Dan Borvan Interview (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

00:08

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

00:16

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

00:24

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

00:30

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

00:37

Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

00:44

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. And as you know, we have a little slogan here, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

00:51

My real goal is to just get you to think biblically. What does the Bible say about this issue or that issue?

00:58

In the old days, I had the name No Compromise Radio because I was all about, �I don�t want to compromise.�

01:04

But we�ve kind of morphed that. It�s grown. It�s evolved. So, this is why we have the mnemonic or No Compromise Radio.

01:12

Can you imagine someone who�s lived on this earth who never compromised, tempted but did not succumb to the temptation?

01:20

Jesus said in John, �I always do what�s pleasing to the Father.� That�s amazing if you just stop and let that sink in.

01:26

So, that�s the first reason it�s No Compromise Radio. We want to talk about Jesus, the one who never compromised. Secondly, at the cross, you know,

01:34

God exercising all of His attributes simultaneously from justice, holiness, compassion, and love and grace at the cross, none of God�s attributes were compromised.

01:44

And in light of that, I don�t want to compromise. So, how do you like that, Dan, for our rescue? Sounds great. Dan Borbin, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

01:50

Thank you. Great recovery. We�ve gone from this discernment ministry, or how do they say it in England, discernment?

01:58

Discernment. Yes. How did, Dan Borbin, if you have not listened to, audience, if you haven�t listened to yesterday�s show, please do that first.

02:06

And so now we�re just jumping right back into this part two. How did you get to England? I never intended to compromise my

02:16

American allegiance by returning to the mother country. But after seminary at Westminster Seminary in California, I was encouraged by some faculty there to continue my studies and was looking at programs specializing in the

02:35

Protestant Reformation. So that�s what I work on, 16th and 17th centuries. And a professor there at Oxford, Dermot McCulloch, one of the leading

02:50

Reformation theologians today, so I contacted him, and it came about very organically, you know, personally, really through him.

03:01

I never had any dream to study in England or go to Oxford or anything like that.

03:08

It just kind of fell into place and loved it, lived there for five years. My wife and I still very much miss

03:16

English life. I think London�s the greatest city in the world. So as Dr.

03:23

Johnson said, if you�re bored with London, you�re bored with life. I think that�s absolutely true. Now, before you go any farther, you know, you can walk down the street in London to a pound land and get a huge PG tips for just one single pound.

03:35

Do you miss those days? I don�t miss much of the food in England, in fact, none of it.

03:43

The best food that you can get in England is from somewhere else, Indian food, French food,

03:48

German food, although they�re good with cheese and sausage, and that�s about it.

03:54

Okay. All right. I�m sorry to interrupt you. So for the listeners, if you�re on holiday, as they say, anywhere in England, and you see, you pass a restaurant or a pub that says, �Traditional

04:05

British Fair, keep walking.� You�re better off at McDonald�s. Did you ever go to the

04:10

Jerusalem Tavern? I have been there, yeah. Twelfth century, I think it is. Yeah. Nottingham.

04:16

Yeah, fascinating. I think that church, Grace Life, is close by. Nice. Yeah. So you were studying what?

04:23

What�s your doctorate, what�s your dissertation on in French? I work on the French Reformed Church of the 17th century, specifically a pastor and theologian named

04:33

Pierre Dumoulin, M -O -U -L -I -N, like Moulin Rouge, the movie, it just means �mill ,� so Peter Mill in English.

04:42

Why did you pick him? He was the most influential theologian and pastor in the

04:50

French Reformed churches in the first half of the 17th century, and not much has been done on him.

04:57

He wrote a tremendous amount of theology, polemics.

05:02

Some have estimated that in the Reformation era only Calvin and Beza wrote more than Dumoulin, so he was a prolific writer.

05:11

Not all of it is great. I mean, it�s not heretical or anything, but he�s not of Calvin, he�s not

05:17

John Owen, he�s not Francis Turretin as far as the theological acumen. But very much his specialty, at least early in his life, was polemics.

05:28

So anytime they had a dispute, whether it was Roman Catholic, Arminian, later in his life with the

05:35

Amaraldians, he was the guy that they asked, all right, pick up the pen and write a retort to these erroneous teachings.

05:45

Did he write in French or Latin when he did his theology? He wrote in both, and because of his notoriety, his works were disseminated even his own lifetime across much of Europe, even into the

06:02

British Isles. He actually studied at Cambridge early in his life. He never wrote in English, but because he had an international reputation, many of his works were translated into English even in his own lifetime.

06:15

So if you want to go online, Google Books has many of his works in English, readily accessible.

06:23

And his influence really was broad despite the difficult nature of ministry in Roman Catholic France.

06:36

Dan, I�d like to know more about this question and the answer to the question, because I don�t know anything about it.

06:41

You�ve got Calvin in Geneva, and he�s got the School of Death there, and the men would come over from France and be trained and go back into France, and many of them perish because they were preaching the gospel.

06:53

What happened between that time period with the School of Death and Calvin training pastors to the 17th century?

07:00

What was the history that was going back on there? Because obviously now we have the French pastors, so what happened?

07:06

Right. The School of Death, that was the case because they were basically involved in a civil war in France between the

07:15

Catholics and Protestants, typically known as the French Wars of Religion, we historians call them today.

07:21

But it was a series of brief civil wars, not over 40 years in one time, but skirmishes here and there over the course of decades between Catholics and Protestants.

07:35

There�s always an uneasiness. And at that time, it was very much geographical. You were in, if you were

07:43

Protestant Reformed, you were in a Protestant town. And just thinking of the map of France, the

07:51

Huguenot towns, the Protestant towns, basically form the letter

07:56

C around the border of France. So in the north, all the way along the channel there, and coming back around to the south, down to the

08:06

Alps, the Huguenot towns were kind of on the peripheries of French society. So if you weren�t living in one of those towns, you probably wouldn�t become

08:16

Protestant. But if you did, you had to be very careful about it. And it was a very bloody time,

08:23

St. Bartholomew�s Day massacre in 1572, where we don�t even know how many

08:28

Protestants were killed, 3 ,000, 5 ,000. They say the streets of Paris ran red with blood of the

08:37

Protestants. So the school of death is not just an interesting moniker. It was true.

08:43

Pierre Dumoulin was four years old at the time of the St. Bartholomew�s Day massacre. His father was a

08:50

Reformed pastor, and he was a target. And his father and his mother went one way.

08:57

They sent the children another direction to save their lives. And he was nearly killed,

09:03

Pierre, the younger, by Roman Catholic soldiers who stormed into this farmhouse where they were hiding.

09:10

By God�s providence, they didn�t find him underneath a bed. But this was not uncommon, sadly, for the

09:17

French Reformed. Then in 1598, after Henry IV, who�s one of the most revered kings in French history, not just for religious reasons, but overall, his statue actually is outside of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on a horse, very regal depiction there, began his life or lived his life as a

09:43

Protestant until he took the throne. He famously said, or maybe apocryphally said, �Paris is worth a mass.�

09:53

So he knew if he was going to take the throne in France and keep the nation united, he had to convert to Roman Catholicism.

10:02

Even still, even though he was an apostate, and sadly, he was very favorable to Protestants, much more favorable than previous kings had been.

10:14

So in 1598, he issues the Edict of Nantes, which basically gives the

10:19

Protestants relative religious freedom. They certainly weren�t not like religious freedom that we have today.

10:24

They were still kind of second -class citizens. But this allowed them to worship without fear of soldiers bursting into their congregations every

10:34

Lord�s Day. So in the 17th century, the French Reformed Church really flourishes. And they become one of the most

10:43

Presbyterian in government churches of all the Reformed churches in Europe.

10:49

And sadly, in 1685, the king repealed the

10:54

Edict of Nantes, then making Protestantism illegal in France, and the

11:00

Church basically dissipates. Many come to North America, many come to the British Isles, the Protestants, and the

11:06

French Reformed Church was basically just decimated at that time. Some remained underground, but the

11:12

Golden Age was over. Dan Borvin, this is a switch -up here, but how can people follow you on Twitter?

11:18

Because you have some pretty, I don�t know, just interesting, you know, you just throw out a grenade here or there, a theological grenade or a cultural grenade.

11:28

How do they follow you? I am at danborvin. That�s pretty simple. Easy to remember. So, let�s think about what�s happened.

11:36

You first go to Master�s Seminary. How long did you attend Master�s Seminary? I was there for a year and a half.

11:42

Okay. And then you leave to go to Westminster Escondido, is that right? That�s correct. Okay. So your

11:47

MDiv is from Westminster Escondido? Correct. And then what URC church were you at? Oceanside United Reformed Church, Pastor Danny Hyde, still the pastor there.

11:56

Okay. And then you�re influenced to go to Oxford. How easy is it to get into Oxford?

12:03

Because I�m going to live vicariously through you because they�ll never accept me. Well, people have this impression of, you know, these �elite� universities.

12:15

I certainly am not of the elite intellectual status. I always said

12:21

I would put our best students at Westminster, California up against Oxford students and any day they could hang with them.

12:29

The difference with Oxford is that every student is of that quality.

12:35

So the top students at most seminaries, evangelical seminaries in the

12:41

United States, I think would be perfectly fine at a place like Oxford. But it�s funny, you know,

12:47

I come from a very working -class, blue -collar background. Before I went to college, I drove a dump truck, worked in a carpet warehouse, you know, and here

12:55

I am with all these Sons of Noblemen and stuff in England with these�for the listener, if you want an impression of what life is like in Oxford, watch

13:05

Harry Potter. It�s not that far off. With the Grand Hall and all of that, much of it was based on Oxford and Cambridge.

13:14

So here I am at these fancy dinners with the president of the college, and we�re all in formal attire.

13:21

And you know, I�m a blue -collar kid from the suburbs of Chicago. I have no business being there.

13:27

So God�s providence brought me to that place. Some theologians will go overseas to Europe, and let�s say it was

13:35

Machen, and Machen goes over to study underneath the Germans, and he says to himself, �You know what?

13:40

They were so kind to me, I almost bought into their liberalism.� Or you�ll have other folks that go to St.

13:46

Andrews or Basel, and they�re influenced by some liberalism that�s found in other countries.

13:53

Were you tempted to believe something at Oxford that you hadn�t believed before that would be of a liberal stripe?

14:00

Not at all. My study of church history, you know, some people who end up studying church history become disillusioned with the church because they see a bunch of sinners throughout church history.

14:12

To me, it was the exact opposite. I became more confirmed in my convictions, particularly of the church, because there is no human explanation for it to continue for 2 ,000 years.

14:25

Not only from the assaults from without, as I�ve mentioned, from Roman Catholics and others, but also internal divisions, strife—again, we�re sinners, so of course it�s not going to be a perfect institution.

14:41

Even with our best efforts, you think of, you know, Abraham trying to help God out. The same is true with all of us, really, trying to help

14:49

God out, doing our own thing in a sinful way. But yet God preserves His Church, the gospel still goes forth throughout every generation.

14:58

So my convictions have been confirmed more and more in that semi -hostile environment.

15:04

Interestingly, though, in Oxford, and England in general, I found more intellectual religious freedom than I did in many parts of the

15:13

United States. I think Americans are a little too close to Christianity. You know, our culture has been a little more

15:20

Christian recently than European countries. So Americans see it still as a hot -button issue, whereas in England, people were very relaxed about it.

15:31

You could talk openly about religion, no fear of anyone getting angry. They could have a

15:36

Christmas break, not a holiday break. You could say Merry Christmas, things like that. They have Easter, you know, with the bank holidays and so forth.

15:45

So there's less hostility, I found, to biblical Christianity in much of Europe than there is in the

15:53

United States. As you were talking about the Church, I was reminded of Matthew 16. Simon Peter replied,

15:59

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar -Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my

16:08

Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell, here the

16:15

ESV says, I don't think it's the best translation, shall not prevail against it, the gates of death. If it wasn't for the

16:22

Lord building the Church, I mean, it would be obviously utter chaos and utter demise of the

16:29

Church, but the Lord is still saving people and regenerating, justifying. Dan, I want to know a little bit about the

16:36

English view of American evangelicalism. Not necessarily the Reformed movement here in America, because that could be a good follow -up question.

16:45

What do the English, kind of the, in my mind, kind of the snobby English, you know, folks think of American, I guess, carnal evangelicalism?

16:55

Many, sadly, have bought in to some of the excesses of American evangelicalism, the megachurch culture, the personality cult aspects of American evangelicalism.

17:10

So you have many evangelicals in the UK trying to be

17:15

Rick Warren in their little community or trying to be Tim Keller or something. Even whether or not those philosophies are biblical and useful, the idea that you could just replicate it somewhere else in a completely different context is rather foolish, in my opinion.

17:36

So some people have bought into many of the excesses of American evangelicalism, but one thing

17:42

I have appreciated is, although some have fallen into the personality cult trap, most

17:51

British people are not enamored with celebrity as Americans are.

17:58

You know, the dandelion that pops up is the one that gets chopped down.

18:05

The English pessimistic point of view always, if someone's getting a little too big for his britches, you know, they'll come along and say, all right, remember who you are, you're not a celebrity, sit down now.

18:18

So I've appreciated that fact. We don't worship the spiritual leaders in the

18:26

UK the same way, sadly, many Americans do. What if the Gospel Coalition started to say that to some of their folks?

18:33

It's the dandelion theory. I think they would be a much better organization. How about the influence of N .T.

18:42

Wright over in England? That's an interesting difference, because the theological milieu is so liberal and gone from biblical

18:58

Christianity. He has a very different reputation, and he's perceived very differently around the rest of the world than in North America.

19:10

North America, of course, we see him as abandoning many aspects of biblical Christianity, compromising on justification and so forth.

19:18

We focus on those things, whereas in the UK and around the world, they love him because he actually believes in the

19:25

Resurrection and writes pretty well on the Resurrection. So he, in the

19:31

UK, is like an ultra -conservative when you have some of the people in the

19:37

Church of England who probably don't even believe in God. For someone in his position, he's on the far right wing of Anglican theology.

19:47

Fascinating. What's the British view of Tim Keller? Again, many love him, many are trying to be

19:54

Tim Keller in London, in Edinburgh, in Manchester.

20:02

He actually came to speak at Oxford when I was, I think, my first year there. He came speaking to the

20:10

Christian Student Union there. But in Presbyterian circles, many of the

20:20

English and Scottish Presbyterians are a little skeptical, particularly of his ecclesiology.

20:28

Okay. Dan, as I just pick your brain a little bit, it's fascinating. I'm trying to think about what

20:33

I would like to learn, but then I'm also thinking about their listeners, what they would like to learn.

20:39

Tim Keller here is the kind of the PCA front guy in a sense.

20:46

I know Ligon Duncan is PCA too. You're not PCA. What do you think is going to happen to the

20:52

PCA? Do you think it's going to split? Do you think the General Assembly is going to keep allowing more women to do this, that, or the other?

21:01

What's your prediction, if you were predicting? Yeah, well, I don't gamble, so I probably shouldn't make prognostications.

21:12

Not so much for conviction, not gambling, but I'm just bad at it. So... Oh, good.

21:18

Well, nobody listens to the old reruns anyway, so maybe PresbyCast will listen or something. But with the

21:25

PCA, yeah, I have many friends in the PCA, many good pastor friends. I preached in a PCA just last month.

21:31

There are still many tremendous congregations throughout the PCA, but as many have mentioned, there are alarming things happening, alarming movements and ideologies that are sweeping through the

21:51

PCA. So I don't know. I hope they can stay together and not divide.

21:57

I hope, sadly, while they have remained together, some churches have split off.

22:02

Some very high -profile churches have split off to join more liberal Presbyterian denominations.

22:09

ECHO, being one of the denominations, a large PCA in Houston just left the

22:16

PCA for ECHO a few months back. So mainly it's over women's ordination. I hope more churches don't go that way.

22:24

I hope the denomination doesn't go that way. And I would like to see those who don't go that way, if the

22:33

PCA does end up dividing in some way, I would love to see the solid confessional congregations come into the

22:40

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Are you writing anything these days? I'm working on my thesis, so I'm writing a lot of that.

22:47

So you don't even have your doctorate yet. I do not. I'm not completing it yet. Oh, I was going to say, wow. Still working on it.

22:53

Work in progress. Who's your advisor? Dermot McCulloch. Okay. I'm actually working on a paper, though, just the other day was assigned for the

23:02

Evangelical Theological Society conference in November. The Reformation study group there will be celebrating the anniversary of the

23:13

Synod of Dort. So I'm going to contribute one of the papers on the Synod of Dort.

23:19

Excellent. And tell me, on a regular basis at the church you're at here in Massachusetts, what do you do? Do you teach?

23:25

Do you have a Bible study? What's your ministry there? I regularly teach

23:30

Sunday school. Adult Sunday school is kind of my slot regularly. And then from time to time,

23:38

I fill the pulpit. In recent months, I've taken time to focus on finishing my doctoral thesis, so that's prevented me from preaching very often.

23:48

But last year at this time, I was preaching at least once a month, sometimes two, three times a month, and then participating in various Bible studies and other ministries of the church.

23:57

Dan, before the show, we talked a little bit about backgrounds and how they influence us theologically,

24:03

Calvary Chapel or institutions like that. But when you're preaching, do you—I mean, you're an amalgamation of your past as God has providentially put you together.

24:15

Tell me what about Master's Seminary and Westminster, Escondido, and then

24:21

Oxford. All three of them must have influenced the way you prepare a sermon and then preach a sermon.

24:28

What would be some of the good points of each? Yeah, Master's really taught me to do the work of exegesis, to dive deeply into the text and also the cultural background of the text, understanding whether it's

24:47

Greco -Roman culture or Jewish culture and how that informs the text, how we interpret the text based on its cultural background, those things.

24:56

And in preaching, there I've taken away the emphasis on very simply proclaiming the text and that text.

25:09

You're not preaching every passage of Scripture in one sermon, you're preaching a particular passage of Scripture, so focus on this text and preach all that God has in that passage.

25:20

And so I took those aspects from TMS and then to Westminster, Escondido.

25:29

Not that they didn't teach me exegesis and any of those things, but the idea that I received there was preaching

25:38

Christ from all of Scripture. We preach the gospel every Lord's Day, every sermon.

25:45

The gospel is preached. The law is preached in every sermon. In my opinion, it's not a sermon if you don't have a law and gospel.

25:52

So preaching Christ from Leviticus, whereas in many contexts we look to the

25:59

Old Testament only for moral examples, from a Reformed perspective,

26:05

Christ is on every page of Scripture. One of the first sermons that I heard after coming to Escondido was at the

26:15

OPC there in Escondido, Zach Keel preached on Leviticus, I think it's 14, the bodily fluid transmissions, that passage.

26:26

He's preaching through Leviticus, and I thought, how in the world is he going to preach this passage? It's uncomfortable to read, let alone to preach.

26:36

And he went into the depth of the Mosaic law, explained the law very clearly, very simply, explained what it meant in that context, and then he showed us

26:48

Christ in that passage, how Christ fulfills that law, how he died in our place as we did not fulfill that law, and how he has abrogated that law, and now we are free from that in Christ.

27:04

So finding Christ through all of Scripture, that thread, the red thread of redemption, as they say, that runs all the way through Scripture, that really impacted me from Westminster.

27:15

And then coming to Oxford, obviously, the theological aspects of the university life, most of that I didn't imbibe because it wasn't biblical, but thinking about how to communicate to people.

27:33

You have some of the, literally, the brightest minds in the world are in, some of them are in that city.

27:41

But then also, so if you're a pastor there, you're preaching to brilliant university people, but then also you're preaching to the janitor, you're preaching to the truck driver.

27:51

How can you communicate to both of these people and feed them with the truths of God's Word in a way that they can both understand and also be satisfied with?

28:02

So you don't bring the cookies to the bottom shelf, but you also don't shoot above the heads of your congregation.

28:09

So as I prepare sermons now, I think of all those types of people that might be in the congregation, and how can

28:15

I be clear to them, no matter where they are on the spectrum? Dan, that's so important as I work through the same issue here at the church, right?

28:24

You have people who have doctrines, and you have people who are brand -new Christians, you have some people who are unbelievers, etc., blue -collar, white -collar.

28:31

I think to myself, I don't want to exegete the people, that's not my first step.

28:37

But after I've done exegesis of the passage and put the sermon together, then I often think, all right,

28:43

I have a message from the Word and from the Lord that I need to give to the people.

28:50

Now who are the people? How shall I explain this doctrine to them so that people who are learning and growing can catch on quickly, and then the newbies, they can figure out as well?

29:00

In other words, are this means such and such, or do you remember that? And so I don't exegete people.

29:05

I think it's wrong to say, all right, let's think about grandma and grandpa and dumpster drivers first, and what would they need?

29:11

No, well, it's just for us, it's the next section in Hebrews, we're just teaching sequentially through a text.

29:17

But I will say, all right, I mean, this is an easy way, Dan, don't you think? If I'm going to teach to junior high kids,

29:23

I still study the text, and then I deliver it in a way that's apropos to where they are in life.

29:30

And then I go to the rest home, and I teach the same text, for God so loved the world still means God loves the world in this particular way, and then when it's for Sunday morning, it's something different.

29:39

And so that's excellent insight. Exactly. You have to know your hearers, and you're preaching to a specific people.

29:47

This is one reason why I'm not a huge fan of multi -campus churches, because who are those people?

29:52

I don't know them, if they're in another state, getting the video feed. No, I preach to a specific people in the congregation.

30:00

And yes, you have to communicate in a way that those people can understand. And it's not just changing some of the approach, it's even changing the language.

30:11

When I have a pastor friend in Milan, Italy, and when I preach there, of course in English, and he translates,

30:18

I simplify my sentence structure so it's easy for him to translate, so the people won't be confused.

30:26

Some of them know enough English. But I try to simplify the content so that even through translation, it's easily digested by the people there.

30:38

All right, two more comments or questions, Dan, before we go have a break and take some time for lunch and fellowship.

30:46

Are you determined to stay where you are now, or would you like to be a preaching pastor someplace, a teaching elder, or how does that work?

30:55

Our tentative plan, of course, we make our plans and God laughs at them, but our tentative plan in our church is that I will finish my doctoral studies, then be called and ordained as an associate pastor at our congregation in Merrimack Valley with the idea of planting a church in Boston.

31:20

Our congregation is the closest OPC to Boston, about 30 miles away, so we need an old -school

31:31

Presbyterian congregation in the city of Boston. As we mentioned, I think, on the last program,

31:37

Boston's one of the most post -Christian cities in America. Some recent surveys,

31:44

I found Boston, I think, was number two of the most unchurched cities in America. And interestingly, it's also,

31:53

I think, in the top three of the number of people who used to attend church and now no longer.

31:59

And I think much of that, of course, is due to the Roman Catholic priest scandals. So there's a tremendous need in one of the great cities of America for a faithful congregation, faithful to the

32:13

Word of God, where the Word is preached, the Law and Gospel are preached every Lord's Day, and Christ is lifted high.

32:22

Dan, I almost weekly, through the radio show and through other means, receive an email or phone call, where's a good church in Boston, because my son's moving there for school, or my daughter, or we're moving there for work, and it's hard to find a

32:36

Bible -teaching church that is, you know, Law, Gospel, a church that I could recommend, right?

32:43

And I can recommend OPC churches, I can recommend some PCA probably as well, too, but it's difficult, so I'm glad you would have that plan at least.

32:51

Last question. I did not know until an hour ago that we have met before. I thought this was the first thing.

32:57

I thought you were a stalker. I pulled up to the church building here. There's a guy in the back, and he's got the glasses on.

33:03

I didn't know if he was a CHIP officer, California Highway Police, or what you were, and then

33:08

I thought maybe you might have been a movie star, but we've met before. Tell the story. Apparently, I'm not that memorable. Yeah, that's right.

33:15

So while I'm looking at you, you look like a masculine man, but that's easy to forget. A face that you never recognize.

33:22

So we met, I think it was 2007, on foreign soil in Switzerland.

33:30

You were at the, what do they call it, the Bible Training Center there in Zurich?

33:36

Yeah, European Bible Training Center, maybe at mission call, some kind of call, mission call, evangelistic mission, midnight mission.

33:46

Midnight call. Midnight call. There you go. You were there teaching on your book,

33:52

Preaching Like Jesus, and I was there dipping my toe into European ministry.

34:03

Our mutual friend, Martin Manton, I went along with him, who's from Zurich, and we hung out there.

34:12

We had Thanksgiving dinner together, you and I, and you still just blocked it out of your mind.

34:18

Can you imagine? No, it's called memory loss because I'm 20 years older than you are.

34:24

Where did we have Thanksgiving dinner? At Christian Andreessen's house. Oh, so we went back up to Berlin.

34:29

I think so, yeah. Okay. And I wonder if I had the rest of my family with me. No, you were solo.

34:35

Okay. Because one time I was in Greece with Christian, and it was Thanksgiving, and so I sent a picture of Christian and I having a double espresso with some gelato.

34:46

That was our Thanksgiving. And I sent that back to my wife, and I thought, oh, this is... No stuffing today, no.

34:52

But my biggest memory of you was that you were funny. Sadly, many

34:58

Christians aren't funny. You know, come on. You have the light of Christ living within you. Why are you so morose all the time?

35:05

So especially in some of those circles, you know, to find a guy who'll crack jokes, I always gravitate toward those types of people, and we sit in the back and crack jokes while everyone else is being too pious for their own good.

35:16

Now, in all candor, I try, and I know I certainly fail in many areas, including this one, but I would like to be someone that others would say, and we're talking about within the

35:30

Christian realm, they look at me and say, do you know what? He's a fun

35:35

Calvinist. He's a kind Calvinist. He's a funny Calvinist. He's someone who's nice, right?

35:41

I don't want to be, and some days I am, sadly, but my goal is not to be the stereotypical, snobby, faux

35:49

Presbyterian, you know, Calvinist Baptist. I think, you know what? We should be able to enjoy life, and when

35:54

I think of that word shalom, that Hebrew word, all of life and just whole living, W -H -O -L -E,

36:01

I mean, we can enjoy everything from the hand of God, and I don't have to do anything else to keep my justification.

36:07

There is no final justification that somehow I have to earn or keep. Yeah, Robert Godfrey, former president of Westminster, California, famous for saying, we take our theology seriously but not ourselves.

36:21

I live by that motto. It's so true. When you think about those multi -campus churches, one of the reasons why it's so important to have a local team of elders and a pastor who teaches that you get to see every week, not just on some video, is

36:37

I want them to notice a difference. I even, I don't want this, but I'm glad after it happens for a practical reason.

36:44

If I'm short with my wife, or I say something to my kids, or maybe I don't respond to someone with enough patience or humility, when people see that in me, of course,

36:54

I don't want that. I'm ashamed if I do something untoward. But I want them to look at me and say, he's not

37:01

Jesus. He better be talking about Jesus every week because he falls short.

37:06

He's tempted and he fails. But there is a high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses, and he's tempted in every area, but he's without sin.

37:14

And I like that. And if you only see positive things up on the screen all the time, then how do

37:20

I know that the person is A, real, and B, who could enjoy life and have fun and talk about this, that, or the other, and just do the

37:30

Ecclesiastes 9? This is one of my great grievances with much of Church history that is produced particularly by those who actually believe it.

37:42

You know, in evangelical Reform circles, when they write about some of the heroes of the faith, John Calvin or John Owen or somebody like that, they present these men as if they never had a bad day, as if they just kind of floated across the floor in this holy, pious cloud and never kicked their dog, never got mad when they hit their finger with a hammer.

38:04

That's not inspiring to me. Number one, it's not true. Obviously, these men all had feet of clay.

38:10

But how can I be inspired by that? I know I'm not that way. So if all these heroes of the faith are these supermen,

38:20

I can't live up to that. And so when I write Church history, I try to present these guys as human.

38:26

They're human. They have feet of clay, but they have a perfect God that they serve, and that's what's inspiring.

38:33

Here, these sinful men, just like me, can be used by God to proclaim the gospel.

38:39

Dan, maybe that's why I've enjoyed the last two years reading some original sources, reading

38:45

Luther himself. You know, how many people read about Luther? Well, I'll just use me as a classic example.

38:51

I've been a pastor for over two decades, and, you know, I've read Roland Bainton and other things, and I've read the 95

38:58

Theses. But have I really read...I guess I read Bondage of the Will, but I hadn't read much, and now

39:03

I'm reading a lot of his works. And one thing that Luther does, to his own, you know, maybe shame, but he writes about himself in such a way where you never think the opposite of what you just described.

39:17

Absolutely. Luther would be the most upset at, you know, the personality cult that developed around him.

39:22

He knew he wasn't that guy. Yeah, I would encourage the listeners, Luther's Table Talk, which

39:29

I published multiple volumes in the great translation series that continues to be put out by Concordia Press.

39:38

They reveal all the struggles of a real Christian who's struggling with sin, trying to be faithful, trying to trust

39:47

Christ while constantly being tempted by sin. It's the real Christian life. I wrote an article for the

39:55

Ordained Servant, which is the OPC's publication for officers about Luther's doctrine of assurance.

40:01

And I took much of it from his Table Talk, because even at the end of his life, he still wrestled with assurance because he had that Roman Catholic grace and cooperation with grace impulse in his bones.

40:19

He never could extricate himself from that drawback to working my way into God's favor.

40:27

And so he, even at the end of his life, he had to fight to trust in Christ alone and not to rely on his own strength.

40:35

That's inspiring because that's me. I fight that as well. And that's why he can be...I

40:42

feel as if we're appropriating as Calvinists, you know, that I don't really have a right to Luther because I'm not

40:47

Lutheran. And I feel like I'm stealing, you know, it's like somebody else's dad, you know, as if it's not legitimate that I love

40:53

Luther. But I love Luther, and I love that Karl Truman loves Luther. And as a Presbyterian who talks more about Luther than he does

40:59

Calvin, I think that's great. And I can hear my children say, after the last few months in Germany, Dad, do we have to go to another

41:07

Luther site? And yeah, just talking about fun, being fun. I wouldn't want to hang out with John Calvin.

41:12

He probably wouldn't be a good time. But Luther, you could have a great time drinking beer in a

41:17

German beer hall, talking theology. I'm reading through his letters to certain people that are undergoing bereavement or trouble or my husband suicidal.

41:28

What should I do? Very, very good. I mean, so wonderfully written, pastorally written, that I think, you know what, sometimes

41:36

I think I'm going to have to write that. I'm going to take that about who Jesus is and how

41:41

He understands and make your focus be on such and such. I think, you know what, that's the

41:47

Luther that people don't read. They just want to say, oh yeah, He hated Jews. And I think, you know what, you don't have any idea what you're talking about.

41:54

In his table talks, I think it's from the early 1530s, he writes about the death of one of his daughters.

42:01

I think she was eight years old, 10 years old or something. And he writes about how that destroyed him emotionally, obviously, that would, but then how he speaks to his daughter and gives her confidence in Christ that they knew she was dying, she knew she was dying, but he gives her the gospel, he gives her hope in Christ, even while he is destroyed internally, he's showing her she can have peace as she goes into eternity because Christ will preserve her.

42:34

It's just, I was actually moved to tears reading that. And I'm not a guy who weeps at romantic comedies, you know, but it was so impactful on how he ministered to his own daughter while she was dying and gave her confidence in the gospel.

42:50

Amen. Dan, we'll have to have you on, we could talk for a long time. Let's go have lunch. If people want to listen to your Sunday School series, is it online?

42:56

Most of them are online at mvpc -church .org. All right, Dan, thanks for being here in the studio.

43:02

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

43:09

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

43:18

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

43:25

You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.