WWUTT 2440 Q&A What is Repentance, What is the Gospel, Shiny Happy People, Remembering John MacArthur

WWUTT Podcast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

What does it mean to repent? What does that entail? What does it mean to share the gospel?

00:07

What elements need to be there to be a gospel presentation? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

00:24

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Thank you for listening and for sharing our podcast with others.

00:33

Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is

00:38

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. Psalm 119, verse nine. How can a young man keep his way pure?

00:45

By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you.

00:51

Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

01:00

And our commitment to the Word of God is why we do When We Understand The Text.

01:06

Happy anniversary, babe. Happy anniversary. In more ways than one. Yes. This is our actual anniversary.

01:14

It is. 15 years today. Yes. And I love you as much as I did that day.

01:20

I think I love you a little more. If not more, yeah. I still remember how lovely you looked in your wedding dress coming down the aisle.

01:29

And you still look lovely as well today. Well, thank you for saying that because I looked in the mirror right before coming in here and I was like, oh man,

01:39

I need to just go to bed. Well, there's a reason why. My hair's crazy. Yeah, there's a reason why God has us growing together in marriage and not, you get married, but you don't get to see this person again for 10 years.

01:50

Right, right, yes. We would probably be looking at each other going, what happened to you?

01:57

I think there's something different. I didn't have a beard back then.

02:02

No, you didn't. I've had a beard now for, let's see, how old is Aria? 10, she's about to turn 11.

02:08

She's almost 11, yeah. So that many years. I've shaved it twice in that period of time. That's true.

02:14

Only two times. Is that right, just two times? Yeah, that's right. It was twice. I think so, yeah. Anyway, where was

02:20

I going with that? No idea. It's our anniversary. It's our anniversary. And it's our other anniversary.

02:27

For the podcast, that's right, yeah. So August, we started doing this 10 years ago. Was it 10 years?

02:32

Or did we already do the 10 year? What year is this? This is 25. Yes, this is 10 years.

02:39

10 years, that's what I was thinking. We've been on the air for a decade, yes. It is now our 10 year anniversary. So we started the first week of August in 2015.

02:48

Right. That was when the podcast began. And you've been on every single one of them.

02:53

Yep. Ever since. As the intro and the. And the outro voice. Outro, is that what it is?

02:59

Intro and outro. That's what I have it labeled as in the computer. So I. Well, there we go. I grab your intro, and I stick on an outro.

03:07

And Becky's voice has been there since the very beginning. I had an email recently from somebody that asked me about the archive on the website.

03:15

So when you go to www .utt .com, and you click on the archive tab, or the, it's podcast.

03:23

You just click on podcast. And then down below has an archive. And I've got all of Proverbs in there,

03:29

Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and some of Luke. So every once in a while,

03:34

I'll get an email from somebody that asked me, are you ever gonna expound out that archive? Yeah, at some point. Yeah, it takes some work.

03:40

We'll see whenever I get around to it. But I'm busy with a lot of other stuff. Obviously, because we took

03:45

July off. We did. Thank you for the emails that we got during that period of time.

03:51

Yes, and thank you for being patient. Yes, letting us take a break. The intention was,

03:57

I was gonna have enough of the podcast done for when we went on vacation. It was still gonna continue. Right. You weren't gonna know that we were gone.

04:03

Yeah. Yes. And then when we got back, I think I said on the vacation message, hey, we're gonna resume on such and such a date.

04:10

And then we got back and you and I were so dog tired. We're like, let's do it next week. Yeah, it was a lot of work.

04:17

And then that turned into next week. Yeah, because then it was prepping for school. That's right.

04:22

And we were getting the kids ready. Yes, everybody. School has started in July. Yes, well, believe it or not, that's happening in more and more places.

04:31

It's not just Arizona. Yeah. Oh, it's just got so crazy to wrap my mind around this.

04:36

A pastor friend of mine in Indiana said, even there in Indiana was starting at the end of July.

04:42

I think they considered those schools out that way. At least I did in Kansas and Texas, that those were year round schools, quote unquote year round.

04:52

Because they took just a short break for this and a short break for that. And it's a little bit longer of a break, but it's still considered short.

04:59

Fall break, longer Easter break, or longer Christmas break. Right. And then a longer spring break.

05:05

Right. And yet I'm like, no, we don't consider ourselves year round school.

05:12

It's just short. We get June off and like most of July. Yeah. Yeah, at the

05:18

Christian school that we're part of. Yes. And Becky is not teaching this year. I'm not. You're retired again.

05:23

I am. I'm still teaching there. Yeah, how many times have you retired now?

05:31

No, I'm homeschooling with the preschooler now. Yeah, who's turning four in a month.

05:38

In a month. A month from today. Yes, yes. And then Annie, who's a senior this year, she's gonna be doing all the senior activities and graduating.

05:48

Yep. So I wanna be free to be able to be like, okay, let's do this, you know, and not be.

05:53

Not teaching somebody else's kids, but I get to be involved with mine. Yes. But I'm still teaching there.

05:59

Yes. I'm still doing the Bible class three days a week. Boop, boop. And that's a joy. I enjoy doing it.

06:05

I enjoy teaching the Bible anyway, if you guys haven't been able to tell. Right. From doing this podcast for 10 years now.

06:13

We're coming up on 2 ,500 episodes, but we're not there yet. I had said because of some delays and things like that, we weren't gonna get to 2 ,500 in the same month.

06:22

Right. That we were celebrating 10 years. But this is episode 2440. Ooh, not too bad.

06:28

So before we get to the end of the year, we'll hit 2 ,500 episodes. Lord willing. Lord willing.

06:34

Yeah. Given that there's not gonna be another leak in this room. Yeah, you know.

06:39

Taking a shower in here, like happened in February. Oh my goodness. We had the leaky sink upstairs.

06:45

I don't wanna talk about it again. Hey, there's been a lot of adventures on this podcast. A lot. 10 years. And you guys have been through it with us.

06:53

Some of you from the very beginning. Yeah. That's pretty incredible. How have y 'all listened to 2 ,440 episodes?

07:00

I don't understand how I've done 2 ,440 episodes, but some of you having listened to that many episodes.

07:06

I love it. That's amazing. We would not be able to do this without you guys. No, definitely not.

07:12

Well, we could. There just wouldn't be anybody listening. True. But not really.

07:19

We could do it without you. Yeah, I mean, you know. But we wouldn't want to. No. Yeah. It's knowing that there are people out there listening and you're growing through the ministry and listening to the

07:30

Bible study. There was an email that I had in here about listening to Luke. And a mom was saying that she was going through Luke with her kids, with the study that we do on here.

07:40

And that's awesome. Because I just sit in a room and talk. And so to hear from you, it keeps us going.

07:48

Makes it a little more real. Yeah, helps us to know there are people listening and the word of God is getting out to many people's ears and hearts.

07:56

And as the Lord said in Isaiah 55, my word will not go out from me void. So even if I'm the only guy sitting in here in this room and talking, and I'm only talking to myself, it's still a ministry unto me.

08:09

Yes. To read the word of God and be giving it that thought and application to it is changing my heart as well.

08:17

So that's just the power of God's word through his Holy Spirit in each one of our lives. We've been jabbering enough here.

08:24

Yes. We've got our wedding anniversary today, 15 years. Oh, in two weeks, my ordination anniversary.

08:33

Yeah, that's true. And that will also be 15 years of pastoral ministry. And then of course, 10 years on this podcast.

08:41

So August is a month full of anniversaries for us. My dad has a birthday.

08:48

My parents' anniversary is this month. Yeah, so yeah, here we go.

08:54

Here's August. Onward and upward. Thank you for giving us the time off and we're back at it again.

08:59

Yes. I'll be back in Luke, God willing, as you said, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But this being the

09:06

Friday episode of the broadcast and we're actually getting it out on Friday this time. We're taking questions from the listeners and you can submit your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

09:18

Let's go to the voicemail message. You can also go to www .utt .com, click on that voicemail tab and leave us a voicemail.

09:26

Record it from your phone or your computer. I know that website needs some work and I'm gonna do some work on it.

09:33

But in the meantime, you can still click buttons on the page and leave us a voicemail.

09:38

This is from Chris. Here we go. Good afternoon, Pastor Gabe and Becky. This is Chris from North Carolina.

09:45

I hope you all have had a great vacation over the last couple of weeks. I wanted to reach out because I recently became aware of the latest season for the

09:55

Shiny Happy People series on Amazon Prime. I saw the first one and talked about the abuses of the

10:02

IVLP and Bill Gothard. There were clearly some problems, but we know that that particular documentary was somewhat hostile as well toward homeschooling in general in conservative

10:14

Christianity as a whole. Season two is covering the abuses of a youth evangelism campaign known as Teen Mania that apparently started in the 90s, went through the 2000s.

10:28

It's no longer in, no longer functioning. It has significant influence from an

10:35

Apostle type doctrine. During the documentary in the first episode, they mentioned that the headquarters for Teen Mania was in Lindale, Texas, which is your old stomping grounds.

10:45

So I was curious to know if you had any additional insights or thoughts, if you have even seen this documentary at all.

10:52

So I hope you all have a good rest of the day. Look forward to hearing from you. Well, appreciate it, Chris. Yeah.

10:57

Thank you for messaging. I hope everybody got that. I know it was a little bit spotty with the recording, but so he mentioned a new season of the documentary on Amazon Prime called

11:08

Shiny Happy People. And Chris, I listened to this message before we played it here, and I actually would not have known that there was a second season of Shiny Happy People until you sent me that voicemail.

11:23

I saw it popping up on our Amazon Prime feed, like it was on under recommended, recommended.

11:31

Recommended. Recommended. I felt like it was recommended though, because I had already watched it.

11:37

Oh yeah. So I was like, why are you recommending this to me again? I was ignoring it, because I've already watched Shiny Happy People.

11:43

So the reason why it was recommending it again was because it's got a new season.

11:48

I just didn't catch that. So on the vacation that we went on, we went camping for a period of that time for about a week.

11:55

And we were totally off grid. Yeah, no signal. Had no cell signal or anything.

12:01

But we weren't like off grid, off grid. Like we still had electricity and stuff like that, but we had no signal.

12:10

Well, we had electricity because your parents' camper was plugged into the electricity. We were in a tent.

12:16

We were. So we ran an extension cord from the trailer into the tent, but we would not have had electricity.

12:23

Exactly. This is true, this is true. But I mean, all the things that come with a camper, we were able to use their amenities.

12:33

Facilities as well. Wasn't too much of a wilderness, if you know what I mean.

12:38

However, well, when you say camping off grid, I'm thinking like in the middle of nowhere.

12:45

True. Alaska, you know what I mean? Actual off grid is having no.

12:50

Right, nothing. Yeah, it's just having nothing. You better hope you brought toilet paper, that kind of off grid.

12:59

Yes, it wasn't quite that off grid. It was off grid in the sense nobody could get in touch with us.

13:04

Right, at all. And we couldn't get in touch with hardly anybody either. Yeah. I told our church,

13:10

I told the officers, elders and deacons, hey, starting this date, you're not gonna be able to get ahold of me at all.

13:16

And then I don't get a signal back until this date. So John MacArthur passed away in that period of time.

13:23

Yes. And it was a weird fluke thing the last night we were camping, where one of the guys with us got a cell signal all of a sudden.

13:34

Yeah. And his messages updated. Yep. And he said, oh, John MacArthur just passed away.

13:40

And I didn't believe him. I was like, no, I heard that he was sick, but he didn't just suddenly die.

13:45

And then sure enough, the next day, when we finally got back into civilization and got a signal again, it was true.

13:51

Yeah. He had passed away. So we're gonna talk about that here in a little bit as well, because that's happened since we've been off air.

13:58

Yes. But anyway, back to the whole story. Yeah, the shiny happy people thing. Yes. So Teen Mania, I did not have any experience with Teen Mania living in Lindale.

14:07

We only lived in Lindale for three years. Acquire the Fire in Teen Mania and all that was already done by the time that we were there.

14:15

But I did have some experience with Teen Mania. I attended Acquire the Fire when

14:20

I was in middle school. And I think another one when I was in high school. Me too. Did you really? Yeah.

14:25

Yeah, went to Acquire the Fire? Yeah, I think twice. It's kind of like - Both in middle school though. Growing up in some sort of Christian environment, whether you were

14:31

Catholic or evangelical, you probably had some exposure to Acquire the

14:37

Fire in the 90s and was it early 2000s? Yeah, so the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

14:44

This was Ron Luce, who was the guy that started Teen Mania and Acquire the

14:49

Fire. Anytime you went to Acquire the Fire, Ron Luce was the main speaking guy.

14:54

Okay. And you would have Christian rock bands that would be there. I know that Skillet was involved with them for a little while.

15:01

Okay. I think I saw Pillar there, Newsboys had been with them. So it was always some popular

15:07

Christian rock band would be the headlining showcase. Right. In the Acquire the

15:12

Fire thing that you went to. And it would probably be a couple of days or it might be one whole day thing. Starting in the morning, going throughout the day.

15:18

If you're familiar with what Winter Jam is now or the Rock and Worship Roadshow.

15:24

Oh yeah. Or Toby Mac will do his big tours where it'll just be $10 to get in the door.

15:30

Acquire the Fire was kind of like that. So that was my involvement. Any involvement that I had with Teen Mania was just that.

15:38

And I don't remember that much about it to be honest with you. Nope. Other than it just feels like that I attended a rock concert.

15:46

Yeah, and I got a t -shirt. Because one of my spelling words was acquire and I couldn't,

15:52

I was like, hey, let me see how that's spelling it. Just kidding. You wore the shirt to school and cheated.

15:59

No, I didn't. I didn't mean to. I really didn't. It was not intentional. It just happened to be.

16:04

On your shirt. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. And one of my classmates pointed it out. I was like, oh, hey, look at that.

16:10

I better know how to spell that. My fault. I remember Ron Luce walking around with his

16:15

Bible and teaching. I don't remember what he taught. No. I remember afterward getting to wherever we stayed.

16:24

I don't remember if it was hotel or dorms or what. But, and then spending time with my friend and our

16:31

Bibles and looking into things. But I don't remember much else. I am not impressed with the

16:37

Shiny Happy People documentary. I don't appreciate that there are Christians that get involved in it because they're not gonna paint

16:43

Christianity in a positive light. The stuff about the Duggars and the stuff about Bill Gothard, that was helpful, was stuff that I didn't know about that.

16:53

I knew people that had grown up in the Bill Gothard, you know, cult, so to speak.

16:59

And so anybody that I might encounter who grew up in that, it was helpful in knowing, okay,

17:05

I know now a little bit about what you went through as a child and the kind of teaching that you were exposed to.

17:11

So it was helpful in that sense. So I really, I wasn't exposed to Bill Gothard when I was a kid and not realizing that some of my friends actually had been caught up in it.

17:20

And I didn't even know what it was. So some of the background stuff with Shiny Happy People was helpful in that sense.

17:27

Like a resource. Yeah, right. But it's still, they're made to rip on Christianity. I haven't watched this new season with Acquire the

17:35

Fire or Teen Mania, as you said. But now that you've mentioned it, I'll go back and watch it and see if there were some things in Teen Mania that I just didn't know about.

17:43

That was not one of those ministries that I followed over the years or know much about it. I know that Ron Luce was charismatic.

17:50

I think that I remember reading a story about him hearing from God to do this.

17:56

So he felt like he was on a mission from God to start Teen Mania. But anyway, beyond that,

18:02

I don't know much about it. And so I'll watch the documentary and we'll find out. I'll give you a report in a future episode.

18:10

I got another message from a Chris coming up here, but it's a different Chris. We get a lot of Chrises. We do.

18:17

The next message, this actually came from somebody who watched the video that I did on Jimmy Swaggart.

18:23

Okay. So in the month of July, not only did John MacArthur pass away, but so did

18:29

Jimmy Swaggart. That was actually at the very start of the month. It was July 1st, so one month ago today. You probably heard the news that Hulk Hogan had died.

18:38

Yes. Another famous celebrity was Ozzy Osbourne. Yeah. Not a believer at all.

18:43

But we're meant to understand that Hulk Hogan was a Christian. That baptism that he had about a year and a half ago was a genuine repentance and baptism.

18:54

And his - Praise the Lord. His pastor was solid and talked about Terry, was his name,

19:01

Hulk Hogan, before he died. Yeah. And so though there are kind of some wicked things in Hulk Hogan's past,

19:08

I mean, that really comes with the superstardom of professional wrestling or WWE.

19:14

It was WWF when I was a kid. Yeah. I never watched it when it was WWE. But everything that kind of came with that superstardom and some of the, you've probably heard some of the things about Hogan and what he was caught up in and things that he said and stuff he did.

19:30

Some of that stuff has probably come out in the days since he died. But as a genuine believer in Christ who repented of his sin, we as Christians should look at him as a brother that we're gonna be praising

19:42

God with when we get to heaven someday. Amen. So beautiful thing. I remember admiring

19:47

Hulk Hogan when I was a kid and all the more reason to love him now that we will get to rejoice together in glory in a

19:57

God who saves, who even forgives us of gross superstar sins in the past.

20:03

You and I may never go through, but Hogan was forgiven of those things and has eternal life with God and not a moment too late.

20:13

So anyway, where was I going with that? Oh, with the death of Jimmy Swaggart. So this message came after I did that video and talked about how

20:22

Swaggart was really disqualified. He made a shipwreck of his ministry and there's nothing about Jimmy Swaggart that you should be looking at as thinking, oh, what an admirable

20:32

Christian man. He did wicked depraved things, was constantly going after prostitutes, which he did over and over and over again.

20:41

Oh yeah. And never truly repented of all this. So this person whose name is only thy word had messaged me and said,

20:48

I listened to the podcast. So not only the video that I did, but listened to the podcast where I responded to comments on the video.

20:56

Right. And he said, you never described what an acceptable repentance just might look like.

21:01

Exactly what must a man do to demonstrate your standards of repentance that might satisfy any lingering doubt concerning Mr.

21:11

Swaggart. I never saw Learjet Tim LaHaye repent of his heresies, perhaps crawling over broken glass in a freezing rain, wearing only sackcloth up the stone steps to some shrine might cover it.

21:23

Brother, we accept the grace of God by faith. Help me see what I might be missing. Jesus called Peter Satan and later everything was

21:31

Jake by Acts 2. I haven't heard that expression in a long time. Was Jake?

21:36

Everything was Jake. Everything was fine. Oh, okay, okay. But you had

21:42

Jesus reinstate Peter. Like that's clearly at the end of the gospel of John.

21:48

So it doesn't go from Peter denying Jesus to suddenly everything is

21:53

Jake in Acts 2. Right. Jake wasn't even one of the apostles. I don't know why we keep mentioning

21:58

Jake. I was confused at first. I had no idea. Were you gonna say something else there?

22:05

Just, yeah, it's not like he had... Yeah, talking about Peter.

22:11

No, I was talking about Jesus, not, he wasn't just with the wind, like every which way the wind blows, he's gonna, like, oh,

22:19

I'm feeling this way today. He didn't just let those things go. Right. And he didn't just make that claim that, get behind me,

22:29

Satan, lightly. Yeah, this was Peter trying to prevent

22:35

Jesus from going to the cross. And it didn't matter how good his intentions were. He would have said that he loved his

22:41

Lord. I don't wanna see my Lord die. But if Peter had his way, no matter how good his intentions, we would not be saved.

22:47

Amen. And so Jesus saying to Peter, get behind me, Satan, you are a hindrance to me.

22:53

For you are not thinking with the mind of God, but with the mind of a man. And then with Peter denying

23:00

Jesus three times, he did this, even though Jesus told him, you're gonna deny me three times.

23:07

And Peter denied that he was gonna do that. No, I never, I would never do this.

23:12

I would die with you. Even if they all fall away, talking about the other apostles, I will never fall away.

23:19

And yet sure enough, more intensely every time he did it. I don't know the man. I do not know the man.

23:26

I'm telling you. And it says that he swore. I do not know the man. I was never with him.

23:31

I don't know him. And then the rooster crows and he realizes what he had done. And he went out and wept bitterly, it says.

23:38

But going out and weeping bitterly would not have even been enough for repentance.

23:44

No. Because even Judas felt bad for what he did. That's what I was thinking.

23:50

So that would not have been enough. It's seeing that Peter continued to be devoted to the

23:56

Lord even after that. Right. And then Jesus showing grace to Peter by asking him three times.

24:04

Peter denied Jesus three times. So now Jesus is asking him three times. After he rises from the dead.

24:11

Yeah, after the resurrection, at the end of the gospel of John, saying, Peter, do you love me?

24:16

And you just kind of have to wonder, was Peter's response then more intense every time that he answered

24:24

Jesus? That's the way I picture it. Yeah, right, exactly. Just like he became more intense the more he denied.

24:30

Did he become more intense the more he said, Lord, you know that I love you.

24:35

Yeah. Yes, I love you. He got more intense with it. And Jesus saying to him, then feed my sheep, feed my lambs.

24:42

So it wasn't just this thing that Peter did. And then he goes out and weeps bitterly. And it's like, okay, well, that's all over.

24:48

That's what Jimmy Swaggart did. So he got caught with prostitutes.

24:54

Pictures were taken and he goes on his program and he weeps bitterly over it.

24:59

I have sinned against you. Never says what he did. True. And that was pointed out in the video.

25:05

He never actually said, here's what my sin was. And here's what

25:10

I'm telling you. It is that I did. The congregation was clueless. And so was everybody who was watching that broadcast, which as I said in the video, may have been the most watched sermon on planet earth, at least up to that time.

25:25

I don't know since then, obviously with the internet, it's easier to get sermons out there than it used to be. Yeah, no joke.

25:30

But there were millions of people, a potential audience of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions that could have seen that particular sermon.

25:39

And when they're watching him weep over sin, that he wasn't actually confessing, just saying that he had sinned.

25:47

You said that everyone saw the picture. Well, later. So nobody knew.

25:53

This had been told to him, we've got you. We've got you with these prostitutes.

25:58

What were you doing with these prostitutes? And so now knowing that he couldn't do anything else about it, he makes this confession on his program.

26:07

But like a vague confession. Yeah, vague confession. Saying that I have sinned and he wept over it, but he didn't say what he had actually done.

26:13

He even turns around and apologizes to his wife. But we don't know what he did until after that broadcast was over.

26:23

And then the news says, here's what it was that Jimmy Swaggart did. But he never actually confesses to it.

26:30

Then he doesn't ever actually repent of it because he goes back and does it again. He gets caught again.

26:35

And this time when he gets caught, which happened in California, he comes back to his church in Louisiana and tells them, it's none of your business.

26:44

Oh, he said, God has told me to tell you that it's none of your business.

26:51

And then there are other occasions though he didn't get caught with prostitutes. He gets caught in districts where there are prostitutes.

26:59

Why is he even driving there? And so there just was this continued pattern in his life that never demonstrated the fruit of repentance.

27:08

It wasn't demonstrated the first time he gave that tearful confession on air.

27:14

And it certainly wasn't demonstrated in his life in the years after. The man was a fraud.

27:19

Now, could he have genuinely repented before God? Absolutely. And going with thy words request here, what do

27:27

I mean by repent? Well, repent means to turn away from. Just very simply, just that standard.

27:34

Did he ever turn away from that sin? And we don't have any evidence that he ever did.

27:41

So his ministry was a complete shipwreck. It was a fraud.

27:46

He was a hypocrite. Take him seriously for nothing. And the memory of what he did, hopefully will perish and be buried along with him.

27:56

Did he ever share the gospel? Certainly he did. And I believe there are people who came to Christ because of what they heard

28:03

Jimmy Swaggart preach. But that does not legitimize him or his ministry. He's gonna have to stand before God and answer for what he did.

28:12

Now, he could have repented before he died. I did not say in that video, I did not give any sort of condemnation and say something like he's burning in hell.

28:20

I did not say anything like that. Because I don't know. He could have genuinely repented before he passed.

28:26

But what we have to go off of, the fruit that we have to judge these things by, just isn't there.

28:32

The public eye. Yeah, exactly. So no, I did not make any sort of assertion whatsoever that he has to crawl over broken glass and freezing rain, wearing only sackcloth and go up the stone steps to some shrine, and then maybe that would cover it.

28:46

That wouldn't do anything. That's - A shrine? Yeah, well, that's what he put in the message.

28:52

Okay. But anyway, I mean, that would be salvation by works.

28:58

Like he's trying to do something. To atone for himself and he can't do that. No. But had we ever seen from Jimmy Swaggart, some turning from his sin, some genuine repentance.

29:10

I mean, I think genuine repentance would have looked like stepping down from his ministry too. He's totally disqualified.

29:16

He can't continue to do that role when you got a pastor that's sleeping around with prostitutes. Over and over and over again, a repeated pattern of adultery.

29:25

And no real genuine remorse was demonstrated over all that.

29:30

As far as we know, his tearful confession was, I'm sad I got caught. Yeah. And nothing else beyond that.

29:37

Peter wept bitterly, but he clearly repented of what he did, sought the

29:43

Lord, came after him over and over and over again. Even the empty tomb, runs to go see the empty tomb.

29:51

Jesus is on the shore. He jumps out of the boat. He goes to Jesus. This is a man who's continually coming back to his

29:57

Lord. And God, by his grace, forgave Peter, reinstated him, said to feed my sheep.

30:04

And then Peter becomes the guy to preach the gospel the first time at Pentecost in Acts chapter two.

30:11

But that is by the grace of God that had nothing to do with his works and nothing in the life of Peter looks even remotely comparable to the life of Jimmy Swaggart.

30:20

Swaggart would be closer to Judas than Peter. So appreciate your question, but let's consider the bare minimum whenever we use that word repent.

30:30

Did he actually turn from his sin? Yeah. It's just a simple question. Yeah. Well, I mean,

30:36

Jesus says go and sin no more. Yeah, right. That's the same thing. And we didn't get that from Jimmy Swaggart.

30:42

This next question, this comes from Tim and he's actually here in Arizona. I looked him up on the map or where his town is at.

30:49

It's like in the Northwest corner of Arizona. Nice. But this goes back to the teaching that I did in Luke 15 on the prodigal son.

31:00

And one of the things that I mentioned in the parable of the prodigal son, which like I said there, this was a month ago now that I did this lesson.

31:09

But one of the things that I said was that it really is more accurately titled the parable of the older brother because that's who the parable is about.

31:18

Right. The focus is really not on the prodigal son because Jesus was addressing the Pharisees with these parables.

31:24

And so they're being compared with the older brother. So it's better to call it the parable of the older brother but nobody's gonna know what you're talking about when you say that.

31:33

Yeah, they're gonna be like, what? It's forever in our Sunday school lessons as the parable of the prodigal son.

31:40

But anyway, I did mention that in that parable, there is no gospel in it in the sense that we don't have any atonement for sin.

31:49

Jesus doesn't sacrifice himself for the sins of the prodigal son or there isn't anybody that sacrifices and then rises from the dead and by faith he's forgiven his sin.

32:00

So the gospel isn't in the parable. We still see some beautiful motifs like the forgiveness of the father and even the affection that he has for the older brother trying to welcome him into the celebration but he refuses to go in.

32:15

So there's some beautiful things in there but the gospel itself, the gospel of forgiveness of sin that we have in Jesus Christ is not given in that parable.

32:24

There are many people that wanna say that it is a beautiful picture of the gospel but it's not.

32:30

Because the sinner repents and comes back home. Yeah, and well, okay, so to use.

32:36

And then he's welcomed with open arms. Right, but the way that like, let me, I'll even borrow a name here.

32:42

So Brian Zahn, who is a false teacher up in St. Joseph's, Missouri.

32:48

Okay. He wrote an entire book called Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God. And that was his kind of protest against Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the

32:58

Hands of an Angry God. Oh, okay. So in this book, right from the cover of the book and everywhere else in the book, he's saying that the parable of the prodigal son is the example of the gospel that we have in the gospels.

33:12

Okay. Now, Brian Zahn is a heretic and he outright denies and even hates, vehemently hates the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.

33:22

He thinks it's cosmic child abuse that the father would put the son to death, his wrath being poured out on the son in our place, he dying for our sins, which are being atoned for so that by faith in him, we have the forgiveness of sins.

33:39

We have his righteousness. It's the great exchange. So our sins upon him, his righteousness given to us and by his stripes, we are healed as said in Isaiah 53.

33:50

So Zahn hates that message. He says, that's not the gospel. He thinks it's pagan and he calls it cosmic child abuse.

33:58

He says the gospel is in the parable of the prodigal son when the father just forgives the son.

34:04

And that's the true message of the gospel, okay? So there are a lot of liberals, especially theological liberals that love the parable for that.

34:13

And will say, you don't need the penal substitutionary thing because all the father has to do is just forgive us like the father did for the prodigal son in that parable.

34:22

You're missing the point of the parable. If that's what you're getting out of it, because that's not what

34:28

Jesus is communicating there. But so I said, when I was teaching on this in Luke 15, that there is no gospel in that parable.

34:35

Again, beautiful things, but the message of the gospel, especially of the atoning sacrifice of Christ is not there.

34:43

So Tim emailed and he said, Pastor Gabe, after listening to a recent podcast of yours,

34:48

I wanted to provide you a thought about that podcast. So upfront, I have perhaps a minor disagreement on how you use the phrase, the gospel.

34:57

Before going further, I highly respect your ministry work and I appreciate that Tim. The first time

35:03

I heard you preach was at First Baptist Lyndale. Later discovered the what podcast and what

35:09

I appreciate most is your backbone, courage and commitment to the authority of scripture. To keep my point brief, let me point to Matthew 4, 17.

35:19

From that time, Jesus began to preach and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

35:25

Jesus' words cut straight to the heart of the issue, sin. This as you know, is only one of many places in scripture where the call slash command is for sinners to repent.

35:37

My question then, the words of Jesus, were they not the gospel? In Acts, Peter certainly gave a full orbed gospel message.

35:46

But does that mean when witnessing, unless we give all the elements, let's say, of Jesus' perfect work, innocent yet dying a sinner's death, paying the penalty due us and concurring death by raising to life to sit at the right hand of God the

36:01

Father, we have not given the gospel? Concerning your podcast as a whole, I was with you the entire way.

36:08

Your statement that Luke 15, 11 to 32 is not the gospel, in my mind, could cause some confusion.

36:14

The misuse or abuse of Luke 15 is certainly a problem. It seems you may have swung the pendulum a little too far the other direction.

36:22

It also seems your definition, the gospel, must include all the elements mentioned above.

36:27

Though not a wrong definition, it is a narrow one. Whereas I contend the entirety of scripture is the gospel.

36:34

All of it is good news. An example can be found here. I have had a concern for decades, the belief that when witnessing, you fall short of your duty if you have not given the gospel in all the elements, resulting in unneeded guilt, perhaps some avoiding witnessing altogether.

36:52

Therefore, working from a broader definition of the gospel when witnessing, the gospel is giving the truth of God's word whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.

37:02

Such as you did at the end of your podcast, a call to repent. You indeed gave the gospel.

37:07

How so? The call you gave came directly from the word. Repentance is a necessary step leading to salvation.

37:14

That is good news. I hope this makes sense. You were not wrong in making your points.

37:19

I do believe, though, it can be confusing to some who desire to witness, but think that they must give every point of the gospel message in order to not come up short or fall into error of false teachers.

37:33

Please keep up the good work, my friend. You are a needed voice in the wilderness to him who is faithful and true,

37:39

Timothy. Timothy, I appreciate that message. And obviously I'm gonna accept the compliments and I appreciate you listening and hearing the sermon that I preached and then listening to the podcast and taking the time to write that message as well.

37:55

I very much appreciate it. Now, I agree with you that you could call the whole

38:01

Bible the gospel. Amen. And I've done that before. In fact, even when somebody asked me, can you give a one word definition of the gospel?

38:11

One word, just give me a one word definition of the gospel. And I said, sure, Jesus. So you could give a one word definition of the gospel,

38:20

Jesus is the good news. The father sent the son, so Jesus is the gospel.

38:26

It all points to Christ. You could say the Bible is the gospel because it talks about our sin and need for a savior and points us to Christ who is that savior.

38:34

Absolutely. So in broad senses, we can use the term gospel that way, but there is still a distinctiveness to it.

38:43

We can't leave it at the gospel is the Bible. That's like saying no creed but Christ.

38:49

Okay, what Christ are you talking about? The Mormon Jesus? Are you talking about the Jehovah's Witness Jesus?

38:54

So there still needs to be some descriptiveness to who we're talking about when we say

39:00

Jesus. There needs to be some definition to what we're talking about when we say the gospel.

39:06

And there is a distinction between law and the gospel. And it's not just a distinction that we make, it's a distinction that the

39:16

Bible makes. You think about John 1, 17, which says the law came through Moses.

39:23

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. There's a distinction there.

39:28

The law, Moses, grace and truth, which is the gospel through Jesus Christ.

39:34

The gospel is grace. It is the grace of God that is shown to us through Jesus Christ, our

39:39

Lord. So even there in the text, you have a distinction between law and gospel. There are some teachers out there right now,

39:45

Doug Wilson stirred some controversy in saying this a few months back because he just came out with a new book on federal vision, which for a long time, people were accusing him of believing.

39:57

He said that he didn't, or he had moved away from it, but now he's got a book out saying that he is a federal visionist.

40:04

But in that conversation about that book, he said that he doesn't really believe there is a distinction between the law and the gospel, or that the

40:12

Bible doesn't make that distinction, but we make that distinction. And I disagree. I think the Bible absolutely does make that distinction.

40:18

You are not under the law, but under grace. That's a distinction. Yes. There's a distinction between law and gospel.

40:24

So when we say gospel, we do have to make some distinctions between that message of good news.

40:29

By faith in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven your sins and you have everlasting life with God.

40:35

By trusting in his work, dying on the cross for us, rising again from the dead so that whoever believes in him, our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life.

40:48

Knowing that message of the gospel, we call that the gospel. You would not call that law because now you've muddied the water now at this point.

40:59

Right. The law, and Paul makes this clear in Romans, the law shows us our sin.

41:04

Right. So through the law, we recognize we've sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

41:10

So there's a part of God's word, the Bible, that is that law that exposes our sin.

41:17

But then there's another part of God's word, the Bible, which gives us the good news after we've been convicted over our sin.

41:25

Right. And that's literally what gospel means. It means good news. Yeah, the whole Bible is good news, but you still have to make the categorical distinctions that the law is not gospel.

41:36

If you were just telling somebody law, like you've sinned and God's angry at you, you've lied, you've cheated, you've stolen, you've disobeyed your parents, you've murdered in your heart, you've committed adultery.

41:49

You could say all of those things. You're never sharing the gospel with anybody. And if you never resolve it with the gospel, you're just heaping judgment upon a person and they leave distressed and depressed, like you said.

42:01

And hopeless. Yeah, feeling hopeless and whatever. So that's all law. You would not have any gospel in that.

42:08

We would not even put that in the same category with the gospel. Some preacher that's just teaching stuff like that, or even saying like, if the sermons are all, here's what you need to do with your life to make it better.

42:20

That's still law. Even if he has good intentions on helping you and thinking that he can make your life better if you just obey these things and then

42:29

God is on your side, well, then it still works righteousness. You're doing your works to make yourself righteous.

42:35

And there isn't really any gospel in there of understanding you can't do anything to save yourself.

42:40

Nope, it's the free gift. Yes, but God has given that free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

42:45

So making those distinctions and that understanding. And I think it is good to recognize those distinctions and even be convicted over the way that you evangelize.

42:57

I don't think that we say those things to discourage somebody from evangelism. It's actually to help them with their evangelism.

43:04

So don't just be heaping law upon somebody. You also can't just go in going, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

43:11

That's not the gospel either. I mean, you've come across so many people that know the Bible, verses.

43:18

Yeah, can quote verses to me, yeah. Yeah, and yet they still don't know

43:24

Jesus. Yeah, right. And so it's actually -

43:30

You can speak the Christianese. Yeah, but if you just spoke Christianese, if you will, like Christian words and using vague

43:39

Jesus's love, then it wouldn't come across to them as anything more than they already know.

43:48

Right. In my opinion. I mean, no, don't take that as truth, wholehearted truth, because God can do anything at any point.

43:59

So with anything, but it's still,

44:05

I don't know. It's less of a discussion at that point. Yeah, I mean, there have been times when in an evangelistic encounter,

44:14

I never did give them the gospel. That's true. And it's because I could tell that they were hostile toward it.

44:20

And so I'm heeding Jesus instructions in Matthew seven, I think it's verse six, verse five or six, where he says, don't cast your pearls before swine or give to dogs what is sacred because they'll just trample them underfoot.

44:33

And so when I can tell that they're hostile to whatever it is that I'm sharing with them, I'm not thinking in my head, okay, well,

44:40

I gotta get the gospel out. I gotta get the gospel to them real quick because otherwise I'm walking away from this encounter and I never gave them the gospel.

44:49

No, I've given them law to till their heart, to soften their heart, to be receptive to the gospel.

44:55

But if they're not softened, if they just become more hard -hearted and they just lash out and get angry,

45:02

I'm not gonna give them the gospel. They're gonna take what's sacred and trample on it. And so, yeah, and Ray Comfort, by the way, way more experience evangelizing than I have, but he said the same thing.

45:15

There are occasions where he has tried to help a person see their sin and need for a savior.

45:20

They become so hostile to it, he doesn't ever go to the gospel. They weren't gonna receive it anyway. There was one time when

45:27

Todd Friel and Ray Comfort were out together evangelizing.

45:33

And Ray didn't share the gospel with the guy. And so Todd, as a teaching moment to the audience, had said, now you didn't share the gospel with him, why not?

45:41

And that's Ray talking about how he wasn't gonna listen to it anyway. So now I've given something that is beautiful and glorious and lifesaving, and he was just gonna spit on it and trample on it.

45:52

There were people that Jesus did not share the gospel with. That's true. Because they were hostile to him.

45:58

There were towns that he told the disciples not to go to. Because Jesus knew they were not gonna be receptive to the preaching of the gospel when they went there.

46:07

Dust your feet when you leave. Yeah. Now the Lord knows that. We can't look at a town and go, well,

46:12

I can't go share the gospel there. Because then we'd be Jonah. Yeah, right, exactly, yeah. I'm gonna hop in a ship and go in the other direction.

46:20

That's my excuse. We moved out to the desert, so you know where our heart's at when it comes to the ministry that we're doing here.

46:29

But anyway, all that to say, Timothy, I agree with some of what you're saying, but there still has to be the distinctions between what we categorize as law and what we categorize as gospel.

46:39

And what elements must a gospel presentation contain to be sharing the gospel with somebody?

46:48

And with regard to the parable of the prodigal son, it's not there. Like I said, there's still some beautiful things in that parable, like the love of the father, the repentant heart of the son.

46:59

And I talked about that. It's a good picture of repentance, the way that he kind of recites in his head, well, when

47:05

I go back to my father, this is what I'm gonna say to him. And then when he tries to say that to his father, his father cuts him off and says, bring the robe, bring the ring, kill the fattened calf.

47:16

My son was dead and he's alive again. So there's beautiful things there. I'm just thinking of how

47:22

I would react in this moment. And it probably would not be that first thing. Like, yeah, you're home, but what were you thinking?

47:30

Like I would be torn. You could certainly use that to give a picture of what should repentance look like.

47:38

Just like we talked about a moment ago. Oh, definitely. So he comes to a startling awareness of what he's done and what he's doing.

47:47

And he doesn't wanna be down there with the pigs, doesn't wanna be down there in the slop anymore. There's no reason.

47:52

Yeah, and with a complete humble heart, I'll just go back to my father, just ask that I be a servant.

47:58

I just wanna be a servant. He's not even asking to be a son again or have my old room back.

48:04

Right, or my entitlement. Yeah, exactly, which is what he demanded in the first place.

48:09

Right, yes. So you got a good picture of repentance there, but a person can be repentant and not really know

48:17

Christ. True, that is true. Like the AA program, for example,

48:22

Alcoholics Anonymous, sometimes, I won't say this is the case with every AA program, but sometimes they're telling the men to just make peace with whatever you believe to be

48:31

God. And I know that to be the case because I've had that experience with AA programs of them teaching men that, men coming out of that and saying, well, this is all they taught.

48:40

They didn't tell me anything about Jesus. Right. They didn't tell me about the gospel. So an AA program might teach you to not be an alcoholic anymore because it's destroying you and it's destroying your family.

48:50

You could repent of that, but you still don't have the gospel in that. You still don't have faith in Jesus to forgive me of my sins.

48:57

Right. You're just trying to be righteous by your own works or by your own abstinence. So again, there does need to be certain elements there for it to be a presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

49:11

And the summary that you probably hear me give most often on this podcast is saying that Jesus lived the perfect life that we could not live.

49:21

He died the death that we were supposed to die. And by his death on the cross, he took the wrath of God upon himself, clothes us in his righteousness so that all who believe in him, our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life with God.

49:36

He rises again from the dead so that we would receive resurrection also. He ascends into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the father, interceding for us on our behalf before God.

49:47

For those who believe in Jesus, he's coming back again to judge the living and the dead.

49:53

But those who believe in him have nothing to fear of the judgment of God. We have everlasting life by faith in Jesus.

50:02

And then as you said earlier, now what? Now that I believe in Jesus, we'll go and get baptized, go and sin no more.

50:10

There are some other things to follow after that. But in the meantime, in sharing the gospel message, understanding that our sins are forgiven and we are made right with God and we are given everlasting life only by faith in Jesus, the perfect spotless son of God who died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins.

50:29

Atonement has everything to do with the gospel. Yes. You look at Paul's presentation of the gospel in Romans chapter three, there's atonement.

50:37

There's the word propitiation in there. Romans 3 .23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

50:51

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

50:57

When you sing the lyrics to the song in Christ alone, you're singing the gospel.

51:04

True. And even in that second verse, when on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

51:12

Yeah. For every sin on him was laid, here in the death of Christ I stand.

51:19

It's message of the gospel there, even in the lyrics of that song. So we have some great things, whether it's catechism or song lyrics that can help us summarize the gospel, quoting certain

51:29

Bible verses as I've just done as well, but there does need to be certain elements that we call the gospel when it comes to your gospel presentation.

51:41

But it doesn't have to be perfect. Who shared the gospel perfectly? I think that might be what he's getting at.

51:50

Yeah. Other than, you know, you're just quoting all the way through the book of Romans or something like that. Yeah. But whenever we do evangelism from the approach of helping a person understand their sin and then giving them the gospel, that's exactly the approach

52:05

Paul makes in Romans. That's the Romans road style of evangelism, if you're familiar with that.

52:12

And most often when I share the gospel, that's probably the method, if you'll pardon the expression,

52:19

I'm using the most whenever it comes to sharing the gospel. I go through a Romans road sort of style of evangelism, which by the way,

52:27

I'm speaking about at the White Harvest Conference that's coming to Georgia in a month.

52:34

Yeah, I'm doing that. The first weekend in September. You can find out more about it by going to whiteharvestmin .com.

52:45

And yeah, so if you're gonna be around in the Atlanta area, that first weekend in September, a little bit

52:52

North of it, Marble Hill, Georgia is the name of it. Foothills Community Church in Marble Hill, Georgia. Charlie Parrish is the pastor of the church out there.

52:59

Oh, and one of the guys that attends that church is Jimmy Hicks. Oh, okay. If you listen to Wretched with Todd Friel, then you're probably familiar with Jimmy Hicks.

53:08

So Scott Klusendorf is gonna be teaching there, Justin Peters, Jim Osmond, me, as well as the pastor,

53:15

Charlie, who's hosting all of us. Loved getting to know Charlie last year. It was a great time. So I'm excited to be invited back.

53:22

Commissioned is the theme this year, Matthew 28, 19, which is the Great Commission at September 6th and 7th at the, like I said,

53:32

White Harvest Conference at Foothills Community Church, Marble Hill, Georgia, September 6th and 7th.

53:38

Yeah, there you go, whiteharvestmin .com. All right, I think I got one or two more messages here.

53:45

I said I had one more Chris message. Yes. So here you go. Pastor Gabe, thanks to you and yours for doing the

53:51

What Podcast. I'm legally blind and find yours and similar

53:57

Christ -centered, Christ -honoring audio resources to be invaluable. I'm certain it's a lot of work, but please know it's very much appreciated.

54:05

Well, that is amazing, Chris. Thank you so much. First question, a few years ago, you did a

54:11

What series teaching through the book of Hebrews. I seem to recall you saying at one point that you believe the author to be

54:18

Paul and perhaps Luke was the transcriptionist. I'm sure you're aware that this is at variance with the majority view, though no less a theological giant than R .C.

54:28

Sproul also believe that Paul to be the author of the letter of Hebrews. Why do you believe Paul to be the author?

54:34

Can you cite any biblical or extra biblical evidence? Second question, the legacy standard

54:39

Bible is rapidly gaining popularity. Justin Peters, Mike Winger and others I follow have made the switch to the

54:46

LSB. I didn't realize that Mike Winger had, but that's pretty cool. I knew that Justin Peters was. Justin Peters is about as devoted to the legacy as anyone else will ever be.

54:57

He does love the legacy translation. As a crusty old curmudgeon who resists change of any sort and has used the

55:03

ESV for years, I'm hesitant to move to the newer Bible lacking solid reasons to do so.

55:09

I do like the LSB's use of Yahweh over the more traditional Lord. Why do you prefer the

55:15

LSB and do you advise others to make the change? Well, let me respond to that one first.

55:21

So many of you know that at one point I did switch to the legacy in teaching here on this podcast.

55:27

There's a couple of reasons why I went back to the ESV. The main one though, being that I was coming to Arizona and this church was already in the

55:35

ESV. I had talked to the elders before coming in about potentially switching to the

55:40

LSB. They made a really strong case for why we need to remain in the ESV at least for now.

55:45

And one of those being that there were a lot of young men who had just come to the

55:51

Lord and were growing in their sanctification and they had been given

55:56

ESV study Bibles. So they just had those Bibles and now here I'm coming in and I'm gonna switch it to another translation.

56:03

I was more familiar with the ESV than I was with the legacy anyway. I had only recently made that switch.

56:09

So I was okay with going back to the ESV. And for now, at least in my preaching and even some of the teaching that I'm doing here on the podcast,

56:17

I'm still in the English standard translation. The hear the word of the Lord podcast, I'm going through the legacy right now.

56:23

When I finish up with the gospel of Luke, I'm going into Acts and I'm gonna do Acts from the legacy.

56:30

And then when I go to the gospel of John, since I've already done that on this podcast in the

56:36

English standard version, I'm gonna do the gospel of John again in the legacy. So I've got some teaching that I do in the legacy but if you are more familiar with the

56:46

ESV, that's where you have most of your Bible verses memorized. It's really hard to switch.

56:53

It is. Even when you're just talking about a slight word change in a verse that you love or something, it's difficult.

57:01

I mean, I recommend it just to have it. Recommend the ESV or the legacy?

57:06

Well, hold on a second. Okay. So I recommend that you stick with whatever you're familiar with as long as they don't switch it up some odd thing, like they did the

57:18

NIV or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I went to the ESV.

57:23

Yeah, don't get me started on that. Because the NIV just changed so much. I was like, if I got to use this,

57:28

I have to learn this translation all over again. I may as well go to something else. Sorry you brought it up.

57:35

No, but use what you're familiar with. But it's good to have the legacy as like a resource or a reference because sometimes it's like you know it by heart, you have it memorized, but sometimes it's good to hear it in just a little different way.

57:56

And if I remember right, the legacy has it to where it does phrase by phrase.

58:01

Is that? No, it's as close to a word for word translation. Word for word, that's what it was.

58:07

Yeah, essentially literal is what that's called. It's an essentially literal translation.

58:12

Okay. So I knew there was something different about that versus what the ESV was doing.

58:19

Yeah. Well, the ESV also is essentially literal. Is it? But there's some things that are like way different.

58:27

Yeah, yeah. There's some things where they opted into a proper and understandable phrasing.

58:34

Oh, okay. Since the word for word, you know, it doesn't translate over exactly.

58:40

You can't go exactly from Greek into English. Definitely. So sometimes the ESV - Be like broken English.

58:45

Yeah, right. Sometimes the English standard does opt for a certain phrasing and every translation has to do that to some degree.

58:51

Sure. But even with the legacy, so even when there's a certain idiom that doesn't translate into English as well, the legacy still might be faithful to the idiom instead of going ahead and taking the translation freedom of,

59:10

I'm gonna go ahead and tell you what that would mean to us in English. Oh, okay. So something like that. Sure.

59:15

Like for example, when the Apostle Paul is warning Timothy to have nothing to do with old wives tales.

59:22

Yeah. In the ESV, it says have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths.

59:27

Right. So it's like the ESV translators went ahead and said, here's really how that would be understood by us.

59:33

So the legacy was gonna be more faithful to being essentially literal than the

59:40

ESV translators even were. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. Well, that explains why they're so different.

59:45

But like I said, it's like, it's, it puts a, I don't know, a little polish on what you already know.

59:52

Yeah. So. And like when I do my sermon prep, I'm often reading from multiple translations.

59:57

Yeah, you are. So helping me to understand the wording or the proper understanding of that phrase as best as I can know it when

01:00:05

I'm communicating it to my flock. And the kids are like in their school, at their school, they're learning in the

01:00:14

NKJV. Yeah, New King James. Yeah. And so whenever we're doing

01:00:20

Bible study and half the family's reading from the ESV and the other half is the

01:00:26

New King James, it's the girls are, the two little girls, they're like, I'm so confused.

01:00:32

I'm like, okay. But some of the phrasing in that is actually really eye -opening.

01:00:39

Like they don't pull punches and stuff like that. It's pretty hard hitting in some of those. Now I've said, and this is something that I've said more recently.

01:00:48

And I think it's just kind of as I've dwelt on why I've settled on the translations that I've used and then coming to Arizona and switching back to the

01:00:56

ESV after I had already made the change to the legacy. I had an understudy that was asking me questions about translation.

01:01:04

I'm like, where would you go given this circumstance? Would you use this translation? And I said, okay, I'm gonna be blunt.

01:01:11

Here's, if I could do my whole pastoral ministry over again, starting from the very beginning, picking from a translation and sticking with that translation to preach all the way through,

01:01:21

I would have gone to the New King James. Yeah, why? And the reason being not only because there is a tradition that's preserved with the

01:01:30

King James and the New King James Bible, a manuscript tradition that is preserved there in those translations.

01:01:37

What we refer to as the majority text, in other words. So there's that, but also because the

01:01:44

King James and the New King James are regularly the best selling translations and you can find them absolutely everywhere.

01:01:53

Oh, that's true. If somebody doesn't have a Bible, they can go to the gas station and find a

01:01:58

New King James Bible. So those translations are all over the place.

01:02:03

They're the ones that you're most commonly gonna find at the shelf at Walmart or at the grocery store or something like that.

01:02:08

In the hotel. In the hotel, yeah, in the drawer, either King James or New King James. So that would be the reason why, just because it's more universal, it's more accessible.

01:02:19

Even when our local Christian bookstore here in Casa Grande, they have an ESV section, but it's very, very small.

01:02:25

And they don't have any legacy standard Bibles, but they have a huge King James and New King James section.

01:02:33

Oh, interesting. And furthermore, it's more than one publisher that's putting out the New King James, even though I think it's

01:02:39

Zondervan that has the copyright on it. A lot of publishers are doing the

01:02:45

New King James, whereas the English standard version is only put out by Crossway. And the legacy is only put out by the

01:02:52

Lachman Foundation or Steadfast Bibles, but they're all kind of connected with the same thing. So when you have more people publishing a translation, it makes the translations cheaper.

01:03:02

There's more variety, more options. Variety as in like covers and stuff like that, or?

01:03:08

Like style in the way that the text is laid out. Oh, okay. Journaling Bibles, study

01:03:14

Bibles, things like that. Yeah, large print, exactly. That's what I mean nowadays. Now I will say,

01:03:19

I think the best study Bible is the English standard version study Bible. I own about six or seven different study

01:03:27

Bibles. I've been through many more than that, including the Geneva Bible, which good luck understanding that one.

01:03:33

But these study Bibles are very, very helpful for study.

01:03:38

That's exactly the point. The best notes of any of those study Bibles is in the English standard version. They really did the best version.

01:03:45

That doesn't mean I think that I agree with every single one of their notes. I can actually point out some places in the

01:03:50

ESV that I did not agree with the notes that they put. But nonetheless, I think it is the best study

01:03:57

Bible. Interesting. Formatting, content, everything. Editing, it looks the best.

01:04:04

It is the cleanest presentation. It is the most understandable. It has the most bang for your buck in the

01:04:10

English standard version. I know the Reformation study Bible put out by Ligonier. I know that's popular.

01:04:15

That's a good study Bible too. I still don't think it's as good as the ESV. Love you Ligonier guys. I just don't think they did as well as Crossway did with their study

01:04:24

Bible. So if that's helpful for you in terms of understanding your translation,

01:04:29

I just gave a big hoorah for the ESV in terms of the study

01:04:35

Bible that they have. But going back to the other question that you mentioned, which was about Hebrews being written by the

01:04:44

Apostle Paul. I have taken the position that it's written by Luke, though it was a sermon that was preached by the

01:04:51

Apostle Paul. So let me go ahead and play that video. I did a what video on this. If you're looking for it on YouTube, it's

01:04:58

WWUTT and then type in who is the author of Hebrews and the video will come up for you.

01:05:03

But here's the video making that argument and yeah, we'll conclude with this. How about that?

01:05:11

The book of Hebrews in the New Testament teaches from the Old Testament how Jesus Christ is greater than any angel, priest or old covenant institution.

01:05:21

He is the greater Moses, the greater word, the greater sacrifice. The author says at the end that this is a letter of exhortation, encouraging the reader to endure in faith.

01:05:30

The audience are Hebrews, that they would know Jesus is the Savior whom God spoke about through the prophets.

01:05:36

But who is the author? That's been a debate throughout church history. Martin Luther thought the author was Apollos. Most scholars believe it was

01:05:43

Paul. There's language that sounds like Paul, but it doesn't start like any of his other letters. In fact, it doesn't start like a letter at all.

01:05:50

It's structured more like a sermon. There's also this line in chapter two, verse three, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

01:05:58

That salvation first spoken by the Lord was confirmed to us by those who heard. Paul would not have said that.

01:06:05

In Galatians 1 .12, Paul said of the gospel that he preached, I neither received it from man, nor was

01:06:10

I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Hebrews originally written in Greek contains some of the most challenging

01:06:17

Greek in the New Testament. In fact, it sounds like Luke's writing. So the likelihood is that Hebrews is a sermon that was preached by Paul written down by Luke so more people could hear it.

01:06:29

Whether Jew or Gentile, the book of Hebrews will equip you in every good thing to do his will by doing in us what is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever and ever.

01:06:41

Amen. When we understand the text. All right. So there's my argument for the author of Hebrews.

01:06:49

Uh -huh. And I appreciate you listening, Chris. And thank you so much for emailing.

01:06:54

I hope our answers were helpful for you. Well, babe, we're over an hour now.

01:07:00

We are. And we never got to the John MacArthur stuff. No. Said we were gonna talk about John MacArthur and what an inspiration he was to us and how much we loved his ministry.

01:07:10

So let me do this instead. We'll read some comments on the John MacArthur video that I did.

01:07:16

We'll do this next week. Okay. Does anybody have any questions or even comments?

01:07:21

Like share a testimony. Sure. Of how John MacArthur impacted you, what his study

01:07:29

Bible meant to you, what the grace to you ministry meant to you, the sermons that he did, anything.

01:07:36

Right. Share something about MacArthur's ministry and we'll read some of those on the broadcast next week.

01:07:43

That'll be nice. The email address again is whenweunderstandthetextatgmail .com.

01:07:48

Don't forget, you can send us voicemails. Go to www .utt

01:07:53

.com. Click on voicemail and it'll come up and you can record it again through your phone or through your computer.

01:08:01

And as always, we appreciate you listening. Amen. Babe, you listened to, you got to hear

01:08:07

John MacArthur live in 2019. Yep. When we went to the Truth Matters Conference. Yes.

01:08:12

Was there any other time that you got to hear him live? Didn't he go to a

01:08:19

G3? That's right. He was at a G3 that we went to. Yeah. So you did get to hear him live a few times.

01:08:24

Yeah. A couple of times at least. But he spoke more than once at the Truth Matters Conference.

01:08:29

There were a couple of days that he spoke. And then of course he always does a Q &A. Yeah. Yeah, I got to hear him like a handful of times from the stage, you know.

01:08:38

Yeah. So we'll talk about our memories. Yeah. And sharing what his ministry has meant to us and even to when we understand the text when we come back next week.

01:08:48

So again, we thank you for your patience with us, letting us have some vacation time. Yeah, thank you.

01:08:53

It's good to be back. It is. And I'll be back on with Luke, Teaching and Luke as we got to finish up.

01:09:00

Oh, I'm on to the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.

01:09:07

That's a good one. That's what I've got next. So that's Monday. They're all good. But that's a good one. Yeah, right. That's a good one.

01:09:13

I don't like these so much. Yeah, take that up with God. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is the

01:09:19

Luke study. Thursday we're back in Jeremiah and then God willing next week, another Q &A. Amen. Oh, I do want to say, we're in kind of a financial crunch right now as we had some surgeries.

01:09:31

So our daughter had to get her wisdom teeth removed. That wasn't covered by health insurance. We had to pay that out of pocket and that was expensive.

01:09:40

And we've got another surgery coming up with our three soon to be four -year -old. And so if there's any way you want to give us a gift somehow and help us out, we would greatly appreciate it.

01:09:51

And again, information on how you can contribute is on the website at www .utt .com

01:09:56

and click on the give tab. And there's information there on giving us a donation. And we definitely appreciate your prayers.

01:10:03

Yes, as always. Thank you. Let's close with prayer and we'll be done for this week. Yes. Heavenly father, we thank you for this time that we have together to chat and to talk, to discuss your word, to reflect upon your gospel, the good news that Jesus died on the cross for us and whoever believes in him, our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life.

01:10:26

What a wonderful, glorious message. And I pray that it is our joy every day, rejoicing in God for the kindness that you've shown us in Christ, that we would be convicted of heart over our sin and turn from it, that we may walk in the righteousness of Christ that we've been clothed in.

01:10:44

And we love this word so much, we want to share it with somebody else. The gospel is the only way that we're saved and made right with God.

01:10:51

It's the only way that anybody is saved. And so we share with them that there is forgiveness for your sins and everlasting life that we have in Jesus Christ.

01:11:00

Give us boldness and courage to share that message with others and for our brothers and sisters in the

01:11:08

Lord to encourage them, admonish where needed, praying for one another and lifting one another up in this most holy faith that we share.

01:11:17

May it be our joy and our delight to gather with the saints, to hear the word of God preached, to partake in the

01:11:23

Lord's table and in baptism. And Lord, we thank you for your continued graces to us every day.

01:11:31

As said in Lamentations 3, great is your faithfulness, your mercies are new every morning.

01:11:37

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. All right, you got your script?

01:11:51

Yeah. Okay, we've got one voice message. Okay. And hang on, several emails.

01:12:06

Oh yeah, so what I was gonna tell you was that we're not going to, we're not gonna try to compile to a half hour for the sake of the radio stations.

01:12:15

I'm just gonna leave that, so. Okay. That's, we're just talking until we're done talking.

01:12:20

All right. Can do. Okay, whenever you're ready. This is

01:12:27

When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the word. Thank you for listening and for sharing out our, sharing out podcast.

01:12:37

Did I say that? Yeah. Yeah, I did. It's good, it's good, don't worry about it.

01:12:43

Okay. I thought that it was going somewhere and then it didn't, and I was like, yeah, okay, I got it.

01:12:48

Sharing out. Sharing out. Just putting it out there. Just put it out there. We're putting a new term to it, yeah. And then I was like, is it shouting out?

01:12:55

Is it sharing out? Like, where are you going? And then I realized it was a typo.