WWUTT 2185 Q&A Spiritual Warfare, Biblical Manhood, What is Reformed Theology

What is a Biblical view of spiritual warfare? Where do we go in the Bible to learn about how to be a man or a woman of God?

And what is Reformed Theology? The answers to these questions and others, when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program. Here once again is

Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky, who is not with me this week. I know, I know

I said two weeks ago that she was going to be back with me this week. Well, she is going to return today,

God willing, but not in time to be able to record this broadcast. She went to Kansas for her grandmother's funeral, then down to Texas with her mom while our oldest daughter went to camp.

She raised all that money herself. She did like bake sales and things like that to be able to go to camp. So Becky went to work on our house in Texas, which is not yet sold while Annie was away at camp.

Then when Annie got back, they're on their way. At the time that I'm recording this, they're in New Mexico and they will finish the rest of their journey out today on Friday in time for our son's 13th birthday.

He turns 13 years old today. We have two teenagers in the house as of today, but unfortunately not able to get back in time.

And even if I waited, if I didn't do this recording until sometime Friday, I still don't think she'd have the energy to do it.

So it's just another week of me, but we'll hopefully get her back on again soon.

This is the Friday edition of the broadcast. When we take questions from the listeners and you can submit those questions to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

Before getting to some of those questions, we've been starting these Friday episodes going through a Psalm and right now in Psalm 18.

I'm going to finish up Psalm 18 today. So let me start reading here in verse 43 and go through verse 50 out of the legacy standard

Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. You have delivered me from the contentions of the people.

You have placed me as head of the nations, a people whom I have not known serve me.

As soon as they hear, they obey me. Foreigners cower before me, foreigners fade away and come trembling out of their fortresses.

Yahweh lives and blessed be my rock and let the God of my salvation be lifted high.

The God who executes vengeance for me and subdues peoples under me who delivers me from my enemies.

Surely you lift me above those who rise up against me. You rescue me from the violent man.

Therefore, I will give thanks to you among the nations, O Yahweh, and I will sing praises to your name.

He gives great salvation to his king and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and his seed forever.

Now as we had read at the beginning of Psalm 18, this is a Psalm of David. So kind of interesting that David mentions his own name at the end, but there's great significance to that, which we'll consider here in a moment.

But because this is a Psalm of David, we've heard some very kingly things. Things that would pertain to a king that might cause us to wonder, well, how does that pertain to me?

Because I'm not ruling over a nation. I'm not leading a nation against another nation in war.

I don't have other nations being subdued under me. So how could some of this phrasing have anything to do with me?

How do I relate to that? And what would the application be for me as a Christian?

So let's come back to verse 43 again. You have delivered me from the contentions of the people, and you have placed me as head of the nations, a people whom

I have not known serve me. Now, when we heard some of this language last week, looking at verses 37 to 42,

I had connected this to the spiritual battle that we fight all the time. We're not taking up arms and going to war against flesh and blood, as said in Ephesians 6.

But there are battles that we face every day in our own flesh, fighting against the temptations of the flesh.

And even when there are people who contend against us, we don't war back with them in the way that you see worldly people fight with one another.

We follow the example of Christ in 1 Peter 2. Though he was reviled, he did not revile in return, but he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.

And Paul saying in Romans 12, do not take matters into your own hands. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the

Lord. So that was the way that we understood the battles that were being talked about there in 37 to 42.

But how about this with regard to nations being subdued under me?

Well, the principle still applies. We know that if God is on our side, man can't do anything to us.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8, 31. Or in Hebrews 13, 6, the

Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?

So in this sense, we're not being ruled by any nation. You may live in the United States of America or Australia or Japan or in Europe somewhere.

Hello to all of our international listeners out there. Great to have you with us.

Yes, you must be subject to the governing authorities in whatever nation you live in. As said in Romans 13,

God has appointed those governing authorities over us. But ultimately, we don't serve them.

We serve God. Our citizenship is not on earth, but it is in heaven, as Paul talks about in Philippians 3.

You might be a citizen of a particular nation while you're here on earth, but ultimately, our citizenship is above where Christ is.

So in this way, the nations don't have any power over us. They are subject to us.

We read about in 1 Peter 2 how we are part of a royal priesthood.

We reign with Christ. We will reign with Christ. Jesus promised to the churches even in Revelation 2 and 3.

To him who conquers, I will give a place to him to sit with me on my throne as I conquered and sat down with my father on his throne.

Going back to Romans 8, we read that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Everything that we experience in this life is for our benefit.

Even the bad things that happen to us are for our benefit. For it is through the trials that we go through that we are being perfected.

We're being sanctified and prepared for eternity. We are sharing in the sufferings of Christ when we go through the things that Jesus went through.

These things don't destroy us. They actually build us up. They make us more holy.

We endure through these things and draw nearer to God and become more Christlike in that process.

So all of this stuff serves us. We don't serve it. We're not being conquered by those things that we go through.

But rather being more than conquerors, we are able to take those things that we go through and use them for God's glory, for our benefit, for God's glory.

Verse 44, as soon as they hear, they obey me. Foreigners cower before me.

Foreigners fade away and come trembling out of their fortresses. And certainly a day is going to come in which we will be judges along with Christ.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, don't you know that we will even judge angels? So in that judgment, we will be there with the rest of the saints and with Christ as judgment comes out upon the nations.

So there the rest of the nations will tremble before us. There's a prophetic significance in that as well.

So verse 46, Yahweh lives and blessed be my rock and let the

God of my salvation be lifted high. You've probably heard that line in a popular praise and worship song.

The Lord liveth and blessed be the rock and may the God of my salvation be exalted. That's another translation.

I think that's the King James, verse 46. So then the next verse, the God who executes vengeance for me and subdues peoples under me.

Reference back to Romans 12 again. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, who delivers me from my enemies.

Surely you lift me above those who rise against me. You rescue me from the violent man.

In other words, no matter what this world is going to throw at us, it does not separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our

Lord. Therefore, I will give thanks to you among the nations, O Yahweh, and I will sing praises to your name.

It is not only praise to God because he is worthy of our praise, but it is a testament even to those other nations of who

Yahweh is. He gives great salvation to his King and shows loving kindness to his anointed, to David and his seed forever.

And I said, there's some significance in that. Well, that's prophetically pointing to Christ. He gives salvation to his

King, delivering him from the grave. He shows loving kindness to his anointed.

Christ is the anointed. That's what it means for him to be the Messiah. He is the chosen one of God to David and to his seed forever.

That should be the clue right there that we're talking about Christ. For Jesus is the descendant of David and the rightful heir to David's throne.

The fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. But as these things point to Christ, so we also benefit because we have been brought into the family of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

He died for us. He rose again from the dead. All who believe in him, our sins are forgiven and we are adopted into the family of God.

So great salvation has come for us as well. The loving kindness of God is upon us as well.

And we receive this eternal inheritance as fellow heirs with Christ.

Amen. That is Psalm 18 for us and God willing, next week, we'll jump into the next one.

We'll go to Psalm 19 and Becky will be along with me for that one. All right.

Let's get to some questions here. I don't have any voicemails this week, but a reminder once again that you can send me a voicemail, record me a message either via phone or through your laptop or whatever else.

You bring it up on our website, www .tt .com. You'll notice on the menu bar, it just says voicemail.

Click on that, follow the instructions, record us a message and it gets to us. I don't have any voicemail this week, but we do have a few emails and some of these have carried on for a little while.

So I might have gotten these a few weeks ago, finally getting to them on the program.

This first one is from Michael and he says, Pastor Gabe and Becky, last week, you mentioned the charismatic view of spiritual warfare and that it is a wrong view.

I was raised Pentecostal slash charismatic, but I have come to a reformed more 1689 perspective.

That's our confession of faith as a church, the London Baptist Confession, 1689. So my question is, what is the problem with the

Pentecostal view of spiritual warfare? And what is the more biblical view? Please help me to understand the text.

Great tag. I appreciate that, Michael. So the charismatic view of spiritual warfare is pretty typical to what you see charismatics do even within their worship, the speaking in tongues and the casting out demons or healing or anything else.

So their view of spiritual warfare is kind of encompassed in that, believing that the miraculous sign gifts are still in regular use.

In fact, you'll see them being used in the middle of a church service on a Sunday morning. So they think that there are people in their midst that might be either demon possessed or oppressed, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, or we talked about it last week, didn't we?

Yeah, that's right. I think I've been talking about spiritual warfare for a couple of weeks now. But anyway, so they have the view that you're still being oppressed by demons and those demons can be cast out.

You'll see the deliverance ministry stuff that will show up on videos. If you're on social media, they're common to TikTok and the shorts that YouTube does and Instagram and places like that.

So there are charismatic teachers that are making quite a name for themselves, and they will specialize in deliverance ministry.

They will come and speak at those conferences or be guest speakers in charismatic churches specifically for their deliverance abilities or believing they have been anointed to cast out demons.

And so they have people come up. You've seen the Benny Hinn clips where he'll lay hands on somebody and they fall down.

It's even more dramatic than that. They'll fall down and flop around all over the place. They'll even snarl and growl as this demon is coming out and all this kind of thing.

It's kind of funny how demons always seem to want to go to these charismatic services to get cast out.

What are they thinking? And there's also an aspect to the charismatic view of spiritual warfare that's a lot like this present darkness.

I know this goes back a few decades, but Frank Peretti's book, This Present Darkness and Piercing the

Darkness had those stories about people that were being oppressed by spiritual powers.

And then you would have the side stories of angels and demons that were fighting against one another.

So while I'm sitting here trying to pray, there's literally an angel and a demon duking it out around me, which was kind of the depiction that Frank Peretti gave it in his books.

They've got their spiritual swords and they're clashing and one has this scheme against another person which the angel's trying to thwart and all this other kind of stuff.

And it's just not reality. That's not what is going on around us. There are spiritual things that are happening around us all the time, but it's not like angels and demons and armor that are having a literal spiritual war that is happening in a realm beyond the one that we can perceive.

That's the common Pentecostal charismatic view of spiritual warfare.

But like I said last week, when you are resisting temptation, you're doing spiritual warfare.

When you are resisting the devil, when you are working on being steadfast and persevering in your faith, growing in prayer, growing in knowledge of the word and in Bible study, when you take up your cross daily and follow after Christ, when you die to yourself to love your spouse, when you train up your children in the discipline and the instruction of the

Lord, all of these things are spiritual warfare. Now, that's not flashy. It's not showy, right?

It's not the stuff that the charismatics love. They love the spectacle. They love the feelings.

But just being responsible to pursue holiness today, you don't get a lot of flash for that.

It doesn't give you the feels. There's not a heroic story to tell there in some way that you just were an honest person today and decided to pursue righteousness.

You don't get a lot of fanfare for that. But that is the regular daily pursuit of a

Christian, a pursuit after Christ and desiring to want to be more Christlike is spiritual warfare every day.

I recently came across this clip. This is Dr. Vern Poythress, who is professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary.

And what he's saying here in this clip is that when the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, it would have been a perfect opportunity to talk about, you know, casting out demons, how to deal with demonic activity.

And he kind of sets that up here. Here's the reason why Paul didn't talk about those kinds of things in the book of Romans.

Listen to this book. If you think about it, because it was written by the

Apostle Paul to a church that he had never visited. Now, he had some friends, a considerable list of friends that he mentions in Romans 16.

But he never visited the church as a whole. So he couldn't take for granted that that church knew every aspect of the gospel and every aspect in particular of how to wage spiritual war.

And he also knew that Rome as a center, power center of the whole

Roman Empire would also in some respects have been the center of pagan worship. In other words, there would have been gross idolatry.

And behind that idolatry is the Apostle Paul himself points out in First Corinthians 10, are always demons.

I will not have you participate in the table of demons, he says, because that's what's behind the idols.

So he knows that. So he writes the book of Romans to further equip the saints.

And of course, he's going to include a long section about demons and their activities and how to resist them and so on and so forth, except that he doesn't.

What does he do? He expounds the gospel. But that is the answer, you see.

It's not a series of techniques. It's not a handbook for how to deal with each particular kind of demon, how to identify and respond.

It's a handbook about Jesus Christ and his victory. That's what the

Apostle Paul gives the people to equip them to deal with the gross idolatry and the bondage to Satan that comes with that in the city of Rome.

So I hope that's helpful. That goes with the answer that I gave last week as well. I shared the story about the young man that came to me and was looking for an exorcist, and I simply said to him, you just need the gospel.

If you have the gospel, if you turn to Jesus Christ, you can resist whatever demonic thing is going on in your friend, which he had come and asked about.

She needs to turn from her sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, and she will be delivered from whatever this oppression is that's happening to her, which was apparently happening to her because of unrepentant sin that she was in.

We don't need exorcisms. We don't need flash and flare. We don't need feely goosebumps. We need the gospel.

We just simply need to turn to Christ. You'll hear charismatics a lot that will talk about battling with Satan.

I bind you in Jesus' name. I bind Satan, and I cast you out, Satan, and all these things.

Satan's not dealing with most people on a one -on -one level. He's got bigger fish to fry.

He doesn't care about you. The devil did not make you do it. Of course, there are demonic activities out there, and even with every temptation that we have, there's something spiritual that's going on there.

We don't have the power to bind Satan. Nobody can do that. I remember

Votie Bauckham saying, if all these people are binding Satan, who is it that keeps letting him out?

You've already been given all the tools that you need to fight against the devil and his schemes, and that is in the gospel.

It's drawing near to Christ. It's a real popular thing right now, even in our

Reformed circles, to be all interested in cryptids and Bigfoot and aliens and demonic activities and all this stuff.

There's a rising interest of this even among the Reformed. But really, what is the benefit of it?

Some of it can be rather interesting, but how does it benefit us to jump into a lot of most of which, a large portion of it, in fact, greater than 90 % is speculative.

It's kind of a hobby horse sort of a thing, but it doesn't really help us in our own spiritual walk.

How do you fight against the devil? How do you fight against your own flesh or the things in the world that want to woo you away from God?

You turn to Christ. You focus on Christ. You draw near to Christ and cling to him, desiring to be more

Christ -like, being in the word, being in prayer, being disciplined, being self -controlled.

These are the things that we do in our constant spiritual battle that we wage every single day.

Thank you for your question, Michael. This next one also goes back to a previous question that I answered.

This is from Scott in Kentucky. He said, I heard the Friday Q &A today. This would have been a couple of weeks back.

I usually listen to it on my Monday commute. I haven't heard your take on the trend toward defeminizing the church before.

You rightfully called out Driscoll, but I'm really interested in others by name that you would see in the hyper -masculine camp.

Your general guidelines didn't really seem that complete. As far as Jesus being our example of a total masculine man,

I agree, but you must also realize that his bride calls him Lord. For some context,

Sarah also called Abraham her Lord. Genesis 18 -12, that's also a reference in 1

Peter 3. Should my wife call me Lord? If she wants to. Continuing on,

I really would like to know whether that line would be toward the hyper -masculine ditch.

Would requiring my wife to call me Lord be aligned toward the hyper -masculine ditch, is what

Scott is saying there. There is so much accumulated feminism that has crept into the church.

I certainly agree with that. It seems there is quite the wide lane before we hit the opposite ditch.

As an example, would you consider the whole of the PCA churches that way, or only the most militant of the

Moscow mood? Some of my fellow church members scream against anything that even resembles

CREC, which is the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. That's the denomination that Doug Wilson started.

Again, are there some real -life examples other than Driscoll that are the hyper -masculine ditch?

We are praying for the sale of that house and for your lovely wife's family during this time.

I so appreciate that, Scott. Thank you so much for your question. I don't really have a whole lot of other examples with regards to a hyper -masculine crowd.

There are some teachers that come to mind. They're not really that prominent, so I don't know that it would be helpful other than just causing some arguments, so I'm going to abstain.

I will say at one point, Ed Young Jr. was in this group, along with Mark Driscoll. Ed Young Jr.

got into a lot of hyper -masculinity stuff. I don't know if he's still doing this anymore or not, but he would do a lot.

He would throw out all these videos on what a man needs to be like and how a man needs to dress, and you probably remember the

Sexperiment gimmick that he did about 10 years ago. I will not elaborate on that.

It really was not for the benefit of the woman as much as it was for the benefit of the man to do that series in his church.

He had WWE wrestlers in a sermon series. Yes, in a sermon series, he had actual

WWE wrestlers in that series, guys like Mark Calloway, who played The Undertaker, Incredible Hulk, and I think

Ric Flair was even one of them as well. These men are not Christians. I know there's debate over the—I said

Incredible Hulk, didn't I? I meant Hulk Hogan. You knew what

I meant. But anyway, Hulk Hogan is supposedly a Christian now.

I know there was a thing at the end of last year where he presumably gave his life to Christ, but he's been a professing

Christian for a long time. For a while now, he said that he was a Christian, so I don't know if this is another thing, if it's genuine this time.

Not for me to judge, but I know at the time that he was at Ed Young Jr.'s

church, I would not have called him a Christian, knowing some stuff that was going on in his life at that particular time.

So he had these men who really were not truly Christian. They may have been professing

Christians, but they weren't really Christians. And this just kind of piled on to a very hyper -masculine thing that Ed Young Jr.

was doing for a period of time. Like I said, I don't know if he's still doing that or not, but he definitely would have been there in that group.

What I see more often than not, it isn't that there is this cabal of hyper -masculine preachers, but more often than not, it's that there are certain guys that will just take things a little bit too far, and they will have some masculine requirements that end up on the more legalistic side of things.

And I really think that that's the better way to define hyper -masculinity. I gave that sort of a definition to it a couple of weeks ago as well.

It's not that you're just being too manly, so tone it down a little bit. It's that you're taking aspects that men should pursue or that it's good to pursue or wise to pursue, and then making those things requirements, making those things obligations or law, like a man has to do this to be a godly man.

And that really falls, that therefore gets into hyper -masculinity. Let me give you an example of this.

So let's say, because I had this happen to me, I even shared this in a sermon. If you track with my sermons on Sunday morning, you probably heard me share this a few months back.

I had a young man say to me that I have an obligation as a pastor to tell men in my church to learn how to fire a gun.

They need to learn how to use guns, and they need to own guns. And if I am not telling the men in my church to own guns, then

I am failing at a fundamental responsibility that I have as a pastor of my flock.

He even used the word fundamental. So this is a requirement for a pastor to tell men in the church that you must own guns and learn how to fire them.

That is nonsense. Now, it might be wise to own a gun and learn how to fire it because a man should protect his family.

A husband needs to protect his family. If he's living by himself, though, I mean, what difference does it make? I suppose then at that point, the hyper -masculine could say, well, he still has an obligation to protect his community, so he needs to learn how to fire a gun and whatnot.

That's an example of taking something that would be a good idea for a man to be able to do, and then making it a legal requirement, which is now legalism and falls into the hyper -masculinity ditch.

Or another one being men have to lift weights. I've had guys say this to me, too, that I don't go to the gym and lift weights, and so I'm just not as manly.

It's like, come on, I have to pay for a gym membership in order to be more manly? Since I've been married, the only time

I ever had a gym membership was when it was actually given to us for free. There was a gym that had just started up, and they were giving everybody within a certain block radius free memberships to the gym just to try to,

I guess, stir up a word of mouth. Oh, it's a great gym.

You ought to go and sign up. They needed some clientele in the very beginning, so that was the way they started it, telling us that we had free gym memberships.

So for a couple of years, I did that. I didn't visit very often. Lifting weights just wasn't my thing.

I'll go on a run every once in a while, or I like riding my bike. My son and I will ride bikes together occasionally, but that's about the extent of it.

I don't do a lot of lifts outside of general calisthenics, but that can become a requirement thing.

You can hear guys say, you've got to drink and you've got to smoke cigars. I think even within my

Reform camp, some of these guys can really flaunt their Christian liberty, and I don't think that some of my

Reform brethren even stop and think about what it is that they're doing when they flaunt their drinking or their smoking, and could potentially cause somebody else to stumble.

So this is an example. We might call it hypermasculinity. You could call it legalism, but I will see pockets of this pop up occasionally.

It's not that there's necessarily preachers that you would categorize as hypermasculine.

It's just that it comes in waves and it comes on particular issues. Even with regard to Mark Driscoll, I wouldn't necessarily say that Driscoll's biggest fault is that he's hypermasculine.

It's not really what I think about first when I hear Driscoll's name. I just think he's a bad teacher.

His doctrine is bad. The stuff that he says is bad. He's opportunistic.

So he looks for the opportunity. He seizes hold of it. He knows how to sell himself. He knows how to sell a book.

He knows how to draw in a crowd. Because it was 10 years ago that he resigned from Mars Hill Church that that whole experiment completely fell apart.

And yet you've seen that he's been able to completely rebuild his ministry since then. I think he's permanently disqualified, frankly.

But now he lives in the Phoenix area, previously had been up there in Washington, a much different part of the country than here in the desert valley.

But he's managed to rebuild his ministry and has a new church.

And once again, he's drawing young men in, just like he was before, with some of the stuff that he's pushing. A lot more on the charismatic side.

He's always been charismatic. But really getting into charismaticism. Previously, when he was at Mars Hill, he was a

Calvinist. And now he rails on Calvinism. He thinks it's for men with daddy issues. But the way that he goes so overboard with the stuff that he talks about, that's how he draws in a crowd.

You don't really draw people to your YouTube channel just being a faithful Bible teacher, just an ordinary

Bible teacher. We're just going to open up the Bible and we're going to teach it today. You draw a crowd by doing something a little bit more extreme.

You've got to have clickbait, right? You've got to have flashy titles and an amazing slide.

And you've got to have something that's going to draw people in right away. And you have to hit particular issues that are the most interesting to people and stuff that's trending out there right now.

And Driscoll knows how to do that. Well, that's really his problem. It's not so much the hyper masculinity side of things.

I think I just talked about him with regards to hyper masculinity a couple of years ago, because that was the nature of the question that was being asked of me.

But when it comes to being a godly man, what should that look like? As Scott had said here, just being like Christ isn't specific enough, which was kind of the answer that I gave then.

All I was saying there was that Christ is our primary example when it comes to being a godly man.

But what should godly masculinity look like? Well, I believe I also pointed to 1

Timothy 6 11. But as for you, oh, man of God, flee these things.

Talk about the sins that were listed in the chapter earlier. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness.

When it comes to flee these things, how we might apply that given the topic of conversation, all this other kind of stuff like what

Driscoll does and what some of these teachers might do going a little bit too far into the masculinity ditch.

Flee that stuff. Don't let the pendulum swing too far the other direction. And that in order to contest against the feminization that's happening in many pulpits today, well, we just need to be more and more masculine and just be biblically faithful.

That will be enough to fight off the liberalism that's becoming so rampant in evangelicalism.

Be righteous. Do what God has said is right. Be godly. Desire to be like God.

Pursue faith. Growing in this faith that you have. If you're a Christian, you already have faith, but continue to mature in it.

That you may even become somebody who is able to mentor other men.

As the apostle Paul kind of presents the mentorship model in Titus chapter two, older men mentoring younger men, older women mentoring younger women.

And we should all aspire to that, to be more mature in our thinking. For as said in Romans 15, 1, we who are mature have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves, but to please our neighbor for his good to build him up.

And men need to lead in that, especially in the church. Growing in love, as the apostle

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16, act like men, be strong.

But then in the very next verse, let everything that you do be done in love. We have to be willing to be sacrificial, to consider other's needs ahead of our own, to be charitable, to be kind and patient with one another.

All of that that falls into the category of love. We need to be steadfast, pursue steadfastness.

This means to bear up or remain under. We're showing a longevity, a consistency to the faith that we have.

That the spirit's work perseveres in our life. When somebody looks at us and they see the fruit of the spirit, as in Galatians chapter five, and they see those things grow more and more in us, as we are maturing, then it becomes something that others are able to observe.

We take the long view of our faith. We're not just in a season. This isn't just a passing opinion.

We're not constantly changing our opinions. We're not easily led astray, going after wild ideas, or we're not easily given into the passions of the temptations of our flesh.

We're rock solid, fixed on Christ, steadfast in this faith that we have.

And finally, gentleness. And by the way, that is an aspect of masculinity that is not often considered because men, manly men need to be aggressive.

They need to be tough. They even need to be willing to fight every once in a while and fight with each other.

Well, the apostle Paul actually tells Timothy not to do that, to not go after youthful passions, he says to him in second

Timothy. And that's not about sexual immorality. That's actually about a young man's tendency toward aggression, to fight with one another, resist that, and instead demonstrate a self -controlled gentleness.

Remember the instruction that Paul gave in first Timothy two, I desire that the men in every place should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

What's being implied there? More often than not, men like to fight.

They like to quarrel. They like the aggression. They like the combativeness. No, instead of using your hands to fight with one another, lift them up.

Holy in prayer. Your hands are not stained with guiltiness because you're constantly bickering and arguing and fighting with other people.

Your hands are holy. They are lifted up to God in prayer. And as these instructions are being given to the church in first Timothy two, before Paul addresses women, he first addresses the men.

Same with Titus chapter two. First, the men are addressed before Paul gives instruction regarding the women.

And so men need to lead in this way, demonstrating gentleness. One of the requirements of an overseer is that he must be self -controlled and he must be sober -minded and not violent, but gentle.

That's a requirement for the overseer of the church. And as he is to be an example of a godly man, a mature man in Christ, so other men should desire those same aspects that we have there.

Those characteristics and qualifications that we see in first Timothy three, one through seven. Yes, we're talking there about a man being qualified to become an overseer or a pastor.

Not everybody will be called to that particular position, but everyone in desiring godliness and Christ likeness should aspire to those characteristics on that list.

That's another good place that you can go and find a list of what it means to be a godly man.

Now, this is what every man should do. Again, as I referenced first Timothy six, 11 here, or first Timothy three, or in second

Timothy two, these are things that every man should aspire to exhibit.

Not every man will be a husband and a father. Husbands and fathers, you're going to have even more responsibilities that single men don't have.

A husband must also lead his wife. He must sacrifice for his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, as talked about in Ephesians chapter five.

He must protect his family. He is a protector. Like I said earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to know how to use a gun, but you need to know what you need to do to protect your family, especially spiritually, guarding your family from false teachers and lies and things like that that are out in the world, training up your children in the discipline and the instruction of the

Lord. That's also providing protection from them, protection from the devil's schemes.

And lastly, a husband also needs to provide. It is first and foremost his responsibility to provide for his wife and for his children, physically as well as spiritually.

All of those things are also characteristics of a godly man.

Does a man have to require his wife to call him Lord? No, my wife has never called me

Lord, but she does respect me. And it's not too much for a man of God to expect his wife and his children to respect him.

He does need to be a man worthy of respect, but that doesn't mean that he has to be respectable first, and then his wife and children respect him.

There are instructions for wives and children as well, that a wife must be subject to her husband, and that the children must obey their parents in the

Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. They have to do that whether or not their parents behave in such a way that is worthy of honor.

But a man doesn't have to require his wife to call him Lord, but lead your family in the word of the

Lord. And that is a responsibility that every godly man must fulfill.

I hope those things were a little more specific for you, Scott, and I appreciate your question.

Thank you for calling me to clarify those things a little bit more as we had considered those things, what was it, two weeks ago.

This next question is actually anonymous. I only have an email address. I don't have a name attached to this.

But this anonymous inquirer said, Good morning. Are you Calvinist?

Are you Reformed? What are Calvinists? What does Reformed mean? I just don't understand either one of these terms.

Can you explain? Thanks. Well, that's a big question. How much time do we have? But thank you for asking it.

So are you Calvinist? Yes. Are you Reformed? I am the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

So you have Reformed Baptist right there in the name. That means that as a

Reformed church, we follow a Reformed statement of faith, meaning that it is a statement of faith that has come out of the

Protestant Reformation that began in the 16th century. A desire to want to reform the church back to its originally intended purpose, the way that the apostles laid out the doctrines of the church in the

New Testament. Some of those doctrines I've referenced already. Things that Paul wrote to Timothy in First and Second Timothy and Titus, the pastoral letters on how a church is to conduct itself.

When the Protestant Reformation happened in the 16th century, of course, all of this was kind of building up to ahead.

It's generally said that the Protestant Reformation began on October 31st of 1517 when

Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

That was kind of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, so to speak.

That's the date that it receives. But it was going on a while before that. There were many other men that had spoken against and rebelled against the excesses of Roman Catholicism and the false doctrines that they were pushing.

The gospel that was being lost, the legalism that was being elevated, man's traditions over God's word.

That was a battle that was going on in the church for some time up until everything kind of reached ahead in the 16th century.

We refer to that period as the Protestant Reformation. If you are part of a Protestant church, in other words, you're not part of a

Catholic church or a Greek Orthodox church, might be Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Wesleyan, Nazarene, something like that.

You are a part of a church, a Protestant church, that is in some way, no matter what strain of tradition led to where your church is at now, but you have roots back in the

Protestant Reformation. Now, a lot of churches, a lot of evangelical churches are not reformed.

It is not the majority of Protestant churches out there. And again, reformed meaning that that church has committed itself or summarized its doctrines in a reform statement of faith.

One of those statements that had come out of the Protestant Reformation, that might be the Westminster Confession.

It could be the Three Forms of Unity. It could be the London Baptist Confession of Faith, either the first edition or the second one, which is the one that our church follows, 1689.

And the differences between them is just the 1689 is longer. It was expounding upon doctrines that had first been laid out in the first confession, but more of them to bring our reformed convictions more in line with what had been written in the

Westminster Confession of Faith. So that the Baptists and the Presbyterians are more closely aligned with one another.

The Baptists decided that they wanted to expound upon or expand,

I guess, would really be the better word. They wanted to expand their statement of faith to show the

Presbyterians how alike we are in our doctrines. We may disagree with application of covenant, with baptism and mode of baptism, or who is qualified to be baptized.

We may disagree on some of those things. But when it comes to belief in the sovereignty of God, the sinfulness of man, our need for a savior, the story of salvation that we are all part of as God is accomplishing something that he had decreed from before the foundation of the world, that he has chosen his elect, how he brings about salvation for those whom he had predestined from the beginning of time.

All of these different things. These are what are summarized in our reformed confession of faith.

Now, as I've said previously about reformed theology, all reformed are

Calvinist, but not all Calvinists are reformed. There are some that will use those terms interchangeably, but there is a distinction.

There's a difference. Calvinism is only a summary of certain doctrines regarding soteriology or the study of salvation, whereas reformed theology is a much broader body of doctrines that are also concerning the end times.

It's concerning covenant. It's concerning the way that we partake in the Lord's table and administer baptism and things like that.

There's a lot more that's being covered in a reformed statement of faith that isn't covered when a person just simply says that they are a

Calvinist. Now, what is Calvinism? So I've talked about reformed theology a little bit there. What is Calvinism?

Well, Calvinism really goes back to the remonstrance that happened in the 17th century in the

Netherlands. At the time, the pastors in the Netherlands were following the Belgic confession, which is a reformed confession of faith.

But there was a pastor named Jacobus Arminius, and he was even a professor at one of their universities.

He was teaching things that contradicted the Belgic confession. Now, Arminius denied some of the things that were being said of him, that he was teaching things contrary to the confession.

And so there were some people that took his word for it. But then after he died, his students continued to teach those things, and it began to spread, and people began to realize that this was a problem.

So the students of Jacobus Arminius were being told to stop teaching some of the things that they were teaching.

They wrote a letter to the Dutch government asking for permission to freely teach the things that they had received from their professor,

Arminius. At the time, the government ruled over the church.

So it was necessary for these pastors to have to appeal to the government in order to receive permission to teach

Arminianism. Essentially, what comes down to the way that we term it today is

Arminianism. So in this letter, which was called a remonstrance, that means protest, they listed their beliefs in these five points.

Number one, God chooses to give eternal life in heaven to those he knows will eventually believe and obey him.

Number two, Jesus died for everyone, every single person, but only those who believe and obey are going to be saved, and those who will continue in that faith to the end will be saved.

Number three, human beings are born in sin and they must be born again by the spirit of God.

Number four, a person can choose to resist and reject God's grace.

Number five, a person who has received God's grace might be able to lose it through rebellion or disobedience.

So you can lose your salvation. That was the fifth point of Arminianism. Well, the reformed pastors objected to most of these points.

There's one or two of them, whereas those who are reformed might agree with, for example, human beings are born in sin, they must be born again by God's spirit.

Yeah, we would agree with that. It's exactly what the Bible says. But to discuss the things that came up by Arminius' disciples, they asked the government permission to be able to hold a synod or an official meeting where pastors were invited from different European countries to come and be a part of this.

And it was the first Protestant council that was held at an international level. Now, the city where they met was the city of Dort.

So this is referred to as the Synod of Dort. And the confessions that result from this or the statement that they agreed upon gets referred to as the

Canons of Dort. And so here was the reply that they gave to the five points of Arminius.

Number one, God's choice of those who will be saved is not conditioned by what people may or may not do.

Number two, Jesus died for those God has chosen to save. He did not just make salvation possible.

He accomplished salvation for those whom he had chosen to be saved.

Number three, human beings are born in sin and incapable of choosing to believe

Christ. So that's similar to what Arminius said, but it goes deeper than that. Not just that human beings are born in sin, but we are in Adam's sin nature and unable to choose

God. We don't even have the desire to choose God. So God has to save us supernaturally.

And the spirit regenerates our hearts. So instead of being in rebellion against God, now we desire

God because of this supernatural work that's been done in the heart of a person. Number four, all those who are called by Christ will come to him because God's spirit has freed them from their sinful nature that was before causing them to reject

God's grace. So once that regeneration happens, the new nature that a person has desires

God and they won't resist God. And then finally, number five, when

Jesus said that no human being can take someone out of his hand, he meant no one, not even that person.

So this is a statement in John 10, 28, I give them eternal life and no one will be able to snatch them out of my hand.

So it's truly eternal life. When you come to Christ, we will never lose our salvation if we are truly in Christ.

When God chooses to save a person, that person will be kept until the end and nothing can separate them from the love of God, as I referenced earlier from Romans 8.

So these points, again, were summarized in the Canons of Dort.

And together with the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, they became part of the three forms of unity, something that I mentioned a little bit ago.

It's the confessional standard for most Reformed churches. You probably won't find a

Reformed Baptist church that follows the three forms of unity, though, because, again, as I mentioned, some of those

Reformed confessions will also profess infant baptism.

And Baptists, of course, don't baptize babies. We believe in credo baptism, or that a person chooses on their own or makes a confession of faith and decides to be baptized.

It's not a decision that is made for them. And so that's why Reformed Baptists came up with a statement of faith that was in agreement with a lot of the doctrines that you find in the

Westminster Confession or the Belgic Confession or the Heidelberg Catechism. But we just did not agree with the way that they were applying covenant or practicing baptism.

Now, those five points that were in response to the five points of Arminianism.

The five points of Arminianism, that which was summarized in the Remonstrance, and then the five points that became the

Canons of Dort eventually became the five points of Calvinism. And those five points are summarized in the acrostic

TULIP, T -U -L -I -P. And each one of those letters corresponds with a particular doctrine.

T stands for total depravity. U stands for unconditional election. L stands for limited atonement.

I stands for irresistible grace. P stands for perseverance of the saints. Now, I have never been a big fan of any of those titles.

And R .C. Sproul, who is a very popular Reformed teacher, same with him. He didn't really like the titles that much either.

And if you find his teachings on Calvinism, you'll notice that he will give different names to them.

He'll teach them under the name of the doctrine that the doctrine is known for, like total depravity.

But then he will describe it's really more total inability is the better title for the doctrine.

It's likely that TULIP, we don't really know where TULIP came from or even why these doctrines, as they were summarized in the

Canons of Dort, why they even became called Calvinism. Because it wasn't like the pastors, the

Reformed pastors that were there as part of this synod were proclaiming themselves as being Calvinist.

That's really a title that came along much later. And we don't know how those Canons of Dort became rearranged and given those different labels and summarized under the acrostic

TULIP. We don't really know when that happened either. But it does kind of sound like that it came from somebody who was critical of the

Canons of Dort to give them those different labels, because that's not really the labels that we as Calvinists or the

Reformed would have chosen. We wouldn't have picked those titles for those particular doctrines.

But anyway, we're stuck with them now. And that's typically what gets called Calvinism, the TULIP acrostic.

And those, again, are doctrines that summarize what the Bible says about soteriology or the study of salvation.

It's not that Calvinism made up new doctrines and then imposed those things on scripture.

It's summarizing things that we know that scripture teaches. And if you look at my confession of faith.

So if you want to go to my church's website, which is ProvidenceCasagrand .com and you click on about us,

I think that's what you click on. Hang on. I'll do it right here and tell you exactly. Well, it says confession at the top of the page.

So click on confession. And it says there that we affirm certain historical statements of faith like the

Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. The Bible is the inerrant word of God.

We look to the scripture alone as our authority. But what is it that we believe the scripture says?

And that's summarized in our statement of faith, which is the 1689 London Baptist confession of faith.

And there's a link there that you can click on and you can see the entire confession. It's about 13 ,000 words or something like that.

So that's about the length of a sermon and a half, maybe two sermons worth. It'll take you a little while to read it.

But you can see all of the doctrines that we believe that are categorized there.

And it will give you all of the scripture references to on top of that. So it's not just statements that are just kind of standalone.

Here's what we believe about that. The confession also shows you where in the Bible it says that.

So how did we come to that conclusion that this is what the Bible says about justification or sanctification or adoption or how we are to partake in the

Lord's table or what we believe about the end times, things of that nature. So you find all of that in the confession.

And once again, PRBCCG .com or go to ProvidenceCasagrand .com

and that will get you there. Click on confession and you will find our confession of faith. Well, anonymous guy,

I appreciate you asking that question. I hope it was interesting enough for everybody to go through kind of a brief history lesson there.

I'm going to wait on the remainder of these questions until Becky's back with me again.

And I think I mentioned last week, I've got a voicemail too that I'm kind of sitting on and waiting for her because I think that the subject matter being addressed in that voicemail is it will make for great conversation between husband and wife.

I thank you for bearing with me doing this program solo over the last three episodes.

If you have any questions that you would like to submit to the program, send them to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

Or once again, you can send a voicemail, go to wwutt .com and click on voicemail right there at the top of the page.

Hey, I want to give a shout out to some people in some different countries, whether you're in Ireland or the

Philippines or in Singapore. In the most recent update that we got on on where we have been trending, where is the podcast been trending?

We were trending in Ireland in both the religion and spirituality category and in Christianity.

We were in the top 100 amongst Christian podcasts in the country of Ireland.

Thanks so much, Irish brethren in the Philippines. We were trending in the top 200 in the religion and spirituality category and almost at number one, like we were in the top 10 somewhere in the

Christianity category in the Philippines. Well, that's awesome. So I appreciate that very much, guys. And then we were also in the top 200 podcasts in Singapore among Christian podcasts.

Let somebody else know about our podcast. That's kind of the way that we got out there is mostly by word of mouth.

And then if you would, please, whatever podcast app you use, leave us a review.

Mark five stars, write something about us because it helps others find our podcast, too.

Those those reviews help out the algorithm a little bit. Let me conclude with prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for everything that you do for us, for the kindness that you have shown us in Christ our

Lord. And I pray that we would continue to be faithful, submissive to your will, desiring to do those things which are pleasing to our

God. Keep us from the snares of Satan. Draw us near to you. May we desire to pursue some of the things that we read about today, like in first Timothy chapter six, that we would pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness.

Help us to understand your word more and more, to grow in these things and be trained in them for godliness.

It is in the name of Christ that we pray. Amen. This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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