Interview with the Babylon Bee | Theocast

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Hi, this is John. Today on Theocast, Justin and I were recently interviewed by the

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Babylon V podcast, and it was fun. In the beginning, they wanted to get to know us a little bit, so there's some fun questions there.

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But the rest of the podcast really is about the gospel. They are asking us about what is unique about Reformed theology,

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Covenant theology. We got to talk about law gospel distinction in times, which was a little bit of fun. But we also had conversations about the chosen, how pietism and revivalism have influenced the

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American culture's understanding of Christianity. It was a lively conversation, and we really hope you guys enjoy it.

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We enjoyed getting to know them, but more importantly, we enjoyed getting to be able to share the gospel and explain the hope of Christ, and so we hope you're encouraged by that as well.

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Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. All right.

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Hey, guys. Welcome to the Babylon Bee interview show. We're really, really excited to have these two guys here today.

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We also have Sam Greer here with me. I'm Jarrett, and with us today is Justin Perdue and also

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Jonathan Moffat. Moffat? Moffat. Moffat. Jonathan Edward. Jonathan Moffat, Justin Perdue, and you guys do

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Theocast. Just for my sake, really quick, and for people listening, what is Theocast, and what do you guys do?

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What's your goal? Yeah. It's a podcast that was started by four pastors about eight years ago, and the whole design of it was we wanted to have more theological conversations so our congregation would benefit from it, and then over the years, it's kind of morphed and changed and grew, and the hosts have changed.

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And right now, the last, I guess it's going in our fourth year. Yeah, going on four. And so Justin and I, we use it as a way to encourage and talk about theological subjects that are hard to do on a

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Sunday morning for our congregation, and then obviously we have listeners around the world. But it's been fun.

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But we really try and focus it from a pastoral and reform perspective. So we wanna try and take some subjects that can be really complicated and hard and make them a lot more simple and practical.

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That's what I like about it. So you guys are very pastoral. I like that about you guys, and I like even talking with you beforehand, it just feels like you guys are pastors at heart, shepherds at heart.

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Okay, normally, you have a hat on. To say normally is maybe an overstatement, but I do wear hats from time to time, so give me one.

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So okay, I have two of these Babylon Bee hats for you guys. And so you guys should know that I get a lot of flack on social media for the fact that I wear flat bill hats.

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There you go. Isn't that cool? Sorry, there we go. Ooh. Yeah, there you go. Move this. I was finding it earlier.

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Not a problem. I'm gonna hope that it just cooperates again. All right. You know, the flat bill hat is cool. And I have an unusually large head, so we're gonna see how this goes.

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So I just got a comment, somebody commented online last week. You want me to wear this now? Yeah, oh yeah, of course.

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There was a very strange comment, but it said, the bald guy's head, like baldness, is accentuated 100%.

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They actually wrote 100 % by wearing that backwards baseball cap. So I guess it makes me look 100 % more bald to have a hat on.

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All right, so let me see. Did it affect you? No, that looks good. Oh, that's great. Does it work? Not flattened out. You could flatten it out a little more.

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I'm trying. To make it look better. I'm trying. I'm gonna work on that in the next five minutes. Okay, we'll keep working on it. I will. So see if we can get it on brand.

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So we had a fun segment idea. We wanted to throw it at you guys. It's gonna be a little silly, but it's gonna be fun.

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We're here for it. You'll need both your hands. All right. Here's what we're gonna do. I'm working on my hat right now, Sam. Justin, you'll hold your left hand up.

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John, you'll hold your right hand up. We're gonna throw some questions at you guys. It's gonna be who is more, like who's got a higher max bench.

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And then without looking at each other, point at the person. So I hold my left hand? Yes. So I can't be able to see it.

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Point here or here. Yes, so John can't see it. All right. That's a good hat on you. Here or here? Yeah, exactly. Just like that.

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Yeah. Okay. So here we go. This is gonna be rapid fire. We'll switch off. Just like this. This or this? I'll take the first one.

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Exactly. I'll take the first one. Jared and I will switch off. Yeah, there we go. Who has, again, you guys have been running a podcast together for years.

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You know each other pretty well. Yeah. Who has a higher one rep max for bench press? Haha! Good.

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Unanimous. It's like one of those wedding games. Exactly. Newlyweds. You actually have to do bench presses to know. We're just not back to back.

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That's right. Wait. Who's been to more countries? I don't know.

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Huh. Okay. Now you got it. Now you got it. Yeah. Should we unpack this? Let's unpack this. You guys disagree. How many countries have you been to?

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I think I've been to at least 12. Okay. You got me then. Because I'm probably around 10 -ish.

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Okay. How? Why? 12? Well, we went to Romania. So we had to go through like seven different countries just to get there.

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And then outside of that, I've been to like five other ones. You know, Mexico, obviously. Obviously. Obviously.

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You're a Southern California Christian. Haiti. You got to do a Mexico mission trip. That's right. Yeah. I'm going to go and give that one to you.

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So yeah. There you go. I'm going to resume my - Yeah. I was going to say, Justin's doing the bicep. Okay.

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Next question. Who preaches longer sermons? Hey. How long are we talking?

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50 minutes. He's 50. Not bad. That's pretty good. I try and stay below 40. Respect. John mocks me. I'm just not that good.

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He does a lot of backhanded comments about long sermons. I know what he means. I just try to take it in stride. You know, the long sermon, it's a dying art.

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It'd be like a purge. It makes people faint. All right. Who is more likely to hit under par in an 18 -hole golf game?

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Right now, it'd be me. Yeah. Because I don't play a lot right now. That's good. Okay. At one time.

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At one time, I would have been him. But not right now. All right. All right. Who has more refined tastes in food?

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Who's got the better palate? Oh, Justin. Do you have a cooking interest? Yeah. He's just a foodie in general.

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Just a foodie. I live in Asheville, North Carolina. It's a foodie town. Is it? Yeah. Food, drink, all that stuff.

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I love food. But he definitely loves it more than I do. But we both kind of... We both kind of do. Do you swish and swirl when you're drinking coffee?

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Do you... Oh, man. Wafty? I don't know. I don't know if we're that much of a coffee aficionado.

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Are we allowed to talk about... Like specifics? Yeah. You're reformed. Okay. We know.

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I just wanted to test the waters. Yeah. So, yeah. We both are bourbon guys.

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Oh, that. We like... Of course. And we like... That's one of our questions. Oh, okay.

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There you go. So, we're bourbon guys. We like red wine. I mean, so, yeah. Do a little swirl and stuff like that with the... I mean, we'll get into it later.

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But do you guys smoke cigars? Last night on the beach, baby. Dang, dude. And we'll probably have more while we're here.

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That's right. Good to know. Maybe we need to have one. Well, that might be a great idea. After recording. I mean...

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After recording. I'm changing clothes before we go to the seminary. That's right. We gotta change clothes, so we're good. That's the most masculine thing about being a cigar smoker is like scrubbing the leather on your car because your wife gets annoyed by the smell.

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Oh, I don't do it in the car. I haven't broken... Yeah, I don't smoke in the car either. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

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I used to smoke much more. I haven't for about four months now, but anyway. I tried my first cigar with Dan at a reading group for like a bunch of guys who read

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Chesterton. GK Chesterton. Oh, yeah. And it was a hoot. Dude, that's like the most reformed thing you just said right there.

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I got this idea that I think will be a funny sketch, who knows, but it'll be a funny sketch to catch someone's internal monologue, like, don't cough, don't cough, don't cough.

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Oh, no, it's going out. It's going out. Just someone trying to play cool when they're around a bunch of burly Chesterton guys. So is my bill flat enough right now?

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It looks good on you. I think it's kind of perfect. All right. So who's been married longer?

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You. How long have you been married? It should be 20 years for me. Oh, my goodness. I got married young.

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But dang. You were 13 years old. The child husband.

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You don't hear about that. Yeah, no, I was married when I was 22. Oh, okay. That's awesome. Wow. What is your wife's name? Not far from here.

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Her name is Judith. We have four kids. That's so sweet. Judith's a great name. What about you? How long have you been married? Ten. Ten years.

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Yeah, so I got married later. I got married at 30. I'm married to Michelle. We also have four kids. Four kids.

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And what are their ages? Oldest just turned nine. The youngest is four. So they're like four years and change apart.

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Got it. So it was, yeah. Still, there's a lot going on in the Purdue house. Yeah. Very few dull moments.

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I looked on your church's About Us page and I remember just noting the four kids all had pretty reformed names.

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It was like Charles and Adam, Asperger's. Especially Knox. Knox. That was who I was thinking of. Knox.

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Yeah. What are the rest of the names? So Karis, Greek word for grace. Oh, yes. She's my oldest. Then Titus.

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Yep. Jane, obviously not biblical, but that's my wife's best friend in college. I lost that one.

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And then Knox. My family goes back to Scotland and my great ancestor was a part of John Knox Church.

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So I was like, that's such a killer name. We're naming our son. What's your Scottish clan? What are you guys from?

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Actually, there's an actual Moffettsville. There's a Moffettsville. Because we're Macintyres. We're on the island of Skye. Oh, yeah.

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Maybe we have - Probably. Relatives in common. I'm a Greer. We have, I have, my grandmother is

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Irish, like Irish Catholic. Her hair redder than mine. Wow. But there might be some

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Scottish in there. That's saying something. Mick Greer. Yeah, that's saying something. That's saying something. My last name is French, so you guys can just tolerate me.

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I'm actually so smart. His last name is French. Yeah. Oui, oui. It's perdition, so lost. So there it is.

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Mine means the master. Yours is better in terms of master. Yeah. Who's next on the questions?

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Your maître, you. Is it me? You. Who? Hands up. Oh my goodness. Muscles up, guns up, sons out, guns out.

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Who is more reformed? I don't know. I don't answer that.

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I don't know. I think that's a 50 -50. That might be a legit toss up there. Yeah. I don't know where we would disagree on that.

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Yeah. Good answer. Non -answer. Kind of unequally reformed. I don't know if there's anything we would disagree on.

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Let me do a freebie question. Cut that one. Forget it. Here we go. Who's more likely to be in a football video game from a couple years ago?

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Well, more than a couple. More than a couple. Wow. Now, can you elaborate on your presence in a football video game?

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So, yeah, this was from the mid -2000s, early 2000s. Yeah. So EA Sports has a franchise

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NCAA football in the year. And so when I was playing as a college guy, it was on the

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EA Sports game for a few seasons. That's really cool. RB number 35. So that, you know, yeah,

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I could say more, but I don't know that we need to. There was a lawsuit. There was a lamentable lawsuit that a number of college athletes filed against EA Sports, which took the

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NCAA football game away from all of us for about 10 years. I feel like most lawsuits are lamentable. Yeah.

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Yeah. I like how you said that. A lamentable lawsuit. Yeah. Hey, well, let's get into some, let's get into some theology stuff and some kind of the stuff that you guys are all about.

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Yeah. I've got a question loaded up. All right. So, Jarrett here has not yet invited

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John Calvin into his heart. Now, it's my sneaking suspicion because I...

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But is John Calvin standing at the door knocking of... Oh! That's what I want to know. He's been knocking for like 30 years.

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So I'm, and I'm, I'm an even more lost case because I'm a Reformed Baptist dispensationalist.

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Yeah. We'll pray for you, bro. Yeah. Pray for me. So it's my sneaking suspicion that Dan, our podcast interviewer, considers

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Jarrett and I to be his mission field for going full Reformed. Oh, Dan. So we want to... I'm not even sure he thinks we're

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Christian. We're not Reformed enough. We're not even covenantal. So we want to give you guys an opportunity.

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What's your 30 -second elevator pitch for going full capital R Reformed? Oh, well, we're not even capital

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R Reformed, but... I mean, depending on who you talk to, I mean, one of your former guests would not consider us to be. Anyways, to answer his question,

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I'll let you go first. No, you go first, John. I want to defer to you, and then I'll just come in from the top turnbuckle if need be. Well, I think the reason...

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So I grew up an independent fundamental Baptist, hardcore dispensationalist, graduated from the Master's Seminary, so very familiar with dispensationalism my entire life.

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And I think what really drew me over was understanding the overarching theme and purpose of the

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Bible. And so you have this glorious creation in the beginning, and then obviously Adam destroys it, and then the whole world is in disarray, and you don't even really get to go one sentence before God swoops in and says, okay, here's the plan of redemption.

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And so the whole story of the Bible is the unfolding plan of redemption based upon God's sovereign promises that will not fail.

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That's what won me over, was that this was not in man's hands, because when it was, it completely failed.

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It's in God's hands. And every time man gets involved, God lets it completely unravel and steps back in and goes, you're unfaithful,

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I'm faithful. And this is why we ended up getting Christ, who comes from the line of Judah, from the line of David.

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And so yeah, I think what's so refreshing about Reformed theology, and specifically covenant theology, is that it really succinctly puts the

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Bible in one glorious picture. And when you read it, you never felt lost, because you're like, well, we're progressing along this glorious story of God restoring what

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Adam destroyed. This is why Jesus is called the second Adam. When even the promise of a Redeemer in Genesis 3 .15,

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effectively what you have in the rest of the entire Bible from there to the end of Revelation 22, is the unfolding of the accomplishment of that promise.

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And a Reformed covenantal perspective on the Scripture highlights that in a way that I think is pretty glorious, and gives us a lot of assurance, a lot of peace, helps us to see how the whole

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Scripture really is a testimony about Christ. Jesus meant what he said. When he says that if you believe

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Moses, you believe me, because Moses wrote about me, covenant theology helps us to see how that's especially true.

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When he says, too, that you search the Scriptures, thinking that in them you find eternal life, but it is they that bear witness about me, it's true.

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That from the jump, Christ was the plan, and a Reformed covenantal perspective

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I think makes that very plain for the congregant to see. See, I love that, because my—and

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I would not disagree with any of that. I think that's all true. Yeah, that's beautiful. No, amen. Yeah, because you've got a redemptive historical understanding of the

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Bible. Right. And it's—I think the covenant idea is interesting because then you carry it on into your eschatology as well, right?

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You can take it further. We just interviewed Kevin Sorbo this week about his new movie,

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The Left Behind Movie. And it was a really—I mean, it's an interesting movie. It's an interesting take on—it's probably of all the

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Left Behind movies, it might be the best one. It's one of those— You watched it? I did, yeah. I watched it earlier this week.

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Did you guys screen it in that dope room? We did. We did. We screened it right over there, and it was a lot of fun.

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But all this to say, you know, dispensational, premillennial, pre—what is it ?—pre -Trib, all that kind of stuff, ends up sort of getting played out with covenant theology.

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And you can—so how would it—so going further, you kind of said it goes up to Christ and Christ looks back.

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Moving forward into Revelation and eschatology, like, how would you guys—how would the covenant theologian interpret that?

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Yeah, I mean, so I think that if we're doing theology well, our eschatology really is downstream from some higher -level theological convictions.

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That makes sense. So for us, I can at least speak for myself. I mean, we'll just go ahead and say all these things.

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I mean, may as well do it, right? So John and I being Reformed guys would be amil in terms of our eschatological position.

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Explain for our listeners what amillennialism is. Yeah, in brief. We would not hold to a literal thousand years, but we understand that Scripture, in terms of how prophecy works and how prophecy is fulfilled, there's a lot of typological language where something means this in its own context and it's significant in that context, but it's pointing to something other and greater that is to come, those kinds of things.

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There's metaphorical language used in the Scripture in terms of how things will come to be fulfilled. And so in our millennial perspective, we believe that we are living in the last days, the era of the

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Messiah, and there's a number of different places in the Scripture where we could go to look for that. But we do believe that Christ is coming back at the end of history, that the millennium in that sense, the era of the

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Christ, has been inaugurated and will be consummated with his return when he will come and establish his kingdom, and heaven will literally come down.

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Right? The new Jerusalem will come down, and God will dwell with us in the redeemed heavens and redeemed earth.

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A second coming, not a third coming. Correct. Like you were talking about, yeah. Yeah, and just to add to that, when he says not literal, sometimes people think, oh, then you don't take the

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Bible literally. I just watched a video of you doing some satire in there, and you knocked it out of the park.

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Right. But you really didn't knock it out of the park. I was using what? An allegory or a metaphor.

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Yeah, exactly. Sometimes I get really confused. Yeah. You weren't knocking it out. I didn't want to say the wrong thing.

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That's right. But like when it says, Jesus, you know, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Is it only a thousand hills, or is the point of it he owns a lot?

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899. Exactly. 1 ,000. So when we're talking about Amillennialism and Reformed covenant theology, we're saying is that the

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Bible has purposes and intentions. Like if you ever read the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel uses all kinds of crazy images of pots and poop and hair and this and that.

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It's crazy what he does. And you're not meant... The reader would never take that literal, right? So then someone would say, well, you're not taking the text literal.

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And I said, we're taking it as it was literally intended. Even if it's thinking of Ezekiel, right? I mean, we're gonna geek out for a minute.

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You guys just stop us, okay? So like in the book of Ezekiel, continue to think about how does the scripture speak?

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How does God reveal his plan through Christ? So in Ezekiel 34 and Ezekiel 37, you get a lot of language about how

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God is going to gather his people from the nations. He's gonna bring them into their own land. Well, what is that talking about?

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Because he never brought all of his people back into the land of Judah. I mean, there's a language in the

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Minor Prophets as well about how the borders of the promised land are gonna be expanded.

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Well, that never occurred. Geopolitically speaking, that never occurred before Christ came. So what's the ultimate point of all of that talk about bringing the people of God into their own land?

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It's the new heavens and the new earth, right? When God says that I will set over them one shepherd, my servant

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David. Well, David's been dead for a few centuries by that point. So he's clearly talking about David's greater son who's coming.

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There will no longer be two kingdoms. There will be one kingdom and there'll be one king, and it'll be David my servant who's gonna be their king.

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So this is just one example, kind of an object lesson in how we would understand Scripture and interpret it from a covenantal perspective, and see how all of it is ultimately pointed to Christ and the plan of God to redeem sinners through Him, and it's gonna be consummated one day in the new heavens and the new earth.

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I'm preaching through Ezekiel right now, and I would say dispensatious. I like that sentence. That's cool. That's cool.

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Yeah. We're going through an unusual sentence. No, it's not. We just finished chapter 11 this last week.

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And what's great about, like, you know, obviously I love all my dispensationalist brothers, and we agree, like,

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Christ is king, and He's ultimate, and the gospel is supreme, and those things are important. It's where we get down into, like, well, you know, how are we dealing with this role?

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And it really is a hermeneutic. It's an understanding of science of, like, how are you gonna interpret these things? And a good example of this is when

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I was doing a lot of research for Ezekiel, and even when I was transitioning into Reformed theology, a lot of people don't understand that historically dispensationalists believe that the temple is gonna be reinstituted, and we're going to be doing animal sacrifices again.

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Sacrifices. The red heifer. That's right. So the problem is that, you know, Hebrews says to us that Christ is the one for all sacrifices and that the sacrificial system is no longer needed.

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But the picture, I think, is glorious. Like, if... I don't ever think

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Ezekiel intended us to take it literal, because there are parts of it that dispensationalists will take literal, the rebuilding of the temple.

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The one part they won't take literal is the stream coming out of it. Because what happens is the temple is finished, the doors open up, and the stream starts coming out of it.

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Well, read Ezekiel 47 and then read Revelation 22. Exactly. And then it gets to the city gates, and it turns into this river, and then it gets outside the city gates, and it turns into this massive, like, flood of water.

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And the tree of life is there. And it turns the desert into the, basically, the new heavens. It's a big metaphor of, like, from Christ, who is the ultimate temple, comes the stream of life, what's going to be the restoration of all things, not the sacrificial system that wasn't the design of it.

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So anyways, those are just kind of some glimpses of, like, when you understand Scripture from a redemptive historic understanding, and I would say this one last thing, this is huge for Justin and I and all those who are reformed.

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We would look at the Bible and say there's these two polar opposites, law and gospel. And the covenant of works is the covenant of grace.

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And that really helps you keep clean cuts where most false religions and legalism and bad theology is when you take grace and law and you mix them together.

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So Reformed theology, to me, was probably the greatest example of dividing those two and keeping them separate. So I want to say this about Ezekiel, because it's very encouraging.

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So right after Ezekiel 47, in the language about the temple and the sanctuary and the river flowing out of it, you compare that to Revelation 22, it's great.

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But then the last sentence of Ezekiel's book is, he talks about the name of the city will be, the

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Lord is there. And he's writing from exile to a people who are in exile, and it's like, but the name of the city is going to be that the

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Lord is there. He's going to be with us, he's going to dwell with us. If I can jump on what John just said, if you guys would allow us to do this.

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So why Reformed theology, right? So I think if this is more, I'm going to do the little rundown that we often do.

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What does it mean to be Reformed? Because a lot of times people think, especially in the evangelical world, to say

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I'm Reformed means I'm a Calvinist. It means that I am Calvinistic in my soteriology, my understanding of salvation, that God is sovereign in salvation.

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You've asked Calvin into your heart. He's persistent. Irresistible grace, all that stuff.

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Turn me into a real jerk. He's going to keep knocking, it's okay. I'm a Calvinist, I know. That's right.

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But for us to be Reformed, what does it mean to be Reformed? At Theocast, we'll say it this way. The three C's means we're covenantal, we're

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Calvinistic, and we're confessional, but then we'll also say we uphold a law and gospel distinction, and then we understand and uphold the ordinary means of grace.

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And you would say that law is an expression of the gospel. A law is an expression of grace. So we'll talk about it. You want to talk about it a little bit?

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Yeah, it's time. That's a great question, and that's extremely important because it does relate to revivalism. This is really important stuff.

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So the law and the gospel, I agree with John. A lot of people think the distinction between the law and the gospel or a law and gospel distinction is a

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Lutheran category, but it is not. Like William Perkins was a Puritan and wrote verbatim that the distinction between the law and the gospel is a

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Reformed doctrine, it is not just a Lutheran one. There are a number of guys in the Reformed tradition who have written beautifully on the law and the gospel.

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John Calhoun comes to mind and others. What effectively we mean here is that the Scripture in the Old and New Testament has law and gospel.

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So in the Old Testament, there's law and gospel. In the New Testament, there's law and gospel. Whenever we read in the

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Scripture anywhere of what God requires of for righteousness, like do this for righteousness, that's law.

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Whenever we read of what God has done for us and gives us in the Lord Jesus that we receive by faith, that's gospel.

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And so that distinction is important. They're complementary with an E, the law and the gospel in God's economy of salvation, but they ought never be mixed.

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And we could riff on this for a while at some point, maybe we'll circle back around to it, and even talk about some passages where the law and the gospel are collapsed.

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The Galatian heresy is that exact same thing. So Paul was talking about you're mixing now what

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Christ has done for you. So the easiest way I always like to describe law and gospel. Jesus' salvation through the works, yeah.

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Yep. So gospel is done. Because think about it, what's another word, two words for gospel, good news, right?

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So is news potential or past? It's past. Past, right? I'm not...

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He's the writer. That's right. I'm not reporting to you what might happen. That's not news. News is I'm reporting to you what has happened, right?

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So when we say good news, listen to what Jesus did. There's no potential there. It's all an announcement of an accomplishment.

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But the law is all potential. It's a do, right? If you do this, then you will be accounted as a good person, you'll be counted as righteous.

24:51

So this is why the greatest example we love to use is the rich young ruler that walks up to Jesus and he says, what must

24:57

I do to enter the kingdom? So Jesus doesn't give him the gospel. He goes, all right, if you wanna know what you need to do, you need to keep the law.

25:07

You'll notice he never gives him grace. On this passage, yeah. So the guy asks, what do

25:12

I need to do? And Jesus says, well, keep the commandments, to which he says, well, I've done that. And then Jesus begins to turn the temperature up and dump the full weight of the law on that man's conscience.

25:22

He says, all right, well, if you're gonna be perfect, you still lack something, right? And then he tells him three things.

25:28

Sell everything you own, give it to the poor, follow me. It's like, okay, what's that about? Because a lot of times, here's what you hear.

25:34

You don't talk about a collapsing of law and gospel. People then say, well, we need to surrender all for Christ in order to be saved.

25:40

It's like the Platt book that you were talking about. I was like, we're about to start talking about radical and all kinds of other things, orange books and whatnot.

25:48

A lot of orange books. But a lot of people say this. All right, so to surrender all for Christ is the good news, right?

25:55

And we need to at least be willing to surrender all for Christ in order to be saved. That is not the point that Christ is making.

26:00

He says, sell everything you own, give it to the poor, and follow me. Prove. It's like, if you say you've kept the law, that means that you have loved

26:07

God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you've loved your neighbor as yourself. Prove it. Prove it by doing this.

26:13

Perpetually, perfectly. He leaves dejected. The disciples go, they're freaking out, right?

26:18

Because Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to be saved, and the disciples lose their minds.

26:25

Now, to us, this doesn't make sense, because to us, we're like, oh yeah, love of money and all that kind of thing. That's what we think. So like, oh yeah, what

26:31

Jesus said makes perfect sense, because if you love money, you're not going to go to heaven. But the disciples are wigging out. Why? Because as we think about covenant theology,

26:38

Deuteronomy 28, right? Read Deuteronomy 28. Covenant blessings for obedience to the law. It's material.

26:43

In the old covenant paradigm, man, I'm going to bless you, I'm going to increase your crops and your children and all these kinds of things.

26:49

So the disciples are looking at a wealthy man, and the assumption there is, this dude has a lot of wealth because he's been obedient.

26:57

God's blessed him for his obedience. The disciples literally say, if he can't be saved. Exactly. So if he can't be saved, who can be saved,

27:03

Jesus? Donald Trump. Oh, man, bro, you just killed the punch there. Man, dang,

27:10

Jared. But who can be saved? And Jesus says, well, with man, it's impossible. It's impossible. But with God, it's possible.

27:16

Jesus said that, not John Calvin, just to clarify. Or Trump. Or Trump. Yeah. So a law and a gospel hermeneutic as well is a big reason why

27:23

I would say that I'm reformed. Yeah. And it's really helpful. Go ahead. If someone wanted to catch conversations just like this with YouTube bouncing back and forth, if someone wanted conversations encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ...

27:34

Listen to you. I know. Well, what do you think the best podcast would be for them? Wow, I mean,

27:40

Theocast is pretty great. These guys plug in with the merch. Some people get a little upset because we do bounce back and forth and get a little fired up.

27:48

It's like, hey, if you don't like that, then maybe listen to something else. We just got to be like a live audience for YouTube. Yeah, there you go.

27:54

Well, you literally picked a subject that we cannot stop talking about, so... You did the old bait and switch.

27:59

You told us we were gonna talk about this thing, and then you start talking about law and gospel. And it's like, here we go. We'll get there. I'll jump back to a couple of things you were talking about.

28:06

No, no. I'll end it with this statement. I think one of the greatest detriments that has happened to the American church is a collapsing of the law into the gospel.

28:15

Because people now think, oh, there's something... They'll say, no, we're saved by grace, we're saved by grace.

28:21

But once they're saved, they go to the law to try and find favor with God. And that has just created so much damage in people's psyche and spiritual walk that that's part of what

28:32

Theocast is about, is helping rip that out of that context and help people understand there is...

28:38

You need to obey. You need to not sin. You need to resist that. But that is a fruit of the gospel.

28:44

That is not the gospel. So Theodore Beza, who was a student of John Calvin, Jared, wrote that same thing 500 years ago, that an ignorance of the distinction between the law and the gospel has done more damage to the church than anything else.

29:00

And I think John is right. I think Theodore Beza is right on that. Wow, I've never had on the same fire

29:05

Theodore Beza. That's pretty... That feels pretty good. Rewinding a hair, because we talked eschatology briefly.

29:11

I wanted to go back to Ezekiel bread. That stuff's bad. Yes. You ever read the instructions on that?

29:17

It's funny because it's like, not only is it cooked over the poop, it's like, that stuff tastes so bad because it's supposed to be judgment bread.

29:24

It's like they were mixing together all the grains because they didn't have enough food to make real bread. That's right. So whenever you eat it, you're enjoying judgment.

29:32

It's got that weird guy with the mustache on it, the drawn dude. I don't know if you remember. This is where, like Christians, I think if you want to take your cologne from the

29:40

Old Testament, that would also be not one you would want to wear. Perhaps that's not the reason the Bible was written. No, I don't think the

29:46

Bible was written for us to... We should take what was meant to be literal. Well, so Ezekiel, it's wonderful that you're preaching through it verse by verse.

29:53

Going back to eschatology just for a second. John, you were raised correctly, dispensational.

29:59

By the grace of God, he was. So I wanted to ask, if we had left piles of clothes throughout the

30:05

B office, would your heart have seized up? No. Would your roots have come back? Bro, I've been to the Judgment House. A lot of Halloweens go on there.

30:10

Oh, yeah. I grew up watching the original Left Behind series as a kid.

30:16

Wait, the original Left Behind or a Thief in the Night? Thief in the Night. And you'll be left behind.

30:23

Bro, we are the same age. The sun has come and you've been left behind.

30:28

Do you remember when Kevin Max did that? Life was filled with guns and war.

30:34

Remember that, dude? Oh, beautiful. So good. There's no time. Dude, those shows to this day, they're creepy.

30:40

Those ones are like the old original Night of the Living Dead. Like those...

30:46

The guillotine scene, man? Yeah, those George Romero movies, the 16 millimeter horror movies that he made.

30:53

It's really similar in quality and style and feel. So it is terrifying.

30:58

It's still scary. Right. And again, this is part of like Logospol. And the fashion was terrible. You're using fear.

31:04

The fear of, oh, I might get left behind, whereas...

31:10

Which again, that comes from revivalism, and we can get into that. But we did an episode on leaving dispensationalism or something,

31:19

I couldn't remember. But we had talked about the second coming of Christ, and we had a lot of comments in our YouTube about people saying that they would legitimately go to bed at night afraid that Christ would come, and because they hadn't obeyed enough, that they were gonna get left behind.

31:33

And it's a fear -based, not all dispensationalists are like that, so...

31:38

But I grew up in that fear -based where you better obey, you better do what's right because you could get left behind, which

31:46

I'm like, wait a minute, am I either saved by Christ or am I not? Like, how does this work? Am I saved by my goodness or am

31:52

I saved by Christ? Which one is it? I grew up Nazarene. Oh, interesting. And so my grandfather was a

31:57

Nazarene evangelist. And every Sunday, the entire youth group was down confessing their sins at the altar, because we were afraid that we were gonna lose our salvation, first of all, or we might get left behind if Jesus came back, because it was quite apparent that he was going to in the 90s or whenever.

32:16

That's right, altar call, anxious bitch. Yeah, and we did it all the time. But then there are some positive things, and what you guys are saying about the law and the gospel,

32:25

I don't disagree with any of that. That's something that I'm not a... Can I try to make you disagree? I'm not against that. Yeah, please, please, please.

32:31

So I'll set the grenade on the table and pull the pin. I'm not a Nazarene anymore, by the way. I went to a

32:37

Calvinist high school. That's been clear to me today. Yeah. No, totally. Yeah, in our conversations. Yeah, yeah.

32:42

Tell me. What an interesting background. So one way we'll put it, not trying to be shock jocks, not even trying to be provocateurs, but saying what we believe to be true from Scripture, the gospel contains nothing in it whatsoever that we are to do.

32:58

So... Even a response? Even a response is not something we're labeled to do. But the response to the gospel is not the gospel. Because if you remember, how do you...

33:06

You receive what Christ has done by faith. That's true. By faith. You receive news. That's true. But the gospel is completely and only about what

33:14

Christ has done. Yes. Well, I agree with that. And so we'll say a lot of times, the law is due, the gospel is done, or the law says do this and live.

33:24

The gospel says Jesus has done it, now live in Him. Right. And it's... So we receive...

33:30

We're completely passive in it. We receive the work of Christ that He has accomplished on our behalf.

33:35

And then, you know, there's uses of the law that we could talk about another time, even for the Christian. Yeah.

33:40

But the law no longer condemns us. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

33:49

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

34:01

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

34:06

slash primer. So we're there in the revivalism segment of our podcast.

34:13

So let's go ahead and keep talking about it, because we obviously agree with what you just said. Okay. What about revivalism or pietism is in conflict with what you just said?

34:22

How long do we have? Just keep going, dude. Yeah. No, I don't disagree. Let me just say that too.

34:28

I don't disagree with any of that. That's good. It was beautiful. I think the language that we tend to use,

34:34

I don't even know what background I am anymore. It's a pedigree that's kind of complicated. It's a mixed bag. Sure. As most of us are.

34:40

There's a little bit of revivalism in there. There's Keswick Convention stuff in there. I was an

34:47

AGE pastor for a while. Now I'm a Baptist, and I went to a Reformed high school.

34:54

So it's this combination of things, but the way that it is expressed is by the

34:59

Holy Spirit, the indwelling power of the resurrected Christ in you. As you walk in obedience to the

35:04

Spirit, the law is accomplished through what Christ does in and through you. It doesn't mean that you did anything to receive your salvation.

35:12

You receive it by faith because of what Jesus has done. But then the indwelling life of Christ, the abundant life, is the life of the

35:20

Spirit, like in Romans 8. Sure. And so that's kind of the way I would describe it, but I don't know that it's the same language that you would use.

35:28

I'll pick up on what you just said for a minute. I think for us as Reformed guys, even in Romans 8, 3, and 4, where Paul writes that God did what the flesh, weakened by sin, could never do in sending

35:44

Jesus to die so that the righteousness and requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Our understanding there is that he is referencing the active obedience of the

35:53

Lord Jesus Christ who perfectly fulfilled the law. So Jesus, his life matters just like his death matters, right?

35:59

Because he lived in perfect accord with the law every moment that he was alive. And so his obedience is counter to us, his righteousness is counter to us.

36:08

We receive that by faith. So like the Heidelberg Catechism says in question 60, how are you righteous before God?

36:14

It's completely by faith in Jesus Christ. Though I have broken all of God's commands and never kept a single one of them and am still inclined toward all evil,

36:22

God, out of sheer mercy and grace, accounts to me the perfect holiness, righteousness, and satisfaction of Christ, so that it is as though I've never sinned or been a sinner, and it is as though I was as perfectly obedient as Christ has been obedient for me.

36:37

Can we take up an offering or a sanctification? Let's do it. Donate online. Justification.

36:43

Union with Christ. Union with Christ. And sanctification. So we receive the act of obedience of Christ, and obviously he's made satisfaction for our sins, and he is the guarantee of our bodily resurrection.

36:54

And then we are united to him by faith, and being united to Christ, we are sanctified.

37:00

And so Romans 6, Paul, you're saying clearly, you just talked about the fact that when we were

37:06

God's enemies, Christ died for us. You just talked about how we are counted righteous because of Christ, and that where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.

37:13

So you're saying we should just sin now, right? By no means, he says. By no means. But notice that he doesn't go to the law.

37:20

He doesn't say, here's what the law says. He says, by no means. You've been united to Jesus.

37:25

You've been baptized into Christ, right? And now you've been set free from the tyranny of sin.

37:31

You are now not under the law, but under grace, and you've become obedient from the heart. That's right. And so that's how we talk about sanctification.

37:38

Inside out versus outside in, I mean, those are easy categories. We're fulfilled for us in Christ, and then we seek to live in conformity to the law.

37:46

That's right. Because we can, and because we want to now. That's right. And then the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the

37:52

Spirit start to come out. Exactly. That he works in us. It's character and it's action, right?

37:57

It's the will and the action. I've talked a long time, John. No, no, John, I'm sorry. I'm just tracking.

38:03

You're riffing. I'm about to cry. The Holy Spirit. Amen. I feel the presence of God. There you go.

38:08

Anyway, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, when he says from the heart, that's probably one of the things that changed in me in my preaching.

38:15

I started preaching as early as I was doing junior church when I was like 16, and so I had some pretty good firing brimstones for the 11 -year -old

38:22

Sunday. Oh, yeah. But what's interesting is that the motivation for loving and serving

38:28

God. So part of revivalism, kind of backing up, there was a shift.

38:33

These tent meetings were originally designed by Presbyterians, and they were really designed for taking communion. And they started shifting, and you had these guys who were well -spoken, who were very just good actors, just to be frank.

38:47

And guys like Finney who could come in and is just dynamic in what he was doing. But Finney believed that salvation wasn't a supernatural act as far as where the

38:59

Holy Spirit had to come and open our eyes, is that he believed that God kind of brought everybody to a point, and he could basically logic and manipulate someone's emotion into believing.

39:10

And so one of the greatest ways to do that is fear, right? We use this as parents.

39:17

We use fear tactics to get our kids to do what they need to do. But I have an 18 -year -old, 16 -year -old, and 14 -year -old, and guess what doesn't work so much anymore?

39:26

Your tactics don't work, right? Because they're all like, Dad, you're about as big as I am, I can take you, probably can.

39:32

So what's interesting is that when you listen to the glorious gospel of Paul, all of them in the

39:39

New Testament, even going back to when Christ talks about our motivation of love, or 1 John, he says, we love, why?

39:46

Because we're afraid if we don't, we'll die. No, he says we love because he first loved us, right? So it's love and grace that becomes our motivation.

39:54

And that is what's so different. So revivalism, there was a lot of hellfire preaching, which

40:00

I think is, we need to preach the law to its fullest extent. You need to be afraid of being under the law as a sinner.

40:08

But what motivates you to then obey is not fear, it has to be faith in the gospel.

40:15

And that's the thing that's so different between, like, during the Reformation, that's what was being reclaimed. It was being reclaimed, it was assurance.

40:21

Assurance was lost. Because assurance was, if I did these seven sacraments, and if I did this faithfully, then

40:27

I could be assured God is good with me. Well, not even really. Maybe go to purgatory. Yeah. You'd still have to go to purgatory.

40:32

You'd have to be purged of lust, perhaps. That's right. And then what was great about the Reformation was the reclaiming of assurance.

40:39

And the motivation for obedience was not based upon what might happen to me, it was based upon what had been done.

40:45

I mean, when you read Romans 8, when it says, nothing can separate you from the love of God, you have to step back and go, did

40:50

Paul mean that? But not really. Right. You know? Or we've been given a spirit of adoption. That's right. By which we cry out the

40:57

Father. We've not been given a spirit of fear to fall back into slavery. That's right. Right. So sin is slavery. And I love how 2

41:04

Peter says this, he says that, 2 Peter 1, he gives this list of qualities that all of us would love to be, right?

41:10

Grace and kind and merciful and all of that. But then he says, if these are not true about you and increasing, you know what he doesn't use?

41:17

He doesn't use a fear tactic. He says, you have forgotten, you've been cleansed from your former sins. He goes back to grace, right?

41:22

And then he says, what you don't understand is that if grace isn't motivating to obey, you're an ineffective and unfruitful soldier for Christ is what you are.

41:31

So my motivation is I wanna honor God and I wanna be effective in spreading the light of the kingdom because I am safe in his arms as an adopted child.

41:42

That's what the revivalism flipped on its head. And revivalism, just to describe it briefly, is...

41:49

Here are the things that characterize it, right? You have a situation where... And so I'm gonna say something, this is controversial, but we're on the

41:56

Babylon Bee, so why not? So as we read historically, most people, most evangelicals, most serious -minded evangelicals,

42:07

Calvinistic evangelicals, to use all those buzzwords, would be very critical, rightly so of the

42:13

Second Great Awakening as it's known, would be critical as well of the great revivals in the latter part of the 19th century.

42:19

But they would probably be pretty sympathetic toward and even speak positively of the First Great Awakening, which occurred in the 18th century.

42:25

Big names associated with that would be George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on.

42:31

And for us, as confessional Protestants, as confessional Baptists, as we read history, we would say that the

42:38

First Great Awakening as it's known, while its soteriology was more sound, its doctrine was more sound in terms of the preaching, there still are concerns with it, because revivalism removes the center of the

42:51

Christian life from the local assembly and puts it outside the church. It's extra ecclesiastical in that sense.

42:57

You're going... The Christian life is no longer about ordinary means of showing up and living life in the community of the church.

43:05

We're gonna go outside of that, we're gonna listen to a fiery preacher, it becomes about my own personal experience of the divine.

43:12

My dedication. It becomes about my own personal fervor, intensity, all of that stuff. It's the conversion moment, it's the transformation of life thereafter.

43:20

Well, I would just interject, you're talking about going down the aisle? Yeah. That was all invented during revivalism.

43:26

Yeah, that's Second Great Awakening, Finney, New Measures. That's Finney. But even for us, as we look, we wanna back it up even further and say that while the preaching, the doctrine, the soteriology was better in the

43:37

First Great Awakening, there are still concerns as churchmen for us because it changed sort of the locus of the

43:43

Christian life. The resting heart rate of the Christian life changed. And I think this is true. You look at evangelicalism, most evangelicals today don't know how to think about the

43:52

Christian life apart from this kind of revivalistic paradigm of conversion and transformation of life and personal fervor, dedication, discipline.

44:04

That is really what makes it go. Whereas for us, we're gonna say, yes, those things matter, your personal relationship with Christ, even to use that language, even though we don't necessarily always love that.

44:15

But to say that your personal life matters is obviously true. But then what is it that is the lifeblood of the

44:20

Christian life? First of all, it's what Christ has accomplished that we receive, and it's life, ordinary life in the community of the local church where we gather weekly to receive from Christ in the

44:31

Word, to receive from Christ in His table, to sing and to pray, to be built up in the faith together, like Paul writes in Ephesians 4.

44:39

And for us, at least from our perspective, we're not quite sure that revivalism squares with that.

44:45

So I've got a question about all this, because it's encouraging. I think of Jonathan Edwards, you're a sinner in the hands of an angry

44:51

God, you're a spider on a thin spider web above the flames, and then when you are born again, you adopt all

44:58

Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, and it's just, oh, that's a lot of homework. It's like Jesus said, come to me, ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you homework.

45:05

Right, and I'll give you more. Come to me, ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you more to do. Give you lots of work.

45:11

Here's my question, does revivalism lead to pietism? Well, yeah, do you want me to answer that?

45:18

You sure? What's that? Do you want to go, or do you want me to go? What do you want to do? I'll let you go, and I'll piggyback off you. I'm going to say this briefly, and then let

45:24

John riff. So historically, pietism came first. That's right. So pietism is a movement that really begins in the,

45:30

I mean, pointedly in the 17th century, and it comes from German Lutheranism of all places. So it precedes revivalism in history.

45:39

We would say the two are very much related, and pietism and revivalism really go together in terms of what we would call evangelical

45:46

Christianity. Evangelicalism is a pietistic and revivalistic movement, and that's not to be pejorative.

45:52

It's just to speak with clarity. But John, go. Yeah, so the word pietism, so the word piety is great.

45:59

All four of us in here, we want to be pious, and what that means is we are in our actions thought where indeed we're reflecting the nature and person of God, and we're all like, amen.

46:09

Like, our wives would all love that. Piety is part of the Reformed tradition. It's part of all Christian tradition.

46:14

It's a wonderful thing. Pietism is bad. And it's the work of the spirit, too. That's right. Piety is. Yeah, sometimes we would even say hyper, pietism is hyper piety, whereas can you say, well, can you have too much of a good thing?

46:24

And yes, in that when there's a purpose in place for your good works, but the

46:31

Christian life is not about your good works, and pietism really becomes very introspective.

46:36

It's all about what you're doing for God on a constant basis, and it's almost a measuring stick where you're measuring yourself, how well am

46:45

I doing? And the problem with pietism specifically as relates to connecting to revivalism is they started to create measures like not drinking alcohol or not going to a movie house, which is a weird thing of saying a movie house.

47:01

The picture house. The Christianity became more about what you weren't doing than who you were serving, right?

47:07

So I know I'm a good Christian because I don't smoke, drink, or go with girls who do, right?

47:13

All of that kind of stuff, where pietism is very much focused inward, and you're always waking up every day, have

47:19

I done enough? Am I doing? Am I doing? What am I doing? And the answer to that question is most certainly no. No. Because, let me ask you this question.

47:26

I haven't done enough. No. Yeah. There's people that say, well, we need to obey. And I'm like, yes, we need to obey. But my next question is, why?

47:33

According to Scripture, why do you obey? Pietism or revivalism is, well, that proves that you're a believer.

47:39

That's why you obey. That's not what Scripture says. It's not why you obey. Or they might say that it makes you righteous before God.

47:46

Yeah. But if you want, and this is where the question comes is, how many good works must you do in order for God to accept you righteous, or to cancel out who you were?

47:57

God accepts you as righteous because He accepts you in Christ. In Christ. That's right. His merit alone. So pietism has you focusing on your works, saying, well,

48:05

I'm a good person because I do these things, which is completely opposite of the gospel. The gospel says, you're accepted because God adopted you, and He gave you

48:12

Christ's righteousness. Now because that's true, go obey. Imputed. Imputed, right. That's right.

48:17

Listen to you using those big words. Come on. All that jargon. You know, I just wanted to throw it out there. We appreciate it.

48:23

I know we're broad brushing, and we're kind of rushing through this, but pietism, it can be seen almost anywhere, where I've grown up listening to all kinds of sermons, and they sound like this.

48:36

Like, oh yeah, we believe in the gospel, and we believe they're saved by grace. And then it's kind of like, that's the first step.

48:42

We don't need that really anymore. That's step one. Step two, and now let's talk about the real meat and bones of the Christian life. And the meat and bones of the

48:47

Christian life is all of these obligations that are put upon you, and if you don't meet these obligations, you really should question.

48:53

You're probably not legitimate. You're probably not legitimate. The emphasis of pietism, it's always pointing the Christian back to himself somehow, rather than us always being pointed outside of ourselves, to use

49:03

Reformation language, extranos, outside of us. Rather than being pointed outside of ourselves to Christ, who is always our righteousness in the ground of our standing before God, we're often pointed back in on ourselves.

49:16

How obedient have I been? How faithful have I been? How disciplined have I been? How are my affections?

49:21

And it's effectively a prove -yourself kind of theology. I wonder... Okay, I don't know how to...

49:27

In my own personal life, if I'm being really honest with you, I don't... It's always good to be honest. I do. It is good to be honest.

49:32

We're Christians, man. Let's be honest. I mean, come on. I don't think I know how to separate those things. And it's a difficult...

49:40

Brother, take a number and get in line. It's a mental gymnastics. I don't know how to not be aware...

49:45

Because I know Paul... Okay, Paul in this... He says, I'm not aware of anything against myself at one point. And I'm just like,

49:51

I wish that I was like that, but I'm constantly like, no, no, that wasn't a good motive. Nah, that was really a bad thought.

49:58

Oh, I shouldn't have done that. Even if I had some good moments during the day, I get to the end of the day, and you know what all

50:04

I can think about are? The dumb and stupid things that I said or did. I can't focus on anything other than that stuff.

50:11

Well, this is what... Other than... But I also know mentally that Christ has done all this. That's right.

50:17

What's the antidote? What you're describing is what all of us feel in various ways. I mean, Martin Luther was this to the nines, right?

50:25

And the Lord used him mightily. We're not his confessors. Yeah, the Lord used him mightily. I do too. Right. And so what's the antidote, though?

50:32

The antidote... Brother, I promise you, it won't be found anywhere in you. The antidote is only

50:37

Christ for you. It's his righteousness, right? It's his atoning work. That's right.

50:43

And the question is, is what he did enough? That's right. It is. Amen. And it is enough, right? So this goes back.

50:49

It's sufficient for me. That's where we pillow our heads. Yes. Yes. So there's the contrast. Revivalism was really kicking back against dead orthodoxy, and maybe even liberalism at the same time too, where...

51:00

Later on, yeah. Yeah, later on in the second one. But in the first one, it's like, oh, this is all dead, the churches are dead, and so they wanted to kind of spark this new energy.

51:09

And so it was, let's get rid of anything that was old, anything that had related that could seem like the Roman Catholic Church, and let's do these new measures.

51:17

It became iconoclasts in every area of destroying everything.

51:22

That's right. I know, it's true. But what ends up happening here is that there's this massive focus on the individual's act.

51:30

In other words, all right, you're struggling here, here's what you need to do. Versus when you read scripture, it removes this individualism.

51:38

You're a part of Christ who's a part of this body, who he puts you into this body underneath these elders, underneath the gospel.

51:45

So it's interesting how Jesus stops and he looks at Peter and he goes, Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.

51:52

Right? This concept of individualism, which is hyper -American, like I can do this on my own.

51:59

Christ says, first of all, you couldn't save yourself on your own. Second of all, you can't sanctify yourself on your own.

52:05

And number three, you can't stay encouraged on your own. I'm going to put you in a body. That body's going to be there to strengthen and care for you.

52:11

You're going to hear the word preached. You're going to take communion. And what that's going to do, and you're going to pray. These are the three graces that God gives us, the means of grace.

52:19

And what that does is it gives us a reminder, it gives us a cleansing, and it gives us strength. It's interesting, before we started, we prayed, and one of the things that has impacted me about prayer is that in Hebrews when he says, boldly, right, as a dirty, wretched, guilty sinner, boldly run into my throne room and ask for mercy and grace when you need it.

52:39

And I think to myself, I don't know of a time when I don't need it, right? That's living life on grace and mercy, versus I'm going to use the law and prove to God and everybody else

52:50

I deserve to be his child. And it's like, you can't use the law to do that. That's revivalism. That's pietism.

52:56

If you want the exact opposite of the two. So this is why, to us, the preaching of the

53:02

Word in the gathered church is paramount, because that's what Scripture emphasizes, versus you being alone with your

53:09

Bible, which is not a bad thing, and you should engage in God's Word. But it's not the primary diet that God has designed.

53:16

This is why he says, consider daily how to build one another up that you aren't hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

53:22

So you and your thoughts, me and my thoughts, we get alone, and I'm like, man, I am horrible. Or you justify sin, and before you know it, you have been deceived and deluded into thinking that what you're doing is not that bad and all this, but this is why we need the church.

53:35

I'm frustrated because the older I get and the more that I've been in relationship with people that have walked away from Christ, I take more responsibility for those things because I wasn't there for them at certain times.

53:49

I haven't been there to encourage them towards Christ or, you know what I'm saying? So just like that verse.

53:55

So I actually feel more responsible for people than I ever have the more that I understand this concept.

54:02

What's interesting is that the church is powerful when the church is doing, as you know, when it says,

54:08

I love when Paul says, when the church functions as it should, it produces really strong Christians.

54:15

That's Ephesians 4, 15, 16. Whereas the message today is, if you do these five things, you'll be a strong Christian.

54:23

And those five things have nothing to do with the church. And your individual life is driven by the corporate, which is the exact opposite of what we've been programmed to think.

54:31

I mean, as American Christians, we think that the private makes me useful in the corporate setting. Like my private devotional life makes me useful in the corporate setting.

54:39

The corporate thing is maybe a supplement, whereas in reality, biblically, the corporate setting is your lifeline.

54:45

I mean, that is where God uniquely meets with us, sustains, strengthens, imparts faith, right?

54:51

And then the private life is driven by and propelled and powered by that corporate reality.

54:57

So that's one of your distinctives, like means of grace, the preaching of the word, that we're broadening.

55:02

Administration of the sacraments, et cetera. So we're broadening the conversation a bit back to all the things that are distinct about Reformed churches.

55:10

And I think of Hebrews 10, 25, do not forsake the assembling. That's right. But then you think of other verses that talk about the accountability that comes with being in a body.

55:21

And then later in Hebrews 13, it says, let your elders rule over you with joy and not with grieving.

55:27

Don't exasperate them. That will benefit anybody. Don't give them gray hairs and mess up their 18... Yeah, because the verse starts, submit to your elders, for they watch over your soul.

55:35

So I wanted to ask about additional distinctives of being Reformed.

55:41

And what about... I mean, now it's gonna go back to humor, at least for a bit.

55:46

Yeah, we're good with that. It's a good break. So second commandment... And then I wanna talk about how politics and social stuff is related to revivalism in a minute.

55:53

So just throwing them out there. So second commandment violations is a fun direction to go in, because these guys are not a fan of the chosen.

56:02

So I've got a question for you. We got shot at for that. If a grandmother has a picture of Obi -Wan

56:08

Kenobi on her fridge and she thinks it's Jesus, is that a second commandment violation? Is she praying to him?

56:16

He's there in his robe, it's Ewan McGregor looking peaceful. Was it the Seventh -day Adventist?

56:21

I think they have a picture of Jesus that looks like Obi -Wan. Oh, 100%. I know the one. You know what I'm talking about?

56:26

I've seen that one. I saw it and I was like, that's kind of creepy. So what about the chosen? What about second commandment violations?

56:33

So we just... We're gonna go in on the... I mean, you could go listen to the episode we did, but in the short. Yeah, so here's the deal.

56:40

Our biggest concern with the chosen, the second commandment violation really was a peripheral concern for us.

56:45

Now, if you talk to some of our PNR guys, like friends, Presbyterian Reform guys, they may say otherwise, 2CV, second commandment violation, which we would agree.

56:56

We ought not make images of the Lord, our God, or images of anything. So we think we should be careful in that.

57:01

But our real concern with the chosen is this quest, as Scott Clarke would say, this quest for illegitimate religious experience, meaning that there is a quest that many of us are on to have this kind of personal experience of the divine and to have a personal experience of Christ that is outside of what is revealed to us in the

57:23

Scripture. So our question, I think, that we would at least throw out there to people is to say that, all right, is what

57:31

God has given us in the Scripture sufficient for us to come to a saving knowledge and an understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ, His person and His work, right?

57:38

So that's important. And then I think we'll just go ahead and say this here. I mean, we got a number of emails of all kinds after we did that chosen episode, but there were some that really hit the nail on the head of what we were trying to communicate.

57:51

I think we bad -mouthed somebody's grandma, man. It was weird. But here's the deal, we had a lot of people say, like there was one person, and I'm going to be very general so as not to give any identity away, but this lady writes to us and says,

58:04

I have a friend who is the wife of an Anglican minister, and she said to me recently that I love the

58:12

Chosen, and whenever I pray, I think about Jesus like He's depicted in the

58:17

Chosen, and when I get to heaven, if He is not like that, I'm going to be disappointed.

58:23

Better not be Obi -Wan. Yeah. All right, so that's the issue that I think we were trying to highlight is... People idolize

58:30

Jonathan Rumi, they... All right. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. Well, and there's a lot of... And we just need to be thoughtful.

58:35

That's an issue. There's a lot of other... We just need to be thoughtful. There's a lot of other... Like people are like, oh, it really helps with me, relate to the humanity of Christ.

58:41

And I'm like, well, that just means that whoever you're sitting underneath as far as teaching is failing you, because Paul says that the

58:49

Word of God is sufficient to give you everything you need to know about Christ. Isn't that another issue though, like that pastors are failing their congregations?

58:57

Oh yeah, I think so. Well, and I think a lot of pastors, and we're just gonna go ahead and say it all, I think a lot of pastors under the guise of Christ -centered preaching are not doing that.

59:08

No. They're not preaching Christ to their hearers. I don't think that's controversial.

59:14

Why does everybody love Charles Spurgeon? Everybody loves

59:19

Spurgeon because the man relentlessly preached

59:24

Christ to the hearts and minds of his people every single Lord's day. And he smoked a heck of a lot. He did.

59:31

So... To the glory of God. But a lot of guys now that love Spurgeon... Said if I could fit six cigars in my mouth at one time, I would do it.

59:37

What? Then he's like a chimney. Is that a real quote? Yeah, I think so. Somebody said it recently, they were like...

59:43

Yeah, somebody asked him if he smoked too much, he said, or how much smoking was too much, and he said, well, if I could fit six of them in my mouth at once,

59:50

I would do it. Yeah, so for me, I'd not say... I feel... And then he died when he was like 50 -something. 58, yeah, he was 58.

59:56

Yeah, so... I don't think it was tobacco -related. He didn't have the best of health his whole life, but maybe it was the same. He wasn't a

01:00:01

Piscinato. He was an R .C. Sproul, baby. I know that I fail in doing this, we all strive to do it, we fail in doing it, but sometimes, guys, like from the circles that I hail from, there's always this question in preaching about, all right, let's talk about application in preaching.

01:00:16

And I'm all for application, but the primary application that I seek to do every Lord's day is to apply the gospel of Jesus Christ to the hearts and minds of the people that are there, and to give them

01:00:26

Jesus. And so I think that one of the deficiencies in many churches in our day,

01:00:34

Jarrett, to your point, is... And there's a reason why people are seeking for something other is because often when we go to church, the gospel is assumed,

01:00:42

Christ is a footnote, right? It's like, oh, yeah, we got the gospel, and now we're gonna talk about the real stuff of the

01:00:49

Christian life. And package it however you want. Maybe it's in the megachurch seeker sensitive movement, and we're gonna talk about the seven steps to better finances and a better marriage, but do it in the serious minded evangelical context where it's about how to be a more godly person.

01:01:04

Now, you guys are... Your main contention is that law sneaks back in, it's very surreptitious, but the gospel is entirely distinct.

01:01:14

So I had a question, there's a verse about law, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, which gospel does this verse come from, where Jesus says,

01:01:21

I am the law of Moses? Oh, that's a quote from the Chosen. I see what you did there,

01:01:28

Sam. Which is a quote from 3 Nephi. I was gonna say, that's not a... And it's not a direct quote.

01:01:34

It's not a... That might come from the New Living Translation. Exactly. It's also not a direct quote from 3

01:01:40

Nephi either. Well, this goes back to even to the... I mean, other problems with the Chosen is as far as your actor is

01:01:46

Catholic, you got... There's just so much issues going on in there. It's like, I don't even so much care about the

01:01:51

Mormonism and the Catholicism, I care about some of these other things. Well, so here's... Go ahead. Let me just push back a little bit.

01:01:57

Now, Jesus did say that He came to fulfill the law. Fulfill the law. That's right. Amen. He did, exactly. That was my pushback originally, but I think when it comes to...

01:02:05

We're sitting down, we can take it. I know, we could. Yeah, we can roll if you want to. Did you do jiu -jitsu, anyone? We could do that.

01:02:10

I just started. It seems like you did. I just started. Like this week. I'm two weeks ago. You guys don't even have the ears. I did it for two years ago.

01:02:16

We gotta talk about it more. Look at God, man. Go. All right. So all this to say, all this to say, you can still kick my butt.

01:02:23

No, but I push back on times... In times in history, right?

01:02:29

Those are some big guns. Big guns. No, but sometimes in history when the pastors of churches are failing and not doing this thing where they're preaching

01:02:39

Christ from the pulpit, as a person who creates stories and narratives and as a person who makes...

01:02:46

The chosen functions in a way, for the people that don't iconoclize or whatever,

01:02:53

Jonathan Rumi, the people that don't pray to him, can it be a tool with which the

01:02:58

Holy Spirit uses to point them back to Jesus? So they're like, oh, is that really in there? And they go back and they read the word and then they're actually revealed who

01:03:06

Jesus really is. And I don't know... Some of the artistic license that they've taken has just been for narrative device.

01:03:15

It's not so much that they're trying to add anything theologically. They're just trying to point...

01:03:21

Really, the heart of somebody like a Dallas Jenkins is to point people to Christ. We interviewed him here. And Jonathan Rumi, as Catholic as he is, his motive is to just reveal

01:03:32

Jesus. He's like, all I care about is Jesus. He never talks about Mary or anything like that.

01:03:37

He just goes after Jesus. Except for he leads people in the rosary. Well, he does do that, yes, which I don't know if that's...

01:03:42

He's just praying to Mary. Right, right, that's true. And so I'll say, we're not trying to be stodgy, we're not trying to be contrarian.

01:03:51

The reason we did that podcast is because I don't know how many questions we got about it. So it's like, fine, let's talk about it. It's not necessarily our normal affair, but I think if I'm gonna have this dialogue,

01:04:00

I'm probably gonna answer your question with a question, which can be frustrating. No, no. That's what Jesus did. It's fair to do, right?

01:04:06

So... But with normal people. I would ask this. So forget the Chosen... With normal people, so true.

01:04:13

Forget the Chosen for a minute. Let's rewind the clock 20 years to the Passion of the Christ. All right, so here's another situation where Jesus...

01:04:20

Right, Mel Gibson interviewed him. He's doing the second one. So what scenes...

01:04:26

So I saw the... I have not watched the Chosen, admittedly, all right? But I did go see the

01:04:32

Passion. This was a different era in my life. And what are the scenes that people remember outside of the gruesomeness of the crucifixion?

01:04:40

The scenes that people remember are often... Two of them that are often brought up to me are Jesus making a table.

01:04:47

He's in the carpenter's shop and he has this sweet interaction with Mary and his mom. And that's white space, right?

01:04:54

That's artistic liberty. Then the other one is when he's on the road, he's literally carrying the cross beam to Calvary, and he stumbles and Mary is right there.

01:05:03

And he looks at her and he says, behold, I'm making all things new. Now, we're not told in Scripture that Mary was there.

01:05:10

We're told she looked on from a distance. And behold, I'm making all things new is in the Book of Revelation. So my point in raising that, what were the most impactful moments on people outside of the gruesomeness of the crucifixion with the

01:05:23

Passion of Christ are two things that are not... One is not found in Scripture at all. The other is actually a manipulation of Scripture, right?

01:05:30

And these are the things that people are just gripped in their person by to say, man, look at Jesus, look at my

01:05:36

Savior. And it's like, I wanna feel things for Christ. I want my affection stirred for Christ. I just wanna make sure that they're being stirred by things that are legitimate.

01:05:44

And that would be my pause. It's interesting, I don't remember either of those scenes. Are those like, quantitatively, those are the ones that people remember?

01:05:55

I mean, there's no data out there. I just know in my own, it's more anecdotal, personal interactions. I just wonder, yeah, it's interesting because you tell those stories, you have to take some license because just to take it, you know,

01:06:05

Scripture. Because God only gave us so much. Yeah. And I do wonder, yeah, and the question is whether or not is a useful thing or if it's a good thing for us to tell those stories, which

01:06:15

I mean, the church has been doing that for years. The passion plays from the very beginning to an illiterate population, you had to do stuff like that.

01:06:24

And people are biblically illiterate now, so they're gonna believe anything we put out there. So there's a lot of responsibility.

01:06:30

I guess my struggle with is that when you think about, is God's Word sufficient for all time and all culture?

01:06:39

Because when you think about the structure in which even when the Word of God was originally given, there was a lot of literacy during that time.

01:06:48

And Paul's command to Timothy is to not act out the Word, right? Not to literate, he says to preach the

01:06:54

Word, like to herald it, to proclaim it. And you have to ask yourself, is that sufficient? Is the proclamation of the

01:07:00

Word of God sufficient or is it lacking? Whereas we need to, in our ingenuity, add something to it.

01:07:07

Or is this a replacement of the Word or is it just like a sermon in visual?

01:07:13

To point to the Word. That's my question. I don't think it's replacing the Word. No. But I guess my concern is that when you do it in this artistic light, you are adding liberties to things that...

01:07:28

It does change. I've even seen some quotes and some... I watched a scene about Christ at the woman at the well, and the interaction there,

01:07:35

I was just kinda like, I don't think that's how that went down. That's not actually the conversation that happened there.

01:07:41

And that kinda bothered me, because I was like, no, actually, that's not what Jesus said, and that's not actually how that woman responded.

01:07:48

Not if you're reading it in its narrative, but they spiced it up a little bit. And so that's where I'm like, I don't know if that was necessary for me to really love and enjoy

01:07:57

Christ, to see something that actually wasn't accurate, it was inaccurate. And I would have just as much of a problem if a guy got up and started preaching and describing something to me, and I'm like, that's actually not what happened.

01:08:07

I don't have a problem with a pastor who's like, hey, this is kind of what you could maybe have expected. And he starts describing...

01:08:13

Let's say, think about the guy at the Pool of Siloam, and Jesus goes and he heals the guy there, and he starts describing things there, and he's like, well, there's this rock band, and then there was like...

01:08:21

And you're like, wait, what? That's actually not what's happening. And you would probably take...

01:08:28

We're to be preachers and people of the Word in its absolute perfect accuracy.

01:08:34

And I don't know, I just take... I take qualms with it when you start messing with it. I'm not okay with that. It's respectable,

01:08:41

I understand that. It's respectable. The only Jesus movie that you guys would come close to endorsing would be The Gospel of John with Desmond from Lost.

01:08:47

That came out a couple years ago, got translated into a million languages. It's full text. There's still our inevitable artistic license.

01:08:55

But this brings us back to your guys' main MO, because you had said, it's not our normal fare to be taking pot shots at what

01:09:01

Hollywood does with Jesus. You can... We leave that to you guys to figure all that out.

01:09:08

Absolutely. The Passion or The Chosen, or I saw just on TV years ago, just the crucifixion scene from a

01:09:15

Christian Baal Jesus movie, and it was very Catholic, but man, crucifixion scenes, they'll move you.

01:09:22

It's... Oh, yeah. For sure. Here's what I wanted to get back to, just your normal fare has detours, but you're always coming back to the

01:09:29

Word. You're always coming back to theology. You're always coming back to the solas. The one thing

01:09:34

I wanted to zoom in on was you are Covenantal, but you're Covenantal Baptist. You don't baptize babies.

01:09:41

That's the most fun part of being Covenantal. What made you all... And our Scott Clark is totally in opposition.

01:09:46

He's all about it. And he's a sprinkler, he's a baptist. He's a sprinkler. So what made you guys be Covenantal...

01:09:52

Yeah, we're gonna do a podcast with Scott tonight. I joked to them, I said, I love that scene where John the

01:09:57

Baptist sprinkles Jesus. And he was like, well... That was really good.

01:10:03

He probably did. I'm like, they were in a river. Okay, so go ahead. How'd you land on Covenantal Baptist?

01:10:09

Well, just real quick, historical data, most people don't understand this, but we hold to the 1689.

01:10:16

There were Baptists earlier on that understood the covenants and embraced them and loved them, but there was an issue when we were thinking about the covenant of works and the you have...

01:10:29

We've had for over 300 years men who are Covenantal, but yet we understand that baptism is an administration given to those who are of the new covenant, not...

01:10:38

Anyways, we can get into the whole Covenantal thing. So in other words, to be a Covenantal Baptist is not a new phenomenon. It's definitely not new at all.

01:10:44

Now, it's been lost into the mires and weeds, I think, and there's not very many of them. There's a huge resurgence happening right now, which we're excited about.

01:10:53

We're part of a... I'm just gonna do a shameless plug here, but we're part of a church planning network called Grace Reform Network, which is...

01:10:59

Still being formed. Still being formed, but it's all of these... Formed. Yeah, exactly. Ooh. Amen. But it's all of these

01:11:05

Covenantal Baptists who are excited about covenant theology and preaching these truths and understanding that...

01:11:12

I mean, listen, the short answer of it is that when we read Scripture, and I love and respect my

01:11:19

Presbyterian brothers, but when we read Scripture and it says, those who are in the new covenant receive the covenant sign, we don't believe that you can enter into the new covenant of Christ by birth.

01:11:29

It has to be by spiritual birth. The way we understand the covenant of grace to be revealed in Scripture is what drives our administration of baptism.

01:11:36

That's right. And so 1689 Federalists, as they're known, so Covenantal theologians that...

01:11:42

Of a bygone era... Federalism, that just means like headship. Different language for Covenantalism, right? So we understand, without getting too much in the weeds here, the covenant of grace is the covenant where God gives to sinners everything that Christ has accomplished.

01:12:01

We receive it by faith, right? Jesus fulfills a covenant of works, He fulfills the law, its requirements and its penalty, and everything that He does is given to us, we receive it by faith.

01:12:10

That's promised in Genesis 3 .15. It's revealed by farther steps through all the

01:12:15

Old Testament, including with Abraham. So we, unlike our Presbyterian and capital R Reformed Church brethren, do not understand that the

01:12:22

Abrahamic covenant is the covenant of grace. We understand that there are two things going on with Abraham. There is the covenant of circumcision that relates to Abraham's physical offspring, and there is the promise of the covenant of grace to Abraham and his spiritual offspring.

01:12:36

This is how we would understand the text in Genesis, as well as Paul's interpretation of them in Romans and Galatians.

01:12:41

So that means that as the covenant of grace, the promise is revealed further and further and further through the

01:12:48

Old Testament, it's established with the coming of Christ and what He did. So that drives our administration of baptism.

01:12:54

I hope some of that made sense. That made perfect sense. So you've talked about the covenant of works, you've talked about the covenant of grace, you've talked about the covenant of redemption...

01:13:04

Which is in eternity past, made between the Father and the Son. What are your three favorite covenants? Those. Those three.

01:13:11

Now let's see if I can pull a fast one on John. What are your seven favorite dispensations? Come on with it,

01:13:16

John. Well, it depends on the dispensational writer, because they don't all agree that's even seven.

01:13:22

That's so true. Dispensationalism. Okay, now listen, I think I would love to sit here and talk with you guys all day.

01:13:30

I actually do think we probably should wrap. So listen, thank you guys so much for coming in.

01:13:38

This was really encouraging to my spirit. Amen. And I love it that we got a chance to talk about all this stuff.

01:13:44

Yeah, thanks for having us. So for those of you who are tuning in, you guys, if you want to come to the subscriber lounge, you're going to get to see the rest of this conversation.

01:13:53

We're going to ask them the 10 questions. So thank you guys so much. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us, guys.