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

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June 3, 2022

Please join the crew as we continue in our healthy church series. Having theology that's Biblical will make for a healthy church.

The Laborers' Podcast- The Holy Spirit part 3

00:24: Good evening, it's Thursday night, and we are excited that you are watching, you are joining us.
00:30: Thank you for watching these videos. Thank you for your support. And we are praying that God would be glorified, that you would hear
00:37: Jesus, and that you would hear Scripture, you would hear His Word, and that you would benefit greatly from it.
00:44: And we would appreciate your prayers. We'd appreciate it if you would like, if you would share, comment, let us know that you're watching.
00:52: 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.
00:58: But ask questions. Get engaged. Be involved. We would love to have you participate with us tonight.
01:05: This is the Laborer's Podcast, and we have some new faces with us tonight. Hopefully, John will be back with us.
01:13: 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.
01:22: So I'm going to go based on how it is on my screen. So we're going to go first with the
01:28: 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.
01:38: Yeah, Rob, thank you so much. It's a privilege and honor to be on this show.
01:44: Thank you, Tyler, for the invite. Thank you for, you know, all your guys' support. Yeah, I'm Jesse, a .k
01:51: .a. the Chicano Knox, because I do open air evangelism. And I preach and I preach like people say, like John Knox.
01:59: I'm out there going crazy, you know, keeping my finger in the text. Don't get me wrong.
02:06: And, you know, I have a passion for the inner city. I have a passion for Latinos, for Chicanos, for Mexicans, you know what
02:14: I mean? And, you know, I was raised in Southern California, but I live here in Colorado, which
02:19: I call the Middle Earth. And because there's a giant mountains right next to me. Anyways.
02:25: And, you know, I have four beautiful kids, a beautiful wife, been married since 2011.
02:32: You know, I've been safe since 2006. You know, I'm always changing and growing my knowledge in the
02:39: Lord. I have a podcast, any of you could check out, called the Bible Theory Podcast, available pretty much anywhere.
02:46: And I am coming out with a book on ecclesiology. It's called the Going to Church Book.
02:52: It's going to probably be out probably next year. You know,
02:57: I'm jumping my, I'm making a transition slowly to YouTube, you know what I mean? You know, so the
03:04: Lord is using me right now. There's a lot of interesting things going on with my podcast and my ministry.
03:11: I've been in and out of ministry since 2011. I am reformed. I guess
03:16: I lean more on that West side from the aisle, which is fine. And I have tons of Baptist friends.
03:22: That's fine too. And, you know, I'm here to, you know, share whatever, you know, that the
03:29: 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.
03:34: 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.
03:47: Let us know what's on your heart. If you have some input at any point, you're more than welcome to join in.
03:55: Tyler, let us know about yourself. Well, my name is Tyler. I'm 23 years old and I live over in Greer, South Carolina.
04:03: I've been a Christian for coming up on nine years. God saved me at 14 years old at Bible camp.
04:12: And it's been quite a journey seeing how God's leading me in places
04:17: I never wanted to go before. But I've been doing a podcast for about three years called
04:24: The Bread of the Word, going verse by verse through books of the Bible, wrapping up Romans right now.
04:30: I'll be starting Ecclesiastes later this month. I'm just trying to lay out the
04:36: Bible, see what the Bible says and how we can be more saturated with God.
04:43: I'm also working on my first book. It's called
04:49: 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.
04:59: 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.
05:13: So there's that. Other than that, I'm just a regular person trying to know
05:19: God and know him more. Amen. Dan, tell us about yourself.
05:26: I'm Dan. I live in upstate New York. And that's about all
05:32: I got right now. You're, you're, you're working with church plants, right?
05:39: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're working to plant a church in the city of Oneon in New York.
05:47: We're part of the Walton Reform Presbyterian Church. They're doing a work up there about an hour away, 45 minutes to an hour away.
05:56: 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.
06:09: John, tell us about yourself. My name is Jonathan Foster. I am a husband and a father and a pastor and a church planter.
06:22: Planting Vertical Life Church and getting to pastor, right now, a church
06:28: I've always dreamed of and with some incredible people and unity and just really cool stuff.
06:37: And also plant Spanish speaking churches. And that's why I knew what Chicanos were.
06:44: Amen. And so we do, we do church plants and missional work and a lot of missional work in Honduras.
06:55: Also on the side on a construction company, a vending company.
07:01: 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.
07:12: 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 right now.
07:22: So entrepreneurship is very important to me as well and training other young men to be entrepreneurial and use their gifts for the kingdom.
07:33: Hope that gets it on me a little bit. That's cool. Yeah, that's really good. And I'm Rob, Robert Knipe, either one, whatever you want to call me.
07:40: And I'm like Jonathan. I'm from North Carolina. And I've been in some type of ministry.
07:47: The bulk of it, I was in church ministry, part -time vocational ministry.
07:52: 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,
07:59: 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
08:06: 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.
08:18: I'm excited about that. So Jesse, the
08:24: Chicano Knox, you can find him at the Bible Theory Podcast. Tyler Inouye, you can find him at Bread of the
08:30: Word. Dan, he preaches, and you can find some of his videos on the
08:36: Truth and Love Network Facebook page. John, you can hear him preach.
08:42: VerticalLifeChurch .com, is that right? VerticalLifeNC .Church.
08:49: VerticalLifeNC .Church. VerticalLifeNC .Church. Find him there. I also share his services on the
08:58: 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.
09:10: Jesse is also on Twitter live right now. You can follow Jesse, the Chicano Knox, on Twitter.
09:16: 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.
09:27: Thank you again for watching. Leave a comment. Let us know that you're watching, and engage.
09:32: 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.
09:41: And these guys have some great insights and great input. This is part two of what we were calling biblical theology.
09:49: So a healthy church is going to have a healthy biblical theology.
09:56: And Dan started off last time we were together kind of explaining that.
10:03: And he helped me to rephrase what I meant by that.
10:09: So within biblical theology, you have three different categories.
10:16: And so I rephrased my title to be a healthy church is going to have a theology that's biblical.
10:23: So, Dan, underneath that umbrella, what are the three different categories of biblical theology that you explained last time?
10:32: 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?
10:43: So you've got one which is called biblical theology, which is a study of how
10:48: 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
11:02: Old Testament and into the New Testament, showing us eventually Jesus Christ coming to reveal himself as the son of God, the
11:10: Messiah, the one who takes away the sins of the world. Then you have another branch called systematic theology.
11:18: Systematic theology is where you enter into the study of the scriptures with a certain topic in mind, like who am
11:26: I or who is God or who is the Holy Spirit or what is sin or how can
11:31: I be saved from my sin? And then you dive into the Bible looking for answers to those specific topics.
11:38: So you systematize the teaching of the Bible into categories that help you understand different doctrines.
11:45: That's a lot of what people think of when they think of theology is, you know, what is your eschatology, your end times view, or what is your view on salvation or soteriology, all the branches of systematic theology.
11:58: Then you've got historical theology, which is what the church has believed down through the ages, you know, over time.
12:06: You find a lot of those in our confessional documents, in the church fathers and their writings, history, stuff like that.
12:16: You see where the church has come together with a consensus of what is heresy, what should absolutely not be believed, what is absolutely essential to faith.
12:27: And so if you start with a biblical theology, recognizing how God has revealed himself, and then kind of move into a systematic theology where you're understanding what the
12:37: 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.
12:47: You should be able to run through that cycle over and over again until you're not here anymore.
12:54: 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.
13:06: So 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.
13:12: Right, I appreciate that. And in further review, what we decided was, or kind of what
13:21: I explained, was having a healthy theology is going to help us to know
13:26: God rightly. That's what it's going to lead us into. And then knowing God rightly, knowing truth rightly, is going to lead us into living right, obeying him rightly.
13:38: And so that's kind of a summary of what a healthy theology is, healthy biblical theology is, and what comes out of it.
13:47: And so part two tonight, and I'm looking forward to the insights from you guys, is going to be a little bit more practical.
13:53: So next up on our question list is, so individually,
14:01: John, we'll start with you if you're ready. Individually, something practically, how can
14:12: I develop or grow in having a healthy biblical theology?
14:22: So having a healthy biblical theology, part of the answer is obviously right in the question.
14:30: You've got to spend time in the Bible. That's very, very important.
14:38: And people always get wrapped up a lot of times in what translation is that.
14:43: And I do believe personally there's some translations that are better than others. But I did have one guy tell me for a new believer, what's the best translation?
14:52: Whichever one you will read, whichever one you will study. So start there, start spending time reading.
14:59: I am convicted that the Holy Spirit is our teacher, first and foremost, and that the
15:07: Holy Spirit can and will and is guiding and leading and teaching and guiding us in all manners of truth.
15:15: So 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.
15:24: So you read something, you get an idea. What do you test that against? And, you know, surrounding yourself with people who are also authentically in pursuit of God and doing those things together.
15:38: And then then accurately knowing how to rightly divide the truth, you know, and you don't have to be a brainiac to be able to do that.
15:50: You know, there's tons and tons of simple resources. I like resources personally.
15:55: I've talked to this guy online before on the phone before, so I don't mind dropping the website.
16:02: But like Austinprecept .com or .org is just a great website that the guy takes tons of commentary from multiple different conservative commentators.
16:16: And on one single text, there'll be like pages and pages and pages of sermon clips and quotes and commentation and that kind of stuff.
16:29: And so 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?
16:38: We can literally do at the click of a button. But the warning is don't just pick up Google and go
16:43: Google it. You know, don't just be like, hey, what does this mean? Don't look at Wikipedia and think that you're getting the truth, you know.
16:53: But but to me, it starts with the Bible. Number two, surrounding yourself with the people that are searching the truth of Scripture.
17:00: And then number three, have have some good resources, discover good resources that are going to tell you the truth that rightly divide the truth and discerning through that.
17:10: 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.
17:18: So to me, that would be four things very practically. If you want to have a biblical worldview, a solid biblical theology, start there.
17:27: Well, this 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 would
17:37: I pray that this will be a resource for people to to know Jesus, to to come to know him, to develop the healthiness in their theology.
17:47: And so I would love for God to use this to help people in the area that you're talking about.
17:56: 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.
18:07: And then in addition, we want to talk about as leaders, how do we develop that in our churches?
18:15: How do we how do we create that environment in our churches that develops an atmosphere of healthy theology?
18:27: So, Jesse, we'll start with you. Yeah, good question.
18:33: You know, I guess in my testimony, looking back, what changed my heart is, you know, the
18:41: Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the only person in the
18:46: 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
18:53: 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.
19:06: 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.
19:18: 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,
19:24: I think I just assumed it, I probably just intellectually came to Christ with just a shallow knowledge,
19:32: 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.
19:44: 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.
19:53: 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.
20:04: 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
20:15: I mean? And it's the people's pride that rejects Jesus, it's the people's arrogance that rejects
20:21: 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.
20:33: The need for Jesus in everything that I saw around me.
20:39: 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
20:48: 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 street, you know,
20:55: 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,
21:06: Christ is my ultimate philosopher. Christ is my king. Christ is my Messiah. He's my savior.
21:11: He's the cure, man. And that's how I saw, that's how I came into Christianity through the gospel, and I saw
21:21: Jesus being the answer to everything. And I believe that fundamentally, you know, and I still do.
21:29: 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
21:36: I mean? And just telling people about Jesus. And so I think, you know, having that burden outside of reflecting of what
21:48: Jesus did for me, right? Because biblical theology is basically like, you know, reflecting what the
21:55: Bible says. You know, you know, you're basically coming to the Bible, you're reading it in its historical context, right?
22:03: 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
22:14: Adam have to do with me? Right? You're basically asking questions. What does
22:19: Jesus resurrection have to do with me? How can I take, you know,
22:25: Jesus restoring Peter, right? The concept of forgiveness and restoring Peter.
22:31: How can I apply that to my life? So you're basically like reflecting all those on those realities that presented in the
22:39: Bible. And you're coming to God with those things. So I came to God with my brokenness, my emptiness.
22:46: 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.
22:53: The gospel makes you transparent with God, right? Because God is your friend. God is your father.
22:58: The Holy Spirit comes into your life and changes you and makes you call God your father. And because God adopts you, right?
23:05: The doctrine of adoption, right? So, you know, without the
23:10: 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.
23:18: Look at Christopher Hitchens, right? He read more Bible and debated more Christians than I could think of.
23:26: And yet he denied Jesus up to this very last breath. You know what
23:31: I mean? So if you're a father out there and you're like, I just don't feel
23:36: Christianity, you know what I mean? Like, I like Jesus. I respect that. I go to church. I try my best.
23:43: You know, chances are you're probably not regenerated. You know, chances are you probably don't understand the gospel.
23:48: You haven't took it here, you know, in your corazón, in your heart, right? So, you know, maybe you heard about it all your life, but it hasn't really hit here in your heart yet.
24:00: 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.
24:12: 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.
24:25: 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
24:32: 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.
24:44: The ecclesiastical body and that local visible church is not going to have a prayer life. The prayer life is going to probably be weak.
24:50: 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.
25:03: 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,
25:13: 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.
25:24: He never smiles. He's never joyful. You know, so, you know, I met pastors like that.
25:29: And it's a sad case. It's a very depressing case. And, you know, so how the churches create that culture is it starts from the pastor.
25:42: You know, the deacons and elders, they need to create that culture. And the spirit will work in that congregation, not overnight, but it will definitely stir up other people.
25:54: They're like, man, this guy has joy. You know what I mean? That's contagious. You know what
25:59: I mean? So that's when fathers and mothers, you know, start changing by the power of the
26:05: Holy Spirit. And I think that's how the culture, creating that culture of joy, for example, in a church that has no joy.
26:14: It has to come from that leadership, you know? I think if we were going to have a list,
26:21: I think you hit number one on both of those lists. I feel like in your first segment there,
26:29: I really feel like you brought out something that was kind of assumed so far in this.
26:35: 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.
26:53: You know, that's number one. You can't develop any of these things without that.
26:59: 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.
27:09: So I think those were great insights. Tyler, how about you personally?
27:17: 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.
27:28: There was a catchphrase that a theologian in the 1200s by the name of Anselm, that he kind of coined.
27:35: In Latin, it was credo ut intelligam, which literally means
27:41: I believe that I might understand. Often these days in the church,
27:47: I've seen this myself. I've been there. We want to believe. I mean, we want to understand so we might believe.
27:54: We kind of flip that around that I want to understand the Bible so that I can become a
28:00: Christian, so I can believe these things. I want to adhere first, kind of build off of what
28:07: Jesse said that, yes, we need to be regenerated first, that we can't make sense of this book.
28:13: 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 adhere first.
28:23: 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.
28:34: Psalm 63 is a beautiful passage, and it starts off with I thirst for you.
28:40: 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.
28:50: The Reformation used a lot of Latin phrases too, and one of those key ones they used was to the fountain, ad fontes.
28:58: Let's go to the source. Let's stop reading about the Bible, and let's start reading the
29:03: Bible. And I've been in a lot of churches over the nine years
29:10: I've been saved. I've been in churches that were very surfacy, not a whole lot of depth to them, and I've been in woke churches.
29:18: I've been in this. I've been in that. And yes, ultimately what it comes back to with me is to the source.
29:26: Why is this here? Why do we have the book of Ecclesiastes? And how does this pertain to my relation to God?
29:36: And honestly, it's been taking the Bible out of the pastor's hands and into my own hands, if 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
29:50: Bible, that I might understand it, that God is showing me things through the Bible.
29:55: 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.
30:05: And my main teacher, like Jonathan said, is the Holy Spirit, is the revealed
30:12: 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.
30:21: And it started with opening the Bible. I mean, when I was in high school, my youth pastor preached a sermon on sanctification.
30:32: 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.
30:41: And that has pretty much been my focal point with the
30:46: Bible is how does an ugly, wretched sinner like me be saved?
30:53: 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?
31:02: What is this blank space here? This lump of clay, how does it become a pot?
31:09: What is God doing? How is he doing it? Why is he doing it? Those big questions are in the
31:16: Bible. And I would say that a great place to go for these questions is the book of Psalms.
31:23: That there's so much poetry in the Bible. It's incredible that a third of all this deep theology in the
31:31: Bible is revealed to us in poetry. When we factor in the Psalms and the prophets, all this prophecy is poetry.
31:40: It's written in a poetic form. And there's so much poetry that God is using to reveal himself to us.
31:47: There's something about poetry that stirs our heart in a different way. I think it was
31:53: 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
32:02: Psalms. And they also show us who God is and how to worship this God, how to commune with this
32:08: 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.
32:26: And let's read the Psalms of God. And biblical theology,
32:32: 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 singing the
32:40: Holy Spirit to teach you, as you guys have stated, so that you can answer these questions. And you can learn about who
32:46: God is, how he wants to be worshipped, how he wants you to live, how he saved you, what all that looks like.
32:52: And so hence the importance of having this healthy biblical theology individually and corporately as our church.
33:01: So I got the next part of our question sheet here is just a list. And I think we can go through this list one per person, if you guys don't mind.
33:15: Because biblical theology is going to help us evaluate these different areas.
33:20: And there's some of these that we're going to differ on, or maybe just one,
33:26: 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?
33:37: And so, Dan, the first one is the preaching that we hear. Having this healthy biblical theology that we've developed individually, that we've been developing corporately as a church, how does that help me evaluate the preaching that we hear?
33:55: So I guess the question that I'm asking is, if I'm a member of a church, and I want to be hearing the kind of preaching that pleases
34:06: 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?
34:22: If you can take it from there. Yeah. It seems like you come at the same thing from two different directions.
34:31: One direction would be, if you're going to listen to preaching, how do
34:40: I know it's the right stuff? Or how do I take it and put it in my head? And really, the thing there is discernment.
34:49: 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.
35:00: 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.
35:08: I mean, you wouldn't want to taste it, but I guess if you taste the real bill, you can taste a little funky. You would know.
35:16: That's not right. There's something off here. The ink's a different shade. There's not enough fiber in the paper or something.
35:23: 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
35:32: 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.
35:38: 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.
35:43: 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.
35:52: Same thing happens if you're looking to preach, but you're doing it from a different way.
35:58: It's still discernment, but it's discernment in how do you go through the process of thinking?
36:04: How am I sure that what I'm about to say is actually what God's word says?
36:10: It takes a different kind of discernment. You're not discerning what somebody else is saying.
36:16: You're trying to discern what's in your own brain, which can be tricky because sometimes we're not right.
36:25: We have to back up, listen to wise counsel, go to a community.
36:31: That's one of the big things about developing a culture of biblical theology in the church. It's about community.
36:38: You ask each other just random questions. Like it says in Deuteronomy, you talk about the word of God.
36:45: 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.
36:54: 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.
37:02: Hey, man, I was thinking about the incarnation or I was thinking about the royal prophets in Old Testament Israel.
37:13: You just talk about it for a while. You go to the scriptures. You push each other. That helps you, too.
37:21: A lot of times when you go to say something, you can think it a lot, but you go to say it.
37:29: You're like, I really don't want to put that out loud. That doesn't sound right at all. That just sounds terrible.
37:35: I should rethink what I'm about to say. It's a matter of discernment, both with what's coming out of your mouth.
37:46: Is it lining up with what is in the word of God or what is going into my ears?
37:53: 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.
38:08: 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.
38:16: We still have tendencies to put ourselves where we shouldn't or put others in a place where they shouldn't be.
38:25: We elevate and lower things that shouldn't be elevated or lowered. We want to make sure that we're discerning in all aspects.
38:35: Keep fresh the feel of the $100 bill. That way when we take one or give one, we know that what we got is the real deal.
38:45: I was going to ask you for a practical example, but I think you kind of did there at the end.
38:52: You gave us an example of what to look for as a listener and as a preacher. If you're in the word, if you're saturating yourself in the word and you're hearing or you're preparing, you're asking yourself, what does scripture elevate and is this what
39:08: I'm hearing being elevated? I think that's a practical example of how to listen.
39:15: Or if I'm preparing a sermon, what is scripture elevating in this text?
39:21: You know, and that's what I want to put on paper. That's what I want to proclaim as I'm preaching.
39:28: Would you agree with that? Yeah. You want to ask yourself, am I actually David in this text or am
39:33: I not? Right. Good example. Good example. John, the songs that we sing, how does having a good, healthy biblical theology help us to decide what songs that we sing?
39:54: This is a tricky one, and there's actually been discussion fairly recently, even among our churches,
40:04: Robert, as we worship some together and things of that nature and among our own church family.
40:11: I'm old enough. I'm 43 years old. Now, some of you young bucks, you may have not experienced this that much, but we come through a worship war generation, especially as I was younger.
40:24: And, you know, hymns and praise songs and this and that and the other and all the stylistic transitions, you know, through the years.
40:36: And so there's a couple of questions in there. Number one is, is the song itself independently theologically sound?
40:50: And then the question is, is that enough? What if a song is theologically sound independently, but the one who wrote the song is not theologically sound?
41:04: Does that nullify the church's autonomy to use that in particular song?
41:14: So the secular culture did not introduce cancel culture.
41:20: I make the argument that the church did. We are constantly, and I say we, maybe not certain pivots independently, but in general, we are constantly looking for reasons to cancel something or someone.
41:44: And I'm always looking for the redemptive work in something personally. So at this point, this is where my conviction is.
41:54: People do not agree with me, and I'm OK with that. That's why we have brethren to grow with each other.
42:02: But John MacArthur said it this way, and I would love to sit and talk with him, because there's some things that we don't see eye on, and there's a lot of stuff that we do.
42:11: But he put it this way. There are really bad theologians that have written really good songs, and there's really good theologians that's written really bad songs.
42:23: So for our church family, the soundness of theology is rooted in the song itself.
42:32: And then I know you get into royalties and all this other kind of stuff, and people always want to bring up those additional layers.
42:39: But at the end of the day, for our church family, we evaluate the song upon the theology that is in the song in of itself.
42:48: And if I can pick up the Bible, and I can read a verse of Scripture, and this song is echoing that Scripture, it may have a creative interpretation there of that.
43:02: But if the interpretation is sound, and there is a clarity of the Gospel, and it is the elevating of Jesus, and it's edifying to the saints, and it meets all those tests, we don't really care what the root of it was, because there's a redemptive being happening there.
43:22: But with that being said, we do always take time to explain that. So in other words, if there is a group that we don't agree with theologically, but has written a good song, then we say that.
43:36: We say, hey, we don't agree with this group's theology. But this song is really beautiful, and it really elevates
43:45: Jesus. And so today, we would not recommend you going and watching this pastor or diving into the theology that they represent.
43:56: But what we would say is this song really elevates Jesus, and we're going to use that. Now, that's not the normal rule. The normal rule is we strive to have songs that we are written by people we trust, by people that are theologically sound, and the song itself is theologically sound.
44:14: So good theologians with good theological songs. But with that being said, there is exceptions to that rule if the song itself is theologically sound.
44:26: And so in the culture that we live in, too, you see music taking over the church, and you see the emotion of that, and then you see the swing to the other side, like the hyper -emotionalism.
44:42: Then you swing to the other side that is emotionless. It's like watching paint dry.
44:51: And so at the end of the day, the gospel in and of itself is not boring at all, and it should be refreshing and reviving.
44:58: And as the gospel is elevated and the good news of Jesus is elevated in song, rightfully so, it should create emotion.
45:07: It should create praise. It should create conviction or tears or laughter or joy or clapping or shouting.
45:14: And Tyler was talking about read the Psalms. How many times in the Psalms is there a shout to the
45:21: Lord, and lift up your voice to the Lord and raise your hands, lift up holy hands to the
45:26: Lord, and praise the Lord with the cymbals and the gongs and the lyres and the harps and all of those creative, beautiful things.
45:34: And so there's just good tension there and all of that, that with good theological songs are very important because that does stimulate an emotion within us that then prepares and plows the ground.
45:53: And for me, for our church family, our worship is supposed to plow up that fallow ground.
45:59: It's supposed to focus our minds where we've been so distracted through the week, coming from a week in the world, and now we're coming into the sanctuary.
46:08: The sanctuary is that safe haven, that place that we're going to dial back in, and we're not going to be distracted by the external things.
46:15: And so the songs help dial us in, and it breaks back up that fallow ground and the monotony of the week, and then it prepares us for the preaching of the
46:25: Word. And as I stand and preach, I'm thankful for great worship leaders that then, man, I'm sowing seed into fertile soil.
46:31: I mean, you're seeing that working together. So biblical music and biblical songs that we sing are extremely important.
46:42: So sorry that's a long answer, but it creates a lot of diversity.
46:49: And so in all of this, I wanted to read this one scripture that is very important, that's key to all of this too.
46:56: I think it fits in all of these. And there's several places in scripture that this is alluded to, but Proverbs 16 .25
47:03: says there's a way that appears to be right, but in the end leads to death. And there's multiple scriptures in Kings and the
47:15: Old Testament that they did what was right in their own eyes, and it ended up leading to death. And so that's all
47:21: I'm saying, that there are systems out there, whether Reformed or Arminian or all those kind of things, that we carry our identities in our systems, which all systems are going to argue my theology is right.
47:40: And some systems are going to argue my songs are right and your songs are wrong and those kind of things.
47:46: So the problem is we measure things by a way that seems right to man.
47:53: And what it is doing is it's leading to death of unity in the church.
47:58: And so there has to be a humility to biblical theology as well. That's the main thing that I always value in this, that even among ourselves here,
48:08: I'm sure if we pressed in far enough, we would find a point to where we would disagree on something.
48:15: Chances are it's going to be, and I'm convinced it would be, something that would be non -essential to salvation.
48:23: But we would find somewhere that's like, you know what? Where I'm at right now,
48:29: I don't agree with that. So then what do you do? And then you go back to what really matters.
48:37: So I guess all I'm wanting to point out too is even with songs, what really matters is the theology of the song itself.
48:45: That's what matters. And then everything else then becomes really a personal preference, a way that seems right to me.
48:54: But I don't have a right to project that onto you if the theology itself is sound.
49:01: Now if we want to talk theology soundness, if the song is unsound theologically, then by all means excommunicate it, get rid of it, throw it out.
49:09: But so again, that's a long answer. But it's an important answer because it's still being heavily debated, and people constantly bring this up as a debate, an issue that really at the end of the day is a non -essential to salvation if the song in and of itself is theologically sound.
49:32: So that's my point anyways. Speaking of the different instruments that you were laying out from the songs,
49:39: I'm missing our brother Claude who has the organ. We're missing that instrument tonight.
49:47: Happy birthday, Claude. We miss you and hope you're having a good birthday. And Jonathan, listening to you explain that answer, and I don't want to take up too much more of the time here, but listen, it brings up another point of fruit that comes from healthy biblical theology.
50:07: It's related to the songs that we sing, but it's related to all the other topics that we're talking about tonight as well.
50:14: But you brought up something that's not been brought up yet but is just as important, not with your words but with your attitude.
50:22: So a healthy biblical theology is going to develop a godly attitude, and I think that's what you heard from Jonathan.
50:32: So he brought up council culture, and he also,
50:38: I think, exhibited the balance slash struggle.
50:43: We want to struggle with the word so that we are aiming to please
50:49: God. We were trying to find that balance, that struggle, so that we are wanting to obey him and please him rightly instead of being that council culture.
51:03: And I think that you heard that attitude that a healthy biblical theology creates, and it reminded me of when
51:15: I was growing up when I was a lot younger. I went to a revival service, one of our associational revival services.
51:21: As soon as you say council culture, I wanted to cancel stuff. KJV -onlyism has been huge.
51:29: You can only read from the KJV. But this gentleman, he took it a step further.
51:35: He said, you can only sing from the Baptist seminal. That's the only place that you can sing a song from.
51:42: And I was like, whoa. He just canceled everything else except for the
51:47: Baptist seminal. But I appreciate your balance. I appreciate your struggle. And I think that reflects another aspect of a healthy biblical theology.
51:59: So, Jesse, on to the next one, choosing leadership.
52:05: How does having a healthy biblical theology help us to choose leadership? Well, I would like to say, like in the book of Acts, you just cast lots, and that's the end of the deal.
52:16: But it doesn't work like that, you know what I mean? I wish it was that simple like it was, but it's not. You know what
52:21: I mean? And back to the worship thing, you know what I mean? There's a great book by Scott Enyo called
52:26: The Foundations of Biblical Worship. So if none of y 'all have read it, it's a small little book. It punches above his weight.
52:32: So it's really great concept of worship in the church. Everything what John said in that book is really great.
52:40: Because modern day worship is like you walk into a megachurch, and it's like, oh, and that was it.
52:46: You're like, wow, that was the worship song. It's missing words, man.
52:52: You know, choosing leaders, it's very important. You know what I mean? And whether you're a congregationalist or a
52:59: Presbyterian, I say vote for good leaders, man. You know what
53:04: I mean? So, yes, if y 'all are not familiar, the church votes for its leaders. You know what I mean?
53:09: The leaders don't just fall out of the sky and like, bam. You know what I mean? Like this one movie.
53:16: But, you know, we need to vote for better leaders. And as you know, the
53:21: Southern Baptist Convention is struggling with the plague of a thousand different sexual scandals that are busting through the seams.
53:32: And it's sad on one part. But another part, it's like you get the leaders you deserve because you voted for them.
53:40: So all those congregations that voted for those guys that are trying to cover up and trying to, like, you know, beat around the bush on that, it's because those congregations were, one, gullible, vulnerable, and not involved enough, whether in their sessions or in their congregations.
53:59: You know what I mean? So I think there's an exhortation from, I think it was
54:06: Second Timothy or First Timothy, where Paul says to Timothy, don't, you know, don't lay your hands too quickly on leaders, right?
54:16: So Presbyterians on that side of the spectrum, they're too slow.
54:25: Presbyterians tend to move slow. And I know that for a fact, because I'm Presbyterian too, and we move slow for a reason.
54:33: Sometimes too slow. From my perspective, sometimes Baptists move too fast, like ninjas, like, pat, pat.
54:42: You know what I mean? So on one spectrum, you have quickness, which is positives and negatives there, right?
54:50: But you know what I mean? You get tons of fallout, tons of potential danger with that.
54:55: You know what I mean? And the other side of the spectrum, we're choosing leaders with the
55:01: Presbyterian system is that, you know, we're slow. Takes like two years to get our day, maybe five.
55:07: You know what I mean? And the Baptist system, maybe it's like within a year or six months, you're boom, done. So we need to slow down with these elders laying on hands.
55:18: We need to slow down. And you know what I mean? We need to take, you know, the pastoral letters from Paul.
55:26: We need to take those seriously. A lot of our culture struggles to answer basic questions.
55:32: Like, for example, I think people need to start asking this of leaders. Ready? What is a woman?
55:39: We need to start asking that question to every pastor that wants to become a pastor. First of all, that's good that you can answer what is
55:48: God, right? Or who is God? And then that's good that you can answer what is the chief end of man?
55:56: I think that's good. That's a good start. But the next question after all that, it should be, how do you define a woman and what is a woman?
56:04: Because this is where our culture is. Our culture right now is stuck where they cannot answer what is a woman.
56:11: And then we need to ask, you know, questions on what is your view on women becoming pastors?
56:19: Because this is also a pandemic or epidemic, whatever. A problem within the church is that many pastors are caving in to the egalitarian concept of, which is the third or fourth wave feminism or whatever, whatever you want to call it.
56:37: And no offense, women can have the gift of teaching. But Paul makes it clear that they cannot teach in the context of a church and have authority in church over men.
56:49: That doesn't mean they can't teach Sunday kids class or VBS or become teachers at a public school.
56:55: They can't teach because they're dumb and nothing like that. Paul's not talking about that. He's talking about the ecclesiastical authority within the church has been given to guys, dudes, dads and dudes.
57:06: To Steve's, not Eve's. And that's Paul's position. And, you know, the church needs to start asking those questions on what is a woman?
57:14: How do you define a woman? What's your view on egalitarianism? What's your view on women becoming pastors?
57:21: Can they teach a VBS? Can they teach, you know, can they teach a public school? Yeah, sure.
57:27: They could teach a public school. I don't care about that. They could teach a VBS. That's fine. They could come out to church and lead a
57:32: Bible study with women. Right. But they cannot lead the Lord's table.
57:37: They cannot preach. They cannot give a call to worship. They cannot be ordained and have elders.
57:43: They cannot be an elder or, you know, become a pastor, senior pastor, associate pastor, coffee shop pastor, whatever, whatever those roles are out there in a modern day.
57:51: They can't do that. So we need to choose better leaders. You know what I mean? So it's not the problem is not how do you choose leaders?
57:59: The problem is, is that we choose leaders too quickly and we choose bad leaders. And that's our fault.
58:05: That's our fault. Like John was alluding to earlier saying that, you know, we the church is probably the one that push for cancel culture and all these other things.
58:15: And all of that is probably true. And egalitarianism found a great entryway to the world because the church was lacking good, faithful, biblical men leading the way.
58:28: Right. So choosing good leaders, slow down, you know, ask, ask, ask, ask a good question.
58:36: Don't just ask, you know what I mean? Because the PCA is dealing with this too, where there's a movement called the side
58:43: A and side B within the PCA. And I'm with the side X, by the way, X -Men, if you guys know what that is.
58:48: But anyways, there's a side B of the controversy of the PCA right now where they're saying, and this is where the presbytery in St.
58:56: Louis saying that, you know, it's okay to be gay. Not, not, not practice it.
59:02: You could be a celibate gay person on the inside. We can never act on it. You know what I mean?
59:08: We, you know, they still believe in the covenant of marriage between men, between one man and one woman.
59:13: But however, if you have sexual desires or if you're attractive to another man who also happens to be a
59:21: Christian or not Christian, and if you're a Christian or a pastor, as long as you don't act on those desires, then it's okay to still be a
59:30: Christian and still have those desires as long as you don't act on them. So it's like saying, it's okay if you get high on methamphetamines, as long as you don't go, you know, driving.
59:40: And it's like, isn't methamphetamines bad? Isn't that illegal? Isn't that evil?
59:47: Well, you know, as long as you get high in your closet, it's not a big deal, right? And it's like, no,
59:52: I think it's a pretty big deal if you smoke methamphetamines in your closet. And if you're an elder, that's a big deal.
01:00:00: I'm using that analogy to make it very clear that the side B is playing footsies and the side
01:00:05: A is totally left field. You know what I mean? And that's within the PCA.
01:00:11: You know what I mean? And every church denomination is dealing with these tidal waves of cultural
01:00:22: Marxism, of cultural shifts. And that's what biblical theology, if you study biblical theology, biblical theology is basically, in the most recent time, it's like a response to these cultural shifts.
01:00:36: You know what I mean? And if you go back to the Enlightenment period of the 17th century, there was tons of cultural shifts before that, right?
01:00:43: But nothing like the Enlightenment period that definitely, you know,
01:00:48: I don't know how to drive manual, but I know they did a hard crank. And that's what the cultural shift did, boom.
01:00:54: You know what I mean? And it was like, you know, it forced biblical pastors and biblical theologians to respond to all that, to respond to all that.
01:01:04: You know what I mean? And that's what, you know, biblical theology in the most recent period has mostly been about.
01:01:10: It's mostly been about a response to all these cultural shifts that came from the 17th century, you know, and they took their emphasis elsewhere.
01:01:21: And now look where we're at. You know, choosing female pastors, transgender, neurodiversity, gender, whatever, pronoun, they, them, whatever, pastor.
01:01:32: It's like, what the heck is a neurodivergent? First of all, you know what I mean?
01:01:38: So we need to choose better leaders, man. And we need to stick to the, to the scriptures, to the pastoral letters of Paul.
01:01:44: What Paul says is the standard. What Paul says is the standard. We don't go playing footsies, okay, with the world.
01:01:52: And we don't try to please the world. We try to go out there and preach to the world. You know,
01:01:57: Jesus sent us out into the world, you know, sheeps among wolves, right?
01:02:04: To be smart like doves, not to like camouflage with the snakes and become like kind of like a snake -ish.
01:02:10: You know what I mean? You know, I think there's like a Southern saying where it's like, if it smells like a duck and walks like a duck and looks like a duck, it might be a duck.
01:02:21: You ever thought about that? It might be a duck. And I don't go duck hunting and you know what I mean? You know what
01:02:27: I mean? I wish I had a duck call right now, but it might be a duck. So if a pastor is out there saying, you know what, we need to be winsome with our words here.
01:02:37: There's a lot of nuances in the Bible. We need to be charitable with our evangelism.
01:02:44: We need to be careful on where we go. It's like, dude, there's that meme.
01:02:50: There's a meme that's really popular where Batman slaps Robin. It's like, bro, that's what needs to happen right now.
01:02:58: When you say those things, Batman needs to put Robin in check and says, I'm Batman.
01:03:03: You're Robin. And you need to get slapped in the face because that's a correction. Ecclesiastical brother slap.
01:03:12: You know what I mean? Because say nuances and winsome and we need to be careful. And oh, you know, dude, we need better leaders, bro.
01:03:21: We need better leaders. We need godly men because there's a lack thereof right now. So I want to ask you a question based on what you were saying.
01:03:30: So when you're talking about interviewing a candidate or whatever for leadership and you were saying you were wanting them to answer these specific questions.
01:03:39: And these were relevant cultural questions that you were asking. What I was thinking in my mind is you're not just asking for the right answer.
01:03:50: I think also and correct me if I'm wrong. What you're getting at is you're you're wanting to know what kind of man he's going to be behind the pulpit.
01:03:58: If he's going to stand up, you know, for or against certain for scripture and against, you know, culture.
01:04:08: Cultural wrongs or whatever in the pulpit. Is that kind of where you're going with it?
01:04:16: Yes. There's a there was a recent. You ever seen the Wizard of Oz and they go into the they meet the wizard and they're like, he's like, welcome to the.
01:04:27: And, you know, he's very, like, frightful and, you know, he's very big. And then the total goes over there and, like, pulls the curtain back and then, like, bites him and kind of gets revealed that he's just like a like a wimpy guy.
01:04:38: They're selling. He's the kind of guy that sells ice cream to kids kind of thing, you know, and it's like that.
01:04:44: It's like we want to know the man behind the curtain right now. Like, don't just come up here and answer all these theological stuff that you memorize.
01:04:52: Right. And you're just trying to tell us what we want to hear. That's great. That's good.
01:04:59: We need to we need to we need to know these things. If you're a Trinitarian, that's good. We need to know if you're a Trinitarian. But there's issues at hand right now.
01:05:08: And there's there's a building on fire, you know, metaphorically speaking, with our culture.
01:05:15: The culture is on fire. So how do you define a woman? What is a woman? We need to know that if you're going to be if you're we're going to give you an endorsement, lay hands on you, ordain you, give you the powers, the keys of the kingdom, call you brother.
01:05:32: You know what I mean? In the ministry, in the Presbyterian Council, whatever. We need to know that you're not going to, like, you know, leave us hanging in ditches and switch teams, you know, either you with the
01:05:45: Lakers or you with the Chicago Bulls. And when the game starts, which team are you on?
01:05:51: Because if you with us on the Lakers side, and we go out there and the ball tips, and we see you switching jerseys, everybody's going to be asking what in the world is going on with that guy?
01:06:04: Because that's what's going on in the church. People switching jerseys. Some pastors got jerseys flipped inside out.
01:06:10: You know what I mean? That's just not professional. That's not honoring. They're breaking their vows, because every pastor takes a vow, an oath, whatever you want to call it, a covenant, and they're breaking their vows.
01:06:22: Just like politicians break their oaths. We got pastors now breaking their vows. Right.
01:06:29: And we need better leaders, definitely. We need to ask really key questions. Like, we need to ask some key questions, you know what
01:06:37: I mean? And so, yeah, you know, maybe the confessions could be updated on the verbiage to implement this, to create a uniformity, to say, okay, we're at the point where people can't define a woman, and people think it's okay to be gay.
01:06:54: So maybe we need to include probably a little verbiage here and there in the divine, because that's how stupid our culture is right now, to be frank.
01:07:05: You know what I mean? And, you know, Ozzy Osbourne is driving the crazy train, and everybody's on it.
01:07:11: So how about we, you know, back in the day, they added the
01:07:18: Pope was the Antichrist. There's the Pope, the Antichrist, like the London Baptist says, the Pope is the Antichrist.
01:07:24: The Westminster says the Pope is a Antichrist, right? So if we could add our own cultural references at that time, we could possibly add our own cultural references now and say
01:07:37: CRT is evil. BLM is evil. Women is a woman, and Steve is a Steve, and Eve is an
01:07:43: Eve, right? So we probably are there, because there is a there there now.
01:07:51: Right. I appreciate that answer. And I want to try to wrap things up, so I'm going to lay out the outline for the next few minutes.
01:07:57: But before we leave leadership, I know that Jesse laid out or gave an example of the two different ditches that we fall in.
01:08:07: Baptists move, and I've seen it with my own eyes growing up. Baptists have been known to move too fast. And he he says that Presbyterians sometimes move too slow.
01:08:16: But I didn't want to leave leadership without giving a shout out because I've seen it with my own eyes. Jonathan has a desire for developing leadership, and he has an excellent approach.
01:08:29: And I would recommend anybody to contact him if you want to have some insights on how develop how you should develop leadership.
01:08:36: I think he has a good handle on that. I've seen it firsthand, and I appreciate his approach.
01:08:44: Thank God for that. And so I wanted to give him a shout out and as a resource to for that.
01:08:50: So this list that I created is not exhaustive. We keep going on and on and discuss how healthy biblical theology helps us to be discerning in all these different areas.
01:09:02: So the rest of my list is evangelism, prayer, eschatology, family, culture.
01:09:09: Tyler, I'm going to give you the last one. Like I said, we could continue with this list on and on and it will be it will be healthy and beneficial.
01:09:17: But I'm going to give you the last one. Dan, after he finishes, if you would share the gospel with us.
01:09:23: And John, if you don't mind, if you would pray for us and close us in prayer whenever Dan shares the gospel.
01:09:29: But Tyler, how can biblical theology having a healthy biblical theology help us to? And I think this is a good question for you because of your studying in history.
01:09:41: Having a healthy biblical theology help us to be discerning when it comes to government and leadership in that area.
01:09:50: The the ever going question, how do we relate to government? This seems to be a lot of church history.
01:09:57: If you follow through, we have had waves and generations of trying to figure out how do we relate to government?
01:10:05: And there have been times in church history where things went really well. And you saw less of these sermons about Romans 13 and submit to the governing authorities.
01:10:15: As far as I can tell, Charles Spurgeon never touched Romans 13. But then you had like Matthew Henry who laid out that Romans 13 means unconditional obedience at all times in the 1700s.
01:10:31: And so you've had these different views, but this is why that's important is we have to get this right.
01:10:38: And Romans 13 goes as far as to say that government is an institution of God, that it is a servant of God.
01:10:47: And in the Greek, it literally is the word deacon. Government is a deacon of God, and it uses that word twice in the course of seven verses.
01:10:59: And it is the same Greek word that we read about in those pastoral epistles about the qualifications of a deacon.
01:11:07: And when we read in Acts about the selection of deacons, it's the same word. And so government is something that God has set up.
01:11:15: It is something that God has entrusted with a very specific purpose. What that purpose is, let's go to the text.
01:11:22: Let's see what God has decreed about government. Deuteronomy, there's a lot in there about what a king should be, what a king should not be.
01:11:31: There's a whole section in there about how when Israel has a king that he is to write out the whole
01:11:38: Old Testament law in his own handwriting and then study it daily. God has a role for government, and part of that is the fact that he is an authority over them.
01:11:52: And so God has enumerated the purpose for government, and he's laid the confines of the sphere in which it operates.
01:12:00: And part of what we're seeing right now is this idea that government is God, that there is no
01:12:05: God above the state. And so government doesn't really have a sphere that it operates in.
01:12:11: It is whatever government decides is necessary or good. And so we've very much taken this almost like the prosperity gospel, that if we follow these rules, we will secure blessing for ourselves, which is certainly not
01:12:27: God's blueprint for government. And when we follow the string of texts throughout the
01:12:33: Bible, we see the fact that government has actually a very small area of operation compared to where we are in America, that ultimately government is to punish wickedness.
01:12:48: There's not all this stuff with education and deciding what should be learned in school, what shouldn't be, how do we provide for health care and things like that.
01:13:00: Those are not necessarily covered by government in the Bible.
01:13:05: But we do have much to say in here, like in the book of James, about the church coming alongside the orphan and widow.
01:13:14: And so in some ways, the government has actually enveloped that sphere of the church, and they're trying to become the church, they're trying to become the family.
01:13:25: And we could go all day into examples of that, but ultimately the government has gotten way out of out of whack with what its purpose is, what
01:13:35: God has called it to be. And so biblical theology shows us what government should be, and what it should not be, and the way that it relates to Christ, the
01:13:45: King of Kings. Dan, I'll let you take it over.
01:13:53: Cool. So I like the way you ended that with Jesus being the King of Kings and looking at it from the government standpoint, because really what that does is it puts all of biblical theology kind of into a nutshell.
01:14:10: It shows where Christ is, it shows where we are not. We are not kings.
01:14:17: We are not the one in charge. We are creatures in God's world. And that's really what you learn when you get into all of theology.
01:14:25: You learn that you are in God's world, that you have sinned against a holy God, that you are a sinner.
01:14:30: You're in need of redemption. You're in need of having your sins forgiven because you have transgressed the law of the universe that came from God himself, who created us with love and goodness.
01:14:45: Since we've fallen, we need some way to reconcile us, to bring us back into a right relationship with God and everything else in the universe as well, because we have put a big old sinful stain upon creation.
01:15:01: And so what the good news of Christianity is, is that there is that forgiveness.
01:15:07: There is that cleansing, the righting of the wrong, the cosmic treason that we have committed has gone, can be forgiven.
01:15:19: And it is forgiven because Jesus Christ came to the earth as a man and as God and took our sin upon himself, died on the cross, took that sin into the grave with him and left it there dead.
01:15:34: He then raised up out of the grave on the third day and sits at the right hand of the Father in charge of everything.
01:15:39: He has healing in his wings and forgiveness in his right hand, and he gives it out to those who come to him seeking forgiveness.
01:15:49: That is the good news of the gospel, that we being sinners, being wretches in our own right, have the possibility of forgiveness in Christ.
01:16:00: He is actually saving a people for himself and that we can know this
01:16:08: God. We can know him not only through reading the Bible, we can know him through experience because he does save real people.
01:16:16: And he really does raise up folks from the dead, which is our hope, even if we leave this earth.
01:16:26: And we would call out tonight the gospel call of repentance and faith.
01:16:32: Come to him if you do not know him, submit to him as king. No more important decision, no more important, nothing more important on this earth than coming to know
01:16:46: Jesus Christ. And so thank you, Dan, for that gospel message. John, would you mind to close with some prayer?
01:16:53: Father, you are awesome and wonder and works in all things that you do.
01:17:01: Beyond comprehension, beyond reasoning, we thank you that you give us glimpses into who you are through sound biblical theology.
01:17:11: Tonight, everything that we've been talking about, Father, is about your character and about who you are and how you work in our lives.
01:17:16: Whether it be through worship, study of your word or through leadership or through governments or all the different things,
01:17:26: Father, you are putting yourself on display. And I'm thankful that you give us a promise that if we seek you, we will find you.
01:17:33: We will see you and see your hand at work. Father, I pray that you will grant us a grace to be faithful, to seek you, to seek your face, to turn from our sin and to serve you and to follow you and rejoice in the promise of the finished work of Jesus.
01:17:49: That because of him, because of you, Lord Jesus, we are saved, we are redeemed and we are imputed with your righteousness.
01:17:57: And now we can move forward with a freedom and a liberty to serve you and to rejoicing you all the days of our life.
01:18:05: Father, I pray for my brothers. I pray you bless their ministries. I pray that you expand the platform, that you will use these things to glorify your name.
01:18:15: And no matter how many people that see it, we know that you are sovereign and you are faithful.
01:18:21: That is, as we share your word, it will be accomplishing all that you've designed for it to do.
01:18:28: And so we rest in that tonight as well, that our success is in faithfulness, not just in dick noses.
01:18:34: And I pray that we'll find rest in that. And so God, but I do pray across the face of the world, you'll use this ministry and the ministries represented in this room to expand the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.
01:18:49: And that people will come to faith through the faithful work of these ministries,
01:18:55: Lord. And so we're trusting you, God, and we love you. We thank you for who you are in our lives, our
01:19:01: Savior, our Father, our friend, Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you guys for watching.
01:19:08: Remember that Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and continue to go out there and share the gospel of Christ.