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Responding to questions from listeners about free grace theology, whether "You're not David" is right theology, and the threefold use of the law. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
What is free grace theology? Is it wrong to understand that you're not David and your problems are not Goliath? And what is the three-fold use of the law? The answers to these questions, when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, still wishing you a Merry Christmas and letting you know that Gabe's new book, 25 Christmas Myths and What The Bible Says, is available now on Amazon .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky.
You're welcome. And my co-host, Becky Hughes. Woo-hoo. And the formats on Amazon are Kindle and, excuse me, Print, I believe. Yes. The Print's been submitted. I didn't check before we started the podcast here if it was up yet.
And I don't have my phone. My phone is charging, so I can't look that up real fast for you. Sorry.
Speaking of looking things up, though. Uh-huh. I got Becky an Alexa for Christmas. Uh-huh. She's been asking for it. I've been resistant on letting a government agent into our home. But boy, they sure were cheap heading into Christmas.
$30 for one of those things. Yeah, that's pretty nice. That was pretty good. So I was like, yeah, I could do that. You could splurge for me. For my bride. That's easy enough. And so we were looking at how we could do the podcast on Alexa.
Yeah, because that would be awesome. Can you ask Alexa? We're saying the word Alexa over and over. Everybody's Alexas are going crazy now. Bing, bing, bing. I do not understand. Can you ask Alexa to play the When We Understand the Text podcast?
Did you look this up?
I did. And you can, but the one podcast app that you could use. Well, yeah, it's not an app. It's called a skill. Okay, a skill. Right. But it's still considered an app. It's still considered an app. Okay.
But the skill, the one podcast skill that knows, recognizes, and can play it is an hour free per month, if I gathered that correctly. But then you got to pay for it. Or you can pay for more than an hour of play time.
So our Friday podcast would be once a month.
You get to listen to us once a month on your Alexa device. Or one week.
Or one week. Not even that. Not even that, because you're about 20 minutes during the week, days.
Yeah, each lesson's 22, 23 minutes or something like that. Well. Not even three full episodes. For free, anyway. For free. But if you paid for the app. Per month. Per month. Was it $1 .99 or something like that?
Somewhere around that. And it kept going up for the more, because it was like, I don't remember what the next one up was. 10 hours, maybe.
Oh. Oh. So it's not unlimited space.
No. Not unless you pay one of the more premium prices. Oh, goodness.
Oh, yes. Okay. So apparently, Podbean, which is the service that we use to host the podcast, had an app that could be played on Alexa at one point. Because I can go find the article where they said, here, here's all you need to do in order to get your podcast to play on Alexa.
But since then, I guess they've changed what apps are available or what skills Alexa can learn. Outdated. It must be. How quickly that happens. You know, when they go up to second and third generation, Amazon figured out, hey, we can get more money out of this.
Yeah. Buku bucks, too. If we make people pay for.
The other the other ones, they there is one that recognized the name and was like attempting to play. But then it wouldn't ever play. Oh. Had bad reviews. Yeah. It had really bad reviews about that being a common theme with other podcasts, too.
I see. And then then there was another one that said, if you have suggestions, you can write into them and suggest podcasts for them to to get.
Well, that's that's what we can extend. That's what we can extend right here. We are new to the whole smart home thing. Yes. Very, very new. If you happen to know of some sort of skill or app or whatever you can add to your Alexa and say, hey, Alexa, play the WTT podcast.
If you can figure if you know of something that is more readily available, free, right? People don't have to pay for. Let us know. Send an email into when we understand the text at Gmail dot com and we'll be sure to let other folks know about it.
It was nice to use it when we figured out we could use it. Yeah. You could just say, hey, Alexa, play. What did you say?
Was it when we understand the text? Oh, I said W .W .U .T .T. And then when she replies, she says what? But she also says Jobs instead of Jobs. Yeah, that was funny.
So the episode that was up was Job's Redeemer Lives. Yeah. And it has a question mark at the end. So she even asked it as a question. Yes. It was playing W .U .T .T. 849 Jobs Redeemer Lives. That was the way.
Yeah. It was Alexa repeated it.
But she says she doesn't say W .U .T .T. as W .U .T .T. She says W .U .T .T. She just says W .U .T .T. Right.
It's real fast. We're speaking of her as though she's a person already using it to computer the computer. We've tried to help our children understand this is not a new person that we've welcomed into our home.
This is still a contraption. It's a person that they can control and fight over. Yeah, right. Alexa, pause. Alexa, play. Alexa, tell me a funny joke. Alexa, no.
All right. It's been quite eventful. We were meaning to do this a little shorter episode because Becky and I are both exhausted. Very much. I don't know how well we're going to do this here because I've got quite a few questions already pulled up.
Well, let's get to it. But being the Friday episode, we take questions from listeners and you can submit them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. This first one comes from Jeremy in Springfield, Alabama.
Hey, Pastor Gabe, I love your podcast. You truly teach the solid meat of the word. Well, thank you, Jeremy. Are you familiar with free grace theology? This movement is starting to influence my church and is really unsettling to me and my family.
It seems like the basis of it is a rebuttal to lordship salvation. Could you give me your thoughts? Thanks for your diligence to rightly divide the word of truth. Well, Jeremy, it kind of depends on what resource you look up to find out what it is that free grace theology is.
There are different folks that ascribe to it and would actually define it in different ways. But for the most part, I would say that free grace theology is the idea that you receive the grace of God without merit, which we understand even in a reformed framework or even within a Protestant framework.
I mean, it's just understanding as Protestants. It's the five solos of the Protestant Reformation. And the gospel message is that we are saved by faith alone and there is no other means that needs to be done by which God transmits his grace to you.
You are saved by faith, not by works. So the free grace theology at least ascribes to that. And as I think every Protestant should. No one within Protestantism should believe anything other than that.
But then where free grace theology goes awry is believing that no matter what you do then from that point on, you never lose that grace. So you cannot lose your salvation. You could never actually show fruit or evidence of being saved ever in your life.
And yet you're still a Christian. And that's the problem. That's where... Yeah, that's anti-biblical. Yeah, well, it's antinomianism, all things considered. It's the idea... It's greasy grace. It's...
Ew. It's so gross. I can't... Greasy grace. I can't remember who it is that used that term. But one of the elders at our church uses it all the time. Bonhoeffer referred to it as cheap grace. Okay. It's just the idea that you can do whatever you want.
Yeah. And it's the whole thing of, well, you know, God's grace covers over me and... It's the perfect description. I just got a mental image. Of somebody covered in greasy grace? Yeah. I won't ask him what this picture is supposed to look like here.
You know those slip and slides? Well, yeah, I know what slip and slides are. Yeah, okay.
So somebody like grease head to toe and then slide down the slip and slide. Grease! Grease! Grease!
Right into the grace pool. Sounds like something somebody would do at Stephen Furtick's church. Expect this to see an elevation gimmick sometime in the near future. There we go. Anyway. Sorry. But it's...
Yeah. Like I said, Bonhoeffer referred to it as cheap grace. It's the idea that you can do whatever you want and you're never gonna lose your salvation. And doesn't Romans 6 tell us that we're no longer under the law but under grace?
Right. But you've missed the whole rest of Romans 6. Yeah. Where Paul says that how can one who is dead to sin still live in it? If you are continuing in sin, if you're not showing evidence of the conversion in your life that you say that has happened in your heart, then that conversion never really took place.
Yeah. You're not supposed to recognize yourself. Yes.
Right. Exactly. Right. It's Paul Washer who has used the illustration of somebody claiming that they were hit by a Mack truck. So you come into church one day and you go, hey, I'm sorry I'm late. I was hit by a Mack truck.
But you look just fine. Yeah. You know, where's the Mack truck logo imprinted on your forehead? Right. Why aren't your bones broken? Right. There needs to be evidence of this thing that you have said.
If you've been hit by a Mack truck and that's the reason why you're late to church, then let's see evidence of you having been hit by a truck. Right. Whereas, you know, taking that same illustration and applying it, it's a person saying, well, I'm a Christian, but they still live like the world the rest of the week.
They come to church, they do their church thing, and maybe if they even do that, according to free grace theology, you don't even have to go to church. There's no church attendance. There's no Bible study.
There's no prayer life. But God is. I have an app. Yeah. Sorry. I downloaded the By Faith Alone app and now I know that I'm saved. There are aspects of free grace theology I agree with regarding the salvation by grace through faith and also with eternal security by, you know, once saved, always saved.
Right. But that's about as far as it goes. Because everything else within free grace theology, which is the idea that there is nothing that you can therefore do that would, well, see, I'm not even framing that right because I'm saying there's nothing that you can do to lose your salvation.
Well, that's true. But it's the idea that you can go on living however you want and there's no need to have to show fruit in your life of the salvation that you say that you have. Now, Jeremy expresses his concern with this that it seems to be the opposite of lordship salvation.
Right. Because lordship salvation is that if you are a Christian, you're going to show that Christ is the Lord of your life and your behavior will change. Doesn't mean that you immediately become a holy person.
Right. But you're in the pursuit of righteousness now.
Yeah. And you start getting convictions and things like that. Right.
Precisely. You're on that progress of sanctification, which every Christian should be on. Right. And there should be evidence of growing in knowledge and an understanding of who God is according to reading of his word.
There needs to be spiritual disciplines in your life. You're abstaining from those sins that you did before. And instead, you're desiring to do the thing that you know that pleases God. Right. You're growing in love for brothers and sisters in the Lord, which that requires church attendance.
Yeah. So that you are fellowshipping with other believers in Christ and encouraging and admonishing one another. There must be evidence of the fruit of this. Your speech changes, language changes. You're no longer talking about being a person who is opposed to God, but you're now saying things that are, you might consider it kingdom language.
Like you're in love with God and you're looking forward to this kingdom that you've been promised. Praise the Lord. In Christ Jesus. Amen. There must be evidence of this transformation. Otherwise you have reason to doubt whether you are saved or looking at another person and questioning whether or not they have actually converted to Christ as they say that they have.
Has there actually been a transformation of the heart? Right. So in first John chapter one, verse eight, we read, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Going on to chapter two, my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also the sins of the whole world. And by this, we know that we have come to know him. If we keep his commandments, whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.
But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected. Love of God is perfected. So it's growing in a knowledge and understanding of these promises of God that we've been given in Jesus Christ and it's maturing in these things.
You have the rebuke in Hebrews of, hey, by this time, you're supposed to be teachers and yet you need to be taught the elementary things.
And Paul's saying The living off of milk instead of the Solid meat of the word.
Solid meat, yeah. Right. And Paul rebuking the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 13, there's those in the church who are still not quite showing fruit of salvation. And Paul's saying to them, he's not saying you're not saved.
He doesn't come outright and point the finger at them and go, you're not Christians. But he says to them, examine yourselves to see whether you are really in the faith. Yeah, test yourselves. Right. Test yourselves or do you fail to pass the test?
It's not an outright rebuke or it's not an outright condemnation, I'll put it that way, but it's certainly a rebuke in that your behavior is not reflecting the claim that you make of your placement before God as being justified by faith in Jesus Christ.
And Jeremy, I guess if there's anything that can help you out with that in terms of how you can approach this subject with people in your congregation, that's the passage I would point you to. So go to 1 John and really just read all of 1 John.
All five chapters are going to help you understand how the concept of free grace theology is not compatible with what we're reading, especially in this particular book, where John says, I want you to have assurance of salvation.
But if you're not obeying the commands of Christ, you don't have that assurance of salvation.
Right. And it's a good thing that you're not comfortable with that. Right. It is.
And there are people in the church are going to be upset that you just don't want to go with the grain. Right. Oh, yes. You're upsetting the apple cart here, man, and they'll be upset about that, which is why with very patient endurance, you must approach these things, not beating people over the head with your theological two by four, but understanding that if this is the kind of theology that they have adopted, then they also are immature.
And again, Becky and I come back to this over and over again, but that instruction in Romans 15, that we who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Were you? Yeah.
You had the Romans 15 look in your eye. I did. I just got it from you. I must have. And that means that we must be patient. We must not be overbearing. We must not be proud, but in humble submission, because we ourselves were ignorant of these things at one point.
And it is through careful training and instruction of the word that we come to a mature framework of how salvation is supposed to look in a person's life. Exactly. And I hope that's beneficial to you.
Thank you for your email. Next question comes from Brian in Toronto, Canada. Hi, Pastor Gabe and Becky. I'm curious to hear your response to this video. He retweeted it to Matt Chandler and Chandler responded, I never heard of the three ways of interpreting the Old Testament held by reformed confessional Christians.
OK, so I gave you that email without any context of the email at all. This is a video from Paul Maxwell, and Paul Maxwell has started a new YouTube channel called Self Wire. And one of the video, one of the recent videos he did just in the last three weeks, I think he started this channel just a few months ago, but it's just in the last few weeks he did this video entitled You're Not David.
I think that's the name of it. Hang on. Let me see if I still know. I don't have it up anymore. But anyway, that was the tweet that he made to Matt Chandler. He tagged Matt Chandler in it. Maxwell said, I know Matt Chandler told you you're not David.
He was very wrong. And then Maxwell gives a rebuttal of that whole concept of you're not David and your problems are not Goliath. Before getting to Maxwell's video, I want to play the clip from Matt Chandler that kind of set this off so you get an idea of what it is that Maxwell is responding to exactly.
So once again, Dr. Paul Maxwell is this man's name, and he has created a channel called Self Wire, approaches a lot of different theological topics. I've watched a few videos. He's really, I mean, he's like drinking from a fire hose.
He just shoots stuff at you, and it's a lot, and it's a lot of information, and sometimes it can be pretty heady. So to try to kind of boil him down into some neat sentences is difficult. It's complicated.
I've also read a blog about his or a blog of his, and I might mention that here in just a moment. But one of the recent videos that he did confronted the Matt Chandler message that he delivered at Elevation Church seven or eight years ago, and this was rebuking Elevation Church and the way that Stephen Furtick preaches to that church, taking Old Testament concepts and then infusing you in the story as though you're the hero.
You are this character, and you are every bit as much David as David is fighting Goliath. Your David and Goliath is your problems. And that's what Chandler's confronting in this sermon is that particular concept.
So here I'm going to play this clip, and then we'll carry on from there.
What you see in the Bible is this is, from Genesis to Revelation, the story of the Bible, that God, for the glory of His name, is reconciling and reclaiming all things to Himself. So this is what you've got to get.
I want to try to help you here with something that's pretty big, pretty epic, all right? So look right at me. The Bible's not about you. Bible's about Jesus. See, there's two ways to kind of look at it.
There's some people that go, this Bible's the roadmap to life. Now, I understand what they're saying. So if you've heard that from your guy, great. This is, in some ways, a roadmap of what we should do, where we should go.
But ultimately, you can't call it the roadmap to life. All right, now, I want to be straight. There's some maps. There are some maps. Like right here, I've got Paul's first missionary journey. And then I believe that's the Temple Mount.
And then this is just, it's the Middle East today. So there are maps back there, but ultimately, it's not the roadmap to life. And if you think that way, you'll read the Bible wrong. What you'll do is you'll keep, now, let me, here's what you'll do.
You'll keep infusing yourself into the stories of the Bible like you're the hero. This happens all the time. All right, so I mean, I want to be straight. I love you enough to be straight. You're not David, all right?
Your trouble in life is not Goliath. And if that's true, you're in a lot of trouble, bro, because you miss. Now, you fling your stones and you miss. And Goliath's still there. And now what? Well, I had five.
You'll miss all five. So if you view the Scriptures through that lens that really all the superheroes in the Bible are actually you, then, man, you put a weight on your shoulders that, listen to me, you will not be able to bear.
Jesus. David. Jesus is the greater David. Jesus is the greater Moses. Jesus is the greater Abraham. It's a whole point in the book of Hebrews, that Jesus is the greater than. So if you want to do this, I mean, you want to dig in.
So that means Jesus is going to be David. Goliath is going to be, and this is all overstating, David's a historical figure, all right? Jesus is going to be David in this shadow. Goliath is going to be sin and death.
Who's that make you? And then to make you the Israelites in the corner going, he's going to kill all of us. That's exactly who you are. All right? So let's make sure we're playing the right part in the story.
Okay. So that was the clip.
Do you remember that? Uh-huh. I do. Okay. That's what it is that Paul Maxwell is responding to. Now, there are certainly things that Chandler says in that message that is taken to an extreme. For example, at the very beginning of that clip, he says, the Bible is not about you.
And I've said that. And I still stand by it. At the same time, there's an element of that that you could argue with because the Bible is about you in the sense that you are a sinner who is in desperate need of a savior.
That's where you are in the story. And I think Chandler fit that well because he talked about understanding where our place is in the story and not putting ourselves in the place we're not meant to be.
When the Bible says, Romans 3 .23, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's about you. Uh-huh. And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
That's about you. Uh-huh. But the whole story of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, is not about you. Right. The showcasing figure there is Jesus Christ. Uh-huh. It's all about him. Old Testament pointing toward him.
New Testament pointing back at him. So that we may know that God is great and he is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Going on there in Romans 3. And that God is reconciling all things to himself through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Uh-huh. Don't put yourself, don't put yourself on the cross. Right. We, and we do that sometimes of taking Jesus off the cross and sticking ourselves up there. Yeah. We do have a cross to bear, but Christ died on that cross, on Christ's cross, and he took the wrath of God so that you never have to experience that.
Uh-huh. If you have faith in Jesus Christ. And there also needs to be an understanding of the context in which Chandler was speaking into. He's at Elevation Church where, where the way that Furtick preaches, this is taken exactly to that extreme that Chandler was confronting.
Uh-huh. That idea of you're David, you're Moses, you're Samuel, you're Solomon, et cetera, et cetera. And when he has to say to this congregation, you're not David, he knows exactly who it is that he's speaking to.
Uh-huh. The crazy thing about that drama, everything that surrounded that sermon at Elevation Church, everything that led up to it and everything that happened after that, Chandler's sermon was taken off of the Elevation Church website during that revival because the sermon that Furtick was about to preach at the end of that revival was exactly what Chandler confronted.
Exactly. It was almost like Furtick had emailed his script to Chandler and Chandler looked through it and went like, how can I destroy this? Yeah. And it's, which is precisely what he did because Furtick's message was, you're David and here's what you need to go do.
So they cut Chandler's sermon out of the website until the revival was over. So it wouldn't look, it wouldn't make Furtick look like a fool, but it had already gained such traction and become so popular on YouTube.
Of course it did. That they had to put it back up, which they waited until after the revival to do. And that's the understanding of everything, you know, related to what Chandler was saying in that particular sermon.
Maxwell creates this video that says, you are David. And Chandler responds to Maxwell on Twitter. He responds to him and says, thanks for doing this, Paul. I've always felt I overspoke that night about David and cringed as it went viral, but I didn't know what to do about it.
Now I contacted them both because this exchange was on Twitter between Paul Maxwell and Matt Chandler and I contacted them and I tried to say, guys, I think you're losing the context into which Chandler was speaking here and understanding the audience, who the audience was that he was addressing.
And the kind of thing that we see in evangelicalism at large is the tendency to put yourself in the place of Moses. Oh yeah. And to think, I mean, you just. To be the hero. Right. You just go to the stuff that Beth Moore says.
You just have to have enough faith. Well. To be the hero. Wasn't necessarily where I was going with that, but yeah. You just go to where, okay, following your train of thought, go stand at the edge of the lake and have enough faith and you can get the water to part.
But Beth Moore will do this thing of hearing voices from God. This is prophets. This is prophets in the Old Testament and you're not them. You are never going to hear God speak to you from a burning bush, period.
Right. Stop thinking that you are getting subjected voices from God and thinking that that's on the equivalent level of what the prophets were receiving or Christ's instructions to the apostles even. That's over.
Hebrews 1 .1, long ago at various times and in various ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he has made the heir of all things. Again, it's all about Christ.
It's not about you and the subjective voices that you think that you're hearing from God. That's the problem in evangelicalism. The problem is not right application of the text where somebody sees if God is faithful to deliver David out of that situation and give him the victory over Goliath, then I know that he's going to give me the victory over this particular situation.
That would be a right application of it. But instead, people are putting themselves in the spot of, they literally think their problems are Goliath and that they're David. If you go to IHOP, they actually teach you to pray in such a way that you can become David and actually be in his body and see through his eyes what he saw and did on the battlefield there in the valley before Goliath.
Why would you want to go crazy?
That's what they teach. It's that whole transcendental meditation thing. It's one of the prayer methods that they have taught at the International House of Prayer. This is the problem in the evangelical church.
I'd rather just pray to God. You know.
Right. I mean, it's resorting to Roman Catholicism, all things considered, because they have that whole mythic side in Roman Catholicism as well. And of course, they pray to beings other than God. And it's resorting to that.
Those who claim to be Protestant will go back to the Roman Catholicism that we should have left 500 years ago and still adopting those same practices. Anyway, but without going on and filling in for Maxwell when I should be playing the clip of his.
Oh, yeah. Here he is explaining in his rebuttal to what it is that Chandler has said. Now, this whole video is about 15 minutes long. I've got two two-minute clips I'm going to play. All right. I'm going to kind of narrow it down to that.
Here's the first one. So, for example, there are several moral lessons from the narrative of David and Goliath. A first is that if your leader neglects to write or to act rightly out of fear, as Saul did, then it is morally praiseworthy to to take the role that he ought to have taken and to fulfill his responsibility, just as David did for Saul.
And a second moral lesson is that we don't know how God will use our past experience to enable us to have victory at an opportune moment in the future, which is why we should act with integrity and develop our moral character in order that at a future and opportune moment we might act rightly.
That is, I doubt that when David was killing lions and bears, he was thinking, one day this experience will enable me to kill a giant who threatens our country. Yet when that time comes, David reflects.
He says, quote, your servant has killed both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them. A third moral lesson is that believers ought not be intimidated by unbelievers who threaten the integrity of the Christian system.
They may be strong in worldly power, but Christians are the recipients of God's very own self-testimony, and that both the intellectual integrity of the Christian system and the ethical state of the unbeliever's heart both belong to God, and we ought to trust, as David did, who comments, it is not by the sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's.
So, those are just three examples. You could write a hundred more lessons from the story, right? An exposition like this constitutes a bulk of what you find in Calvin's commentaries on the Old Testament, which is the very sort of exposition that a lot of young New Calvinists are rejecting with regard to the story.
So, he does not, Calvin doesn't constrain himself to seeing the only antitypical function of the Old Testament to tee up Christ's messianic fulfillment of the text. Calvin sees moral instruction for the Christian life everywhere in the Old Testament and would have balked at the notion that believers are represented by fearful soldiers.
Quite the contrary. Calvin would have taken that to be an immoral reading as long as it were taken to be the exclusive reading. Believers should be like David, and in that sense, the story is true. I mean, this translates even to our use of the Psalms.
If believers aren't to emulate David, why do we even read the Psalms? But that's a different point. Now, I believe he actually contradicted himself there at the end. Because he's trying to make the case that you are David, but there at the end of that explanation, he actually said, be like David.
I agree with that. That I absolutely agree with. Yes, be like David. You should look at the characters that we've been given in the Bible and follow their example, which is what Hebrews 11 shows to us.
And learn from their mistakes. Learn from their mistakes as well, right. Don't do the mistakes that they made, but emulate the faith that they had. And Hebrews 11 gives us that picture of setting up these heroes of the faith.
And though they did not receive the things promised in their lifetime, yet they were looking toward a kingdom that was not here on earth. And we need to be doing the same. The fulfillment of all God's promises in our lives is not going to be in an earthly kingdom that we're going to receive in this life, but a heavenly kingdom that will be given to us in the next.
And in that way, I agree with that assessment. But the whole idea that you are David and you're going to fight giants like Goliath, that isn't true. David did something that only David could do, and God meant for only David to do.
And there was not anybody else that could fill that role. So in that story, we would be like the Israelites on the side, but again, we should be emulating David. Right. Now, again, remember the context into which Chandler was speaking when he delivered that sermon.
As he was talking to Elevation Church, yes, everybody at that church absolutely was Israelites standing on the side, clamoring, going, he's going to kill us all because they've been improperly equipped by their pastor, Stephen Furtick, on how to properly deal with life and struggles and grow as Christians in this world.
He's not properly equipped them for that. So they're standing like Israelites off to the side with no armor on, holding farming tools and implements. And here comes the Philistines decked out in their armor, and they put their giant champion out in front of them and say, hey, which one of you with a hoe or a shovel is going to come out here and beat our giant champion?
That would be everybody at Elevation Church. None of them following the teaching of Stephen Furtick are at all properly equipped. But David comes out there with faith in God and the power of Christ that was upon him, and he was able to slay that giant.
So in that way, we imitate David and not be like the Israelites. But we have to consider the context in which that sermon was given. And I believe that both Maxwell and Chandler overlooked that. Chandler himself seems to have forgotten the context that he was speaking into when he says now that he regrets saying what he said in that sermon.
I don't think you remember everything that led up to that and everything that surrounded that night and the audience even that you were talking to, if that's what you think about that particular sermon.
So anyway, that's the first clip of Maxwell. The second one, which I'm going to get to here, is him confronting the whole idea of Jeremiah 2911. And I want to address this as well and kind of make another point out of this.
It's still the same video, Paul Maxwell saying that Jeremiah 2911 is about you also. So you've heard me say like when a person quotes Jeremiah 2911, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, a plan to prosper and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.
And you might hear me say, well, that's not about you. You've probably heard me do that before. Well that's what Chandler's going to, or Chandler, that's what Maxwell is going to confront here and then I'll respond to him.
You know, and just to throw a wrench in the works, Jeremiah 2911, you know, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, right? I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
That's about you too. Okay? People say, oh, this is not about you, man. It's about the Babylonian exile. Don't you know, don't you have a real context, context, dude, God's plan of redemption for Israel after the Babylonian exile as expressed by Jeremiah is fulfilled in Christ as evidenced by Matthew's quotation of Jeremiah 31, just two chapters later in Matthew two, right?
Where he says that a voice is heard in Rama lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more. Right? Matthew says about Herod's infanticide of Jewish children.
Then what was said to the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. That's the second use of the law. Doesn't Matthew know that Jeremiah was talking about the exile? Doesn't Matthew know that Jeremiah had a clear historical antecedent fulfillment, which renders this interpretation inaccurate?
No, it's not inaccurate. It's typologically fulfilled and applied to Christ. More than that, there's a third use of the law applied to this Jeremiah 31 passage, which likewise applies to Jeremiah 29, which is that the lamentation of Israel during exile is applicable to believers in grief today because that's the purpose of the book of lamentations, which was about the same exile that was said to be fulfilled at the birth of Christ, which Jeremiah 29 foreshadows.
Every Old Testament text has multiple applications and fulfillments and to say, that's not how it works, man. It's only about Jesus. It's only about this. That's only about Babylon. It's like, listen, you need to have some theological humility because your understanding of grammatical historical context is hampering you from seeing meaning actually in the text.
It's hampering you from doing actual biblical theology and the fulfillment and exportation of redemptive historical truths and themes is multivariate and composed of layers of fulfillment and application.
Now, whatever problem it is that he's confronting there, I only encounter in this stream when there's somebody who makes such a distinction between Israel and the church that the promises that are given to Israel cannot possibly apply to the church.
That's the only time that I encounter this. And that's honestly, that's not reformed theology. That's what Maxwell is confronting. He thinks that this is among young reformers. That's not where you see that happen is in reformed theology.
Now, I've taught on Jeremiah 29 11 before, as I mentioned, and even in the what video that we did of that verse, I said, the way we need to understand that verse is not in the way that it's most commonly applied, which is here on earth.
I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plan to prosper you, which means I'm going to get money to give you a hope in the future, which means I'm going to get all my hopes and dreams. That's the way that verse gets applied.
But when you understand the context of the verse, you see that that that promise was given to a people who would not even see its fulfillment in their lifetime. It was another hundred to one hundred and fifty years later when all of those things would come to pass.
So when you study that in context, you see that the fulfillment of this may not be the it's not right to take that verse and apply it to your immediate future. Right. But rather, we apply it in the sense of what I mentioned before, out of Hebrews 11, in that we're looking forward to a future kingdom, a heavenly one.
Right. And in that way, Jeremiah 29 11 applies to the believer. Oftentimes, whenever that whole thing of this verse doesn't apply to you is being confronted. And I think, again, Maxwell is approaching this outside of a proper context.
I don't think he's approaching these arguments in context. He's just making blanket statements of how you should never say that Jeremiah 29 11 is not about you. Well, it just depends on the context that you're responding to.
Right. He's talking about context, but he's ignoring the context of the argument. Anyway, now I'm just getting redundant. But so there is an application there for us in understanding that God does have a hope and a future for you.
And I believe that every promise given in the Bible, Old Testament or new absolutely has application for the believer. Every one of them does. R .C. Sproul has said, how many meanings are there to the text?
One. There's only one meaning to the text. How many applications are there? Ten thousand. Yeah, there might be ten thousand applications. And Maxwell gave examples of that in the first clip that I played, where he was going through different ways in which even the story of David and Goliath might apply, how we can draw a moral lesson from that, which is OK.
The problem then becomes when teaching becomes all about moralism. And we just turn the book into a bunch of moral tales. Right. Rather than understanding the implications of the gospel and pointing to Christ.
That's when that whole moralistic teaching can go awry. But otherwise, yeah, there's absolutely ways in which we can draw from the story an understanding of how we should live in the Lord, even from the story of David and Goliath.
Right. Being like David, as I said earlier.
So I need to learn how to play the liar. Yeah, play your harp. Yes.
He was a harpist. He was a harpist. I thought it was a... Anyway. No, liars are in the Psalms. Oh, OK. Yeah. Liars are also out in the community. And we need to share the gospel with them. Dad joke. But yeah, specifically, the instrument that David played was the harp.
But out in the country, when he was the shepherd. I think it was still a harp. Really? Yeah, I don't remember there being a... I'm sure he probably played the liar. I don't know.
Master musician. I just assumed it was. I don't know why I thought that. Perfected everything that he did. I'm gonna have to go look that up now. Maybe there's something in the text that you've read that...
And you're schooling me on it right now. Well. Is there somewhere in the Psalms that David said he played the liar? I have no idea. He instructed others play the liar, the harp, the tambourine.
Yeah, maybe that's where I'm getting it. Could be.
I don't know. I'm not sure. But anyway, going back to the Jeremiah 2911 passage. There was a funeral that Becky and I attended last year for a friend of ours. It was a family who's a friend of ours. And their daughter who was in high school was in a car accident.
And their theme verse at her funeral was Jeremiah 2911. And the whole funeral, I could not shake just how wonderful an application that was. I was like, this is the best application of Jeremiah 2911 I've ever seen.
At a funeral. Not saying it at a graduation. I know the plans I have for you now. Go make your hopes and dreams come true because it's God's destiny for you to have them. Right. Instead, it was she's died and she's gone to be with the Lord.
And that promise of Jeremiah 2911 is still true for her. It's even more true for her in death. Yes. That she has seen the fulfillment of it now with her own eyes. Yeah. That was, that's the right application of something like that.
That's, and that's the way in the what video that I did on Jeremiah 2911, I gave that application there as well. We need to be looking for a heavenly kingdom, not for earthly reward, earthly fulfillment.
And thinking that's the way that a passage like Jeremiah 2911 applies. Or in the David and Goliath story, even. You are going to have giants that you're going to go up against. But, you know, we shouldn't take the story of David and Goliath, apply ourselves to the place of David and then think now with enough faith, I'm going to slay this giant.
But then what happens is that trouble in your life actually overcomes you. Right. And you feel like your whole world is falling apart because this thing that you thought you should have been able to slay with enough faith of David should have been put down.
And maybe it was my fault. Maybe I didn't have enough faith. Yeah. In that particular situation, or maybe God's not really there. Right. Maybe he doesn't care for me. And so then you misplace yourself in that story instead of realizing that, you know, what Paul frames in Romans 8 is that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
So even though it seems like that giant that you were facing has overcome you, the reality is that it's shaping you more like Christ. You are pushing through this trial and giving God praise, even in the midst of your struggle and hardship, even if you feel like you've received the sentence of death, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1, but it's to make you rely more on him who raises the dead.
And in this sense, the power of Christ has overcome that giant ultimately in the end. Right. Though in the immediate vicinity. Now. In the now, it doesn't seem like you've had any power over this giant at all.
Right. But victory ultimately will be the Lord's, just as David proclaimed before Goliath on that battlefield. Amen. I hope that helps to answer your question. I hope everybody was able to follow my train of thought there too.
I know we said that we were both real tired. Yes. And. Sorry. Rabbit trails too. Oh, there was one other part of that question that Brian asked. Okay. So he said that he had never heard the three ways of interpreting the Old Testament held by Reformed confessional Christians.
Well, specifically what Maxwell was referring to there was he was making reference to Calvin and in Calvin's Institutes where he talked about the threefold use of the law. So it's not necessarily the three ways of interpreting the Old Testament.
And he may have over applied that. Maxwell may have over applied that principle, but it's rather the threefold use of the law. And I've heard R .C. Sproul teach on this. And as a matter of fact, it's in the Reformation Study Bible.
But the first function of the law is to be a mirror reflecting back to us, showing us our sinfulness before God and therefore our need for a Savior. So that's the first use of the law. When you read in the law, and Paul gives an illustration of this in Romans seven.
I didn't know what it was like to covet until I read in the law, do not covet. Right. And then I realized that I'm a covetor. So in that sense, the law serves as a mirror. It shows you that you are a sinner and you have violated the perfect righteous law of God.
So if by that law, you're going to be judged on Judgment Day, how will you be able to withstand judgment when you've broken the very perfect law of God? And as James says, if you've broken one law, you've broken all of it.
So then you're all the more like, well, I can't say I've kept these nine, but I broke this one. No, you've broken all of them. So that's the first function. And James even gives that illustration in James chapter one of, don't be like the man who looks at his own reflection in a mirror and then walks away and forgets what he looks like.
Don't merely be hearers of the word, but do what it says. The second function of the law is the civil use of the law, which is to restrain evil. So the law says, thou shalt not murder. And just because the law says that, and there is a conscience that has been written on the heart of every man by God, then there is a restraint of evil that happens in society when the law of God is proclaimed, regardless of whether or not a person professes faith in God.
The conscience of a person bears witness to them that this is the order that God has made. Just from general revelation, they realize, hey, it's bad to kill people. And so in this sense, the law serves as a civil judge in keeping order in culture, in a society.
So there's the civil use of it. And that personally applies as well. So your personal hearing of the law and then application of it is going to apply in your own civil life and obedience. Then the third function of the law is to guide the regenerate into the good works that God has planned for them.
And it was mostly that third use of the law that Maxwell was using in his explanation of how he thought Chandler's sermon was incorrect. But I think that Maxwell was kind of over applying that a little bit.
But the third function is to see what God desires of us and what is pleasing to the Lord. And we look at the law and we say, I want to do that because I want to please God. Right. And then we can therefore take those principles as they're given in the law and see the examples that have been given to us by those heroes in the faith in scripture and emulate their faith, imitate them so that we may grow and mature in those things and show ourselves to be faithful followers of Christ, as we're supposed to do.
Not according to free grace theology, but according to lordship theology.
Yes, most definitely.
I could bring that full circle and come back around to that. So there's the three functions of the law. And I just recently went through Romans 6 with our high school class, which meets on Wednesday nights.
Well, that's as far as we've gotten in our Roman study. We're through Romans 6 now. But when we were in, I think it was, I think it was Romans 5. Might have been Romans 3. I think it was Romans 3. But we talked there about the threefold use of the law.
And the way that I summarized it for them is three R's. And that's reflect, restrain, reveal. So the first use, reflect. It's a reflection of, it reflects back to you who you are. That's the whole looking in a mirror sort of a thing.
So you're looking in the law, you see, I'm a sinner. And there's your reflection. The second being restrain. It restrains evil. And then the third being reveal. It reveals the will and the purpose of God.
Awesome. So remember that. There's your threefold use of the law. Reflect, restrain, reveal. There's your three-point sermon. There you go. Now, Brian, I happen to catch that you just asked somebody on Facebook to get the book 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says When They Come to G3.
That's where we're going to be in mid-January. Becky and I will be down there in Atlanta. Oh, I just happened to catch on Twitter too that there's now a new speaker that's been added to this. Hang on, let me bring up that update.
Click, click, click. And it says, Announcement. New speaker confirmed. Who? To be announced. Friday, January 18th, 7, 10 p .m. What an announcement. We got to wait three weeks or something here before we find out who that is.
Anyway, so, Brian, you have asked a friend to pick up a copy of the book 25 Christmas Myths and What the Bible Says While They're at G3 Visiting the What Booth. Because we're going to be there. Yes. I'm going to have a copy of that book set aside.
So your friend just needs to come up and say, hey, I'm here to pick up Brian's copy of the book and I've got one for free for you. Set aside, Brian. Thank you for the question that you asked today. Awesome.
And by the way, that book is available on Amazon. Yes, it is. You can go to our website. And I think right now I just have the link for the Kindle version of the book. But the print version link will be on there as soon as I get the confirmation that the print version is available.
Hey, we're still working. We're still in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas here. So I'm OK. Yeah. Between December 25th and January 6th, which is epiphany.
We still have our Christmas decorations still up. We do. The tree's still up.
It's all good. There's one strain of lights that's apparently totally burned out, but the rest are up. It totally fried. I mean, it's not like one bulb went out. So weird. All of the bulbs are black. So I don't know what happened to that.
And the rest of the lights are on. So it didn't disrupt all the rest of the lights.
No, it's just right there in the middle.
Anyway, y 'all. Moving on. Y 'all have your Christmas decorations still up somewhere. You can, in the spirit of Christmas, pick up the book available now at www .utt .com. Or if you're searching for it on Amazon, it's just the number 25 Christmas Myths.
And I am so blessed at the number of people that have already ordered the book. We're still number one under the Christmas category on Amazon. That's so exciting. It's the number one bestselling book.
That's cool. That is very cool. I can't imagine there's a whole lot of people releasing new Christmas material on Christmas day. So I'm sure I don't have a lot of competition. But nonetheless. It's still pretty fun.
It's still me. So I'm going to go. Yay, I'm number one on it. I'm number one on Amazon. I've got that claim to fame now. If I can claim to fame anything, it's that. All right. Thank you so much for joining us today.
And as much as we wanted to keep this short, we did not. No. Do I ever succeed at that? No, Becky's yawning. I'm sorry. Excuse me. I'm shaking my head, though. Can you all see me? Quite the reminder that I went long.
My wife is yawning. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you for our time together and a time to reflect in your word and talk about some of the things that are going on in the world and how we rightly apply the instructions that you have given to us, whether it's through one of these heroes of the faith or whether it's through a direct command that has been given to us.
How do we live in this world? How are we to be Christians in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation? How are we to shine like stars in the universe in the midst of darkness? And it is your word that guides us into that truth.
So let us not neglect to read it and rejoice in doing so, because we love you and we desire to be like our savior. So it brings us to the word to hear what you would say to us and drives us to our knees that we might communicate with our father and speak to our heavenly father in prayer.
We have access to you, to the throne of grace because of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And we thank you for the gift of your son, not just at Christmas time, but thankful for this gift all year long. And we ask for your continued guidance on our lives.
In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Amen.
Through the snow, you're recording me, so I'm gonna stop.
You gotta be careful singing, because you never know, that might end up at the end. We had enough complaints. No, I had enough complaints. It was complaints about... That's because they're kind to me.
It's complaints about me rapping.
So they complain about you, but indirectly... Because I can take it. That's right.
I can handle it. I think I must be a tough guy, but inside I'm weepy. Oh, whatever. They don't like my rapping. I wanted to make a career as a rapper. DPT job.