own words when we view ourselves as the chief of sinners. But tell us why

Jacob? Why is he the poster boy in this book? Well, for reasons. One of the reasons is because we know so much about him.

So he is a character, really the first character in the scriptures, in which we know everything, not everything, but we know at least a lot about him from the very beginning of his life to the very end.

We know quite a bit about Abraham, for instance, and some about Isaac. But we meet

Jacob literally in utero. He's not even been born yet. And then we follow his steps all the way from that moment to his very end, to his death in Egypt.

So we have a lot of information, a lot of biographical information about him. We meet him in Genesis 25, halfway through the book, and then we hear about his death later in the book of Genesis.

So that's one reason. There's a lot to work with there. We get to really know him as a personality, as a character.

Anyone who's read his story knows that he is a fascinating character. Fascinating in some good ways and fascinating in some bad ways, but he's certainly never boring.

He's very helpful. So one of the reasons is that.

Another reason, and really the primary reason that I decided to use him, as you say, as kind of a poster boy for discipleship, is because I see him as, in many ways, as exemplifying who we also are as sinner saints, as those who are redeemed by the beloved

Christ and made holy by the Spirit, but also at the same time we still struggle with our sinful nature. And we see the sinful nature in Jacob exemplified in many forms and fashions in his interactions with his brother, with his parents, with his wives, with his kids, with other people as well.

So when I look at the life of Jacob, I see myself reflected. I see a lot of other people reflected.

And in the midst of this life that's got its problems, its family issues, its failures, we have a

God who steadfastly loves Jacob. He chose him, he called him, he made him his own, he promised him his blessing.

And in many ways, most shockingly of all, he used this guy who has all of these problems as also

Israel. So what we might think of as the head of the Old Testament Church, as it were, the one really after whom the people of God are named.

So that fascinated me, and I wanted to take some time to really immerse myself in his story, get to know him.

And to get to knowing him, know myself better, and getting to know Jacob and myself better, also better understand and appreciate the fact that God loves

Jacob, God loves me, God loves us as sinners and as failures. And it's not our sins that, as it were, keep

God away from us, but rather he comes to us, he calls us to himself, calls us to repentance, and blesses us as we, as I say, live along in this life of discipleship.

Okay, we do have already an anonymous listener. An anonymous listener says,

How much of what you know now about yourself and about God and about theology and the

Bible came about while you were still in the process of writing this book, or were most of those things predominantly resolved in your mind before you hit pen to paper?

That's a great question. I think that anyone who has taken up their pen or their computer and begun to write a book is, first of all, working with a certain amount of knowledge, a certain amount of biblical knowledge, theological knowledge, knowledge about themselves.

But the process of writing is itself revelatory in the sense that it reveals things about us.

And as we begin to go through the biblical story, we're going to, especially, kind of slow down as you're writing a book, because you have to, you're slowing down the biblical story.

You begin to see things that you didn't see before, or connections that you didn't see before.

And along with those connections, along with those new insights, you not only understand the biblical text better, but you also, if you're doing this in a very honest sort of way, you begin to learn more about yourself as well.

And I'll go ahead and add this, because this is not in the book, and so someone who's read the book would not have known this.

And unless you know my personal history of the last year, you would know this as well. So this book came out this last

July. I wrote it the year before, but it was published in July. And it was released about four days after the death of my 21 -year -old son,

Luke. So, of course, when I was writing the book, in the 8 -12 months before its release,

I had no idea that this was going to happen. It was not anywhere on my horizon.

Luke died in a hiking accident. He was a student at the United States Naval Academy. He was studying abroad in Chile, and during a hiking accident, he was killed.

Now, I say that because what has been remarkable to me is that when

I have re -read portions of the book, and especially when my readers read the book, many of them reach out to me to say something along the lines of,

Chad, it seems as if what you wrote here, God had you say, because He knew that you, yourself, would need to read it later on.

So I think that's an appropriate point to add that, because sometimes we even write things.

And, okay, yes, we're learning as we write. We're learning more about ourselves. We're learning about Jacob. But even sometimes afterward, we realize more about the things that are in the book that we never really knew, because we had yet to experience things in life that give us a different perspective on how

God is at work in our lives. Thank you, anonymous listener. I'm not sure why you chose to be anonymous, since that was a fairly general question, but perhaps you are going through something very painful in your life.

You want to have hope that God can still use you if you have repented and returned to Him.

Well, you are going to receive, if you provide for me your full name and full mailing address through an email, obviously that won't be divulged over the air, but you will receive a free copy of Limping with God, Jacob and the

Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship, compliments of our friends at 1517, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will actually be shipping the book out to you.

And that is at no charge to you or to us. So thank you for your question.

We're going to be going to our very first commercial break right now. If you want to get in line and ask a question of your own of Chad Byrd on his book

Limping with God, Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Of course, we will broaden the field for questions. For instance, if you have a curiosity about his

Lutheran faith specifically, you may ask that. Anything involving his knowledge and wisdom and experience and studies in the

Old Testament, whatever the case may be, will allow you to ask the question if it is relatively connected to my guest and what we're discussing.

So send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Chad Byrd and Limping with God right after these messages from our sponsors.

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from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. That's royaldiadem .com. We're now back with my guest today,

Chad Bird, author, scholar, and residence at 1517, and co -host of the popular podcast, 40

Minutes in the Old Testament. We're addressing his book, Limping with God, Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship, and actually, you have more than one website—I'm sorry, more than one podcast.

Not only do you have 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, but you also have Hidden Streams. Why don't you tell us about those podcasts before we move on to the discussion of your book?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So, Hidden Streams is a devotional podcast that's based on the Psalms. The way it's structured is a psalm will be read, or if it's a longer psalm, then a portion of that psalm will be read.

That'll be followed by a brief meditation by me, which is usually about five minutes.

That is then followed by original music that's composed to complement the psalm.

Right now, I think that we're—I don't remember how many episodes this is, but we're around Psalm 109.

So, quite a few episodes are out. We're going to finish the Book of Psalms, and we're going to move on to other poetic parts of the

Old Testament. So, Hidden Streams has been going on for the last, I think, probably three or four years now.

We also have one more podcast out. It's a finished podcast. It's called

A Field Guide to the Bible. I did that with two of my colleagues in 1517. It's 20 -something episodes, and what we did is we took the

Bible—Old Testament, New Testament— and we tried to introduce it in such a way that someone who's new to the

Scriptures, they don't really know anything about the Bible, would get the big picture of the salvation story.

So, we spent several episodes in Old Testament, several episodes on the New Testament, and by listening to all of these, within a matter of a few hours, you kind of get the big picture of what the entire biblical story is all about.

So, that's called A Field Guide to the Bible. And then 40 Minutes is more of kind of chapter -by -chapter, verse -by -verse, in -depth look at the

Old Testament. Amen. And I'm assuming they can access these podcasts at 1517 .org.

They can see them at 1517 .org. They're also available on any podcast app. Okay, great.

And you also have other books available there. And, God willing, perhaps we can have you back on the program to address these other books that you have written.

In fact, we already have a listener from Findlay, Ohio, Cindy, who simply says that she thanks you for agreeing to be on the program.

She's loving listening to you, and she hopes that you come back. So, that's just an encouraging word from Findlay, Ohio, for you.

Before I go to any more of the listener questions, I was just curious if you agreed with my assessment after reading your devotional that it seems that in addition to a primary message that God uses broken people, in fact, if he didn't use broken people, he wouldn't use any people, because we're all broken.

But another thing that kept brightly shining in my mind as I was going through this devotional is the truth that God's ways are not our ways.

Would you agree that that is a primary emphasis that you had in mind as something to convey to the reader?

Yeah. So, in my tradition, as well as in the Calvinist tradition, there's emphasis on the theology of the cross.

And that, by definition, means that God's ways are not our ways, because God is always going to be working in a way that's upside down to our expectations, where we expect power, there's weakness.

Where we expect victory, there's a cross. God is using weakness, he's using those things of which the world is a shame in order to demonstrate his strength and his wisdom.

And so, very frequently, this perspective of the theology of the cross, this kind of prism through which we view

God's dealings with us, shines through in Old Testament examples, and we certainly see that in Jacob's life.

And as well as multiple Old Testament characters also. So yeah, God's ways are not our ways, because just to give one example,

I mean, if God were to come to me and say, Hey Chad, who do you think

I should pick to be the top guy? I mean, the guy after whom the

Old Testament church is, Old Testament community of God is named. What kind of person do you think that I should choose?

Well, of course, my immediate reaction might be, well, you need someone who's very exemplary in character, they've got a great moral pedigree, they have one wife, they have great, great children, and just kind of have their life put together.

They're going to present a good picture to the rest of the world as to what a believer is, and what commitment to God is going to look like.

Well, then you get Jacob, and you realize, well, that doesn't really match Jacob at all. He's a guy who's messed up in multiple kinds of ways, riddled with weakness.

So God's ways are not our ways in who he chooses and how he uses certain people.

And I mean, we see this in the lives of suffering that these people endure as well.

Take Joseph, for instance, and all the things that he went through, kind of this, I think Martin Luther calls it this gradual crucifixion, where he goes down, down, down, down, down, until he's finally in the pit, literally, he's in prison.

And yet, God's ways were not Joseph's ways. God used all of that in order to ready

Joseph for the vocation to which he had really had in mind all along to raise him up to be the one who sits beside Pharaoh and orchestrates the plans for the coming famine.

So yeah, God's ways are not our ways. We see that in the Bible over and over, and we see it in our own lives as well.

We have Susan Margaret from Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

In the beginning of the program, Chris Arnzen introduced you as a Lutheran.

I know that there are things that are universally held by both

Reformed and Lutheran heirs of the Protestant Reformation, but I was wondering if there was anything in your book that is uniquely

Lutheran. That's a great question, and it's kind of a question that we could take outside of my own book into my other books, as well as through my podcast, and just kind of all the public teaching that I do.

I'm always coming from a theological perspective that is informed by my own

Lutheran confessional theology. But I sincerely endeavor, in a very conscious sort of way, to major on the majors.

There was a period in my life, especially kind of during my early years when I had converted to Lutheranism, when

I had the zeal of a convert, and I would only read Lutheran books, mainly talk to Lutheran people about Lutheran things.

And as I got older, I realized that, you know, one of the things that we can do is we can either focus upon those things which divide us, or we can focus upon those things which unite us.

Not, as it were, denying the things that divide us, but not majoring on minors.

And so I say all that in order to kind of answer the question, so did

I approach Lenting with God, as it were, to kind of Lutheranize people, or to really trumpet

Lutheran theology? The answer is an absolute no. It is informed by Lutheran theology, to be sure, but my goal is to always write books or do podcasts in such a way that, yeah, there's going to be distinctives that come out at times, but I'm trying to focus on those things which unite us, which are, when

I say us, I'm talking about people who are part of the classical Orthodox Trinitarian Confession.

So us, that's what I mean by that. So focus on those things in order that we can really hear these things that God says to us that are the most important, that are these primary areas of theology— sin and repentance and the gospel and who

Christ is and discipleship and prayer and all those kinds of subjects. Great.

Well, Susan Margaret, you've also won a free copy of the book that we are addressing by Chad Byrd, Lenting with God.

Please make sure we get your full mailing address so that we can have cvbbs .com

ship that book out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. And we want to thank once again our friends at 1517 for providing these free copies of which we have a limited number to give away to listeners today.

We have Christopher in Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. And Christopher says, how do we—let's see, he's got a little typo here— how do we convey to our loved ones and friends who are depressed and agonizing over their sin but we want to do the comforting of them without giving a seal of approval upon their lives?

Yeah, this is kind of a basic law of gospel question is the way that I would answer that. So anytime that we're dealing with, we'll say in this case loved ones, who are leading a life of sinful rebellion or drifting into one sin or another or whatever it might be, whether or not they're not living a life of conformity with what

God desires for us. And what is actually good for us, it's not as if what God desires for us is bad for us.

He always desires what's good for us. So if we see someone doing that, it kind of depends on the person and the relationship to them.

But whatever that relationship might be, we approach them with a word of God's law, speaking the truth in love, not rushing in with this fiery judgment, but rather prompted by a love and concern for the sinner, we speak to them

God's truth. Hey, this isn't right. This isn't good for you.

This isn't what God desires for you. This is not the kind of life in which you're actually going to thrive on the grace of God because you are, as it were, separating yourself from He who is your life itself.

And the goal of that, of course, is not simply to make them feel bad. The goal is certainly not to shame them.

The goal is to bring them to the point of confessing. And by confessing,

I mean agreeing with what God says, saying, you know what? What God says about me and my sin is absolutely right.

He is right and I am wrong. I should not be doing this. I should not be practicing this.

This is not the life that God desires for me. And I confess that sin. And then that is exactly where God wants them to be in order then to hear the good news that for that sin,

Christ has died. Whatever that sin might be, for that, that's exactly why

Christ came. He came in order that sinners might be saved. And so He went to the cross for you for that sin.

And because of that, you know that the blood of Jesus Christ covers that sin.

And in so doing, we can give them that consolation that we all crave, that we all need.

And so hopefully bring some light into their darkened lives.

And because of that light, bring them into a place of hope and healing and where they're once more where God wants

His children to be. Yeah, I'm sure that you would agree that the fact that the person, as the listener indicated, the hypothetical person is grieving over a sinful life.

At least we can assure them that is a very positive first sign that you are on the way, if not already arrived at having peace with God, because you're at least demonstrating that you're not reveling and rejoicing and celebrating in your sin.

Yes, absolutely. And that reflects the language of the Psalms of Repentance. 6, 32, 38, 51, 102.

I mean, all these Psalms of Repentance use that kind of language. Sometimes it's couched in kind of physical suffering sort of language.

My bones are crushed. I'm trembling. I'm weeping. I'm drenching my couch, my bed with tears.

So often the Psalms will describe this kind of grieving over sin in very physical, tangible sorts of ways.

And we might experience it as anxiety or a broken heart or fear or any number of emotions.

But it's all different ways of saying the law of God is having its way with us. It's bringing us to the point of grieving over our sins, confessing and hearing that good news from God the

Father that Jesus Christ has paid the price for that sin. Well, Christopher, great name, by the way.

You have won a free copy of the book we are addressing by Chad Byrd, Limping with God.

Please make sure we have your full mailing address in western Suffolk County, Long Island, so that CVBBS .com

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship the book out to you at no charge to you or to us. And thanks again to 1517 for providing a limited number of these books.

We have to go to our middle break right now. The middle break is required of us by Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program in a rerun format or a prerecorded format twice a day in morning drive and in the evening.

And the FCC requires of them to use the middle of our show to localize

Iron Sherpins Iron Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida. And they do that with their own public service announcements and other local things that localize this program to Lake City.

We, on the other hand, simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the contact information for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully contact our advertisers, hopefully to often buy their products, use their services, and visit their churches.

But when you cannot do any of those things, please do one thing that everyone listening can do if you really love this show.

Thank our advertisers for sponsoring this program and for making this program possible.

We cannot exist without the financial support that comes through the advertising dollars of our sponsors.

So please, at the very least, thank them and send in your questions to Chad Byrd at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sherpins Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd.

On a theme that I have been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

And there's more great news. Chris Arnson of Iron Sherpins Iron Radio can get you a 30 % discount off the registration fee.

Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo code

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Chris Arnson, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the

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Iron Sherpins Iron Radio Exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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Last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church, no matter where you live on the planet

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As always, give us a first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Chad, let me just address the only two areas in your book that I remember disagreeing with you over.

The first one we don't even have to discuss because it's an obvious issue that divides

Calvinists and Lutherans in your very brief mention of baptism.

There is a unique Lutheran view on that that Calvinists do not share.

But there was a section of your book, and forgive me if I am misrepresenting what you said, you can clarify this, but it seemed to me that you had mentioned in the book that it is completely acceptable to be angry at God.

And while I would agree that that is nearly a universal problem amongst

Christians, even the finest and most sanctified and godly of Christians may battle with that, with the exception of some super sanctified saints among us that may have never fallen into that.

But regardless of the fact that it is common, I have always viewed anger toward God as a sin.

Now, if you could please explain that statement in your book, just to further clarify what you meant by it.

Yeah, if I want to remember, it's probably in the section later in Jacob's life when he is misled by his own sons to believe that his favorite son,

Joseph, has in fact been torn to pieces by a wild animal. And so this is the deep grief into which he slides.

That's probably the context in which I said what I did. I honestly can't remember if I used the word anger or not.

I probably did, because I frequently would use that to describe what is expressed frequently in the

Psalms. And I'm certainly open to other words that might be used to describe how the

Psalms will give expression to the blank.

And you can fill in that blank with anger, bitterness, disappointment, disillusionment, whatever it might be, with God, because of the situation in which they find themselves.

And sometimes this is an individual lament, sometimes this is a corporate lament. But at least some scholars have estimated that up to 40 % of the

Psalms are in the genre of lament. Not the entire Psalm, perhaps, but part of it.

So this is definitely kind of a mainstream way, a foundational way, in which not only

Israel, but also the Church and individual Christians have prayed. And some of this language is very strong.

It's scattered all over the Psalms where there'll be questions. So how long? And why?

And at times it's, have you forgotten to be gracious? And why are all these terrible things happening to me?

So that's what I'm trying to communicate in that chapter. And again, because I'm open to suggestions on other ways to describe this that's not using the word anger.

Whatever word that we stick in there, the person who prays the

Psalms, and in praying these words doesn't just speak them, but actually is expressing where they themselves are.

The negativity of the emotion is apparent. And the pain that is there is apparent.

And that's the way that lament works. So that's kind of where I'm coming from there.

And the reason that I couched it in the language that I did. To harken back to something we earlier discussed kind of toward the beginning of our first hour.

It was during my darkest days when I began to pray the Psalms canonically, beginning with one, going to all the way to the end, and then starting over again.

And it was then that I discovered this kind of what I call the language of the languishing, where the

Psalms give expression to these deepest and darkest emotions that we feel.

And in praying them, we're actually able to verbalize where we're at.

And in so doing, not just kind of lash out, but actually pray to God. And place our needs, our frustrations, our disappointments before Him.

And, of course, then ask Him to intervene and to bring us out of that darkness into light, out of that despair into hope once more.

Yes, I would agree that we get nowhere in our communication with God in our prayer life if we're lying to Him as if we could possibly pull the wool over God's eyes.

And if we are angry with Him, we should openly confess that to God and ask

Him to deliver us from this anger. But perhaps at a future time we can discuss this further, because I'm still not at peace with the knowledge of it being acceptable to be actually angry with God.

And, of course, I know that you would agree that that can be extremely sinful and even blasphemous, where somebody allows their anger towards God to control them, and it changes the way in which they speak to Him in prayer.

In fact, I have encountered a couple of people who have wandered away from the faith who they claim to have a buddy -buddy relationship with Jesus.

Like, he's my main man, he is my friend, and therefore

I could speak to him like I speak to any friend, including cursing his name when

I disagree with him, raising my middle finger to him. And that, to me, is the kind of behavior that you better watch out for lightning.

Would you agree with me there, at least? Yeah, absolutely, of course.

The way we speak to a friend is not the way we speak to the Creator of the heavens and the earth. So along with the necessity of honesty in prayer is also the necessity of realizing who we are.

We're creatures, He's the Creator, and we are servants, and He is the Lord. So what

I see there is holding together a tension of an acknowledgement of who we are, and also acknowledging the deep and the raw honesty that's expressed in the

Psalms, and the willingness when we are in those places to not shy away from those words.

It's one of the criticisms I actually have of some of the hymns as well as even some of the prayers that we have in churches today.

They're a little bit too clean. They're a little bit almost uber -pious, and they lack this realism.

And this true emotional grit that we have in the Psalms. And so that's why for many years now

I've been a fan of the Psalms, as it were, and trying to encourage more and more people to pray these, so that they too can find words that I haven't found anywhere else that actually do express in an honest, forthright way where I'm at and my need for God to step in and save me.

Yes, the Psalms are definitely replete with frustrations with God and bafflement over why

His greatest enemies live lives of luxury and seemingly lives of superior ease and joy on this planet while they are faithful children of God's suffering.

There are many instances of that that is very clear. And I share your frustration with some of our hymnody, and sometimes

I find myself in the middle of singing a hymn where the words are making far too many claims about the one singing that are actually true.

Like, I love you God with all my heart, soul, and strength every day or something like that.

What? No, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't need a

Savior if that was the case. That reminded me, actually,

I hope I'm not going off topic too much, but the last questioner who was asking about how to approach someone grieving over their sin where you want to encourage and comfort them but at the same time not giving a seal of approval on their sin.

I recently, it might surprise some of our listeners, but I recently watched a documentary on Donna Summer, the disco queen of the 70s.

And the reason I watched it is because I remembered that she had made a profession of faith in Christ, and through a considerable portion of her final years before dying of cancer, she refrained from singing certain songs that she recorded in her past that were explicitly sexual and things like that.

But it burdened my heart, it grieved me when I saw her in the documentary.

After there was a pushback from the homosexual activists when she made a profession of faith in Christ and apparently made a comment during a concert that God created

Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and there were other comments that she made.

There was one comment that she denied saying that God had brought about the

AIDS crisis as a punishment to homosexuals. So when she had a press conference, because she knew that she had alienated perhaps the majority of her record -buying audience, since she seemed to be very popular amongst homosexuals, since the disco scene was so highly infiltrated by those folks, during a press conference she said that homosexuals are not sinners.

And I remember it felt like somebody kicked me in the stomach because I was hoping to hear more convincing evidence of her salvation.

And I'm not saying she wasn't truly saved, because even the best of us can, out of fear, say or do things, at least temporarily, that are a betrayal of our

Lord. But for her to say that, for her to say homosexuals are not sinners, what she's saying is that they don't have a

Savior, because Jesus didn't come for the righteous. Am I making sense here? Yeah, perfect sense.

I mean, that is one of the dangers, and you can apply this across the board to any sense.

If we start getting approval to disobedience, where God has declared something to be disobedient, then pretty soon we're going to be left with, well, what need is there of a

Savior anyway? If everybody's okay, if everybody can do whatever they want and not be sinning, then what need was there for Christ to come and to live

His life and to die His death and be resurrected? So the more that we are truthfully and lovingly pointing out sin, we're also, at the same time, truthfully and lovingly pointing people toward the gospel.

So you can't have the gospel unless you have the law, because the law is in the service of the gospel.

Amen. The aforementioned Cindy in Findlay, Ohio, who wrote in earlier just to thank you,

Chad, for being on the program. She's actually now submitted a question, or perhaps plural, more than one question.

Hello, Chris and Chad. Thank you for coming on the show today. I have heard the phrase God repents us from two sources, yourself being the first, and also the

Theocast podcast. There is some controversy in the Reformed Church lately regarding must a person repent in order to come to Christ?

In Sinclair Ferguson's book, The Whole Christ, which is an expose of sorts on the book by Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which discusses the topic of must a man forsake sin in order to come to Christ?

Some gather that this is not so. Maybe I'm confused, but I see contradiction between evangelical styles.

For instance, for years I have followed Ray Comfort from Living Waters, who stresses strongly when he evangelizes that a sinner must repent and then trust in Christ.

He stresses it so strongly it seems as though it is something that they are doing almost as if it is a work.

If God repents us and it is not something that we are doing, is there a contradiction here?

And she has one more question after that. Yeah, that is a phrase that I will sometimes use, usually by explaining exactly the background of that.

So in my own academic background is in studying Hebrew, and the

Hebrew verb that is used typically for repent is shuv. It means to turn, to return, to turn around.

And there are many occasions in the Old Testament where the particular grammatical form of that verb is in the causative form, meaning to cause, to turn.

So bring back or return is a common way that it is translated. And God is typically subject to that.

So we think, for instance, in Psalm 23, He restores my soul. He brings me back.

And so because of that, God repents us is a phrase that I will sometimes use, meaning that God is the one who brings us back to Himself.

Now, that being said, does that mean that we don't have anything to do with repentance? Well, no, of course not.

I mean, we repent. But how do we repent? Well, God, through His word, calls us to repentance and then brings us back to Himself.

So it's not as if we're automatons. It's not as if we're just kind of robots and God is pushing us here and there. We certainly do repent.

And why do we repent? Because God has brought us back to Himself. So anyway, that's kind of the

Hebrew background to that phrase. I use it because I think it accents the fact that—well, let me say this differently.

I will often hear people talk about repentance as if it is the source of our atonement, almost as if we take

Jesus off the cross and we nail our repentance up there, as if it's a good work by which we somehow are earning

God's forgiveness. And because I hear that so often, I like to emphasize the fact that, yes, of course we need to repent.

We must repent. And God is the one, therefore, bringing this about in our lives. Amen. Yes, and people—there are interdenominational wars over this.

There are those amongst—primarily, it seems, the dispensationalists and fundamentalists, although there would be exceptions like John MacArthur, who believe that to say that repentance is required of a person is adding works to faith to justify them.

And that's not true. The irony of that is those people that say that you have a false and damning gospel by requiring repentance, they themselves must be saying, you must repent of believing that.

Oh, the irony. Yes, but repentance, isn't it just turning from one thing that you love to another?

Isn't it just a change of mind? We cannot come to Christ unless we turn from our idol, or idols, plural.

I mean, it has nothing to do with cleaning ourself up to be acceptable to Christ, because we could never do that.

In fact, that in and of itself is a false gospel of self -righteousness and works righteousness.

But we have to turn to him. I remember a pastor, a former pastor of mine, saying, and I don't know if you would agree with this analogy, he said, a person is not truly coming to Christ just as a husband or a groom is not truly coming to his bride if he is walking down the aisle with prostitutes on each arm.

So, does that make sense to you? Does anything that I said make sense to you? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

I mean, our hearts are always gravitating toward the true God or to false gods.

It's impossible, in other words, for a person to say, you know what, I'm not going to have any gods. I'm just going to remain neutral.

That's an impossibility, because we have this built -in tendency, God gave it to us to worship.

And so it's a question, are we worshiping that which is true or worshiping that which is false? And so repentance is God bringing us away from these false gods and bringing us then to himself.

And Cindy follows up, I think it is necessary that a person must be convicted of their sin and understand that they are under the wrath of God, but that they look to Christ for forgiveness.

I personally think this comes first, and that then being regenerated,

God gives them a heart willing to repent and trust. I'm trying to figure out if there is a grammatical error.

I personally think this comes first, and that then being regenerated,

God gives them a heart willing to repent and trust. But I don't think, unless you are regenerated, you will be convicted of your sin either.

So perhaps, I don't know if I'm misunderstanding Cindy, but the regeneration part, at least in my

Reformed Ordo Salutis, would come prior to the conviction of sin, but it's an instantaneous following.

It's not some huge gap of time. I don't know if Lutheranism would agree with that or not, but if we cannot, as the book of Romans teaches us, that we cannot please

God in the flesh, and if being convicted of our sin pleases

God, then we can't conjure that up from our dead hearts until the

Lord gives us faith and repentance and gives us a new heart. Does that jive at all with what you would believe as a

Lutheran in that area? Yeah, absolutely. So whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

And therefore, if there's a conviction because of the preaching of the law, and if there's faith and there's repentance in all these things, then that is the work of the

Spirit, who is bringing us to that point of conviction and repentance and confession in faith.

Well, Cindy in Findlay, Ohio, you seem to be very familiar with my guest,

Chad Bird. If you already have his book, I'm just asking you two questions.

Do you want to receive another copy to give to a friend or loved one, or do you want us to pass this copy on to another listener?

Because we've only been given a limited number of copies by 1517. So either way, you've won

Limping with God, Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship, and you could do what you'd like with it, either pass it on to another listener, or you yourself can give it to somebody that you love.

We're going to our final break. If you have a question and you want to give us enough time to have my guest answer it, please send it in immediately, because we are running out of time.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back with Chad Bird. Please do not go away.

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We are now in the last segment of our interview with Chad Byrd on his book

Limping with God, Jacob and the Old Testament Guide to Messy Discipleship. Chad, we have two questions from two different listeners on Martin Luther.

The first one is choosing to remain anonymous. I am remaining anonymous because this has to do with a dispute amongst my

Roman Catholic family and the constant thing that they hurl at me in regarding Martin Luther as if we should not trust anything that he wrote or said or did is because he believed that the epistle of James was not a canonical or a

God -breathed epistle. In fact, he called it an epistle of straw and actually said, if I'm quoting this accurately,

I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove. However, to my knowledge, that Luther never actually did remove the epistle of James from his

German translation. Am I right on that? And do you have anything else to say about how

I should handle this dispute with my Catholic family? Well, I'm no expert on Luther, certainly no expert on Luther, on James, but that is a pretty widespread bit of knowledge about Luther's attitude toward James.

And I think part of what Luther says with the typical Luther hyperbole, of which he was very fond.

So if it tells you anything about where he ultimately stood on the book, it certainly was in his translation of the

New Testament. So it wasn't as if he's like, you know what, I'm going to throw Jimmy out. I'm going to get rid of James completely.

I'm going to excise it from my canon. So the fact that he includes it, and I'll add this, the

Lutheran confessions, both in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, speak quite extensively about the book of James, in particular in how what

James is saying with regard to justification by faith squares with what Paul says about the same subject.

And don't we have to consider the time during which Luther had these sentiments.

He had come to discover as a Roman Catholic month that he had been lied to about so many things, and he was questioning everything.

I mean, isn't that really the case? Sure, sure. I think that all of us who have been in these very intense moments of either, you know, anger or sadness or exaltation, we sometimes will say things which are a bit much, which in our more sober and level -headed moments, we wouldn't say.

So all that being said, even if Luther did say that, we've all said things which we later regret, all said things which later in life we change our mind, and Luther is no exception to that.

In fact, that's why I love my webmaster who edits all of my mistakes out of these programs. I've had a lot of regrets in this show.

Yeah, so that is kind of a modern idea, too, that if someone has ever said anything in the past, which is wrong or disagreeable or whatever it might be, then that is a word that cancels out everything else that they said.

Well, we all know that's not the way that human interaction works. Okay, Anonymous, you've also won a free copy of Limping with God.

Make sure we have your full mailing address and your full name through email so that we can have

CVBBS .com ship that out to you. We have Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania who says,

Since you are talking about God using broken people, I hope you don't mind me bringing up one broken aspect of Martin Luther, which involved his anti -Semitism.

There are people that I know, particularly Messianic Jews, who say that I'm insane for viewing

Luther in high regard because of the fact that he said such hateful things to the Jews and the

Nazis even used some of his statements in propaganda later on. How do you defend

Luther in the midst of this? Well, I don't, to be blunt.

To piggyback on what I was saying earlier, people say a lot of untrue things about their lifetime, a lot of unfair things, and sometimes we use quite vehement language, which can be then also used by others in order to perpetrate evil on people.

And it certainly is true that Luther has been used, Luther's words have been used in that sort of way.

I would simply urge us all, it doesn't matter if we're talking about Martin Luther, if we're talking about the founding fathers of the

United States, if we're talking about anybody who is separated from our day and time, to put yourself in their time, in their place, in their culture, in their perspective, and realize that chances are they're not the only ones saying things like this.

This is not in any way to excuse what they did or what they said. It is to,

I guess, to understand it in the time in which it was said. And in that way, to realize, okay, this is what prompted that.

And that saves us from being kind of this generation that stands in judgment on all prior generations as if we have a sort of moral superiority to those people.

I guarantee you, if our Lord doesn't return in two more centuries, people are going to be looking back at the things we said and did, and saying, how in the world could they have done that or said that?

That's just, that's the way the history works. Now, I have heard, in defense of Luther, without defending the horrible statements of his against the

Jews, I have heard that, number one, he was never referring to anyone's ethnicity like the

Nazis were. The Nazis could not care less if you were a genuine convert to Christianity, if you were of Jewish ethnicity.

If they found out, and they did search high and low for people who had become

Christians but who had Jewish ethnicity in their background, they would send you right off to the camp.

They didn't care if you had a strong faith in Christ. And Luther had no connection to that way of thinking.

And the other thing that I heard in his defense was that this came after the huge letdown, to put it mildly, of his confidence that the

Reformation would bring about the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity. And when that failed, and when rabbis were actually writing nasty tracts against him, he said inflammatory and horrible things.

And I also heard, which I don't know if it has been verified, that he eventually repented of that.

Do you have any comments on those things that I've said? No, certainly not the last thing.

It's not a subject that I'm well versed in. But the first thing that you pointed out, this is not a matter of ethnicity, but this is a matter of practices in particular to which he objected and the opposition he was facing from them.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It makes historical sense. And it makes human sense that that is the way that a person will often react when he is opposed or gravely disappointed over something.

Well, we are out of time. I loved every minute of our interview, Chad. I look forward to your return if you agree with my enthusiasm over our interview.

I want to remind our listeners that the website where you can find out more about Chad Byrd is 1517 .org.

1517 .org. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater