Jeffrey Johnson - Full Discussion

Introduction to Jeff Johnson and Free Grace Press

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder, and with me this week is a special guest, Jeff Johnson. And some of you may recognize Jeff's name or his image from the church study, and he did that with Mediagratie.

We've been very happy with that and the way it's helped churches. Jeff is also on the board of directors with Mediagratie, and he is the pastor of Grace Bible Church. He's been there for 23 years. It started in Jeff's living room, which we've been talking about before the episode.

It's quite coincidental because Christ Church in New Albany is 23 years old now, and we started in a living room, similar kind of small group. Jeff's church is in Conway, Arkansas, but Jeff wears a number of hats.

He is also the president of a seminary. It is Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and he is the executive, the head of Free Grace Press, and we want to talk about one book in particular from Free Grace Press today, a book called The Sovereignty of God, which I have read and want to recommend, and we want to let you know about such a beneficial, essential aspect of the Christian life to understand that He, our Lord, is king.

He is essentially sovereign, and how does that work itself out into the everyday practical aspects? So, Jeff, good to see you. It's good to see you, John. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Jeff is joining us by Zoom, so Teddy has asked me to remind you that there may be some audio issues to get a little funny with our connection, but that's why.

Jeff, why don't you just jump in and tell us, how did you go from being a pastor of a church plant to being also president of a seminary and the head of a publishing company?

How Free Grace Press Began

The short answer is, I don't know. Yeah, the publishing company started around 12 years ago, and I had written a book. It was actually kind of the fruit of my doctoral dissertation that I wanted to get published, and I sent out to a few publishers, and it's like a black hole that I didn't even get a rejection letter.

I just got nothing, so I decided to self-publish that work, and I don't know what it was at the last second. I said, well, let me put a little logo and a brand name, and I saw that Fergus Press wasn't occupied on the internet, so I just chose that real quickly, and I'm glad I did.

I didn't know at the time. I thought it'd just be a one and done type event, but I would go on to write other books and start publishing some out-of-print works, and next thing you know, after 12 years, we've done 70 plus books in 12 years.

Now, we're doing on pace to do 12 books a year, one book a month. We're putting out books, old books, out-of-print books that are good, other authors. We're just kind of exciting about who we've already published, and we've got some great authors ahead of us that have agreed to publish with us, so.

Really excited about that. Yeah, I think the fact that you're able to publish old and new. Free Grace Press has a very specific focus, Reformed Baptist material, and while we can find good Reformed Baptist material from other publishers, Free Grace Press really focuses in on that, so one of the books that you published was from a man named Wilcox, and Honey from the Rock of Christ, and such a, you know, it's a book that should be read by every believer.

It's on the doctrine of justification, and it states it so boldly that you almost feel like he's the Apostle Paul, and you want to say to him, now, you're not saying that we're free to just do anything we want to do, and he is not saying that, and he's clear there, but I remember listening to Lloyd-Jones say that if you preach the gospel correctly, you ought to be accused of being an occasionally, you know, like Paul, and you know, because justification is so, just so, you know, magnificent and mountainous, and you know, it just fills the heart, but when done right, it fills the heart with the desire to obey, with the motive, with the hope.

New and Upcoming Books from Free Grace Press

This book on the sovereignty of God, we feel is also really practical, but before we get to the book, any books that you guys have recently published, or that you have on the horizon,.

That you're particularly keen on? Well, we just published a book by a man named Lance Quinn, who worked with John MacArthur for many years, now he's in Florida, a good friend of mine, Lance Quinn, he's put out a book that we just published called God Preacher Apologist, and it's very excellent talking about how, you know, we are preachers, we're going to be apologists, but the best preacher there is, and the best apologist there is, is God himself, and that God's, in his word, is the best proclamation of who he is, and the best defense of who he is, and it comes from a presuppositional approach, very, very well done, and I'm very excited about that, that book's done very well for us, and then we got a book coming out next month by an old Baptist, this is another one of those books like Thomas Wilcox that you just got through mentioning, that's very good, Tom, his name is Cornelius Tyree, and it's called The Living Epistle, and he talks about the importance of the Christian life as a witness to the gospel, and how we may share the gospel properly, and yes, we do need to use words when we evangelize, but if our lives is not congruent with that gospel, it undermines our testimony, undermines the gospel, and how one of the best impacts upon an unbeliever is seeing a Christian live out the Christian life, that they have a different life, and it's a very practical book, helpful book, and that book there is really talking about the importance of godliness, so you take Thomas Wilcox's book on justification by faith alone, independent of works,.

Pair it with this book, and you've got a great balance. Yeah, actually, I think it was, I got an email from Free Grace Press this morning mentioning that book again, I stole a quote from it recently in speaking to the church, where he talks about the best commentary on the scripture is a godly life, a holy life, you know, it is clear in scripture that God stamps these great realities, these doctrines that are so important, and precision is important, but He does stamp them into the lives of men and women, and you know, what might be for us a bit ethereal or, you know, complex when we're trying to read through a big thick book, when we see it lived out in the man next to us, and you know, in our friend that sits beside us on the pew, there is something beautifully simplifying about seeing doctrine demonstrated or exemplified in everyday choices.

Doctrine, Godliness, and a Changed Life

Yeah, it shows us that God is supernatural, and that there is a God as evidenced by changed lives, by a life that's been renewed, converted, regenerated. Someone has gone from a life of sin, and Paul says, we know the gospels come to you, we know that you're elect of God, chosen of God, because you went from serving these dead idols to now serving the living God.

There's been a radical transformation in your life, and that's essential to verifying to our unbelieving friends and family members that there is a real God, and it's truly evident by how we live our lives.

Yeah. Well, the book, The Sovereignty of God, as I mentioned, really a very manageable treatment of this. It's just under 200 pages. The contents are laid out in three major sections, and I'll run through those quickly here.

Part one is the foundation of God's sovereignty, and that's where Jeff deals with how the power, and the knowledge, and the authority of God are all united in this doctrine that we call sovereignty. The second part is the nature of God's sovereignty, and we see that expressed in his decrees, and in his rule over providence, you know, the everyday events of life for the individual, or worldwide, you know, international events.

The third part, the extent of God's sovereignty. Where does it reach to? He is sovereign over nature, nations, salvation, sin, and suffering, and those last two really difficult things for us to wrestle through as we consider, you know, if I think for all of us, if you move from theoretical talk about the sovereignty of God over sin, and the sovereignty of God over salvation.

The Bible is very clear on that, but it's easy to discuss it. It's a different thing to live through it, but the truths are true, and they can bear the weight of our hope. So Jeff, why, when a man is so as busy as you are with three major, you know, investments of your time, why pick this topic?

Why Write on Divine Sovereignty in a Hard Season

Yeah, I did this book for myself.

Every time I write a book, I've written 12 books, and they're motivated by different causes or reasons. Sometimes I see a great need here, or I'm a great, I have a great burden. This book particularly was written because I was going through a low period of my own life, ministry, and going through some, I guess, wondering, questioning about what God is doing in my life, and I knew that the remedy was the doctrine of divine sovereignty.

I knew I needed to root myself back into what I already knew, so I've learned this doctrine a long time ago when I was a young man, but I knew that that was the answer, and so I began refreshing my mind on verses that would help me, and so I began writing, therapeutically writing down my thoughts, and one thing that's unique about this book that none of my other books is like this.

There's not one single footnote. There's not one single citation, and a lot of my work is deep research, and I have to spend a lot of time, and it drains me. It's tiring, and I wanted this to be not one of those books that I, it becomes laborious and work.

I wanted it to be therapeutic, so I didn't quote anything other than the Bible, and so I just reviewed scripture, and then I took my thoughts and put them together and worked through it, and it was helpful.

At the end of this book, reminding myself of what I already knew was able to pull me out of kind of the despair that I was going through, and to have a hobby of God changes everything, and I'm convinced of that, John, that if we could just see God as who He is, it fixes a lot of our own problems, and that's what it was beneficial for me in writing the book,.

And so hopefully it has some benefit for others as well. Yeah, I think that what you said about the foundational aspect of knowing God certainly is something that we've tried to restate in different ways with Medio Grazie, but as you mentioned, it benefits every area of life, but if a man goes to scripture looking only for the answer for this area of life, so what about marriage?

What about my children? What about jobs? He may find a biblical answer to that question, which is good, but how much better if he had come to it through the pursuit of the ever clearer views of God, and then those penetrate the life, and fill those specific commands of scripture, those specific principles with a whole new light, with wonderful weightiness.

You can maybe behave differently at home because you went and looked at what the scripture said to do, and that's good, but that's all you got if you begin with God, you know Him, and you are gripped in a way that you weren't gripped before, transformed by the sight of divinity in the God-man, and then the practicalities flow, and they're accompanied by something so much more than just.

I changed my behavior. That's exactly right. I mean, what we need more than anything else is to see God. We need to see Him as He actually is, not as we create Him in our minds, but as He's depicted in scriptures, and to see Him, really to see Him is to know Him, to see Him biblically, to know Him, and to know Him is to worship Him, and to worship Him is to glorify Him, and that brings the joy that God has combined knowing God with personal joy, and we can't separate knowing God without being satisfied in God, and that is what it is to truly worship Him, and so if we're in despair, we don't need more self, and we don't need just self-remedies, we don't need just self-help stuff, we need God, and God is the answer to our problems, as we need to see Him as He is, and part of seeing God as He is, is seeing His majesty, and part of that majesty is His sovereignty, that He is King, He is Lord, and to see the scope of His power, the scope of His authority, the scope of His knowledge, and that's one of the things I've tried to do in the book, is say the sovereignty of God can be looked at from different angles, but all these other attributes of God demand, require that He is sovereign.

If He is all-powerful, He can't help but be sovereign. If He's all-knowing, He can't help but be sovereign, and so forth, and to see that, it readjusts our thinking, it realigns everything about our life, and our circumstances, and we, I know I have a tendency to complain about petty, small things, but when you see God in His grandeur, it sure puts things in perspective, and changes everything, my behavior, it changes, you know, my outlook, my emotions, and so I think that's what we need most, to see God.

Providence in World War II and the Life of Sergeant Joseph Barr

In the book, you use the life of a World War II soldier, Sergeant Joseph Barr Senior. You use his life as kind of a backdrop, a thread, to show in very practical ways, well, how does the sovereignty of God, how does it affect a life, or how is it seen in a human life, and it's very helpful.

It just keeps the book from becoming, you know, kind of dry, or aloof, impractical feeling, that you connect it to a person. How did you come across this man?

Well, that's my wife's grandfather, and I knew him, he passed away several years ago, but I got to spend 10 years with him, basically, getting to know him, and I was always, I'm always fascinated with World War II, and this particular man, my wife's, Letha's grandfather, Joseph Barr, went through the entirety of the war.

He entered the war in the North Africa campaign, goes all the way through that, into the Sicily, and up the peninsula of Italy, and then he thinks he's coming home, but ends up being on the first waves of D-Day, survives that, goes all the way through the Battle of the Bulge, 42 battle at the end, 42 day battle at the Battle of the Bulge, he's one of just a few people who survived.

In the landing craft of D-Day, he was one of three people who survived, the 25 people who was on his craft, and I think I counted like eight times he should have died, and that we know of, so his life is miraculously preserved, and I wanted to show how God had a purpose in every bullet flying, and how every aspect of World War II was sovereignly controlled under the hand of God, and here's a real man that went through this, that lived through it, and there's no other way of saying it, he lived through it because of the divine providence of God, and at the end of the book, it's kind of a spoiler alert, but at the end of the book, I reveal who this man Joseph Barr is, that he's actually the great-grandfather of my children, and it makes me wonder like if he didn't survive those near-death experiences over and over and over again, none of my four children would be alive, my wife wouldn't be alive, and how God's ordained their lives, therefore he preserved the life of Joseph Barr in a very tragic scenario, World War II, when many of his friends, most of.

His friends did not make it. Well, Jeff, if a person is looking at the book and thinking, so who could I give this book to? I mean, I know that we could say, well, anybody, but in your mind, who do you think that a book like this might be most suited for?

Who Should Read a Book on Divine Sovereignty

Yeah,.

I think two people in particular, two types of people. One, it is an introductory introduction to the doctrine of divine sovereignty, so it would be good for someone wanting to know more about divine sovereignty, and it's a refresher.

For me, it was a refresher, but principally, this person that is going through some trial, it's not principally designed to be a book of comfort, but at the end, I seek to show how that the divine sovereignty, the doctrine of divine sovereignty actually is the most comforting doctrine that we could hold on to when we're going through some trial or through some terrible pain or sorrow, that it might seem counterproductive because there are some people who reject God when they're going through a painful thing because they understand that God could have prevented that, so they don't like a God that allow that to happen, but I try to turn the table and show us that if there's no God who's sovereign, if there's not a sovereign God, then everything we went through would be meaningless and pointless, and how this doctrine rescues pain.

It brings comfort.

Where there would be no comfort at all otherwise. We had an older couple attend the church here for a while. They've moved, and they were a really sweet couple. They came here because they had lost an adult daughter.

Their adult daughter had contracted cancer and had slowly and sadly, painfully had passed away, and when that happened, it just kind of shut them down, especially the mom, just so broken-hearted, you know, can't get out of bed, can't really, you know, get up and live life, and the father, very concerned, of course, broken-hearted himself, and then concerned about his wife, and someone in the town, you know, they had a church background, and so, you know, he was a teacher in a church, and she attended church some, and people would give kind of maybe cliche answers, you know, kind of on the side of, you know, almost as if God, you know, God had nothing to do with that, you know, that don't you worry, and, you know, wrong answers.

She ended up coming to the church because someone in town said to her, well, my church has been not been talking about comfort lately, or, you know, of this, or how to get 10 steps to get through hard times like this.

They said, our church has been talking about the character of God, and so they showed up the next week, and she came to me, and she said, I don't need any more cliches about comfort. I desperately need to know the God who has allowed these things to happen.

I need to know Him, and that's right. They came, and she was, I, you know, by the grace of God, I think they were really wonderfully helped by looking at God. They were able to lay, you know, the broken heart at his feet, to trust that, you know, the cloudy edges of providence, the dark edge of life, trust it to his wisdom, and walk up out of that pit, you know, and I would have said that.

I would have said that that's the right cure, but it was wonderful to see it happen in front of your eyes.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I tried to not avoid the real difficult cases. There's a lady in our church that a tornado came down and took her father and sister and wrecked their whole house, and so she watched her own father pass away, watched him die in front of her eyes, and she survived with just a scratch.

Our sister died, well, in that event, and, you know, and many years later, she's still having to deal with a lot of emotions. Why did I survive? Why did my father die? And why did this happen? And so, I use her story in this book as like there's real, real hard things that God allows to happen, and let's just not talk about the little simple things like I stumped my toe or I lost my job.

No, there are some real difficult things and hard issues, dark providences, as you would think, and so I want to really address like people lose children and people lose spouses, and it's very hard and difficult, and God doesn't always give us the reasons.

You know, we do know all things work together, but we don't understand how and why. I do believe, though, when we get to glory, that he wipes away our tears, not simply because there's only joy and pleasure and no pain, no sorrow.

We know heaven's not going to have any more death, any more sorrow, and it's just going to be a place of happiness, but I don't think that's why the tears are wiped away. I think the Lord's going to come and wipe away our tears, and he's going to show us that the death of our daughter and what all it brought about and the glory of her life, and let's say our daughter lived to be 10 years, and then she died tragically, then he shows that in that 10 years, there was so much glory that was brought out of that 10 years that many people could live 90 years or 100 years and less significant lives, and then when we see that from all eternity, for millions and millions of years of indefinite, no end of all eternity, what is 10 years?

What is 90 years? What is one day or two days? It's about the glory that is brought about by life, and when we see that from his perspective, from the eternal perspective, then we can say, all is well, all is good, though we don't have that perspective now, but we have a God.

We have a God who says, I'm enough. Trust me. You can trust me with good, and you can trust me with bad. Blessed be the God when he gives, and blessed be the God when he takes, and we'll know for certain that there's not going to be one accident or one thing that will change on the day that we see the Lord.

We'll be looking back at our life and said, it was perfectly planned, and it was glorious, and I can rest in that knowledge today, even though I still work through sorrow and pain, and I have to deal with all the agony that I'm working through, but knowing that God is working through that agony with me, and that's the God we have.

We have a God who's perfect, and then we have a God who enters into that pain with us by sending his son, and he endures the agony along with us through his own death, and that is amazing that God would.

Do such a thing and be such a God as he is. Well, it's good to have Jeff with us again. Jeff Johnson, author of this new book, The Sovereignty of God with Free Grace Press, and so you can go to their website, Free Grace Press, and find that available.

I wanted to end with a quote, Jeff, that as you were talking, one of my favorite quotes about the impact of thinking rightly about God, particularly big pictures of God, and how that helps us is by a man named Saint Anselm, and Anselm said this, up now, get up now, slight man, flee for a little while your occupations, hide yourself for a time from your disturbing thoughts, cast aside your burdensome cares, and put away your toilsome business.

Yield room for some little time with God, and rest for a little while in him. Enter the inner chamber of your mind, shut out all thoughts save that of God, and such as can aid you in seeking him. Speak now, my whole heart, speak now to God, say to him, I seek your face, your face, Lord, will I see.

The opening part of that quote, up now, slight man, and flee for a little while your occupations, your cares, finding the answer in him. Well, thank you, Jeff. Thank you for writing this book, and thanks for spending time out of your busy day to talk with us.

Thanks, John, for having me on, and I appreciate what you're doing there, and all the work that Media Gratia is putting out.