The Laborers' Podcast- Biblical Theology in a Health Church part 2

Good evening. It's Thursday night, and we are excited that you are watching. You are joining us. Thank you for watching these videos. Thank you for your support. And we are praying that God would be glorified, that you would hear Jesus, and that you would hear Scripture, you would hear His Word, and that you would benefit greatly from it.

And we would appreciate your prayers. We appreciate it if you would like, if you would share, comment, let us know that you're watching. Ask questions. If we can pray for you, all you have to do is type me in the comments, and we'll be glad to be able to pray for you.

But ask questions. Get engaged. Be involved. We would love to have you participate with us tonight. This is the Laborer's Podcast, and we have some new faces with us tonight. Hopefully, John will be back with us.

We'll see his face again soon, I hope. But since we have some new faces, we want to go around and let everyone introduce themselves. So I'm going to go based on how it is on my screen. So we're going to go first with the Chicano Knox.

Introduce yourself. Let us know what information you'd like to have out there about yourself and maybe generally where you're from, who you are.

Introductions and Ministry Backgrounds

Yeah, Rob, thank you so much. It's a privilege and honor to be on this show. Thank you, Tyler, for the invite. Thank you for all your guys' support. Yeah, I'm Jesse, a .k .a. the Chicano Knox, because I do open-air evangelism.

And I preach, and I preach like people say, like John Knox. I'm out there going crazy, you know, keeping my finger in the text. Don't get me wrong. And, you know, I have a passion for the inner city. I have a passion for Latinos, for Chicanos, for Mexicans, you know what I mean?

And, you know, I was raised in Southern California, but I live here in Colorado, which I call the Middle Earth. And because there's a giant mountains right next to me. Anyways, and, you know, I have four beautiful kids, a beautiful wife, been married since 2011.

You know, I've been safe since 2006. You know, I'm always changing and growing my knowledge in the Lord. I have a podcast, any of you could check out, called the Bible Theory Podcast, available pretty much anywhere.

And I am coming out with a book on ecclesiology. It's called the Going to Church Book. It's going to probably be out probably next year. You know, I'm jumping my, I'm making a transition slowly to YouTube, you know what I mean?

You know, so the Lord is using me right now. There's a lot of interesting things going on with my podcast and my ministry. I've been in and out of ministry since 2011. I am reformed. I guess I lean more on that West side from the aisle, which is fine.

And I have tons of Baptist friends. That's fine too. And, you know, I'm here to, you know, share whatever, you know, that the Lord has given me to, you know, to all y 'all. So if you have any questions or anything like that, just let me know.

I'll be more than willing to answer the best way I can.

Absolutely. And you guys, as we go through this, if you're here at Paul's, if you want to chime in, chime in. Let us know what's on your heart. If you have some input at any point, you're more than welcome to join in.

Tyler, let us know about yourself.

Well, my name is Tyler. I'm 23 years old and I live over in Greer, South Carolina. I've been a Christian for coming up on nine years. God saved me at 14 years old at Bible camp. And it's been quite a journey seeing how God's leading me in places I never wanted to go before.

But I've been doing a podcast for about three years called The Bread of the Word, going verse by verse through books of the Bible, wrapping up Romans right now. I'll be starting Ecclesiastes later this month.

I'm just trying to lay out the Bible, see what the Bible says and how we can be more saturated with God. I'm also working on my first book. It's called The Bread of the Word, 40 Meditations on Being More Saturated with God.

It's kind of like a study with a little bit of hermeneutics in there. It's, it's, I lost my train. It's, it started as a devotional, it kind of grew into more of a study, but I'm hoping to have that out sometime this year.

So there's that. Other than that, I'm just a regular person trying to know God and know him more.

Amen.

Dan, tell us about yourself.

I'm Dan. I live in upstate New York. And that's about all I got right now.

You're, you're, you're working with church plants, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, we're, we're working to plant a church in the city of Oneon in New York. We're part of the, the Walton Reform Presbyterian Church. They're doing a work up there about an hour away, 45 minutes to an hour away.

So since the church plant is closer to our house, we're just doing whatever we can to help out there and see the new work get started.

That's right.

John, tell us about yourself.

My name is Jonathan Foster. I am a husband and a father and a pastor and a church planter. Planting Vertical Life Church and getting to pastor, right now, a church I've always dreamed of. And with some incredible people and unity and just really cool stuff.

And I also plant Spanish speaking churches. And that's why I knew what Chicanos were. Amen. And so we do, we do church plants and missional work and a lot of missional work in Honduras. Also on the side on a construction company, a vending company.

And that's how we create margin for mission and financially. And so, sorry, my phone and all my equipment's acting so weird tonight. So that's how we create a lot of margin and are able to do missional living and things financially and some pretty creative things.

So entrepreneurship is very important to me as well. And training other young men to be entrepreneurial and use their gifts for the kingdom. Hope that gets it on me a little bit.

That's cool. Yeah, that's really good. And I'm Rob, Robert, either one, whatever you want to call me. And I'm like Jonathan. I'm from North Carolina. And I've been in some type of ministry. The bulk of it, I was in church ministry, part-time vocational ministry.

But I've been in some type of ministry since I was 15. I've been doing this podcast for a little over a year, I think. And a lot of it, I've been doing it with Dan. And then it's developed into this greater thing where we're doing the Laborers Podcast now, which is very exciting.

Creating and growing this network. And I'm loving meeting new brothers and locking arms with new brothers as we reach our communities for Jesus Christ. And I'm excited about that. So Jesse, the Chicano Knox, you can find him at the Bible Theory Podcast.

Tyler Inouye, you can find him at Bread of the Word. Dan, he preaches. And you can find some of his videos on the Truth and Love Network Facebook page. John, you can hear him preach. Verticallifechurch .com, is that right?

Verticallifenc .church.

Verticallifenc .church. Verticallifenc .church. Find him there. I also share his services on the Truth and Love Network page. So you can hear him preach there on the Truth and Love Network page. We're going to be sharing more of Tyler.

And hopefully we're going to be sharing more of Jesse in the future on the network page. Jesse is also on Twitter live right now. You can follow Jesse, the Chicano Knox, on Twitter. And he inspired me tonight to go ahead and go live on TikTok.

So we're on TikTok live tonight. So whatever platform that you want to watch us on, we would love to have you. Thank you again for watching. Leave a comment. Let us know that you're watching and engage.

Ask questions. We would love to try to answer your questions. We're continuing in our series talking about what makes up a healthy church. And these guys have some great insights and great input. This is part two of what we were calling biblical theology.

So a healthy church is going to have a healthy biblical theology. And Dan started off last time we were together kind of explaining that. And he helped me to rephrase what I meant by that. So within biblical theology, you have three different categories.

And so I rephrased my title to be a healthy church is going to have a theology that's biblical. So, Dan, underneath that umbrella, what are the three different categories of biblical theology that you explained last time?

Sure, sure. Yeah. So what you're getting at is if we have a theology that's biblical, what areas are going to be guided by the scriptures? So you've got one which is called biblical theology, which is a study of how God has revealed himself to mankind throughout history.

It starts generally from beginning, follows the way that God has revealed himself, how he's entered into history with mankind, and kind of runs all the way through the Old Testament and into the New Testament, showing us eventually Jesus Christ coming to reveal himself as the son of God, the Messiah, the one who takes away the sins of the world.

Then you have another branch called systematic theology. Systematic theology is where you enter into the study of the scriptures with a certain topic in mind, like who am I or who is God or who is the Holy Spirit or what is sin or how can I be saved from my sin?

And then you dive into the Bible looking for answers to those specific topics. So you systematize the teaching of the Bible into categories that help you understand different doctrines. That's a lot of what people think of when they think of theology.

What is your eschatology, your end times view, or what is your view on salvation or soteriology? All the little branches of systematic theology. Then you've got historical theology, which is what the church has believed down through the ages over time.

You find a lot of those in our confessional documents, in the church fathers and their writings. History, stuff like that. You see where the church has come together with a consensus. What is heresy? What should absolutely not be believed?

What is absolutely essential to faith? If you start with a biblical theology, recognizing how God has revealed himself, and then move into a systematic theology, where you're understanding what the Bible is teaching about different things, you check yourself against historical theology and making sure you're not going completely off the rails, being led astray somewhere.

You should be able to run through that cycle over and over again until you're not here anymore. Just tightening up what you believe about God, understanding exactly who he says he is, what you can find out about him, about the scripture, and living that out in community with the saints.

That's basically what it means. The categories that we're talking about when we say we want to have a theology that's biblical.

Right. I appreciate that. In further review, what we decided was, or what I explained, was having a healthy theology is going to help us to know God rightly. That's what it's going to lead us into. Then knowing God rightly, knowing truth rightly, is going to lead us into living right, obeying him rightly.

That's kind of a summary of what a healthy theology is, healthy biblical theology is, and what comes out of it. Part two tonight, and I'm looking forward to the insights from you guys, is going to be a little bit more practical.

Next up on our question list is individually. John, we'll start with you if you're ready. Individually, something practically, how can I develop or grow in having a healthy biblical theology?

Having a healthy biblical theology, part of the answer is obviously right in the question. You've got to spend time in the Bible. That's very, very important. People always get wrapped up a lot of times in what translation is that.

I do believe personally there's some translations that are better than others. I did have one guy tell me, for a new believer, what's the best translation? Whichever one you will read, whichever one you will study.

Start there. Start spending time reading. I am convicted that the Holy Spirit is our teacher, first and foremost, and that the Holy Spirit can and will and is guiding and leading and teaching and guiding us in all manners of truth.

I think it has to start there with the Bible itself. Then from that, obviously, just like Dan was saying, there's many systems that you run that through. You read something, you get an idea, what do you test that against?

Surrounding yourself with people who are also authentically in pursuit of God and doing those things together. Then accurately knowing how to rightly divide the truth. You don't have to be a brainiac to be able to do that.

There's tons and tons of simple resources. I like resources personally. I've talked to this guy online before, on the phone before, so I don't mind dropping the website. But like austinprecept .com or .org is just a great website that the guy takes tons of commentary from multiple different conservative commentators.

On one single text, there'll be pages and pages and pages of sermon clips and quotes and commentation and that kind of stuff. Anybody that says, hey, I don't have time to study. Man, what took preachers of old hours and hours and hours and hours and hours?

We can literally do at the click of a button. But the warning is don't just pick up Google and go Google it. Don't just be like, hey, what does this mean? Don't look at Wikipedia and think that you're getting the truth.

But to me, it starts with the Bible. Number two, surrounding yourself with like-minded people that are searching the truth of scripture. And then number three, have some good resources. Discover good resources that are going to tell you the truth, that rightly divide the truth and discerning through that.

And then the last thing is the most precious thing that we have to give is time. Give time to it. Dedicate time to it. So to me, that would be four things very practically. If you want to have a biblical worldview, a solid biblical theology, start there.

Speaking of resources, that's my prayer. And that's why I'm so thankful for you guys and your insights and your participation, is because I pray that this will be a resource for people to know Jesus, to come to know him, to develop the healthiness in their theology.

And so I would love for God to use this to help people in the area that you're talking about. Jesse, we'll go with you and then Tyler next. If you want to talk about some of the things practically that have helped you develop healthy biblical theology in your life.

And then in addition, we want to talk about as leaders, how do we develop that in our churches? How do we create that environment in our churches that develops an atmosphere of healthy theology? So Jesse, we'll start with you.

Regeneration, the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit

Yeah, good question. You know, I guess in my testimony, looking back, what changed my heart is, you know, the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is the only person in the Trinity that could come into your heart and change it and give you a new heart.

You know what I mean? So unless you don't have a new heart, you know what I mean? You could read as much as you want and it won't impact you. You know what I mean? You could be the kind of guy that has so much knowledge and orthodoxy, but no orthopraxy, which means you're not practicing what you're preaching.

You're not doing what, you know, what Jesus wants us to do. What pleases God is faith. So, you know, it's impossible to like fake faith, to have faith that is not based in Jesus. It's kind of easy to fake it, but it's hard to make it, if that makes sense.

So I think in my younger life, I think I just assumed it. I probably just intellectually came to Christ with just a shallow knowledge. I assumed it probably. It wasn't until I heard some hardcore sermons by people like Paul Washer and John MacArthur that really cut me to the core.

That really gave me the gospel. So fundamentally, it has to start with the gospel. Like, you know what I mean? It has to start with understanding the gospel that we are sinners, that you're a sinner, that, you know.

And if you ever do open air preaching, most people would, you know, have a consensus of their sinfulness. That, yes, we live in a broken world. Why is everything broken? Why is everything evil? You know, there's evil and, you know what I mean?

And sooner or later, most people would understand that, you know, they are fallen. You know what I mean? And it's the people's pride that rejects Jesus. It's the people's arrogance that rejects Jesus.

Their egos, right?

And I see that a lot in street ministry. And that's the kind of stuff that broke my heart fundamentally in the beginning. The need for Jesus in everything that I saw around me. Back in the day, I grew up with, you know, different type of philosophers.

You know, like Tupac and Eazy-E were my philosophers. You know what I mean? I never heard of a Nietzsche or a Darwin or anything like that. You know what I mean? So growing up in the streets, you know, I had different type of philosophers.

So now when I came to Christ and Christ transformed my heart and is renewing my mind until this day, you know, Christ is my ultimate philosopher. Christ is my king. Christ is my messiah. He's my savior.

He's the cure, man. And that's how I saw, that's how I came into Christianity through the gospel. And I saw Jesus being the answer to everything. Like, and I believe that fundamentally, you know, and I still do.

And that's what took me to the streets. That's what compelled me to go out there being on the shame and just talking about it. You know what I mean? And just telling people about Jesus. And so I think, you know, having that burden outside of reflecting of what Jesus did for me, right?

Because biblical theology is basically like, you know, reflecting what the Bible says. You know, you know, you're basically coming to the Bible. You're reading it. And it's historical context, right? You're saying you're reading about Solomon.

You're reading about, you know, Adam. And then all of a sudden you reflect on those things. And you're saying, what does Adam have to do with me?

Right?

You're basically asking questions. What does Jesus' resurrection have to do with me? How can I take, you know, Jesus restoring Peter, right? The concept of forgiveness and restoring Peter. How can I apply that to my life?

So you're basically like reflecting on those realities that's presented in the Bible. And you're coming to God with those things. So I came to God with my brokenness, my emptiness. I'm like, Lord, I can't forgive people.

It's so hard to forgive people, you know? So basically you just got to be real. And the gospel makes you real. The gospel makes you transparent with God. Right? Because God is your friend. God is your father.

The Holy Spirit comes into your life and changes you and makes you call God your father. Because God adopts you, right? The doctrine of adoption, right? So, you know, without the Holy Spirit, like I said in the beginning, you can't call God your father.

You can read as much scripture as you want, but it won't change you. Look at, you know, Christopher Hitchens, right? He read more Bible and debated more Christians than I could think of. And yet he denied Jesus up to this very last breath.

You know what I mean? So if you're a father out there and you're like, I just don't feel Christianity, you know what I mean? Like I like Jesus. I respect that.

I go to church.

I try my best. You know, chances are you're probably not regenerated. You know, chances are you probably don't understand the gospel. You haven't took it here, you know, in your corazón, in your heart, right?

So, you know, you know, maybe you heard about it all your life, but it hasn't really hit here in your heart yet. And you really got to cry out to God like I did. And keep doing that until Christ comes into your heart and changes you.

And how you change the church and create that culture. I think it has to start from the, you know, the pastors and elders and deacons. Because whatever the leaders are going to do, you know, the body will follow.

The head is going to lead the body. You know what I mean? And Christ appointed teachers to the church. So like the deacons and elders. If the deacons and elders are not praying and if they don't have a prayer life, chances are that's going to reflect into the body.

The ecclesiastical body in that local visible church is not going to have a prayer life. The prayer life is going to probably be weak. It's because the pastor's prayer life is weak. You know what I mean?

If the pastor is not happy and joyful, it's going to be really hard for him to come out and preach a sermon on joy. Right? In Philippians. It's going to be really hard to believe his joy.

Right?

Because he's up there just talking facts and just talking about joy when all his life, Monday through Saturday, he has no joy.

Right?

And people see that. People are going to see through the facade of this guy has no joy. He never smiles. He's never joyful. You know, so, you know, I met pastors like that. And it's a sad case. It's a it's a very depressing case.

And, you know, so how he does how the churches create that culture is it starts from the pastor. You know, the deacons and elders, they they need to create that culture. And and the spirit will work in that congregation, not overnight, but it will definitely stir up other people.

And they're like, man, this guy has joy. You know what I mean? That's contagious. You know what I mean? So that's when fathers and mothers, you know, start changing by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's I think that's how the culture creating that culture of joy, for example, in a church that has no joy.

It has to come from from that from that leadership.

You know, I think if we were going to have a list, I think you hit probably I think you hit number one on both of those lists. But I feel like in your first segment there, I really feel like you you brought out something that was kind of assumed so far in this that you can't you can't develop a biblical theology.

You can't develop a hunger for biblical theology. You can't develop anything apart from God transforming you and becoming saved and God causing you to be born again. You know, becoming his child, him becoming your father.

You know, that's number one. You can't develop any of these things without that. And then the second part that you talked about, which you probably hit number one, if we were going to develop a list, it starts with the leaders, with the elders of the church.

So I think those are great insights. Tyler, how about you personally? Some practical things that you've used to develop biblical theology in your life and any insights that you would like to share about developing that culture in the church?

There was a catchphrase that a theologian in the 1200s by the name of Anselm that he kind of coined. It was in Latin. It was credo ut intelligam, which literally means I believe that I might understand.

And often these days in the church, I've seen this myself. I've been there. We want to believe. I mean, we want to understand. So we might believe. We kind of flip that around that I want to understand the Bible so that I can become a Christian, so I can believe these things.

I want to adhere first, kind of build off of what Jesse said that, yes, we need to be regenerated first, that we can't make sense of this book. We can understand that Jesus was born in Nazareth. But when you start talking about union with Christ, that doesn't make sense unless it's in here first.

And so there is that we have to come to this from a place of faith that we are in Christ. And it is only in Christ that this makes sense. Psalm 63 is a beautiful passage, and it starts off with I thirst for you.

My body faints for you in a land that is dry and desolate, because ultimately we are in a desert. And Christ is the fountain in the middle of the desert. The Reformation used a lot of Latin phrases, too.

And one of those key ones they use was to the fountain, ad fontes. Let's let's go to the source. Let's stop reading about the Bible and let's start reading the Bible. And I've I've been in a lot of churches over the nine years I've been saved.

I've been in churches that were very surfacy, very not a whole lot of depth to them. And I've been in woke churches. I've been in this. I've been in that. And, yes, it ultimately what it comes back to with me is to the source.

Why is this here? Why do we have the book of Ecclesiastes? And how does this pertain to my relation to God? And it's honestly, it's been taking the Bible out of the pastor's hands and into my own hands.

That makes sense of not just taking this blanket statement of this is what the pastor says. So I believe that. But I believe the Bible, that I might understand it, that God is showing me things through the Bible.

And sometimes he does that through the pastor on Sunday mornings. But that doesn't negate me getting alone with the text, getting alone with God. And my main teacher, like Jonathan said, is the Holy Spirit, is the reveal word of God that is living and active.

There are things in this book that jump out at me that I've read dozens of times. And it started with opening the Bible. I mean, when I was in high school, my youth pastor preached a sermon on sanctification.

And then the next week we were talking about video games. And I'm like, wait a minute, you talked about sanctification and I want to know more. And that is pretty much been my focal point with the Bible is how does an ugly, wretched sinner like me be saved?

How do I become acceptable to God? What does God do with my life from the moment of salvation until the moment he calls me home? What is this blank space here, this lump of clay? How does it become a pot?

What is God doing? How is he doing it? Why is he doing it? Those big questions are in the Bible. And I would say that a great place to go for these questions is the book of Psalms. That there's so much poetry in the Bible.

It's incredible that a third of all this deep theology in the Bible is revealed to us in poetry. When we factor in the Psalms and the prophets, all this prophecy is poetry. It's written in a poetic form.

And there's so much poetry that God is using to reveal himself to us. There's something about poetry that stirs our heart in a different way. I think it was Martin Luther that said, if you want to stir your heart to devotions, take up the Psalms.

And a great place to marinate on God is in the Psalms. And they also show us who God is and how to worship this God, how to commune with this God. That it's theology in action, if that makes sense. And so I guess that would be the big things would be over the last nine years of digging into the word and formulating this biblical theology is to the source.

And let's read the Psalms of God.

And biblical theology, I think what you were saying is helps you answer all those questions that you're asking. And so you're diving into the word, you're seeking the Holy Spirit to teach you, as you guys have stated, so that you can answer these questions and you can learn about who God is, how he wants to be worshiped, how he wants you to live, how he saved you, what all that looks like.

And so hence the importance of having this healthy biblical theology individually and corporately as our church. So I got the next part of our questions sheet here is just a list. And I think I think we can go through this list one per person, if you guys don't mind.

Because biblical theology is going to help us evaluate these different areas. And we there's some of these there's some of these that we're going to differ on or maybe maybe just one or I'm not sure. But our approach is still the same.

So the question is, how does biblical theology help us evaluate these different things? And so, Dan, the first one is the preaching that we hear. Having this healthy biblical theology that we've developed individually, as we've been developing, that we've been developing corporately as a church.

How does that help me evaluate the preaching that we hear? So, like, I guess the question that I'm asking is, if if I'm a member of a church and I want to be hearing, you know, the kind of preaching that pleases God, the kind of preaching that I need, or if I'm a leader, if I'm a leader in the church, how does healthy biblical theology help me develop my preaching?

If you can take it from there.

Discernment in Preaching and Teaching

Yeah. It seems like you come at the same thing from two different directions. One would be, one direction would be like, if you're going to listen to preaching, how do I know it's the right stuff? Or how do I take it and put it in my head?

Really, the thing there is discernment. The way that people will find a counterfeit $100 bill or a counterfeit $20 is when they train them to do so, they don't do it by training them to spot the fake.

They train them by giving them only the real thing. And you look at the real thing so much to where you can just touch or smell or look or, I mean, you wouldn't want to taste it. But I guess if you take the real bill, you can taste it a little funky.

You would know if that's not right. There's something off here that the ink's a different shade. There's not enough fiber in the paper or something. And it's the same thing when you come across preaching or teaching.

If you've been in the word and saturated with the scriptures, you've been praying, you've been letting the Holy Spirit lead you. Then when you come across something that's not right, something that's just a little bit off, it seems off.

Even if you can't put your finger on it, say, I don't know exactly what it is. Something there didn't sound right. Let me back up a second and check on something. I don't know what it is yet, but let me figure it out because it doesn't seem right.

Same thing happens if you're looking to preach, but you're doing it from a different way. It's still discernment, but it's discernment in how do I know you go through the process of thinking, how am I sure that what I'm about to say is actually what God's word says?

And so it takes a different kind of discernment. You're not discerning what somebody else is saying. You're trying to discern what's in your own brain, which can be tricky because sometimes we're not right.

So we have to back up, listen to wise counsel, go to a community. That's one of the big things about developing a culture of biblical theology in the church. It's about community. You ask each other just random questions.

Like it says in Deuteronomy, you talk about the word of God. You're standing or sitting or you're going out there. You're standing here. You're plowing your field or you're eating dinner or wherever you're going.

You just bring something up. It doesn't have to be big or meaty or anything, but bring it up with your brother down the road. Hey, man, I was thinking about the Incarnation or I was thinking about the royal prophets in Old Testament Israel.

You just talk about it for a while. You go to the scriptures, you push each other. A lot of times when you go to say something, you can think it a lot, but you go to say it. You're like, I really don't want to put that out loud.

That doesn't sound right at all. That just sounds terrible. I should rethink what I'm about to say. It's a matter of discernment, both with what's coming out of your mouth. Is it lining up with what is in the Word of God or what is going into my ears?

Does that line up with the Word of God? Having that solid biblical foundation, having studied and gone through theology and continuing to do so, you keep fresh the truth of God so that way you don't run off into the weeds, which is easy to do if you're only relying on your own brain power.

We still have tendencies to think, put ourselves where we shouldn't or put others in a place where they shouldn't be. We elevate and lower things that shouldn't be elevated or lowered. We want to make sure that we're discerning in all aspects.

Keep fresh the feel of the $100 bill so that way when we take one or give one, we know that what we got is the real deal.