FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE! (Keith Answering Emails & Audience Questions)

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Live from the Theo shed in Callahan, Florida. It's Friday night

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It's your Calvins podcast with Keith Barsky Beers and boat rides, laughs till sunrise

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It's your Calvin's podcast with Keith Barsky He's not like most

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Calvinists, he's nice Your Calvinist podcast is filmed before a live studio audience.

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And welcome back to your Calvinist podcast on this Friday night live edition.

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And I am joined, as you can tell by someone who is not normally with me on Friday night live, but may start being a regular staple.

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This is Mrs. Your Calvinist, Jennifer Foskey. Thank you for being on the show.

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Talk baby and let me make sure they can hear you. Hello, can you hear me? All right, I can hear you. I think they can hear you.

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Talk a little bit more. Jennifer's on the show with me tonight because she's going to be the question asker and the person who helps me keep up with questions coming in from the comment section.

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So she's going to be watching you guys ask me questions as well as asking the printed out questions from our email.

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So she's got a big important job tonight helping me answer questions.

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But before we start anything, I got to talk about some of the important things. Get some of the important information out there.

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Number one, this podcast is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church. So if you are in the

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Jacksonville area, you can learn more about us by going to sgfcjacks .org. We're also a partner with tinybibles .com

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right here. I've got these tiny bibles sitting underneath. This was a gift from my wife to me for Christmas.

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No, for our anniversary. This was my own personal, what are these called?

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Pop thing. Anyway, my own personal toy that looks like me. Funko pop.

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Yes. So what is your favorite 80s movie? That's Eric Yeager. Hey, Eric.

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It's good to see you, buddy. Summer's Husband. Yes, that's Summer's Husband. That's his whole world.

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Yes. Yes. What is your favorite 80s movie? This is going to hurt my soul. Christmas Vacation.

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Okay, that counts. That counts. Okay. Is your wife the luckiest woman alive like my wife?

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Amen. Amen. That's what she calls me. That's funny. That's funny. Okay, a couple things real quick.

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As I said, we're partners with tinybibles .com. If you go to tinybibles .com and you buy one of these Bibles or the

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Tiny Gospel of John, which is now available, and they're hopefully wanting people to know that it's now available, and you use my name,

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Keith, in the coupon code, you will get a percentage off. It's a good percentage off, too. So go check that out.

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And you support the show by doing that. If you want to support the show in other ways, you can go buy yourself some cool

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T -shirts. A Bucky shirt does not help the show, but a Warning I'm Just Barely Saved shirt does.

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You can find this shirt at our Teespring shop, and you can find that in the link in our YouTube channel.

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Speaking of YouTube, I have something I want to talk to you guys about. This is super serious, very important to me. We are sitting at 28 ,500 -ish subscribers right now.

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And I have a goal. And I've never said this. I've never, like, pushed for subscribers. All I say is please like and subscribe.

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But I'm going to push something because I want, by Thanksgiving, to have 30 ,000 subscribers, which means that's 1 ,500 subscribers.

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That's a pretty big push between now and Thanksgiving. So if you could help me out by simply sharing the page with somebody, putting it on your

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Twitter page, or putting it on your Facebook page, say, hey, I enjoy this show, I like this show, and try to get your friends to subscribe, that would be great.

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Again, it's arbitrary, but it's something that I'm just hoping that the channel continues to grow.

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We've kind of stalled on subscribers lately. And I think we've got a lot of people who are watching the show who enjoy the show, but we're not getting a lot of new people watching the show.

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So please reach out to your friends if you think they would enjoy the show. I like that.

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We've got to put Keith over the top. That's right, Kevin. Thank you. In fact, I will highlight that and say, yes,

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Kevin is correct. Put us over the top. Get us 30 ,000 by Thanksgiving. I'll eat the whole turkey by myself.

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No, I won't. That's a lie. That's bad. Let's see, anything else on that list that I need to bring up?

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Just remember, if you ever want to support us, just directly support us, you can go to buymeacoffee .com slash your

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Calvinist, and you can send a blessing to us like that.

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And it goes to support hungry children. Mine. So thank you for blessing us.

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And those of you who have been supporting us, we're super appreciative. Somebody says, keep the shorts coming. That's what they say when

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I go to the beach. Yeah. That's a dumb joke. That wasn't even a great. Yeah, yeah.

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You know, you're so pretty. I know. I'm used to being out here by myself, all by myself.

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And tonight I get to be with the prettiest girl in all of Callahan, Florida. So I'm so thankful.

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And I know what she's thinking right now. Why didn't you say the whole world? Well, you are the prettiest girl in the world to me, but you know, the whole, you know,

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Callahan, definitely. Okay. So we got a lot of questions to get to tonight.

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And I appreciate everybody who's hopping on and watching with us. Shorts do reach the largest audience,

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Sheldon. I agree with you. And that's why I put out, I try to put out at least one or two shorts a day. I've got a really funny one that I'm working on with the

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Harris Waltz campaign. If you guys have seen the new Harris Waltz, what's a man video.

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Let me just put it this way. The Methodist and I have something to say about the Harris Waltz campaign.

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So I'm working on that for tomorrow, hoping to get that out before we take our kids to the County fair tomorrow is the, the

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Northeast Florida County fair this week, we're going to be doing evangelism at the Northeast Florida fair.

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So I asked that you pray for us as we go, we'll be filming some of those interactions. So we'll be posting that later in the week, brother, brother

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Mike is our church evangelist. We'll be following him around filming some stuff. So looking forward to that.

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And, and yes, it was an awful ad, but you know what? An awful ad does brother is it allows us to have some fun and that's what we're going to do.

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All right. So let's, let's begin. We have eight questions we're going to get to tonight, along with the questions that you give us in the, in the comments.

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And we'll answer them as we go. Okay. Let's begin with question number one,

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Jennifer, you are reading them. Question number one, you mentioned an educational course your church provides.

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Can you give more information? Yes. Now that may seem like I'm the shameless plug, but that was a legitimate email that came in.

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And I said, you know what? I think this is something worth mentioning to everybody. And that is that our church does offer a two year ministry training program.

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It's not a seminary. We don't claim to give out degrees or anything like that. We do provide certificates for every class that you take.

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And then after two years of taking classes with us, which is eight core classes, you get a diploma of basic ministry training, go to sovereigngraceacademy .org.

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It's absolutely free. The only thing you have to pay for is your books. It's all done through YouTube and through our website.

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It's very easy to access, even though today I had about 10 people try to register and they were having trouble.

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Sarah, who helps me out with the website has worked on that and it should be working now. If you want to register, go to sovereigngraceacademy .org.

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The next class I'm doing is early church history from the fall of Jerusalem to the rise of Augustine.

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So 500 years of church history. And that class is going to go until the end of the year.

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It starts at the end of October. So it's a two month class and we would love for you to participate with us.

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Classes are 4 .30 to 6 o 'clock on Sunday afternoon. If you cannot join us live, then you can join us with, you can watch the video later.

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All testing is done online. There is testing involved. You have to keep a notebook, you have to do a test. And at the end of the class, you will have taken two tests, a midterm and a final.

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And you have to provide all of your notes. And you do that through email. And that shows that you did the work and listened to the class and you get your certificate.

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And that's it, sovereigngraceacademy .org. You can learn more about it at the website. Question number two is kind of in the same vein.

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So if you want to go ahead and go to that one. Are your sermons available in podcast form? Again, this sounds like I set these up, but I promise these were legitimate emails

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I got. And I thought, you know what, I never mentioned this. So I'm going to mention it again today. I sound like I'm shamelessly self -promoting, but I promise this is not the purpose of the show.

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We do. And this is something I think is important because we do so much podcasting and so much videos.

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I think people forget sometimes that we do have a legitimate preaching ministry at Sovereign Grace Family Church that we want to expose people to.

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And you can find that on our church website at sgfcjax .org. Just go to the sermon section.

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It takes you to our sermon audio page. We have over 1 ,500 messages on topics ranging from church history to books of the

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Bible that I have preached through, who my fellow elders have preached through. I have two other elders. One is Brother Andy. One is Brother Mike.

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We have both preached the whole books of the Bible, and all of those are available. And some of them are very detailed and in -depth.

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So I would encourage you to go if you're looking for a place to find good, solid Bible teaching,

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Sovereign Grace Family Church, sgfcjax .org. And so check it out.

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That's the answer to that question. It's not a podcast, but sermon audio works sort of like a podcast. You find what you want to listen to, and you listen to it.

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Their app's a little shaky lately, but it's just because they have so many people using it that it's had a little bit of struggle, but they're working on it.

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But again, if you just go to our website, you can find our sermons, and they're all there. All right.

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Let's move on to the more difficult questions. What do you think of the three circles gospel presentation method?

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Ask that question again, because I actually forgot I was muting you and me. Or maybe I didn't. I don't know.

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I was going to cough, but we're so professional. I'm just going to turn my head. All right.

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Try that again. We lead an exciting life on Friday night. This is it. This is our Friday night. Guys, this is date night.

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You know what our children are doing? Sleeping. Praise the Lord. They're not really sleeping.

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Totally not sleeping. Okay. Go ahead. What do you think of the three circles gospel presentation method?

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Okay. I thought this was a great question and to lead us off on the real questions. The other questions were important, but this leads us off on our first theological question.

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The three circle gospel presentation method, I had to go out and find a video on this and watch the video to see what it was even talking about, because I had never heard of it before.

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I watched the video on what the three circle method is, and if you guys don't know what it is, it's a person drawing three circles, and each circle represents something.

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One represents brokenness. One represents the goodness, and one represents

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Christ. I think that's the three circles. I may be getting it wrong, but I don't have an issue with it.

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I don't think it's necessarily bad. It reminds me of the evangel cube. Do you remember the evangel cube?

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Yeah. The evangel cube was this thing that they created back in the late 90s and early 2000s, and it looked almost like a

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Rubik's cube. It had the story of the gospel in pictures that unfolded as you unfolded this cube.

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It was just a method for remembering the steps of the gospel. It was fine for what it was.

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I knew people who trained evangel cube training, and this was a huge thing for them.

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It was a big method for them. I owned an evangel cube, but it was never my preferred method for sharing the gospel.

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Not that there's anything wrong with it. I just didn't think I needed a prop, and that's basically what the three circles thing is.

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It's just another form of trying to present the information in a way that gets it to stick, and so I'm fine with it.

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Here's my only issue with the three circle method. The circle that talks about brokenness, and I mentioned this to Brandon Scaff earlier.

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Many of you probably know who he is. He's a pastor, and Brandon mentioned on his Facebook page that you have to be careful of people who replace the word sin with the word brokenness.

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That's my only issue with the three circle method is we should not be afraid to use the word sin.

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That's number one. We should explain what sin is. Sin is breaking God's law, deserving

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God's punishment, being under His divine wrath. All of those things are what sin is and what sin does.

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It's not just brokenness. It's being guilty in the courtroom of God. If we're unwilling to say that,

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I think we have a problem in our gospel presentation. We need to tell them what sin does. Sin is more than brokenness.

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Brokenness is a result of sin. It's not all that it is, and Christ didn't come to just heal our brokenness.

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Christ came to receive the wrath of God on our behalf so that we could have a righteous relationship with God through His righteousness.

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That's the important part, so it's more than just brokenness. It's more than just separation.

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It's guilt. It's shame. It's need for redemption and atonement.

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That's the only issue I would have with it is I wouldn't use the word brokenness.

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I would say sin. If I were using the three circle method, I would change it.

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That brings up something. I talked to a guy one time who had a method, and I found out that his method was copyrighted.

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I don't want to say who it is. I'm not going to say the name, but it was a guy who I had been using his method a little bit, and I told him

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I had used it, but I changed it a little, and he said, oh man, my method's copyrighted. I was like, you can't copyright the gospel, bro.

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That's not the way it works. You don't copyright the gospel. But if somebody's copywriting the three circle method and saying you can't use sin instead of brokenness, then

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I would have a big issue with it, but so far I don't know that that's actually the case. So that's my answer to the three circle question.

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We better get going because we've got a lot more questions, but I hope that was helpful. I did see one question. Oh, Sig Gomez said,

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I think I'm saying that right, I like Living Waters evangelism the best for a method. I'm interested in seeing evangelism explosion as well.

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Both of those are great. EE is great, and we love Ray Comfort in our house. We teach his method at our church, and we introduce him to our kids at a very young age.

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We love Ray. He's a blessed man of God, so absolutely. All right. Okay, question four.

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What are some safe resources you recommend for studying partial preterism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism, and do you have any suggestions for avoiding problematic full preterist materials?

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Yeah. I'm just thankful I'm not having to answer these questions. I can read them to you. Okay. Well, I don't know if Eric is still out there, but I'm going to pick on his pastor for a minute.

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My wife really loves your pastor, Jeff Durbin, and he introduced you to postmillennialism.

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Tell the story. No, I don't want to tell the whole story, but I just remember when you first started really wanting to know more about it, it was because Jeff was talking about it, and you were listening to his sermons.

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I like that stuff. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So I bring that up only to say this.

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I think Jeff has some great stuff on postmillennialism, so if you want to find out more about postmillennialism,

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I think Jeff is a safe and good place to go, and you can look up his sermons online and find out more about them.

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I take some different positions from Jeff and Dr. White, and I'm an amillennialist, not a postmillennialist, but if that's what you're looking to find out, the answers that they would give to questions,

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I would say they're asking to turn you up, so I'm going to turn you up a little. Okay.

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She's up. Thank you, David. So Jeff Durbin would be a great resource for postmillennialism.

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If you're looking for amillennialism but not preterist amillennialism, Kim Riddlebarger's book,

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The Case for Amillennialism, is great. Sam Storms' book is also good. You can look at either one of those resources and feel like you're going to get a pretty good answer to your questions as to what amillennialists believe and teach, and I would be closer to Dr.

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Riddlebarger on a lot of things, even though I would be more of a partial preterist, which puts me in kind of a strange sort of black sheep area because not all amillennialists are partial preterists, but some are, and that's where I'm in that camp, and if you're looking for a good book, a good starter for partial preterism,

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Dr. R .C. Sproul's book, The Last Days According to Jesus, great resource to get you started on partial preterism.

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If you want to dive deeper into partial preterism, go into Ken Gentry's work and learn more from him, so there you go.

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I just gave you, I think, four or five different resources, sermons, and information, and you can actually,

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The Last Days According to Jesus, if you can't get the book right away, you can go to Ligonier, and R .C.

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Sproul's teaching on that subject is very good as well, and to legit just mention,

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I want to post this one. Yes, The Divorce of Israel is now out. That is a book by Kenneth Gentry on Revelation, so feel free to check that out if you're looking for a partial preterist understanding of the book of Revelation.

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That last comment, James White should watch you. James White should watch you eat a cheeburger.

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How many people don't know that story? Were you with me with that?

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Yes, but I wasn't. I think I was in the hotel. You were in the hotel. For those who don't know what that's about, the first time

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I ever met, Eric, come over and get fully immersed in post -moralism.

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Not yet, not yet. Maybe one day when I get convinced, but I'm not yet there. Okay, so when

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I first met Dr. White, I sidled up, and if you don't know what that is, you've never watched Seinfeld, but sidling up is when you just kind of get up close to somebody and kind of make yourself part of the conversation, even though you weren't really invited.

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It was James White, Steve Camp, and Chris Arnzen, who now

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I know all of them much better than I did at that time. I didn't know any of them, but they were having a conversation, and I sidled up next to them, pretending like I was supposed to be there.

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I totally wasn't. And Dr. White, they had all flown in. This was in Tampa, I think. They had all flown in, and I drove because I was only four hours away.

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So Dr. White was like, I'm hungry, and I don't have a way to go get anything. And I was like, I'll go get you food. And so I went and bought him a cheeseburger.

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That's what he asked for, a McDonald's hamburger, and I brought it back to his room. So he invited me in.

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He said, entree vu, which he reminded me he said that. And when

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I came in and sat down, I watched him eat it, like the weirdest creep in the world. I didn't just leave him his food like a good

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Uber driver. I sat and watched him eat it, and it was the most awkward moment of both of our lives because I wasn't going to leave.

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He had to make me leave because I was so – I was in the intersanctum. I was in the sanctums.

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I was in James White's hotel room watching him. I didn't get me food, so we weren't eating together. I was watching him eat a cheeseburger.

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It was the greatest night of my life. It was the worst night of his life. So that's the reference.

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He should have to watch me eat a cheeseburger. One day we will. One day we'll take a picture. I'll make him watch me eat a cheeseburger.

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Okay, moving on now to question number five. We are over 20 minutes in. We're doing great.

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What advice would you give to a Baptist in between churches who is choosing between a more traditional

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Presbyterian church and a more contemporary Reformed Baptist church, and should the decision ultimately come down to my conscience or doctrinal alignment with credo baptism?

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This email was much longer. I always condense these down to one or two sentences. This email was a long email, and I read the whole thing.

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I always try to read the emails you guys send in, but I had to condense it down. Let me give you a little bit of the background, because what he was saying is he just came out of the

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IFB, and apparently he is now convinced by Reformed teaching. So he's still Baptist, but he's

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Calvinistic Baptist, and he has two choices in churches, and the churches, as he said, it's a

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Reformed Baptist church, but it would be more contemporary, which he's not a fan of, or it would be a

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Reformed Presbyterian church, which is very traditional liturgical high church, and he likes that, but he doesn't like the credo baptism, or he doesn't like the pedo baptism.

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So he asked the question, where should he go? Answer is, I can't tell you where to go. I can't be the

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Holy Spirit. I can't be your conscience. But I will say this. I don't think

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I've talked much about our church on the show. Our church would probably be classified as very conservative, but still somewhat contemporary in our worship, because we play guitar, we have keyboard, we have drums.

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You're likely to hear Shane and Shane. Yes, not the real Shane and Shane, but Keith's version of Shane and Shane, which is nowhere near as good.

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It's much better. Oh, you're so sweet. I'll tell you what, guys. I want to tell you, get a good wife, because they are awesome.

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I've always loved this woman. The first time I met her, get all mushy.

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Okay, I love you. So here's the deal, guys. Somebody asked me this question.

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I would say, what do you mean by contemporary service? Is it like a big Eva contemporary service? Do they have a guy driving a Harley onto the chancel?

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I mean, that happens, right? I wouldn't tolerate that. But if it just means that they're singing songs that are a little bit more contemporary, it's

24:31

Dr. White. Don't worry about it.

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We're going to leave him right here. Maybe this guy watched me to cheeseburger. Okay.

24:45

Yeah. Somebody just made something too legit. Made a good point. Yeah. I mean, listen to the songs they're singing. He said, well, if they're not singing

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Bethel Elevation, that's a good point. Right. Listen to what they're singing. Listen to what they are.

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You know, what are they? How are they worshiping? Like I said, our songs, we're singing songs that are good, solid worship songs, but we're doing them sometimes in a more contemporary way.

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You got it. Okay. All right. You got the hair back. We'll put him back. Keith is back on the throne.

25:16

Not real. The king of all millennials back on the throne. So, um, somebody, somebody asked the question, shouldn't we be leery about contemporary music's adherence to scripture?

25:28

Yes. We should always make sure that all the songs that we sing are adhering to scripture. That includes hymns as well, though.

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I I've taught lessons, um, on the history of Christian music and hymnology and showed that there are hymns that are just as bad as some of the contemporary music, as far as their lack of theology, some with poor theology, some that that endorse wrong views of Jesus and the

25:54

Holy spirit. So, um, just because something is contemporary, doesn't mean that it's bad just because something is old, doesn't mean that it's good.

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Everything should be taken through the lens of scripture, but getting back to the original question, you are going to have to decide, and this is where the big decision is going to come in.

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How committed are you to credo baptism? I've said this before. I would have a very hard time with, with joining a

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Presbyterian church because I'm committed to credo baptism. And even though I love my

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Presbyterian brothers, I do not agree in my heart with the baptism of infants.

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And so I would have a hard time worshiping and endorsing through covenant membership, the baptism of an infant.

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And therefore it would be much easier for me to join a slightly contemporary reformed Baptist church, which is probably how you would define our church than a more conservative musically or conservative liturgically

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Presbyterian church. So it's really going to be where, where are your convictions on the issue of credo baptism?

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And for me, it would not be a question. I would go to the Baptist church unless there was something in the

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Baptist church that was just completely opposed to scripture. And, and so that's, that's where my heart is because I'm a committed

27:20

Baptist. All right. Okay. All right. So the following questions all address women or parenting roles, and some of them ask about specific teachings from certain ministries.

27:33

So I guess we're moving to a new section. Yeah, I put that disclaimer in the questions because some of the following, we've only got a few more questions and we're going to get to some of the comment commenters questions, but the questions that I'm about to be asked, some of them are just straight up about specific churches.

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And I'm not going to mention the names of those churches on the show because I'm not, I'm there.

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They're not sending or sending or anything. So it's not like they need to be called out, but it's methodology.

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And I, and I'm not, I'm just not prepared to say, well, this guy's methods are bad, but I'm going to,

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I'm going to address what the question is. And, and, and, you know, if, if, if you know the church that this is talking about, just, you know, keep that information, you know, you know who it is.

28:23

Great. But you probably won't. All right. So hit me with question number one. Okay. Did women pray out loud in church prayer meetings outside of worship services, or should only men pray aloud while women pray silently?

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And what are your thoughts on this practice? I don't think women should pray at all. I absolutely think just, I'm just kidding.

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I think all women should stop praying completely. Don't pray at all. That's somebody who's going to clip that and, and try to prove that I'm a heretic.

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No, I understand the question. And this really does, this does raise to the, raise the issue of how a church structures its leadership.

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Because some people, some churches will allow women to lead in certain areas, even in worship services on Sunday morning, as long as they are under the ultimate leadership of the worship leader or pastor or whomever.

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We are very careful at Sovereign Grace that, that we have men in leadership when it comes to our singing, when it comes to prayer times, when it comes to the leading of the

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Lord's table, which is our elders, of course, who do that, who are all men and when it comes to the preaching of the word.

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So Sunday morning, which is not really the question, but I'm just, I'm building something here. Sunday morning, it's not even a question.

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It's going to be male leadership. We believe in male leadership. I've talked about this on the show. You know, a few weeks ago, a lady emailed a question in about Deborah and some of the women leaders we see in the

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Bible. And how do we fit that into Paul's teaching that women should not teach or have authority over men. If you want to go back and listen to that, that was on a previous

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Friday night live, I think two weeks ago, if you want to hear my answer to that question. But there are other things that the church does, which isn't always in the context of corporate worship.

30:26

So for instance, if the church is simply praying in community, the question becomes, when does that become a service or when is that just a group of Christians praying?

30:40

Just today, I'll give you an example. Just today, a group of ladies met at our church for the purpose of prayer.

30:49

They do this every Thursday this week. They did it on Friday because of the storm. We had a storm.

30:55

And by the way, many of you prayed for us during the storm. I just want to throw this out there. Thank you for praying for us during the storm. Thank you for being concerned about our heart.

31:02

Thank you for being concerned about our safety. And it meant a lot. How many of you reached out to us?

31:07

We were safe. We were well north of anything dangerous, but we have a lot of friends and family who have weathered a terrible difficulty.

31:15

So we pray for them. Pastor Jonathan Bush down in Winter Haven, you know, was right in the heart of everything. And Pastor Austin Tucker, Travis Van Meter, and of course,

31:25

Tom Askell, Steve Kreloff, who were over in Tampa. So pray for them. So if our church, getting back to the question about prayer, those ladies who met today, there wasn't a man with them.

31:39

It was just a group of ladies praying. So of course that would be a time where ladies would lead other ladies in prayer and they would pray publicly.

31:46

Where the issue comes is when it's a mixed group and in our church, we have allowed, if it's not a structured service, but it's a time of just prayer, we do this on Wednesday nights, where men and women are together and we give everyone an opportunity to pray for something.

32:03

We have allowed for women to pray openly and publicly in that group because it's not a worship service and it's not something that's structured with an authoritative structure.

32:14

And there's still, of course, an understanding of, you know, that men have authority in their homes and that the pastors, the elders have authority within the church.

32:23

But there's nothing that would forbid a woman in that context from praying. And we allow anybody who wants to pray.

32:31

And I don't think necessarily that that is wrong. I think where it would be wrong is if it became a position of, of exercising authority or teaching.

32:40

And there are some lines where that is crossed at times, especially when someone's prayer becomes a sermon hidden in a prayer.

32:48

And so we have to be careful of that, that our prayers are not for, as Jesus talked about people who, who want to be heard for their many words.

32:58

If it seems as if a person is praying for the purpose of making a show of themselves or making a, making a spectacle of their prayer or teaching in their prayer, then that might be something that we would talk to that person about and address that person on.

33:13

But usually that's not a problem. Usually it's just a person praying for an issue of their life or an issue in their family.

33:20

And something we always do before prayer is we go around the room and we let everybody, we talk about, we get, we ask three questions on Wednesday night.

33:27

We ask you, is there something you yourself are struggling with and need prayer for? Is there something you are studying and you want us to pray for God to open your eyes or enlighten you to?

33:40

And that also is a good opportunity to let people know that we care that they're studying the word, you know, it's, it's not like, it's not like we're checking up on them, but we are saying,

33:48

Hey, what are you studying right now? What, what, what are you doing? And so that's, that's, that's two ways to get them to talk about ways we can pray for them.

33:56

You know, what are you struggling with? What are you studying? And the third is the normal question that most people ask during prayer time is who else do you want us to pray for?

34:04

And you know what? The most common thing in our times of prayer is people praying for their adult children.

34:10

Because we have a lot of older folks who have adult children in our church. And many times they're praying for their salvation of their adult children.

34:18

And so that's an, an awesome opportunity to, to, to, to hear someone really crying out to God for something that's very serious.

34:28

And, you know, it's, it's, it's one thing and we do, we pray for grandma's bunions and we pray for, you know, the person who had, you know, knee surgery or whatever, those things are important.

34:37

But when you're praying for somebody's adult child, who's wayward, you can really feel and hear their heart in that.

34:45

And, and so, yeah, I think, I think there, there are times where women can pray publicly and it not be an affront to scripture.

34:52

That's my opinion. And I know there are those who differ, but that's where we are at our church. All right, moving on to the next one, which these are going to get, these get progressively harder.

35:05

What are your thoughts on the claim that career women are destined for eternal destruction and the belief that women shouldn't get degrees, work outside the home, or that a woman who simply doesn't wish to pursue marriage is an unsaved person?

35:21

Wow. That's a lot. Can you read that again a little slower?

35:28

Let me, let me preface this, by saying this question was really long and we had to condense it down to still a long sentence.

35:41

But this person contacted me because there is a ministry out there that is teaching that if a woman has a job outside the home, she is destined for hell.

35:55

Wow. And the question was, what do you think about that? What, what do you think about that?

36:01

So if you would read that question again, just again, getting the heart of what's on what's in this question.

36:09

Sure. What are your thoughts on the claim that career women are destined for eternal destruction and the belief that women shouldn't get degrees, work outside the home, or that a woman who simply doesn't wish to pursue marriage is an unsaved person?

36:27

Okay. I believe this is an example of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction.

36:37

And what I mean by that, if you've never heard that phrase, I'm sure you have, but if you haven't, when we talk about the pendulum swinging, we say sometimes pendulum swing so far one direction that the response becomes an, an, a knee jerk reaction that causes the pendulum to swing so far in the other direction that it becomes equally as bad, but just in the other extreme.

37:00

So in this case, we are dealing with the, the fallout of feminism, which has been a real issue in the last hundred years.

37:13

It has affected America. It has affected the church. It has affected many areas of our life that we probably don't even recognize that our, our educational institutions have been affected by feminism.

37:26

Even the, the, the, our sports have been affected. All of these things have been destroyed.

37:32

I saw, I saw a video earlier today of a, of an, I think it was a, might've been

37:38

Nike commercial, but it was, it was a commercial and it was a woman who was saying that Alexander the great wasn't really that great when you compare him to the women's basketball team, because the women's basketball team have gone undefeated.

37:54

I don't know what team it is, but they've gone undefeated for like 10 years. And that's greater than anything Alexander the great ever did because Alexander the great represented patriarchy and patriarchy is bad guys.

38:04

That's stupid. That's straight up. Just that's ridiculous. And anybody who says such a thing is, it's just one.

38:13

I just, I wanted to respond and just say, this person has no idea of history and the things that were accomplished by Alexander the great to, to, to compare a foot or a basketball team because they're women to the, the, the, the things that Alexander the great did again, you know, certainly not, not saying they were necessarily good things, but we're saying the accomplishments aren't to be compared.

38:42

And then if you look at the, the, the, the, the, the, the

38:51

WMA players or whoever they are, you say, okay, but how would they fare against a team of men?

38:58

I mean, you know, you know, as great as they are, how would they play against, you know, the, the greatest men team, right there, there's a difference between men and women in sports and that we used to be able to say that, right?

39:12

Like, like you played, you, you played something that you guys don't know. My wife was a college softball pitcher, a scholarship winner.

39:21

She's awesome guys. I have the best wife ever. And she was a fast pitch softball player, but she recognized, and we've talked about this many times, the difference between men and women on the sports field, right?

39:36

The difference between pitching to a man. No way.

39:42

I mean, thinking back to my high school and college days, would I ever have pitched to a man?

39:48

Not, not, not competitively, not like in playing around. Cause we've talked about that, but, but to do so in a way that was competitive.

39:57

Right. All right. So having said all that, getting back to the question of what is it?

40:03

WNBA leads coalition to defeat. This is funny. Breaking news.

40:08

WNBA leads coalition defeat of King Darius at the battle. Fake news.

40:14

Love it. Love it. I'm going to screenshot that. Thank you. Potato sandwich. First of all, cool name.

40:20

All right. So, so getting back to the question, I'm talking about the pendulum swinging. There used to be a time where we could recognize the difference between men and women.

40:29

Feminism came in and has caused a problem with that. And of course now with the advent of the rise of, of transgenderism and all that, there's now the issue that you can't even define what a woman is anymore, which is a problem.

40:41

So there's this, this really far side. That's crazy. And then you have those who are coming out and says, okay, well, if a woman works outside the home, she's in sin.

40:51

They're basing this of course, on the Titus passage, which says that a woman is supposed to be the keeper of the home.

40:56

She's supposed to work at home. And I believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is true. But I don't think that those passages would forbid a woman in certain cases from having a job outside of the home.

41:10

And so the question is, the question was, is a woman who is a career woman destined for eternal destruction?

41:18

The answer to that from my position is no, I will say that there are people who are abandoning their

41:28

God given duties for careers. And that would be sinful things that they should repent of.

41:34

And, and, and I think that would be easy enough to say, but to say that they're automatically destined for eternal destruction,

41:43

I think would be a bridge too far. And again, that's where the pendulum swings too far.

41:49

And they say works outside the home or wishes to, or excuse me, what does it say?

41:55

Um, shouldn't get degrees, work outside the home or, or that a woman who simply doesn't wish to pursue marriage is unsafe.

42:03

Yeah. And that's another one that was weird for me. A woman who doesn't wish to pursue marriage is unsafe.

42:09

I'm not saying that that's the questioner. And this is what's being taught by whatever website or, or ministry that they're, they are asking me about.

42:16

And again, I don't know the name of it. They put it in the email, but I don't remember it. And I think, again, these are extreme wild, uh, pendulum swings to the other side.

42:27

Here's what I believe the Bible is, is clear about one. It is the man's responsibility to provide for his home, to protect his home, to pastor his home.

42:37

We talk about those three Ps all the time, protect, provide pastor the home. And it is the woman's responsibility to provide a nurturing home, to raise the children along with the husband and the fear and admonition of the

42:49

Lord. And they are together to love those children and to raise those children together.

42:54

Now there are different stages of life. My wife and I were married for six years before we had children.

43:02

And we didn't know that we could ever have children because we had some physical issues that were keeping us from having children.

43:09

Our first two children were adopted. It was another six years after that, before we had our first physical child, because we found out that, um, there was a physical issue that was keeping us from having children.

43:20

We solved that issue. And, um, if you don't, I can, I tell him, yeah, it's an interesting, we found out that my wife had an allergy that was creating a problem with her endocrine system.

43:33

And when she eliminated the thing in her life that was creating the allergy, she got pregnant after 12 years of marriage.

43:41

Yeah, that was amazing. That was God's gift. He's so gracious. He has been so gracious.

43:47

And she's been pregnant every two years since then. Cause we had, hope was our first natural child.

43:53

We had hope, justice, faith. And then we had three babies that we lost in the womb. And then we had

43:59

Theo, which is our miracle baby. And so ever since the two years, or ever since you found out about that allergy, we've been every two years we've been pregnant.

44:12

And so now we're 44 wondering if God has done with us. We kind of think maybe he might be, but we don't know.

44:20

But our, but going back, I'm going to get back to having a two year old in your forties is wild. I just like to throw that out there.

44:30

It's pretty amazing. He is. And he is like fearless. He loves to climb to the highest place he can and prove that he can jump.

44:39

And he jumps to me just crazy. This little two year old, but he's, he's my heart and I love him so much and we have such a good time.

44:48

But yeah, so that's, that's how, but I want to get back to the question about women working. The, the first children we had married and we had them by adoption.

45:02

They were four and six years old and we adopted them through foster care. We love them to death. They're, they're just as much our babies as our natural babies.

45:09

And my daughter still lives at home. She's 26. Our daughter is 26 years old.

45:14

Our son is 24. He's serving in the air force. He is right now in New Mexico. And our daughter is about to get married in February to a man with a mullet.

45:24

I just can't even, he's got a Billy Ray Cyrus mullet and it's amazing.

45:32

But Hey, you know what? We live in the South. It'll work. Yeah. She's going to hate it when she hears me say that. I tease him all the time.

45:39

I just call him mullet. Anyway. So anyway, the point is we were married for, for five years, six years before we had kids.

45:45

During that time, my wife did work. I told a story recently in a comedy act of meeting your boss. That was in our early twenties.

45:51

She worked because we didn't have children in the home. And when our children, when we adopted children she worked for a little while longer, but then, but then came home and began to homeschool them and she homeschooled them out until they were until they were graduated, graduated.

46:08

And during that time you got a degree because the job you had, you worked for JSO and JSO Jacksonville Sheriff's office.

46:15

So Jacksonville Sheriff's office provided her the ability to get a degree at no cost.

46:21

And so she was able to get a degree in criminal justice basically for free.

46:27

And so we, we encouraged her to do that and she did it and she got a degree from Liberty university.

46:34

So, and I'm bragging on you now because I'm very proud of you for that. And, and so she now has a degree that would allow her at a certain point to teach.

46:46

If she wanted to teach in the state of Florida for your degree was is all that is required to get a teaching certificate.

46:53

And so if she wanted to teach one day, like when our children are, are adults now, again, when

46:59

Theo is an adult, we're going to be 11 ,000 years old. But, but if it's, if at a certain point she wants to, she wants to go and work,

47:09

I don't think it would be sinful for her to do that provided she wasn't robbing our home of the nurturing care that is needed by a mother for children.

47:18

And that's where I think the issue lies is, is it's not that a woman who works is in sin. It's what stage of life is she in and is she in a stage of life that is that she needs to be home with the children.

47:29

So I think that's, that's first and foremost. And, and there are rare situations where even that she may have to work.

47:39

But, and that's why I say that we have to deal with what is sin, what is wise, what is best, right?

47:44

All of those things have to come into play. And, and that's where I think when you automatically say a woman who has a degree, that's sinful woman who works outside the home, that's sinful or a woman who doesn't want to get married.

47:56

That's the one that got me because the Bible clearly says that there are some people who are not going to be married. Paul talks about this in first Corinthians seven,

48:03

Jesus talked about those who are made eunuchs, right? Like, like the, which I would assume would, you know, would, would apply to women in the sense that they have no desire for that relationship made eunuchs by God.

48:16

Of course, some people say, well, that only applies to men. I don't want to get into that argument right now, but the point is some people are not going to be married and the

48:24

Bible indicates that that's okay. And so a woman who, who doesn't desire to be married is not in sin for not having that desire, at least as far as I understand the scriptures.

48:36

So the question was long. The answer was long. I hope that it was helpful. And, uh,

48:43

I know that somebody out there's going to say, oh, you're a compromiser or whatever. I don't think I'm compromising.

48:48

I think I'm being fair. I'm not allowing the extremes to rule the day. That's what happens.

48:54

The extremes rule the day. You've got ditches on either side. We talk about this in our church all the time when it comes to almost every issue, right?

49:02

It's just like with salvation. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. And you got two ditches.

49:08

You have the ditch of legalism and you have the ditch of licentiousness, right? And both of them are wrong.

49:14

There is one way it's the narrow way. And when it comes to many issues, there are extremes on both sides.

49:20

And those extremes are the ditches that you have to be careful not to fall into. Can I say something?

49:26

No, I don't allow women to talk on my program. To the couch.

49:32

Yeah, that does. Yeah. Just kidding. But this also goes, you've heard people talk about homeschooling to like homeschooling their daughters.

49:42

Like maybe that they shouldn't teach them certain. Yeah. Certain things. I don't know.

49:48

It just made me think about that. That's a good point. There are people who would say, if you're, you know, when you're homeschooling, you only train them to be wives and mothers and things like that.

49:58

That there's no other, there's no other job that's righteous for them to have. And I, and I, I think that that's, that's not correct.

50:07

I think that, and again, I know some, somebody is going to, Oh, this is a, you know, somebody is going to scapegoat and say,

50:12

Oh, this is a bad example. I do think that there are examples in scripture of women who were good at caring for their home, but also did things outside of the home that had value.

50:24

Lydia was a seller of purple, right? She had a business outside that she did work and business and did an exchange in business.

50:31

The Proverbs 31 woman exchanged in business in such a way that her husband's name was exalted in the, in the, in the, in the town because of the work that she did.

50:42

She, she was good at what she did and it brought honor to her family and to her husband.

50:47

And so, again, I think that's absolutely true. Last question.

50:54

Yep. And then we're going to get some of the commenters. I don't know if you've seen any question. All right. So where do you fall on holding your church to high standards that might exclude people, including forsaking public schooling as part of the church covenant?

51:08

And do you have a specific rule of thumb or policy for these situations? I put these questions together because I feel like they have a similar answer.

51:19

And so here, here, here's where I'm going to go on this. I just gave the example of the two ditches.

51:27

And I think this is another example where we're finding somewhat of an extreme that is coming up in, in certain churches.

51:36

And the extreme is that the church is going to have a, a covenant that requires certain behaviors that are not necessarily required by scripture, but that's going to be the standard of the church.

51:53

And that's the question is where do you fall on standards that might exclude certain people? And he gave an example of a specific church.

52:01

I'm not going to name the church or name the person. I actually liked the person who he's referring to. So I'm not going to bring this person out or try to, you know, but, but I would probably disagree in this area and will, but I'm not looking to pick on anybody.

52:15

This is just an area where we, we can disagree. And so here, here's the way this works out in that particular church.

52:23

This person who wrote the email cannot join the church because their children are in public school.

52:29

The church is covenant, which if you don't, if your church doesn't have one, that's basically a set of standards that you say we will live by as Christians is in community with each other.

52:41

And the church covenant, which you have to agree to says you will not put your children in public school.

52:49

And if you do, you can no longer be part of this covenant community. A church is within its right to make that standard.

52:58

A church is within its right to hold that position. I don't think that it's necessary, but that's where I stand on this.

53:07

The question of the person who wrote the email is what do you think about churches having high standards?

53:15

Well, here's the thing. It's not a, a high standard.

53:22

It's a, it's a standard that is arbitrary and that's, that's different.

53:29

I'll give you an example. The IFB often has a very high standard of clothing.

53:37

Women can't wear pants. They can only wear skirts. The skirts have to go down to their ankles.

53:43

That's the standard for women. That's not a high standard. That's an arbitrary standard. That is an arbitrary standard, meaning somebody came to the conclusion that the only way a woman could be dressed modestly is if she wore a denim skirt and tennis shoes.

53:59

That's the only way a woman can be modest. Somebody came up with that arbitrary standard. Therefore, that became the standard for an entire movement.

54:08

That is not the way the Bible tells us to set our standards. It doesn't say to set our standards arbitrarily.

54:14

It says to set our standards biblically. The very issue of the Pharisees is that they set their standards arbitrarily.

54:21

This was the whole issue with the way the Pharisees ran. Jesus said, you create doctrines based upon your desires, your will, and you set them up and you put them over God's standards.

54:35

You make your standards higher than God's standards. That's the very heart of Phariseeism, and that's a problem when your standards become higher than God's standards.

54:44

Right? So on the issue of public school, my kids are not public schooled.

54:50

I don't think public school is best. I don't think that that will be a choice that we ever make as a family, but we have made the choice to send our kids to private school, and there were people who were not happy with that because they believed that the right standard was homeschooling, and the only standard that you could do and be righteous was homeschooling.

55:15

And when we said, well, we've chosen not to homeschool, even though we homeschooled our two older kids all the way to graduation, and even though we homeschooled our younger kids to a point, we got to a point where our autistic daughter, we thought it would benefit her to be in a classroom with other children and to be in a school that would help her with her autism.

55:32

We put her in a private Christian school, and there were people in our life who did not like that choice. They did not like that we chose not to homeschool anymore and to leave the homeschool community, and they were very upset with us.

55:43

They had set an arbitrary standard for our family that was appealing to their sense of what should and should not be, and that was very frustrating for us, and it continues to be, and I've mentioned this on the program in previous conversations about schooling.

56:06

There are times where public school may be a necessary option for someone, and I'll give you two examples.

56:14

When our children were in foster care, when we adopted them in foster care, for us to be able to have them in foster care, they had to be in public school.

56:27

As long as they were wards of the state and we were a foster home, our children had to be in public school.

56:33

So if the standards of this church covenant, the one that's being mentioned, says if your children are in public school, you can't join, and we were members of that church and we adopted those kids, would we be excommunicated?

56:43

Would they make an exception for us? And if they made an exception for us, would that not be an exception to the covenant that they're saying we're in sin?

56:50

So that's where I think one of the issues would lie. The second is, if there's a family that has unfortunately gone through a situation of divorce, where there's a man whose wife leaves him, and she has the children half the time, and he has the children half the time, and the court has demanded that the children have to go to public school, and he doesn't have the right to take them out of public school, do we have to take him out of our church at that point and say, well, hey, your kids are public school, therefore you no longer meet the standard of our church covenant?

57:25

This is where I think these types of arbitrary standards do not live up to the biblical standard of wisdom.

57:34

Biblical wisdom requires that we be wise when we look at these situations. I want to tell you a story. When I was working in public school, yeah,

57:45

I was a public school assistant teacher, and I was a substitute teacher for eight years.

57:50

You were too. And we're public school graduates. We are public school graduates.

57:57

We be public school graduates. Yeah, we be public school graduates. But no,

58:02

I was laughing because you had some pretty funny experiences substituting in public school.

58:09

But when I was working in the public school system, they had something called a zero tolerance policy.

58:15

And this is how the zero tolerance policy worked. Because I did security during lunch.

58:22

I would go and I would watch over the kids, and if there was a fight, I would break up the fight. Any two kids that fought, both of them got suspended.

58:28

It didn't matter who started the fight. It didn't matter if a kid was sitting and eating his lunch and another kid came up and punched him in the head, both of the kids would get suspended because the zero tolerance policy was you fight, you get suspended.

58:41

Even if you don't fight back, you were in a fight, therefore you get suspended. And I went to the dean of the boys, and I said, this is the stupidest policy ever.

58:50

He said, hey, we're just trying to make it to where anybody involved in a fight goes home and they go home for three days. I said, it's stupid because it doesn't apply wisdom to the situation.

58:59

It does not apply wisdom to the situation. You want an easy answer. And sometimes there are no easy answers.

59:08

Sometimes you got to look at the kid who just got whacked in the head and say he was a victim. He wasn't fighting.

59:14

And so when I see a church, any church, that's applying arbitrary standards and saying, this is the standard we have.

59:21

It's not necessarily a biblical standard, but this is the standard we have, and you can't be a member here unless you meet this standard. I think that's a struggle for me if it's an unbiblical standard.

59:32

And again, I have lots of problems in public school. I just posted a video earlier. You saw it.

59:38

There was a school where the teacher gave out stickers on the kid's arms that were actually like melatonin patches because they wanted the kids to go to sleep.

59:45

You put a melatonin patch on my kid's arm without asking me, I'm going to lose all my sanctification at once.

59:52

I'm going to be very ugly for a moment. That's not going to happen. But that's it.

01:00:07

There's a lot of reasons why public schooling is not the best option, but should a church make that the standard for the church?

01:00:16

I don't think so. I don't think that's necessary. I think you can teach the ways of wisdom and not expect that everybody's going to be at the same level of sanctification all at one time.

01:00:26

That's the other thing. That's what I want to get to. Just because you want people to get to a certain level, it doesn't mean that you should expect that that's where they're going to be when they come and join the church.

01:00:39

That's the point. Are we saying you've got to be this righteous before you can join? Or, hey, we're going to bring you in, and we're going to help you, and hopefully through the teaching of the word,

01:00:49

God will sanctify you to where he wants you to be. We're going to trust that he's working on your heart and doing more than we could.

01:00:57

Somebody asked a good question. This is Mary M. She comes in a lot, so I appreciate her.

01:01:03

She said, No shade meant here. I understand. Appreciate. No shade. She said, No shade meant here, but this reminds me of Charles Stanley's church.

01:01:09

If you were divorced, you couldn't be a pastor until his divorce. Problematic. Okay. If what

01:01:15

I understand you're saying, Mary, and I don't want to overthink this, but from what

01:01:20

I think you're saying, is what I'm saying is the standards change depending on people's situation or what would be called situational ethics.

01:01:27

That's not what I'm endorsing. I'm not endorsing situational ethics, but what I am saying is that you do have to deal with people where they are, and you do have to look at the situations people are in when it comes to church membership.

01:01:43

What is required to join a church? Well, a person has to be a believer. They have to affirm what the church believes.

01:01:50

They have to endorse what the church teaches. All of those things are true. And if what your church stands on is homeschooling, then that may be a part of your church covenant.

01:01:59

But I was asked the question, do I think that should be? My answer is no, because I don't think that should be the standard for church membership, but other people will disagree, and that's why there are churches out there that does that.

01:02:12

And that's where she's saying, yes, changing the standards midstream feels wishy -washy.

01:02:17

I agree with that, and I don't know the story with Charles Stanley. I only know that his son is a raging heretic, and I think he recently died, but I didn't follow his ministry very long or very much.

01:02:33

All I know is he didn't have a pulpit. When he preached, he would carry his Bible around, and it was like a giant

01:02:38

Bible. That's all I really know about him, so I can't speak too much to his ministry, and I'm not endorsing changing your position midstream, certainly not.

01:02:50

All right, so that leads us. That's the end of our questions, and we are now at the hour mark, but I do want to give an opportunity to entertain any questions through comments.

01:03:00

Jen, did you see anything come through the comments that we should address? Can we scroll back up?

01:03:08

Sure, sure. All right, let's see. We'll go back up a little bit and see.

01:03:16

Joshua Neece asked for prayer. This would be good. He says, pray for me. I did have a job interview today, but because it was on campus that I study at, they can only work with me a max of 25 hours, but that would be good.

01:03:26

Okay, well, we'll pray for you, Joshua. Everybody out there, if you would say a prayer for Joshua in regard to his job interview.

01:03:33

All right, and let's see. Joshua also mentioned that Kentucky's voting for school choice this year.

01:03:48

I am very grateful. I do want to say this. We live in a state that endorses school choice, and praise the

01:03:54

Lord for that, because our governor does a great job of encouraging people. If they want to homeschool or private school, the state endorses it and helps through funding for that, so I'm encouraged by that.

01:04:10

All right, let's see. Too Legit says this. Disagreeing with a parent's choice for their children is quite problematic.

01:04:17

I wouldn't do it. That's kind of what I was getting to. You're overstepping at a certain point when you say to a man, he has to make this choice because it's what you believe is right for his family, and at a certain point,

01:04:27

I think if it's not sinful, I think the elders have to trust that God has put that man in the leadership position in his home, so good thought on that.

01:04:40

An actual bot, that's funny. I hope not, but an actual bot says thoughts on the

01:04:47

Apocrypha. Are they inspired? I do not believe they're biblically inspired in the sense that they are.

01:04:54

I don't believe that the Apocrypha is Theopneustos. The Bible says in 1

01:05:01

Timothy 3, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. The word inspiration, there's a translation of the word Theopneustos, which means to be

01:05:07

God -breathed. I do not believe that the Apocrypha meets that standard, and the

01:05:15

Jewish people did not have the Apocryphal books laid along with the other books, and they never held them to that same position, and the reason why they made their way into the

01:05:26

Roman Catholic canon is because they were included in the Vulgate, which is the Latin translation of the

01:05:32

Bible, but when we look at the Jews and how the Jews recognize the Bible, they saw a distinction between those books and the books that we would call the canon.

01:05:41

The Jewish canon is the same as the Protestant canon, it's just numbered differently. We have 39 books and they have 24 books, but it's the same books, just numbered differently.

01:05:49

Like we have 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, they don't have it numbered that way, and so I would say they are not inspired, and if you're interested in more about that,

01:06:03

I did an entire series on how we got the Bible, and it is available on our sermon audio page, so you can find that there if you want to go and learn more about that.

01:06:14

Okay, let's get down here. Ashley said what? On a scale of 1 to 10, how painful is it to do the gay

01:06:21

Methodist voice? I want to tell you something, it is very, very not hard, and that's what makes it scary.

01:06:30

I can go into the gay Methodist voice very, very quickly, which is scary.

01:06:41

Okay. Ashley, you said you had a question, but it's far up in the comments. If you retype it, I'll try to answer it for you, but I can't find it.

01:06:52

Justin's above question is good. What is it? Justin's above question is good. Justin had a question.

01:06:58

Justin had a question. Justin tried to explain. Oh, okay, good. I tried to explain

01:07:03

Irresistible Grace to a buddy, but I don't think I explained it in a way that he can understand it. I thought

01:07:09

I did. Can you help me? Yeah, that's a great question, and it goes right along with the theme of being a

01:07:15

Calvinist, right? You're a Calvinist podcast. A lot of the questions that I answer are about Calvinism.

01:07:21

It wasn't tonight, but a lot of times I answer questions about Calvinism. So when I'm explaining

01:07:26

Irresistible Grace, the first thing. Sorry. What? Enjoy Calvinism. Yeah, enjoy

01:07:32

Calvinism. We'll put that right here. So the thing that I try to remind people of when we talk about Irresistible Grace is that we're not saying that all of God's grace is meant to draw us to salvation, because when we think about something like what some people call common grace, what theologians call common grace, we all experience grace from God.

01:08:01

And so when Stephen is talking to the Sanhedrin in the 7th chapter of Acts, and he says to the

01:08:08

Sanhedrin, you are always resisting the grace of God. He's pointing to the fact that those men, those

01:08:16

Jewish men had the scriptures. They had the wisdom that had been passed down from their forefathers.

01:08:22

They had the covenants that had been given to them. All of those things were example of God's grace in their lives, and they just simply ignored it or resisted it or denied it because they wanted to do things their own way.

01:08:37

Irresistible Grace is the grace that God does on the inner man where he opens the heart to believe.

01:08:44

We see this in Acts 17 with Lydia. It says when Paul preached the gospel to her, God opened her heart to believe.

01:08:51

We see this in other places in scripture where it says you were dead in your trespasses and sin, but God being rich in mercy by his grace saved us, right?

01:08:59

It's that. That's Irresistible Grace. That's the grace that comes into the heart, takes out the heart of stone and gives you a heart of flesh.

01:09:08

Now, explaining that to someone can be difficult, but I do like to remind them that along with Irresistible Grace is

01:09:16

God's work in changing the heart or what we call regeneration. Now, Irresistible Grace is not the same as regeneration, but Irresistible Grace leads us to regeneration.

01:09:24

It's the byproduct of God changing our heart is he gives us a new heart. And so if you're having trouble explaining it to a person,

01:09:34

I would simply ask them some of the questions such as Jesus's question or ask them questions based on Jesus's words.

01:09:45

When Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

01:09:50

What do you think that drawing is? Is that drawing merely the call of the gospel? Or is that something

01:09:56

God does on the inside? Because it says the one who is drawn will be raised up. It says the one who is drawn on, you know, he says, no one can come to me unless the father draws him and I will raise him same him up on the last day.

01:10:11

And so talk to him about that. What is that drawing? What does it look like?

01:10:17

How does it work? And if he's a believer, say, what is it that caused you to come to faith?

01:10:22

What is it that brought you to faith? Was it your own intellect? Was it your own spiritual disposition? Or was it

01:10:27

God drawing you? And I played a song the other day. It was meant to be a joke, but it was,

01:10:34

Jesus is a friend of mine. I posted a short and it said, I said, this is a Calvinistic song because in the song it says,

01:10:42

I tried to run away, but God was like a Mountie.

01:10:47

He always gets his man, right? Like he's the one who's coming and drawing and bringing me in.

01:10:54

And I can say, praise the Lord. My sheep listen to my voice. Yeah, my sheep listen to my voice.

01:11:01

No, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no. That was it. Yeah. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me.

01:11:08

And you don't believe because you're not my sheep. Very important passage. You're not my sheep because you don't believe.

01:11:15

No, you don't believe because you're not my sheep. Too legit to quit. But a good one.

01:11:21

He said the hound of heaven. And Mary said that was hideously hilarious.

01:11:27

I don't know what was hideously hilarious. I don't know what I said. So maybe I had to tell me later.

01:11:34

All right. We're over an hour and 10 minutes now. So we're going to draw to a close. Let's see.

01:11:43

Did that person ever get their question put in here? Did they ever get it done? Let's see.

01:11:52

Who was it? Was it Justin? Ashley. Ashley. Ashley. Did she ask it again?

01:11:59

Oh, last year I bought in frames. Nope. That's not it.

01:12:05

That's not our question. Sorry. This is harder than y 'all think. Try to do a show and take live questions through the chat.

01:12:17

All right. I'll end with this one. This is a good one. Christlike Warrior asked, do you think there's any credibility in the book of Enoch or any of the extra books in the

01:12:26

Ethiopian Bible? The question of is there any credibility is a difficult one because that's like saying, is there any truth in the

01:12:38

Quran? And the answer is, yes, there's truth in the Quran, but that does not mean that we should trust what it says or to put any confidence in what it says because even though it might be true in one area or true about something, it's not

01:12:53

God's word. And specifically the book of Enoch, there's a lot of questions that I have about its accuracy or even if what we have today that we call the book of Enoch really represents what was originally written.

01:13:08

And we know Enoch didn't write it. So that's the other thing that's important. This didn't come from Enoch.

01:13:19

And I'm sure you know that. So I have looked into it.

01:13:25

I talked to the book of Jude. I've looked at the book of Enoch. And I think that there is something to be said for the way that the

01:13:33

Jews viewed those books during the time of Christ. But I don't think that that means that we should place any particular value in them as giving us an extra measure of truth.

01:13:45

I think that there's some truth in them, but not something that is anyway should demand that we interpret the

01:13:56

Bible a certain way or something like that. I take like the Genesis 6 thing is what almost always comes up with this. And that's regarding the issue of the

01:14:03

Nephilim. I take the Sethite view, which is the least popular view right now because the

01:14:10

Hanukkah guys have encouraged everybody to take the angelic intermarriage view.

01:14:20

It's just not the view I take. And I find a simpler view in the Sethite view. But I know a lot of people disagree with me.

01:14:26

That's cool. You can disagree with me, and we can still be friends. But when it comes to the book of Enoch, that's one of the issues that often is raised up.

01:14:34

Well, Enoch says this. Therefore, this passage must be interpreted this way. And I don't think that's always the best way to approach it.

01:14:43

All right, you found Ashley's question. We said we were going to end, but let's end with this one. This is a great question,

01:14:48

Ashley. Thank you for asking. Ideas for gifts for Pastor Appreciation Month. I wish

01:14:54

I could bless with gift cards for dinner, but I have three pastors and can't afford it. Breakfast, coffee, something else.

01:15:00

And a nice note, of course. Okay. A gift that you could get your pastor that wouldn't break the bank that would be meaningful.

01:15:13

Honestly, do you have any thoughts? Because I have a few, but you're a pastor's wife. I don't know.

01:15:24

Yeah, the thing is. I think just being told, being appreciated, or just that means a lot to me.

01:15:35

Absolutely. A nice handwritten card that expresses your appreciation for a person's ministry in your life can go a long way.

01:15:46

And if your pastor knows you well, he probably knows that you're in a situation where you don't have a lot of money to spend.

01:15:55

But you wanted to show him that it mattered to you. And so a nice handwritten card would probably go a long way to just show him how much you appreciated him.

01:16:08

And I am very thankful when people do that. It doesn't always have to be financial.

01:16:14

It's nice when somebody gives you a little bit of money or gives you a gift of some kind. But a nice, loving, handwritten card that actually says something specific about the way his ministry has impacted you can go a long way.

01:16:27

It's one thing to say, hey, I appreciate you. But it's another thing to say, hey, you know what? A few years ago,

01:16:33

I was really in a tough time in my life. And you preached this sermon. And God used that to really encourage me in a time where I was hurting.

01:16:40

And I want to tell you, and I've never told you this before, but that changed me and helped me. And God used you in my life.

01:16:46

If I got a card like that from somebody, and I have, I've received messages like that from people before. That is awesome.

01:16:54

To hear how God is using you is very valuable. So that's one thing.

01:17:01

And the last, I will throw this out there. Because I said, you know, a handwritten card is great.

01:17:07

But if you know your pastors, you might know something about them that can help you get them something small that will be very meaningful.

01:17:21

And here's what I mean. Just two weeks ago, I received a package in the mail.

01:17:29

And it was from a listener. And it was, first of all, it was addressed to the

01:17:35

Harbor Freight Doug Wilson, which made my day. The fact that they just, because that shows, man, they listen.

01:17:42

They know who I am. They're listening to the show. But all it was, was a deck of cards.

01:17:47

And it was a nice deck of cards. It was a deck of cards from the, the

01:17:53

Lord of the rings, but it was just a deck of cards. I can't imagine it costs a whole lot of money, but that deck of cards meant a lot to me because that means that this person knows one,

01:18:04

I used to be a magician. I'm a card handler and I've done card magic for years. I love a good deck of cards.

01:18:10

And so they took something they know about me and they applied it to a gift.

01:18:16

And that meant a lot. And I'll give you an example from somebody in our church. Mariana gave me a comic book poster and it's in my office.

01:18:30

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a big book of posters and they're all comic book. It's Batman, Superman, DC comics, which is my favorite comics because DC is awesome.

01:18:40

And, and let me tell you something that she told me, she said, I thought I saw this at a, at a,

01:18:49

I saw this at a garage sale and I thought of you and I thought who better to have this than you.

01:18:57

And I was like, man, she thought about me and she knows me. She knows I like comic books. She knows

01:19:02

I like DC. So if you know your pastor and you know, something that he likes or enjoys, that can be a blessing just to say,

01:19:13

Hey, I know you like this. Yes. Babysitting. That's a great gift. If your pastor has kids offer to watch his kids, that would be a tremendous gift.

01:19:24

Thank you, Mary. That was a great, great, great one. Yeah. And, and then if he has kids,

01:19:29

McDonald's gift card, also awesome. Absolutely. And Hey, I want to mention the watch while podcast Parker's out there.

01:19:36

He said he appreciates the Dunder Mifflin hat. Well, Parker, for those of you who don't know, the watch while podcast is awesome.

01:19:43

I've been on it before and Lord willing, I'll be on it again. The guys have been on my show with me. They do a wonderful job of giving a

01:19:50

Christian review of movies and talking about the messages in those movies.

01:19:56

So go check out the watch while podcast. Those guys are awesome. All right, guys.

01:20:01

I want to say thank you all for being a part of the show. Thank you, Ashley. Thank you to legit.

01:20:06

Thank you everybody for being a part of the show and thank you to the most beautiful woman in all the world for being a part of the show today.

01:20:14

Yeah. You're so funny guys. If you liked having Mrs your Calvinist on, let us know and maybe she'll join me again next week because it was nice having somebody to talk to other than just a camera.

01:20:28

Thank you. I love you. And we love you guys. Thank you for listening to your

01:20:34

Calvinist podcast. This is the Mrs. Your Calvinist. And as always, I'm Keith Foskey and I've been your