Can Patriotism Become an Idol?

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Does patriotism ever become idolatrous? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today on Conversations with a Calvinist that begins right now.

00:26

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist, and my name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist, and I'm welcoming today my good friend and second time on the show, Jake Korn.

00:37

He is an army chaplain.

00:38

He is a wonderful brother in the Lord.

00:42

I do believe he's a reformed Baptist.

00:43

I can say that because we share a mutual love, so you're not like that guy, Matthew Henson, who I have to say is my not-yet-Calvinist friend.

00:52

You're my fully-Calvinist friend.

00:54

That's right.

00:54

I am confessionally committed.

00:56

Awesome.

00:57

Well, thank you for being with me today, Jake.

00:59

I am really just trying to catch up to the amount of visits on your show as Matt Henson has had.

01:04

I can't let him beat me.

01:07

Well, we're going to have to have you on about six or eight more times, but I'd love it because I enjoy our conversations.

01:13

So what we're talking about today is really a subject that you and I have chatted about before, and we felt like this would be important because today, the day that this will go live, is the Fourth of July, Independence Day, a very important holiday, and it's a holiday that my family does celebrate.

01:29

I do believe it's an important holiday, and it's a holiday that we should be thankful for as Americans.

01:35

It's the day that we declared our independence from England, and we now have our United States because of what happened on our Independence Day.

01:47

And of course, we're not the only country that celebrates its Independence Day.

01:50

There are other countries that celebrate Independence Day.

01:53

So this is something that we do every year, but oftentimes, this celebration of American independence is brought into the worship time on Sunday mornings.

02:08

And I've seen many churches that end up tailoring their entire service around the concept of Independence Day.

02:17

And then it becomes, well, we're going to do that on Memorial Day, or then we're going to do that on Veterans Day, and then we're going to do that on these different days.

02:25

And you end up several times a year having days that are not only driven by United States holidays, but are really sort of rah-rah services for stoking the patriotism fire.

02:44

Now, I know, Jake, that right now you're serving in the military.

02:47

You're serving actively as a chaplain.

02:51

But do you still see this in churches? Are you recognizing that this is happening in churches that you're involved with? Or how is this affecting you specifically? Yeah.

03:02

So this has definitely been prevalent for my entire Christian life.

03:07

I do just want to throw a disclaimer out at the beginning that none of my views expressed during this podcast are representative of the views of the United States government.

03:15

These are just Jake's views.

03:17

This is not chaplain.

03:18

This is not the United States Army.

03:20

I usually don't have to say that, but this issue is just kind of going to cross over a little bit.

03:25

So I just want to make sure that people understand this is my opinion.

03:29

So I grew up in the West.

03:31

And out West, I would say it is not something that I have seen as prevalent as down here in the South.

03:38

Now, I'm in Savannah, Georgia.

03:40

When I was a pastor, I was a pastor in North Florida, which is essentially South Georgia.

03:46

And the further East and South I got, the more not just prevalent, but the more acute these instances of patriotism within the service became.

04:01

And I remember the first time it became noticeable to me, I was just volunteering in a choir at a very large church here in Savannah.

04:11

And it was, I remember it was a 4th of July service and they asked me to sing a special and it was not a song I'd ever heard.

04:19

And it was a more modern song.

04:22

It was just, you know, thanking God for the blessing of living somewhere free.

04:26

And I was like, okay, I'm super into thanking God, right? Like, I don't mind that.

04:32

But there were no, none of the traditional patriotic hymns.

04:35

Well, then I start working at a smaller church, a smaller church, right? A community church.

04:41

And there they were much more hymn-based church.

04:45

And I will say distinctly more dispensational, which I think there's an overlap as to how much patriotism and how much dispensationalism go together in a church for theological reasons.

04:55

And then I saw the Pledge of Allegiance and three or four patriotic hymns and, you know, it ramped up in intensity.

05:02

So, I mean, this is a real thing.

05:04

And it's a real question that pastors and elders need to be considering, right? Like in our RPW conversation, I'm not, I'm not seeing a specific directive in scripture.

05:18

So with the wisdom of the body and the both sola and tota scriptura, what are those left and right limits that make the most sense? Yeah, absolutely.

05:28

And, and I do, I want to give a little disclaimer as well.

05:31

And I've been telling myself I was going to do this, so I'm going to do it now.

05:35

Forgive me if this is totally out of left field, but I've been saying at the beginning of the show, I want to mention to the audience, your help in this show really helps me.

05:44

And one of the things that you can do is if you're enjoying the content, if you're enjoying today's show and you're listening to this on YouTube, you can hit like and subscribe.

05:52

If you're listening to this on Facebook, you can share this with someone.

05:55

And if you're listening to it on a podcast, you can subscribe to the podcast.

05:59

That would really help me out.

06:01

But I also want to add a disclaimer about this subject.

06:04

Both Jake and I, as I already mentioned, we are men who would consider ourselves patriots.

06:08

Jake has, has dedicated his life to serving our country as a chaplain.

06:12

One of the, one of the men who's willing to bring the gospel in a place that it's, I would say would be difficult because you are under the restrictions and structure of the United States military, but you're still bringing the gospel.

06:25

And I'm so grateful for men like you.

06:27

I have a son who's serving in the United States air force, and I pray that men like you are in his life and are, are, are, are, are able to share the gospel with him.

06:37

I know he grew up hearing the gospel, but you know, like I said, you're a patriot, you're serving.

06:41

I believe I'm a patriot.

06:43

I've, I've, I've, I've not only have I allowed my son to serve, but I've been proud of his service and he's, he's currently serving overseas.

06:50

And I'm grateful for that.

06:51

So neither one of us in this conversation are intending in any way to diminish the concept of patriotism.

06:59

We're not intending to diminish the, the, the flag or the, the, the, the, the role that America has played in, in, in being a light for good in many areas and, and doing good things around the world.

07:15

And so, you know, we're, we're, we are not those guys.

07:18

I totally agree.

07:20

And I think that's the most important thing to start off with, because these things do tend to devolve into a sort of, you know, name calling or devaluing our opponent on the other side.

07:33

If, if you, there's fireworks going on in the background of my neighborhood as well.

07:38

You know, if, if I start to say, and I've experienced this, Hey, I'm not comfortable with that.

07:44

Or perhaps that expression is too much on the Lord's day, the pushback automatically is, Oh, well, you're not patriotic.

07:50

And, and I just don't, I don't think that's helpful.

07:53

What we're looking for is a rightly ordered life, right? God first, family, country, however, you know, that works out.

08:01

And it is the role of a pastor elder to shepherd his flock and to say, even this good thing can possibly become idolatrous.

08:12

You know, I always think of the, the bronze serpent, right.

08:16

From, from the children of Israel's time in the wilderness that, that they needed.

08:21

It was important.

08:22

Jesus uses the bronze serpent as an example to describe his salvation.

08:26

But we forget that there was a time that the children of Israel kept it and, and they had to destroy it because they formed an idolatrous relationship with that thing and not the God who empowered what that thing accomplished.

08:44

It was his, his goal.

08:45

And I feel the same about America is God's providence that America was formed for his will, for his purpose, either, you know, at sometimes as an agent of his goodwill in the world and perhaps sometime in the future, or even now, you know, as a subject of his wrath and, and justice.

09:03

Right.

09:03

So, but, but a rightly ordered patriotism.

09:06

And I even think there's, there's some realm of patriotism on the Lord's day.

09:11

That's good to talk about.

09:12

And then there's also stuff that says, maybe we push that to a Wednesday afternoon, get together with the church.

09:17

You know what I mean? There's, but it's not a, you're a patriotic and I'm not, is what I'm trying to say.

09:23

Absolutely.

09:24

And, and just as you were talking about that, I have, I've had the benefit of serving many funeral services for men and women who served in the armed forces.

09:35

And I've been to the Jacksonville national cemetery.

09:38

If I've been once, I've been 50 times.

09:40

I mean, I, I've, you know, I've been so many times that I know the people who work there and I know the young men and young women who fold the flag and who present it to the spouse or the next of kin.

09:50

And I've seen that flag folded so many times.

09:54

I've, I've heard that the, the playing of taps, which I finally, I found out they actually don't play taps.

10:00

The guy holding the bugle.

10:01

It's, it's fake.

10:02

Yeah.

10:02

It's rare.

10:03

It's rare that you get an actual player now.

10:04

Yeah.

10:05

Yeah.

10:05

Which is, I mean, it's fine, but people don't realize that guy's not really playing it and he's just holding it.

10:10

But we, but when they hand that flag and they say, you know, please accept this flag as a, as a, um, in honor of your, of your loved one's faithful service on behalf of the president of the United States, please, please.

10:23

That's, that's always touching.

10:24

It's always a moment of, of, uh, you know, where I say to myself, this, this person earned this, whatever the, whatever it may be, whether they serve their four years and got out or whether they served 20 years and, and, and, and, and retired or whatever, this person did something that was a value.

10:39

And, and I'm grateful for, and I'm grateful to be able to honor them in their, at their funeral.

10:45

So, so yeah, yeah.

10:47

The idea of not being a patriot, because we're going to question the subject of having worship services that center around, you know, I mean, cause honestly there are services that happen today.

10:57

I'm certain because we're recording this on Sunday and it's going to go out tomorrow.

11:00

There are services today where I'm certain songs, which sang about America were sung in worship America, America, you know, and it becomes a question of, okay, what did we come here today to do? Yeah.

11:15

And, and, and, and what's interesting is I know you know this, but the audience may not.

11:20

If you take a hymn book, there's a whole section in the older hymn books.

11:25

Even the, the modern, the one that we have is the one that Lifeway published back in the early two thousands, which was called the worship hymnal.

11:33

It was the new Baptist hymnal, but it was also called the worship hymnal for churches that weren't Baptist.

11:37

So we weren't Baptist.

11:38

So we bought the worship hymnal.

11:39

There's a whole section, Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful.

11:45

Yeah.

11:45

My Country Tis of Thee.

11:47

Yeah.

11:47

And for a moment as a former, well, I guess I wouldn't call you a former worship leader, but one who that was your job for a while, right? Was to lead worship.

11:55

And I'm sure you still do, but I mean, that was your job title as a worship leader.

11:59

How did you respond when people came and said, I think we should have sang America the Beautiful today? Oh boy.

12:08

So, you know, when I started working for this small church, I had come from just a different background and I came into the church.

12:18

And at the time it had a traditional service and a contemporary service.

12:22

And when I first came in the traditional service kind of had its own crew running it.

12:31

And so like, at first I was not invited to kind of take part in that.

12:36

And then so I ran the contemporary service and we didn't do any hymns.

12:40

And honestly, this is so funny.

12:43

So the church had done bulletins up until I showed up.

12:47

And my first big patriotic holiday, I don't remember which, we did not do any patriotic songs.

12:52

I played a, you know, a transition video with a bit of a patriotic, thank God for where we live kind of thing.

13:00

And there was a nice patriotic prayer.

13:02

And I told a bit of my story, but we just didn't do any patriotic songs.

13:06

Well, at the time we printed one bulletin that had traditional on one side, contemporary on the other side.

13:11

Well, the traditional service folks looked at the contemporary song list and saw that we didn't have any patriotic songs.

13:18

And they came to me and said, well, why aren't you guys doing any patriotic songs for a service that they're not even going to? You know, like their service was entirely patriotic songs and ours wasn't.

13:30

I said, like, you know, one, like you didn't come to the service.

13:35

And I think we struck a nice chord.

13:37

You know, it was like today, it was a Sunday that wasn't actually the fourth.

13:41

I think it was like July 2nd.

13:43

And, you know, we acknowledged it and prayed for the country.

13:45

But no, you know, they said, well, you have to sing songs.

13:49

And I said, the classic Calvinist answer, by what standard? By what standard do I have to? And I'm sad to say I was a young, new pastor, and it started more of a row than I wanted.

14:04

And I started to really learn about, you know, this church's tradition and their theology and how that influenced this choice and their opinion of America.

14:15

And, you know, this was a very dispensational church, which I was completely new to dispensationalism, frankly.

14:22

You know, and for them, there is this theological concept that God created America so that America would establish Israel, the nation, you know, and thus, right, there is this overlap.

14:36

It's not just God's providence, right? It is His direct acting in an eschatological frame.

14:42

And the pastor, the outgoing pastor who was kind of in his retirement years, you know, we had a long talk about it.

14:49

And I said, you know, for my generation, we're a bit of a skeptical generation.

14:55

It's a tough sell for you to tell me that, like, how much honor you want us to have for the country in this service.

15:04

We are coming in like a post-Vietnam, post Roe versus Wade mindset.

15:09

We're now we're post-post Roe versus Wade.

15:12

Praise the Lord.

15:13

Right.

15:14

You know, but this was 2015 or so.

15:17

You know, like for us, the concept of America is a much more murkier water, whereas the traditional service congregation, these are, you know, some silent generations of folk who served in the Korean War, you know, less gray, right, more black and white.

15:35

And they would say, well, you know, my patriotism is my faith.

15:40

And I let me stop you.

15:42

I don't mean to interrupt.

15:43

I have heard that on multiple occasions, and that strikes such a such a negative chord in my heart to hear someone say my patriotism is my faith.

15:54

And I can't believe one, I can't believe people would say it.

15:57

But also, I don't know exactly what they mean.

16:01

I think I know what they mean.

16:02

I hope I'm giving them the grace to think that it can't be charitable reading.

16:06

Yes.

16:07

Yeah.

16:07

The charitable reading is, is, you know, God first intertwines our faith into how it's expressed in this country that has a first amendment right to religious expression.

16:20

That's the charitable reading.

16:21

Yeah, but but nonetheless, like, like, that's not just toes on the line.

16:26

That's like dancing on the line.

16:28

And the pastor encouraged me to say that that's a good thing.

16:32

And I'm like, man, I don't I don't know if it is.

16:35

And and so I kind of took a very watchful stance.

16:38

I, you know, I was fairly new.

16:40

I gave my opinion to the pastor and the elders.

16:43

But I said, like, you know, I'm not running the church.

16:46

I'm not an elder yet here.

16:48

So I'm going to honor your decisions.

16:50

And I'll tell you the next patriotic holiday, I paid attention.

16:55

And I am not, as you listened to our last conversation, I'm not somebody who's going to judge pretty intensely somebody's worship style.

17:03

I don't care if you're raising your hand.

17:05

If you're dancing, I'll think you're weird, but I'm not going to think you're, you know, unbiblical.

17:10

But I paid attention.

17:11

And for the most part, that traditional service, right? No one ever raised their hands.

17:15

But by golly, the next patriotic holiday, when we sing patriotic songs, there were some folk who raised their hands in the patriotic songs with a sense of this urgency that I didn't see for, you know, how great thou art, or, you know, some other great hymn that the direct subject is God.

17:35

And to me, I began to say, like, look, man, like, this is not an inherently sin issue, but we have an idolatry issue here that it's just too blurry.

17:45

And in my opinion, the answer to that is for the eldership to draw a hard and fast line, right? This is a, you know, if your American flag causes you to sin, pluck it out of your sanctuary.

17:57

You know what I mean? And there's the quote of the show.

18:05

That's the Calvinist in me, right? We're a bit iconoclastic, right? Like, it's kind of our nature just to say, might be too close to an idol.

18:13

So let's burn it.

18:14

That just is our history.

18:18

But with good scriptural warrant to say, like, I don't need that.

18:22

If there's a question, I don't need it.

18:24

But clarify, you are not encouraging anyone to burn a flag.

18:26

Of course not.

18:28

I don't want anybody leaving that comment below.

18:31

Oh, he said, burn a flag.

18:32

I tell you, man, after five years, maybe six years, six years, six years, I encouraged them to let's move the flag to the lobby.

18:44

And it caused a riot.

18:46

It caused a riot.

18:47

It caused a near church split.

18:49

I mean, to gently say, it's time to just move this to the lobby for lots of reasons, right? Not just the idolatry issue, which I don't even think, like, I didn't make that a primary issue.

19:01

But also like, hey, man, what if, you know, there was an Iranian Christian who is not even a citizen that for whatever reason made it to our service.

19:10

And they have some weird opinions about America.

19:14

Should we put a barrier of entry to our worship service, right? Because we're coming together under the banner of Christ first.

19:24

And it's a tough, it's a tough issue, right? Like, there's not an easy answer.

19:31

I mean, I guess there's the easiest answer, which is just don't include it at all in your Sunday morning in the Lord's day, right? But like how that works itself out in the life of a church is something that should be dealt with some sensitivity, excuse me, some caution, but I don't know.

19:49

Yeah.

19:49

And I would add a thought to what you just said, because you mentioned the Iranian guy showing up.

19:55

And obviously that's possible that could happen.

19:59

I would go a step further maybe in my argument, and I do think what you said is completely true.

20:05

So I'm not questioning the reality that that could happen.

20:10

We could have an Iranian, we could have anybody could show up that, but it's the place that I have the issue with the flag in the sanctuary, since you brought it up, we'll kind of deal with that.

20:23

And I do have, I have a quote from the internet I want to read, and we're going to talk about that too.

20:27

But the thing that I take issue with the flag in the sanctuary is when we are looking at the chancel, and I don't call it a stage, I know a lot of people call it a stage.

20:42

Some people call it a platform.

20:44

I call it a chancel because that's the traditional name.

20:47

And it keeps me from saying the word stage.

20:49

I don't think stage is sinful to say, I just prefer not to say stage.

20:52

So when we look at that platform and we begin to think about the focal point, and I do think there are three focal points on the chancel.

21:06

You have the place where the word of God is held.

21:10

We call that the pulpit.

21:12

Some churches have moved to a table or to a music stand or whatever, but I do think that that place has a place of honor and for good reason.

21:20

In fact, the very idea of Protestantism is the upholding of the word of God.

21:26

The church is the pillar and support of the truth, and the truth is that word.

21:30

So having that place.

21:32

The second, of course, is the place where we serve communion, that is the bread and the cup.

21:37

And that tends to, in most churches, sit right in front of the pulpit.

21:40

Whether it's one level below on the steps, it's still right in front of the pulpit.

21:45

It's still center.

21:46

It's still in a place of prominence.

21:48

And depending on your church, us being Baptist, our baptistry sits behind the pulpit.

21:55

And therefore, these three things center our mind on God's word and God's sacraments.

22:04

The two things that picture us as believers, we have the baptism, which enters us into the covenant community, and the Lord's Supper, which is what we do as the covenant community.

22:18

And I don't mean to belabor this, but the point I'm making is, for years, there are videos of me online.

22:25

I mean, I preached for years with flags behind me.

22:27

One was American flag, one was a Christian flag.

22:29

And I always looked at those videos and would always sort of grimace, because I look like somebody who was a politician.

22:40

Because behind me were these two big flags that were between me and the baptistry, and they stood as almost like two pillars of, this is who we are.

22:53

And so, yes, I do think it could be offensive to the Iranian, but to me as a believer, I think we're placing it in the wrong place.

23:01

Yeah.

23:01

Yeah.

23:01

I completely agree that the symbolism is so important.

23:08

As brothers of the Reformed tradition, tradition isn't usually our main watchword, right? We're soul scripture people, but we still like traditions and we do things for a reason.

23:18

And there's always been this kind of symbolism of where things are placed and why they're placed there as a way of just communicating the gospel with all of our senses.

23:28

And I'm completely into that.

23:29

And I completely agree that there is a certain baggage that is carried by just the visual, because you or somebody made a choice.

23:41

This goes here, and this is why, and this is at that level, and this is why.

23:45

And when we look at scripture then as our guide, scripture actually tells us the opposite, right? Scripture actually says we're citizens of heaven.

23:54

Scripture actually says there's no barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free.

23:59

Scripture does not give us the picture that says combine these things.

24:05

Scripture says the opposite.

24:06

Now, I say that to say this, the Lord's day, right? We look at that as something that is set apart, special, a gift of grace.

24:16

It is something that we value and is valuable.

24:19

But the church should not just be about what do we do during that hour and 15 minutes.

24:25

We are about walking together through life, you know, all week long.

24:30

And as pastor elders, we're shepherding our flock all seven days of the week, which is why, to me, when I say, hey, let's keep the flag and the flag songs out of the Lord's day celebration, because that's set apart, but it is no less part of the life of the church if we then go have a banging barbecue where we have a flag, praise God for our blessings, tell stories about veterans in honor, you know what I mean? It is not less that it's put there, but it is rightly ordered, in my opinion.

25:03

Now, it's weird to say, because I'm an army chaplain, right? Right.

25:08

But I agree.

25:09

Right.

25:10

I have a theological perspective on chapel that is very much informed by my faith as a Reformed Baptist, a confessionally committed Reformed Baptist, that chapel is not church.

25:24

Chapels and churches are very different, right? A chapel is a stopgap measure.

25:29

If you're stuck in the hospital or you're traveling on a cruise ship or you're deployed to a foreign location where you are separated from your church, and specifically what I mean by that, separated from the elders under whom you are under their spiritual authority, where you can still, in a similar capacity without that sort of authority, receive the gift of grace and preaching of the gospel.

25:55

But a chapel is not a church.

25:57

And so the symbolism that is, you know, present in a chapel is just going to be by nature different because it's not under authority.

26:09

I, as a chaplain, I am given to the army by an organization similar to a missionary.

26:18

I am not a pastor with authority.

26:20

I cannot, with authority, determine.

26:23

I can preach from the pulpit, right? But if a brother comes to a chapel service with his mistress and not his wife, I don't actually have any ability to, you know, properly do church discipline to him.

26:36

And so that order matters, right? So the symbolism in the chapel service is going to be very different.

26:41

In a church setting, though, which is what we're talking about, we are shepherding our flock.

26:47

And so why is it less to say the Lord's day is set apart for this? This is an hour that we set apart for this celebration, but this barbecue or this parade or this special time of gathering, whatever, how is that less? And if you're fighting too hard for it to be put into that special set apart time, I, as your pastor, immediately say, we need to examine the heart on that.

27:14

And people don't like that at all.

27:16

No, nobody wants to be questioned on this issue either.

27:19

Nobody wants to have to defend anything.

27:21

They just want to, they just want to say it.

27:23

They just want to say, this is the way it is.

27:25

I tell you, and during that whole phase of my life, I mean, there was a town hall called and the elders, you know, were defending their choice because ultimately they went with the choice.

27:37

Well, I was an elder at the time.

27:38

We went with the choice to move the flags.

27:41

But there was a shouting match in the church.

27:45

And I mean, it was definitely thrown at me that y'all aren't patriots.

27:50

Y'all don't have any patriots.

27:51

And I'm thinking, man, I have, I have buried friends under that flag.

27:56

I have stood vigil as it is draped over coffins.

27:59

I've handed it to people I don't know.

28:01

I have delivered multiple, you know, funeral messages under that flag.

28:06

I have fought and bled for it.

28:08

Like, don't, don't tell me I'm not patriotic.

28:11

I'm just trying to get us to be rightly ordered.

28:14

And my goodness, why would you fight against that? Now, I don't want to be guilty of saying, if they're saying you're not patriotic, I don't want to be guilty of saying, well, you're not faithful to Christ.

28:27

But as a pastor, it is kind of my job, right, as a pastor elder to say, hey, brother, here's what the Bible says.

28:33

Let's check your heart on it.

28:35

The Bible does say our citizenship is in heaven.

28:38

How does that rate with what you're talking about? Man, people don't like that.

28:43

There's a great story of John Piper.

28:46

He went through this, you know, at his church, you know, and he is a much wiser man than I am, as far as pastoring and rightly dividing the word goes on most issues.

28:58

I'm more right on some issues, you know, and he came to a similar place where eventually you just have to say like, hey, right is right and wrong is wrong.

29:12

And under the authority of this church, how we rightly divide the word, this is what we've decided is going to happen for these reasons.

29:21

And I assume you love Jesus and you should assume I love Jesus.

29:24

And so under the authority of the word of God, here's how your elders are rightly deciding this decision.

29:30

And that might not be what your elders, that's why we're, that's why we're for Baptists and not Presbyterians.

29:35

If the church next to me and their elders faithfully came to a different decision where their flags go, okay, right.

29:42

As long as, as long as they're, they're Semper Reformanda, as long as they're always reforming right to, to what scripture calls us to, that decision is what's right for their flock because the idolatry issue is what's different.

29:54

If that idolatry issue is growing like yeast, then that thing just needs to be cut out.

29:59

You know what I mean? I'm rambling a lot.

30:01

I'm sorry.

30:02

No, no, you're, you're, you're right.

30:04

And the, and the part that, that, that you keep mentioning about the idolatry issue, and that's very true.

30:09

I think also you hit on something earlier.

30:13

I want to circle back.

30:16

And that is the idea that you, you didn't sing the songs, the church that you were at, they, they saw that you didn't sing the songs.

30:24

You said they had the bulletin.

30:25

They, they looked at that.

30:28

And, and, and did they, was there ever a time that they, that, that, that anyone got upset because you didn't sing how great thou art, or you didn't say, you know what I'm saying? It's like, this is a, this is a issue that seems to rile people up in there.

30:47

And it's like this, where you get upset tends to be where you place value.

30:54

And so when I think about like, when I, when, when, when in 2008, when our church went through the issues of Calvinism, I understand why people were upset.

31:06

I understand why the, the, the few people who really disagreed with me, because they really thought that Calvinism was dangerous.

31:14

They really thought because they had, they'd heard these things about it.

31:18

I get it.

31:18

And I did try to be gracious, even though there was some, some that made it hard because they, they came hard against me and accused me of things that weren't true, but ultimately I get that, I, you know, and, and so if somebody comes to me and says, Hey man, you know, the songs that we're singing, I'm concerned with the theology of those songs.

31:39

Okay.

31:39

All right.

31:39

Well, let's talk about what it is you have a concern about, or if the, even if, you know, even though I, you know, this whole Hillsong Bethel thing, there's a lot of argument and we can talk about that another time, but well, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did during the, during the, the, the RPW conversation.

31:55

So if that issue came up, at least I know the heart of the person they're concerned about.

31:59

They're concerned about biblical integrity and theology in these things.

32:03

And, and, and then we get to this issue.

32:06

If a person comes in, they're concerned about the flag for, I do want to give them the grace to say, okay, you think that by not having this flag here, that that is somehow diminishes the value of the men and women who fought diminishes the value of our freedom that we have to, to celebrate and worship freely.

32:29

All these things are good, but you understand that's not my purpose.

32:34

My purpose is not to diminish the value of these men or this, my, my, my purpose is so that we do not confuse what we are here to do.

32:45

Yeah.

32:45

We are here to worship.

32:46

Yes.

32:47

Men and women have died for our ability to worship, but we can celebrate them another time.

32:55

We're here to celebrate Christ.

32:56

And they, they probably would want us to focus on Christ, frankly.

33:00

Yeah.

33:01

Especially those who have died and went to be with Christ.

33:03

Oh yeah.

33:04

Amen to that.

33:05

No, I completely agree with you.

33:06

I think, you know, if, if it was sanctity of life Sunday, right.

33:10

And we didn't mention sanctity of life and someone came up to me and said, Hey, you didn't mention sanctity of life.

33:16

There's more cause for that because that, I think a clearly biblical stance, right.

33:21

This is clearly something that scripture endorses is that we defend the weak and execute justice, right.

33:28

Justice.

33:29

But if I come to 4th of July and I don't sing my country tis of thee, there's not a clear biblical warrant to do so.

33:37

It's, it's extraneous, you know, at best.

33:39

And like you said, you know, yes, people have fought and died, I'm alive, but you would think that my presence in that conversation would disarm them as I'm saying, Hey, member of that community.

33:51

Don't worry.

33:52

Checked in with them.

33:53

We're good.

33:54

Let's keep doing the gospel.

33:55

But it didn't, it didn't impact it whatsoever, which says to me, it isn't actually about that.

34:01

It's, it's about our addiction to traditions, right? We talked about that last time.

34:06

The tradition of the church is an addicting drug.

34:10

And we have really good ways of, of transforming how we view scripture in order to inform keeping our traditions the way we like them.

34:19

And if we could be more honest about that, I think we would probably have a better way, but it's, we, we want to justify our traditions scripturally rather than write scripturally derived our traditions, if that makes sense.

34:34

No, absolutely.

34:35

And, and I want to, I want to bring up what this guy wrote.

34:41

I shared it with you before the show.

34:42

And I think this is as good a time as any to bring this in because there are, there are guys out there who would say, pastors who would say, we need this flag.

34:55

We need patriotic songs.

34:57

We need a 4th of July service.

34:58

We need a service that centers on America.

35:01

And I've even seen churches, maybe you have seen them too, where they would invite like senators to speak or something like these big Baptist churches that have access to big names.

35:11

I mean, I mean, doggone, uh, what was his name? Mike Pence, you know, was the vice president.

35:16

I'm sure, I don't remember it specifically, but I'm sure there was a time where he has spoke in a church on a Sunday morning during the sermon time, where he spoke about America rather than really focusing on, on, on Christ.

35:29

But this is a guy, and I am going to mention his name for the sake of, not for the sake of defaming in any way, because I don't know this brother and I do count him as a, you know, he's a brother.

35:38

He, I believe he's a pastor, but his name is Kyle Cadell.

35:41

And Kyle, if you ever hear this, no brother, we're not, I'm not downing you in any way.

35:45

I actually want to interact with what you've said here.

35:48

In fact, I'm going to tag you in this on Twitter so that you can see that we're going to interact with this and I hopefully we do so in a respectful way.

35:55

But this is, this is what Kyle says.

35:57

He says, praying in advance for those young pastors who get inspired by the evangelical Twitter verse to make a statement by removing the flag from the sanctuary that's been posted there for 25 years and was donated by the late brother Herschel's family.

36:12

That's of course a made up name.

36:14

The Monday will be a long one.

36:16

Now his, what he's saying, he's, he's being tongue in cheek and he's, you know, being kind of funny, but what he's saying is that a lot of pastors that are young, they get on Twitter, they get on Facebook and they get inspired.

36:34

I've got to start, I've got to start getting rid of all the idolatry in the church.

36:39

I gotta, I gotta, I gotta make the move.

36:41

I gotta do what I can do.

36:43

And so what he's saying is, if you do this, if you take out brother Herschel's flag, just get ready for a really tough Monday.

36:53

Yeah, I get what he's saying, but how, how would you respond to, to brother Kyle? Would you say I get it? Maybe he should wait.

37:03

Or do you think this is more than a Twitter verse argument? So, I mean, he might as well be describing the church that I was talking about, right? This is exactly the thing.

37:13

So, so I always say, you know, there, there are very few instances where it's right or wrong.

37:20

It's usually two ditches on the side of the road.

37:23

So what he's talking about is, is the zeal overcoming our love.

37:29

And there is a way to do this with an incorrect heart.

37:34

Completely true, right? Like, I completely agree that that is possible to do.

37:39

However, where is the biblical warrant for saying, hey man, I know that this is an unhealthy, unbiblical, ungodly supported tradition that's enveloped our worship of God.

37:52

But, you know, sister Ethel Susanna really loves it.

37:56

So we probably can't upset her.

37:58

Jesus didn't do that.

37:58

The prophets didn't do that.

37:59

The apostles didn't do that.

38:01

Nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the Bible do we see it.

38:05

We do not.

38:06

Now, if you're going to enter into that, you need to do that with good brothers and sisters, elders, checking your heart, prayer, humility to say, sister Ethel Susanna, I love you.

38:19

But this is the wrong call.

38:21

And here are the biblical reasons why we're going to move forward on this.

38:24

We love you and we want to include you.

38:26

And God clearly shows in scripture that we can overcome the enmity that is being put between us right now because of this issue.

38:34

He absorbed it into Christ and we're unified already in this.

38:38

However, we as a leadership of this church, we're going to make this decision for this reason.

38:42

And here's the clear scriptural reason to do so.

38:44

So I disagree with him on this idea of timing.

38:48

And my very bad experience with this, having gone through it, would also disagree with the timing.

38:54

That is not what the Bible says.

38:56

It is not what Jesus says.

38:57

It is not what anyone in scripture does.

38:59

You tear down idols.

39:01

You clip them out, throw them out, burn them.

39:04

That is what you do.

39:05

Now, us young, angry Calvinists, right? Especially we do.

39:12

Yeah, well, you're not.

39:14

I'm not.

39:15

Oh, man.

39:20

Oh, that hurt.

39:22

You know, what do they call the young wrestlers reform, right? Yeah, we do tend to lead with our zeal.

39:29

We do tend to let ourselves slip into maybe a self-righteousness, right? We adopt our own Pharisee-ism.

39:36

Certainly that is all true.

39:37

Certainly we need to check ourselves.

39:39

Certainly we need to die, you know, to Christ so that we can, you know, let his love lead through these things.

39:47

And that is the balance.

39:48

That is the hardest balance for sure.

39:51

But I'll tell you, I was in a situation where I saw so much more of this guy's point of view in the leadership.

39:58

It did not make it better.

40:00

It prolonged it.

40:02

It allowed this cancer to metastasize and grow, which frankly probably led me to pick up more zeal than was necessary.

40:11

And so it was this unnecessary balance.

40:14

So what I'm saying is he's wrong on the timing.

40:17

He's right on the heart.

40:18

Do the thing quickly, swiftly, decisively, clearly, but do it with the heart of Christ.

40:24

Yeah, and I don't know, again, I don't know this brother won't give him all the grace in the world, but I would assume that maybe to him it's a secondary, tertiary, it's really not a big deal ultimately.

40:42

And maybe in his church it isn't.

40:43

Yeah, and that could very well be.

40:46

And that's where it comes down to the question of, okay, do we really think that it's wrong? I'm going to say it and I'll say it.

40:57

I think that it's not right, therefore it is wrong, to prominently display a flag on the same level as the word of God in the same place as the word of God.

41:08

That's where I have the issue.

41:10

I don't have a problem with having one in the lobby.

41:11

We have ours in the lobby.

41:13

I don't have a problem with having one outside, you know, next to the flagpole, next to the sign or whatever.

41:18

I don't have a problem with that at all.

41:20

But where the word of God is proclaimed is meant to be for the word of God.

41:25

And I know the argument could, well, there's drums up there, there's pianos up there, but those are necessary tools in a church that does have music.

41:37

And don't inherently have symbological value.

41:40

A flag stands for something.

41:42

Drums don't stand for a thing.

41:45

That same argument was used for us.

41:47

Well, you care a lot about the drums.

41:49

And so what if it's clearly not the same? You're just grasping at straws.

41:54

Yeah, absolutely.

41:56

But I could see, it's interesting that that did happen.

41:59

Because like I said, I could hear somebody making that argument, even though nobody's made that argument with me.

42:03

Because when I say there's the three things and the focus, and they say, well, there's other things up there.

42:07

Yes, they are.

42:08

But nothing quite as symbolic as what you just said.

42:12

And obviously there's more to this conversation than just the flag, but the flag is a big part of it.

42:19

And I want to tell a quick anecdote that I think I've told you before, but I may not have ever, but obviously I haven't shared it on the show.

42:27

When this became something that I recognized was a problem, was not at our church.

42:34

And I don't want to be, oh, our church is great and doesn't have any problems.

42:40

No, we got problems.

42:41

But this wasn't something I thought was a problem.

42:44

And even when we did move the flags, the people that had issue were very gracious about it.

42:49

We didn't have any town halls or anything like you did.

42:52

So I'm sad that you had to go through that.

42:54

I had a few folks who disagreed.

42:55

They were gracious to me in their disagreement.

42:58

We talked, we had lunch, we shared our heart on it.

43:04

Nobody left, nobody created an issue.

43:06

They loved us in spite of that difference of opinion.

43:10

And hopefully by now it's all water under the bridge.

43:13

Hopefully it's all good.

43:15

That's an appropriate Christian response, by the way, disagreeing in church.

43:18

We love each other in spite of that disagreement.

43:21

You bore each other's burdens as we're commanded to do by scripture.

43:25

But what really was maybe the moment of truth for me, because it had bothered me for years.

43:37

Again, we've been on YouTube since YouTube started.

43:39

I've got YouTube videos of me back when I was a lot younger looking and I've had those flags behind me for years.

43:48

They were just there and it always bothered me, but I never wanted to fight that battle.

43:54

I always felt like there were other things I needed to deal with before that.

43:58

Not that it wasn't important, not that it didn't matter, but there were other fish to fry, if you will.

44:04

So where it became the issue for me was actually when I visited another church.

44:09

I'm not going to name the church, but it is a church local to ours.

44:15

And we visited there, my wife and I were in the sanctuary.

44:19

And now anybody who's been to this church will know the church I'm describing, but I'm not going to use the name.

44:25

But when you walked into the sanctuary, there were two banners next to the chancel, the choir loft.

44:33

And then you had these two banners.

44:35

The banners were the size of blankets.

44:38

I mean, they were huge banners.

44:40

They weren't like a three by five.

44:41

They were more like a six by nine queen size comforter.

44:46

And they looked like they had been hand stitched.

44:49

Both of them were patriotic in nature.

44:53

And you might think, well, it was just like Fourth of July.

44:55

No, this was not near Fourth of July.

44:57

This was not Memorial Day.

44:58

This was just their normal banners.

45:01

One was like faith, freedom, and country.

45:04

Like that was the three words.

45:05

And the other one was like had a POW flag or something.

45:08

It was like all this stuff.

45:10

And I saw those and I was like, wow, this church is really focused on patriotism.

45:16

And then I turned around, because this is the part.

45:19

I walked into the sanctuary, walked down the aisle, looked up at these two banners.

45:23

And there was, of course, the flags on the chancel.

45:26

There were these two big banners.

45:27

There were a few other patriotic banners around.

45:30

But I turned around, and Jake, you're not going to believe it.

45:34

In the back of the church, there must have been eight to 10 American flags on poles.

45:43

And I said, oh, I got to know what's going on here.

45:45

So I walked back, look at the bottom, and it had a plate.

45:50

And it said, each one of these flags have flown over a different state capital.

45:55

And then he looked at the, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

45:58

It was like Washington, Minnesota, Florida, like different states was on these different flags.

46:07

And I was like, okay, so these folks are getting after it.

46:12

I mean, not only do they have the faith, family, freedom thing at the front, but they've got multiple flags.

46:19

Then I found the curio cabinet.

46:22

This is the one that if anybody's been to this church, they're going to know exactly which one I'm talking about.

46:25

You know, curio cabinet is like a hutch.

46:28

There was a hutch, and I took pictures of this.

46:33

I sent them to my elders because I was so amazed.

46:37

In the hutch were all sorts of items that were apparently donated that were all patriotic in nature.

46:47

There was like a bust of George Washington, like a little statuesque bust.

46:52

There was a folded American flag.

46:54

There were several letters from senators.

46:58

It was all, honestly, you talk about idolatry.

47:03

I can't use another word to describe.

47:07

It smelled like red, white, and blue.

47:10

I mean, we make fun of these edge cases, but they're real.

47:14

Yeah, this was real.

47:15

This was the most incredible expression of someone would say, this is beautiful.

47:22

It was not beautiful.

47:23

Yeah, it was ugly.

47:25

Yeah, give it.

47:26

I mean, I hope with all of my heart that America continues down this path of canceling Roe versus Wade, and it continues to honor God.

47:36

But let's say it doesn't.

47:37

And in 10 years, we are fully under God's wrath.

47:40

What do you do with that stuff then? Right.

47:42

Like, what do you do when God says that country is now an enemy to me? What do you do? And like this slippery slope is real.

47:49

Who was that pastor who was really popular during the Trump era? The first Baptist, Dallas, Jeffress, something like that.

47:58

Take a look at his patriotic service sometime.

48:01

Take a look at the intertwining, the intermingling of these concepts.

48:06

And just put on a very scriptural eye, and it should disgust you.

48:12

There was something that it was like a couple of generations after Constantine that was very popular is they would walk around with people who represented the government would walk around with banners that would have the current emperor's face and Jesus's face on the same banner.

48:27

And they would walk along with these.

48:29

Right.

48:29

There's a reason that intermingling was to say, oh, look, these are the same.

48:34

They're intermingled.

48:35

Right.

48:35

And that goes somewhere.

48:38

There is a slippery slope for that.

48:40

That's scary.

48:41

And for me, it comes out of this.

48:42

Right.

48:42

Scripture, the picture of the New Testament Christian is we are sojourners in the land.

48:50

Our citizenship is in heaven.

48:53

There's this section from Hebrews 11 that really matters to me.

48:56

Right.

48:57

Hebrews 11 10.

49:00

Right.

49:01

Well, nine, by faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

49:17

Right.

49:17

And if we are dead, it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

49:22

If we are dead, our citizenship here really ultimately ontologically is dead.

49:28

And what lives now is Christ and his purpose.

49:32

Now, we thank God that we live in a place where we are more free than our Iranian and our North Korean and our Syrian brothers are to do what we do.

49:40

But in a sense, is not the church more effective and pure in and under that persecution than it currently is under this freedom? No, yeah, absolutely.

49:52

We should evaluate that.

49:54

Has this Americanization of the church actually done good things for the message of the gospel? Man, I'm not really here to make that call, but I would say our gospel is in and of itself at a country level, less pure than the Christians who are struggling in Syria.

50:12

Absolutely.

50:12

Are you familiar with the American Gospel documentary? Yeah, absolutely.

50:18

That's a good example of listeners who haven't seen that.

50:24

We don't have any ties to that movie or anything like that, neither one of us do, but we would both probably recommend— A thousand percent.

50:30

—that people would go and watch that because what it does show is it shows how Americanized the gospel in many places it has become, and that's not a good thing.

50:42

To Americanize the gospel is often to rob it of its power and its truth.

50:47

There is no gospel plus.

50:48

There's no gospel plus.

50:51

And I wonder if anybody's taken that passage you just read from Hebrews about the city made without hands, and I wonder if there's ever been a pastor, and there has to have been because there's so many eisegites out there, guys who are just willing to read anything and anything.

51:03

I wonder how many times that passage has been used to say, this is talking about America.

51:08

America is the city on a hill.

51:11

Absolutely right.

51:12

You are a thousand percent right, and all of that disgusts me.

51:16

What's the 2 Chronicles 7, 14 or whatever it is, right? If my people will humble themselves.

51:22

But first of all, first of all, ego Jesus, he's definitely not talking about America in the 21st century, right? And second of all, we're not going to do that.

51:35

I like it.

51:37

You're getting very animated.

51:38

Those who were just listening to the podcast, you were going straight like, it's not, sorry.

51:46

I'm slowly starting to flirt with being a post mill.

51:50

So maybe America will do that, right? But that's not what that verse is even talking about.

51:57

It just isn't.

51:58

If my people who are called by my name, which America is not, right? And even if you come to say, well, America is a Christian nation.

52:06

One, the pilgrims were mostly trying to go to a place where they could freely worship Christ.

52:13

The pilgrims were.

52:15

Now, to the extent that the founding fathers were Christian and how much Christianity they put into the American system of government, I find most of that to be fairly mythological.

52:25

So when someone says we are a Christian nation, I say yes to Plymouth Rock, probably no to the constitution to as much a degree as you think.

52:35

And nonetheless, right? That's an idealized version.

52:40

What does America today look like? Is America today honoring God? We just finished Pride Month in June.

52:48

We just had 50 years under Roe versus Wade.

52:53

We are constantly making decisions abroad that are not honoring God, right? This is a secular nation.

53:01

This is not a Christian nation.

53:03

So like I get that there's like this like Avalon vision that we want to dream up or could turn into this thing.

53:11

And God is certainly capable of nationwide revival.

53:15

But that is not what I'm seeing today.

53:18

And my instructions are to live as a sojourner, as an alien.

53:23

That's my job, right? Well, I just preached on this a couple of weeks ago.

53:28

I was preaching on how Joseph was raised up as the, I've been in Genesis now for three years, so I'm getting close to the end.

53:35

And I was preaching on where Joseph was raised up as second to Pharaoh.

53:39

And all of these things are, you know, he's given the power.

53:44

He's given the privilege.

53:45

He's given all these things as second to Pharaoh.

53:47

And he has two sons.

53:48

He has Ephraim and Manasseh.

53:50

And he names the one child, it's leaving my memory now which one means what, but one of them talks about forgetting.

54:00

I think that's Manasseh's forgetting the sins that his brother committed against him.

54:04

But the other one is about the blessing that he has in the place of his persecution.

54:12

And that's how he saw Egypt.

54:15

He saw Egypt, even though he is now second in command, even though he's going to live the rest of his days a rich man, he is going to be the man making all the decisions.

54:26

But when he was dying in chapter 50, which I'll get to in a couple of weeks, he said, you don't bury me here.

54:32

This is not my home.

54:33

Now, obviously he's looking at Canaan as a promised land, but Canaan is typological of the fact that even Canaan, even the earthly promised land is not our home.

54:45

We are sojourners.

54:47

We are looking forward to the city that has foundations.

54:50

And I think that matters a lot.

54:51

So to go back to this guy's tweet, man, that is soul of fields, right? That is church by soul of fields all the way.

55:01

And I don't mean to misrepresent you, my friend, if you are listening.

55:05

I understand that there is a caution to how we approach people.

55:10

And I have failed at that more than I've succeeded.

55:12

Trust me, I was not a very good pastor.

55:15

Hopefully I'm a better chaplain.

55:17

But to be what I'm hearing is soul of fields.

55:20

And I don't see Christ doing it that way when it comes to calling out sin and idolatry.

55:25

I don't see the prophets doing it.

55:27

I don't see the apostles doing it.

55:28

So like, yes, let's check our hearts.

55:31

Yes, let's do it with humility.

55:32

Yes, let's do it under the authority of good elders.

55:34

But it still must be done in the way that it needs to be done at your church.

55:39

If your flag, it sounds like there wasn't an idolatry issue with the flags at your church.

55:43

You just made an aesthetic choice for a symbological reason that mattered.

55:47

Right? Yeah.

55:48

And what happened with ours, I mean, to make a long story short, we were remodeling the sanctuary anyway.

55:55

Yeah, right.

55:55

It was part of a decision that the elders made in the remodeling of the new chancel was going to be shorter, wider, because I walk around a lot.

56:07

There's going to be more room up on the chancel.

56:10

I'm a ping pong pastor.

56:12

If you watch me, it's ping pong.

56:14

I'm just that guy.

56:15

I go back and forth.

56:17

They're talking about building a new pulpit that encloses me.

56:20

I'm going to be a caged tiger if I have to be in that pulpit that goes around me.

56:24

Push up on one of those Whitefield platforms.

56:26

Yeah, yeah.

56:27

But when we moved them out to do all the changes, the elders discussed whether or not we were going to move them back in.

56:36

And that's when we said, you know what? This is the time to not do that, to not move them back in.

56:42

And so, yeah, like I said, there was a few conversations.

56:45

But other than some disagreement, lovingly, it was, yeah.

56:49

So our reasoning was we felt like they did not need to be where the Word of God was being.

56:55

Yeah, but at my church, it was actually the same kind of timing.

57:00

There was a remodel.

57:01

It wasn't really Josiah tearing down the Asherah poles.

57:06

It wasn't treated that way at all.

57:08

It was a lot more casual.

57:10

But the response was very unchristian anger and splitting.

57:17

And it was just so hard for me to just hold up a mirror to that and say, is this what Scripture calls you to do? Is this the hill that Scripture? And they were saying to me, is this the hill you want to die in? I'm like, well, yeah, scriptural fidelity.

57:32

Yeah, sure.

57:32

Absolutely.

57:33

Yeah, super comfortable with that.

57:35

Yeah.

57:36

You know, but we don't want to be told about our idols.

57:40

And I'm sure if I'm not coming off as gracious and humble, trust me, I am very humbled by that experience.

57:46

It was painful.

57:47

I didn't do everything right.

57:48

But I didn't come away with any sort of like, you know, maybe I shouldn't have done it or maybe I should have done it slower.

57:54

In fact, I think I should have done it faster, maybe just with some more clarity, right? Like, hey, we're doing this.

58:02

This is why we love you.

58:03

But here's what Scripture says.

58:05

And we, as the elders, are called to interpret Scripture and then put it into our daily life as the church.

58:11

And then if you want to go have six days of patriotic barbecues outside of the Lord's supper, there is nothing wrong with that.

58:19

There's nothing wrong with that.

58:19

Yeah.

58:20

Have a blast.

58:21

I mean, tomorrow, my neighbors are right now, as you can hear.

58:25

Yes.

58:25

Yeah.

58:26

All my neighbors are having fun.

58:27

And, you know, we're going to a friend's house.

58:29

We're going to have a barbecue.

58:30

We're going to enjoy the national day off, the celebration, you know, it's going to be great.

58:37

But I can say this, this morning in worship, we did acknowledge that it was the 4th of July weekend.

58:45

I even put in the bulletin.

58:46

We hope everyone has a safe and healthy and happy 4th of July.

58:49

And one of our deacons during the time of—we have communion every Sunday, and one of our deacons is tasked with giving a short little Scripture reading prior to the reading, or prior to the elder fencing the table.

59:07

We do a little short word of fence for the table.

59:10

So the deacons come up, one of them will say something, and then the elders will speak, and then we'll pass out the elements.

59:16

Well, the one who chose to speak, he brought up the fact that tomorrow is Independence Day, and we are grateful for what has happened.

59:27

And when we gather around this table, though, we must be reminded of the most important thing that we have, and that is Christ, that whatever freedoms we are given in this life are not to be compared with the freedom that we have from sin because of Christ.

59:43

And so I thought that was great.

59:44

It was a great juxtaposition, still mentioning the holiday, but at the same time, this is what's more important is what we're doing right now, and there's a distinction.

59:53

So I don't think that we are saying—and I think you would agree with this—I don't think either one of us is saying, we can't mention these things, it can't be brought up, we can't wish people a happy 4th of July, none of that.

01:00:02

Yeah.

01:00:03

No, and I think you can even scripturally frame these things well.

01:00:07

You know, I think one year I did say like, hey, Passover is in and of itself a form of Independence Day, but its focus is on God's agency in the world, what He is accomplishing through covenant with His people.

01:00:22

We have been given a freedom, so let's make sure that we're using it as God's agents in the world.

01:00:28

Now, let's pray for our country, and let's pray for our leaders as we're commanded to do, even the ones we don't currently like, you know.

01:00:36

It's our job to frame the events of the world so that our flock, right, sees them through a scriptural worldview.

01:00:45

That's our job.

01:00:47

So I don't think it's wise to ignore it either and just pretend, oh, there's something happening this weekend.

01:00:55

I'll do that with the Super Bowl, but I'm not going to do that with Independence Day, you know, because our people are experiencing that.

01:01:01

So as pastor elders, we need to frame that, and there's a way to do it that's not pandering.

01:01:07

There's a way to do it that's not commingling, right, like Christ first.

01:01:12

Can we just all agree? Christ first, Christ alone.

01:01:15

Let's make that our anthem and then tell our people, hey, and here's how we see Independence Day.

01:01:22

Here's how we should view it.

01:01:24

Here's what we should do with it.

01:01:25

We should enjoy some barbecue.

01:01:27

We should see some cool fireworks.

01:01:28

We should pray for our president right now.

01:01:32

But anything that another countryman from another country could come in and say, are those people worshiping that flag? If someone even could possibly think that, you might want to re-examine it, right? Like you might want to have a scriptural critical view of that event if that's possible.

01:01:52

And you know what? Fine, do the same thing about my drums.

01:01:54

If someone thinks I'm worshiping the drums, then yes, let's examine it by scripture.

01:01:58

Yes, I am a soul scripture Christian.

01:02:02

Examine all of the things I'm doing by scripture.

01:02:05

Yes, I want that.

01:02:07

But generally, the folks on the pro-patriotism side, that isn't their cry.

01:02:12

That isn't what they're doing.

01:02:13

That's a soul feels pro-tradition stance, generally, and well-meaning, but nonetheless, the heart of their argument is not scripture, generally.

01:02:22

Yeah.

01:02:24

So in that regard, and I do, I agree with you, and I want to shift for just a second as we begin to start making our way to the end of the program.

01:02:34

We've been doing this almost an hour, and I want to, first of all, thank you for giving your time today.

01:02:38

I know this is an important topic, but it's also your family's in town.

01:02:44

You've been gracious to give us this hour, and we do appreciate it.

01:02:49

So let's for a minute, because we've talked about music.

01:02:53

We've talked about the flag placement.

01:02:57

I think there's more that we could discuss, but I want to sort of address the concept of the sermon, because you and I may see this differently, and that's fine.

01:03:11

This is not something that would divide us as brothers, of course, but I am an expositional preacher.

01:03:19

Therefore, my typical program is to preach through books of the Bible, even though there are times when I will do a series from what I would say is a systematic, or others might call it topical, but I tend to say subject-based or systematic teaching through the Trinity or something like that.

01:03:38

A lot of churches make every holiday a special message, and to me, if you do that, not only with the Fourth of July, but you do— Mother's Day.

01:03:52

Yeah, I call it the Hallmark Liturgy, right? So every time somebody gives a card to somebody, we have a special message.

01:04:00

I do not do this.

01:04:02

Yeah, even when you were preaching— Even when I was preaching regularly.

01:04:06

I spent last year in Korea, and I preached every week.

01:04:10

I was in charge of my own chapel, and I preached every week.

01:04:13

Absolutely would not impact my preaching whatsoever.

01:04:16

Would not even deviate in the slightest.

01:04:19

I don't care what the holiday was.

01:04:20

Other than liturgical holidays like Christmas and Easter, I might preach something that might lend me toward those, but those are Christ-centered holidays.

01:04:30

Not even close.

01:04:31

And here's why.

01:04:32

Because I was a worship guy first, right, and not a senior pastor first or whatever, I think about all of the elements of the Lord's Day, which includes some transition times, nice prayers, what's going on in the lobby.

01:04:47

So I can acknowledge Mother's Day as part of my pastoral prayer, where I will say, hey, as the nation is celebrating Mother's Day, I want to take a minute to pray for mothers.

01:04:58

I want to take a minute to pray for people who want to be mothers who can't.

01:05:00

I want to pray for— Right? Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

01:05:04

But never the sermon.

01:05:05

That's just me.

01:05:07

And I'm not— Well, I am.

01:05:08

I do judge people that do that.

01:05:09

I do.

01:05:09

I judge people that do that.

01:05:11

It's like, I don't— Well, yeah, I do.

01:05:13

No, I totally— Maybe that's wrong.

01:05:15

Maybe it's not.

01:05:15

No, I think it's great.

01:05:16

Yeah, it's funny.

01:05:17

Great, great.

01:05:17

But like, because I have rarely seen it done well.

01:05:23

I've rarely seen it done to a place that actually honors scripture.

01:05:28

So like, so— There's only so many ways you can really mess up Proverbs 31.

01:05:34

Right, right.

01:05:34

So I was visiting a church.

01:05:36

I was visiting a new church on Father's Day, what, two weeks ago or whatever.

01:05:40

And they preach from Acts, I think, 15, where Paul and Barnabas split up because they're fighting over John Mark.

01:05:50

And that's a Father's Day sermon.

01:05:52

Why? Why? Tell me why.

01:05:54

Well, because Barnabas stuck with John Mark and split with Paul.

01:05:59

And then, I don't remember where it is, but later Paul says, hey, John Mark's with me.

01:06:04

He's doing great.

01:06:06

Yeah, yeah, he's profitable to me.

01:06:08

Yeah.

01:06:08

Yeah, right.

01:06:09

And so the sermon was, Barnabas was a father in that moment.

01:06:13

And he stuck with John Mark and fathers need to show up and they need to take care of and whatever.

01:06:19

And look, this man who Paul, you know, who's high and mighty, he, you know, he wrote him off.

01:06:25

But then look what happened because Barnabas chose his fit and was like, bro.

01:06:29

Bro, where's the gospel? Where's Christ? Where's authorial intent? Where's any hint of exegesis? But that's where those things go.

01:06:36

That's where those things go.

01:06:37

So like, here's what it comes down to, right? Good exegesis, just valuable exegesis, right? Would tell you 2,000 years ago when Luke wrote Acts, he was not thinking that America would have a holiday called Father's Day.

01:06:53

And thus, when I wrote Acts 15, my authorial intent and the Holy Spirit's authorial intent through me was not so that we could talk about Barnabas being a good standing father, right? So you're already abusing the text.

01:07:06

Even if you say you take a good passage like Hannah praying to have a child and you equate that to Mother's Day, it's still ego Jesus to make that about Mother's Day.

01:07:18

It just is.

01:07:19

Okay.

01:07:21

Clarify what ego Jesus means.

01:07:23

Ego Jesus.

01:07:24

It's, you know, there's exegesis reading into the text.

01:07:26

Oh, ego Jesus.

01:07:27

Oh, I'm hearing it wrong.

01:07:29

I'm hearing ego Jesus.

01:07:30

No, ego Jesus.

01:07:31

It's writing me into the text.

01:07:33

Okay.

01:07:33

I've heard that as narcissist.

01:07:34

Okay.

01:07:37

Which is the same idea.

01:07:38

But when you said ego Jesus, I'm like, what is ego? No, no, no, no.

01:07:42

I, it's new.

01:07:44

Now I have a non-Southern accent.

01:07:46

I've added a word to my lexicon.

01:07:49

But you know what I mean? Like, that's why we as in the reformed tradition do tend to have a close to a lectio continua.

01:07:56

I have not a full lectio continua, but I'm the same as you.

01:07:59

I'll either do a big book or I'll commit to a big section.

01:08:03

You know, we're going to do, you know, Daniel two through seven, because that's kind of a standalone section, right? Like I'll do that.

01:08:11

But I don't, I don't preach topically, especially I don't preach holiday topically.

01:08:15

I just don't do it.

01:08:17

Yeah.

01:08:17

Yeah.

01:08:18

And, and, and I, I'm not going to say I've never done it.

01:08:21

I mean, I've been in the same church for 16 years and I've done a lot of things that I probably wouldn't do now that I have done in the past.

01:08:28

And I did, I can say this, and this may be to a young pastor out there, maybe somebody who's just starting out.

01:08:34

When I started, I really felt like that's where I got the term Hallmark liturgy.

01:08:38

I felt like I was expected.

01:08:41

You were every time you were expected.

01:08:43

Yeah.

01:08:44

And so every time it was father's day, mother's day, you know, and you even mentioned Christmas and Easter.

01:08:49

I, I, I, of course I, we celebrate Christmas Easter.

01:08:52

We do those things.

01:08:53

And I normally do have some type of a message on the incarnation and the resurrection.

01:08:57

That's the two biblical concepts that are celebrated then.

01:09:01

Um, but, uh, but yeah, it, it, it became where I couldn't teach through something without having to stop throughout the series.

01:09:11

You know, if I'm doing six weeks in, you know, like I did a, I did a study of the sermon.

01:09:16

You, you talk about section of the book.

01:09:17

I did the Sermon on the Mount.

01:09:18

Well, that took, that took a while.

01:09:19

It's three chapters, but there's so much meat in it.

01:09:21

Right.

01:09:21

It took me a year to get through the Sermon on the Mount.

01:09:24

Well, in the, in that year, you got to stop at fathers.

01:09:28

They got to stop at fathers.

01:09:29

They got to stop all this.

01:09:29

And when I stopped doing that, and it was, you know, it was, it was a while after I began, but when I stopped really making that my plan and saying, I ain't going to do it.

01:09:42

I'm just going to, if I'm preaching through John, I'm going to keep preaching through John and wherever I land.

01:09:46

It's amazing.

01:09:48

Um, uh, how one oftentimes, even though the subject wasn't there, something would, would relate in some way that I could point.

01:09:58

That's okay.

01:09:59

Yeah.

01:10:00

Go ahead.

01:10:01

You know, I was going to say that sometimes the spirit just kind of does give us a little idea to go, Oh, let me, I'll just tie that in real quick.

01:10:08

You know, I can high five moms real quick in this section.

01:10:11

Yeah.

01:10:12

Yeah.

01:10:12

But for the most part, um, I, I, I would say this.

01:10:16

And again, I I'm, I'm certainly not just, you know, saying all our churches for our church is not perfect at all.

01:10:21

But one of the good things was I, I, people would say, there was a few people who would I really wish you'd have done a father's day message.

01:10:28

I really wish you'd done a special mother's day.

01:10:29

But for the most part, people were like, you know what? I think it's one.

01:10:32

It was, it's bold that you didn't really not that bold.

01:10:36

It's just right.

01:10:37

But I appreciated at least people recognizing that there was a purpose, you know, when, when, when, when Calvin was kicked out of Geneva for three years and he came back, he picked up at the same verse he left off on because he, because he believed in the consistent exposition of the text.

01:10:56

And, um, you know, that, that's a, that's something that if, if I, if I'm sure you would agree with this, if we can impart to any young pastor who may be listening to this is that there is value in, in the, in the consistent exegesis of a, of a long section of text.

01:11:11

It doesn't have to be a whole book.

01:11:12

If you're starting out, start out with a short book or start out with a section of a book, you know, do, do John chapters one to three, or just John chapter one, you know, that, I mean, you can, you can, you can do a lot with John chapter one.

01:11:24

Get really bold and do Jude.

01:11:25

It's one page.

01:11:26

You'll be all right.

01:11:27

Yeah.

01:11:28

But you know, you said you felt like you were expected.

01:11:31

You were, you were expected, right? Because people do come with these built-in expectations from their church or the grand mammy's church or whatever.

01:11:40

And, and the brother's tweet that you read is true.

01:11:43

You will have a long Monday.

01:11:45

And, and let me tell you pastors, you're going to have long Mondays, no matter what you do, you're going to have long Mondays.

01:11:50

You're going to make people mad all the time.

01:11:53

Jesus made a lot of people mad.

01:11:55

So whatever you do, don't do it to avoid the long Monday, do it to be faithful to what God's word has to say.

01:12:03

And then with humility, prepare yourself for your long Monday.

01:12:06

Cause it's coming.

01:12:07

It's just coming.

01:12:08

So like, let's be faithful to scripture.

01:12:10

That's, that's what makes us reform.

01:12:13

That's why we're having a conversation with Calvinist.

01:12:15

That's our whole thing.

01:12:17

And that should be, that should be universal, whether you're reformed or not.

01:12:22

Right.

01:12:23

I mean, it's not, but I'm saying we should be able to look at any man who says he's been called of God to preach the word of God and say to that man, if you've been called to preach the word of God, if you have been called to do this, you are not in a popularity contest.

01:12:43

You are in a job that inherently will have people that dislike you.

01:12:48

I have, I have mail in my desk from people that over the years have written praying for my demise, praying for my departure, praying for, you know, for my, that, that I would, that I would be defrocked, that I would be removed.

01:13:09

One handwritten message very early on, because I didn't believe we had a, we had, when I became a pastor of the church I'm in, we had a female pastor or female elder.

01:13:19

I was opposed to that.

01:13:22

But at the time I received the position as I did, because I, I believed this where God wanted me by God's grace.

01:13:30

He moved that lady out.

01:13:32

She, she resigned as a, as a female elder.

01:13:34

And I was thankful that God did that.

01:13:36

And she said, I'm doing this because I know you don't want me to do this.

01:13:39

She didn't do it.

01:13:40

She, she, she didn't do it necessarily because she agreed, but she knew that her position was an offense to me.

01:13:46

And I believe, yeah, so she did that.

01:13:49

But another person in the church took great offense to it, another woman, and wrote a message to me that to this day was just, was, was hateful, hateful, a handwritten message of how I had struck a, a, a saint of God and how I was going to be judged by God for striking this woman.

01:14:10

Of course, I didn't strike her in any way physically or emotionally, but that was what one of the things that I, you know, over the years have had to remember is there are going to be tough days.

01:14:24

There are going to be days where you get things in the mail.

01:14:26

You're, you're in good company brother, because none of the prophets were received.

01:14:31

The disciples were run out of towns and Jesus was killed for being very Christ-like.

01:14:36

So, you know, like we have to make sure Scripture fidelity and our hearts are in check, right? Like, but beyond that, you are not going to avoid these things.

01:14:47

And we've shifted from the topic of patriotism, but this is so important, especially if there are any young pastors who are listening.

01:14:54

People-pleasing is not the scriptural model for pastoral leadership.

01:14:58

It is not, right? Christ preached to 5,000 plus and ended up with, with 11 and Judas.

01:15:06

And he looked at them and said, are you going to leave too? Yeah.

01:15:09

Yeah.

01:15:10

And then, and then, and then just a little while later, Peter preaches, Hey, by the way, all of you killed Jesus.

01:15:16

You need to repent.

01:15:17

And the church exploded.

01:15:19

So be faithful to Scripture.

01:15:22

Be prepared to suffer, right? Like all of the prophets be prepared.

01:15:27

We are no better than our master who suffered.

01:15:29

Be prepared for that.

01:15:31

Preach anyway, like, like none of the disciples escaped, you know what I mean? Except maybe John, I guess.

01:15:39

I don't know.

01:15:40

None of the disciples.

01:15:41

I mean, he still had a tough life.

01:15:42

He just lived a long, long, tough life.

01:15:45

Yeah.

01:15:45

I guess being boiled in oil, right? So, so like, this does come back to our brother's tweet here.

01:15:52

Um, do not seek to be offensive, but my goodness is the gospel, not offensive to the flesh and praise God that it is our flesh is going to recoil against the gospel and the good order and discipline of what God has for our lives.

01:16:08

Our flesh does not like being pruned, right? If you are the vine and you worked really hard on that nice little leaf, and then the vine dresser comes along and cuts it off.

01:16:16

Yeah.

01:16:17

It doesn't feel good, but praise God for it.

01:16:20

And as we're moving people, people from spiritual milk to spiritual meat, which is what our job is as pastor elders, they're not gonna like it.

01:16:29

Always they're not.

01:16:30

And we're not.

01:16:31

And so right now there's so much focus on, well, you pastor, you know, your heart or you're being mean, or you have too much zeal.

01:16:38

Yes, that's true.

01:16:39

That possibly is true.

01:16:41

And I need to be in, in check with my elders.

01:16:43

However, also at the same time, let's look at this idol and we need to tear it down.

01:16:49

Amen.

01:16:50

Amen.

01:16:50

Well, I think that's a good place for us to draw to a close.

01:16:54

And hopefully this will be a blessing, not only to the young ministers out there, but also to everybody who gets a chance to hear this.

01:17:02

And again, we hope everybody enjoys the 4th of July.

01:17:05

We hope everyone is able to celebrate their patriotic zeal in whatever way they want to.

01:17:12

But we would say when it comes to what happens in the church, we should be zealous for, for, and, and, and, and honestly, we should be, we should be absolutely concerned in our soul for what happens for that hour, two hours, whatever it is on Sunday morning, because that's the time.

01:17:32

And that's the place where we have come together, not for any other reason, but then to worship the triune God and to celebrate Him.

01:17:41

So thank you, Jake, for, for being with me today.

01:17:44

And I appreciate you as always.

01:17:46

Thanks for having me.

01:17:47

Yes, sir.

01:17:48

All right.

01:17:49

I want to close the show out by simply saying thank you for listening as always.

01:17:54

And I do have to make, I have to make one mention.

01:17:56

If you're watching this and you're wondering why I did a show on the 4th of July dressed as Batman, I'm not really dressed as Batman, but I have my Batman shirt, my Batman stuff in the background.

01:18:04

I moved offices in my home and I now have a new home.

01:18:08

This is actually my room that I had decorated with some of my, some of my Superman and Batman gear, and I'm a, I'm a, I'm a nerd.

01:18:14

So if you're wondering about this, I'm not making a statement and I certainly hope I don't get hit by any DC, uh, uh, any, anybody from DC who tells me I can't post this podcast because I'll be, uh, uh, breaking some advertising rules or something by having, uh, having that up there.

01:18:29

So anyway, just wanted to mention that for anybody who's wondering what in the world, I don't have a flag t-shirt.

01:18:34

I would have worn it if I did, but I am thankful for Jake wearing his five point Calvinism shirt because that is the coolest shirt in the world.

01:18:41

And I'm glad, glad you got to do that.

01:18:43

Well, thank you again, everyone for listening.

01:18:45

Please take an opportunity to like, and subscribe.

01:18:47

If you have a question that you'd like for me to deal with on a future episode, or if you'd like me to bring Jake back on and for us to deal with something, please send me that at Calvinist podcast at gmail.com.

01:18:57

Also, we have a new YouTube page, which is conversations with a Calvinist just dedicated to the podcast.

01:19:03

You can go, please go and like, and subscribe that also.

01:19:06

Also, we have our own website.

01:19:10

Calvinistpodcast.com has all of our podcasts available.

01:19:15

Since we started the program, we have almost a hundred episodes dealing with a variety of topics and you can find them all in video and audio format at Calvinistpodcast.com.

01:19:26

So I want to thank you again for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.

01:19:29

My name is Keith Foskey.

01:19:31

And as always, I've been your Calvinist.

01:19:33

May God bless you.