Harbor Freight Doug Wilson & Great Value Steven Furtick talking' Nuance

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Sometimes I feel the weight of the world Fall down on me so heavy

00:13

And I need a friendly voice with some good theology

00:20

Helpin' is to be speaking, so I mix a manly drink Pepsi and shoe polish, and I hit the

00:26

YouTube link Don't say hit, that sounds violent And I feel my troubles all melt away

00:33

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky Beers and boat rides, laughs till sunrise

00:50

It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky He's not like most

00:59

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

01:13

And welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast My name is actually the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson today

01:19

And I'm glad to have you on the Your Calvinist Podcast Yes guys, it's Keith Barsky, your Harbor Freight Doug Wilson And we're going to be talking today to my friend and fellow pastor

01:30

And the great value, Stephen Furtick Yes, that's right, we have

01:36

Sean DeMars with us And we're going to be bringing him in in just a moment But before we do that, I just want to remind you of a few important things

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As we begin the show First, this is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church If you're in the Jacksonville area, come visit us at Sovereign Grace Family Church You can find us at sgfcjacks .org

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Also remember, we are a member of the Truth and Love Network If you're looking for other great podcasts, you can find them at the

02:00

Truth and Love Network Just throw that into Google and you'll pull up the website there We are also continuing to encourage people who enjoy a great cigar to go to 1689cigars

02:10

And if you use the coupon code SUPERIORTHEOLOGY, they will give you a discount Finally, if you want to get in touch with me, go to keithfoskey .com

02:18

You can email me directly from the website and that will allow us to interact And if you have ideas for the show, people you'd like for me to interview

02:25

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02:38

Alright guys, we're going to bring in our guest today He is a very famous man

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He is a pastor, podcaster, featured in American Gospel He's been a part of the larger conversation in Christian circles now for several years

02:53

I've heard that he raps And my friend Kobe Muncy actually asked if he has another rap album coming

02:58

So that's one of the questions we're going to ask But anyhow, this is my friend and fellow pastor,

03:05

Sean DeMar Sean, thank you for being a part of the show today Actually, great value, Steven Furtick, how are you doing?

03:12

Oh, you're muted I'm sorry, I unmuted you, there you go No, it's good, brother Hey, listen, glad to be here

03:19

I flew all the way in from North Carolina Is it South Carolina?

03:26

Where I pastor a megachurch with 7 campuses, 9 ,000 members I have the biggest house in Charlotte I think that's

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South Carolina, right? Yeah, anyways, this is why I'm the great one I don't remember I'm a

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Florida boy, so I don't know Yeah, there you go No, brother, thanks for having me on the podcast Yeah, man, and I did

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I wore my Doug Wilson sweater vest for this occasion

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This is my Doug Wilson outfit I've done a sweater vest dialogue with James White Where I dressed as Doug Wilson And this is kind of our thing

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But this is what caused me to originally reach out to you Because I've been following you on Facebook for years

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I've wanted to have you on the show But what really got my attention was when someone posted this picture

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And they said, why is Steven Furtick interviewing Keith Foskey and Bill Burr?

04:15

And I just thought this was great Because that's obviously you interviewing Doug Wilson and Rigney Is Joe Rigney his name?

04:25

And I think he looks more like Jackie Earl Haley than he does Bill Burr But we'll leave it at that That's like when your grandpa makes an obscure reference

04:36

Like I have no idea who that is Who, Jackie Earl Haley? Uh -huh Did you ever see

04:41

Warshak from the movie Oh goodness It's the superhero movie but it's the really crazy one

04:48

Oh goodness I can't The Watchmen Did you ever see Watchmen? Uh -huh

04:53

Are you a superhero guy? No Oh man, I'm the nerd today I'm obviously the nerd

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You look at my studio, you can tell I'm a movie nerd Yeah But no, Jackie Earl Haley played a guy

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And he looks like Joe Rigney People in the comments, tell me if I'm wrong I think I'm right Tell me if I'm wrong

05:13

I'm the weird one Everyone else definitely has heard of that person Okay So I know that I know who you are

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And I remember I first saw you I think I first saw you on American Gospel, the movie You were interviewed and you were part of the documentary

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And you've done a lot of stuff since then But some of my audience may not know who you are

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So would you just for a few minutes kind of tell us about yourself You know, tell us who you are

05:40

Or as one Twitter person said, who is Sean DeMars? And another person said, who do you think you are?

05:46

So that's a great question too Yeah, so I'm a pastor of Sixth Avenue Community Church in Decatur, Alabama I grew up outside of the church to a family of drug addicts and alcoholics

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I was abused pretty horrifically most of my childhood And I think the Lord really used that to soften my heart

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To prepare me for the gospel I spent most of my teenage years in gangs and drugs and guns and violence

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And all of that stuff I was a crystal meth dealer and a pimp when I got saved

06:19

Spent 20 years in prison That was when I was 18 Soon thereafter I got involved in the prosperity gospel

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Because I didn't know any better And I kind of became the prosperity gospel poster boy And then, yeah, the

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Lord used a John Piper video to lead me out of that I was in the military for five years I was a combat medic, one tour of duty in Missoula, Iraq Came home, went to the mission field

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I was a missionary with my wife and our two daughters in Peru For four years in the upper

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Amazon River basin Trying to reach the Wudarina people group Came home, tried to be a

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Presbyterian for a year The Lord was kind, didn't allow that to happen Then I did the Capitol Hill Baptist Church internship

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And then I came back to Decatur, Alabama to do a church revitalization Which, by God's grace, worked

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And, yeah, that's it, man Well, that's awesome

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I wasn't aware of your mission's work I guess I probably have heard about it and just didn't register with me

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Because I'm always so grateful for the men and women Who God gifts to go and to do those things

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And especially reaching the unreached peoples We support a missionary named Scott Phillips Who goes to Indonesia And I try to mention him as much as I can

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Because I like to encourage support for him But knowing that, I mean, maybe

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I'll have you back one day Just to talk about things that you learned on the mission field Because I'm sure that helped form who you are as a pastor

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So that's great, that's wonderful work Now, I do have some things

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I want to talk about In regard to your online ministry But before I do that, can you tell us

08:05

Because I know you've got a hand in a lot of different things You're pastoring your church

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Also, I want to hear about your church's recovery Because I know you guys went through a difficult situation

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Back at the beginning of the year with a fire But I also want to hear about your online ministry

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I know you have room for nuance And some other shows that you do So tell us first, how's the church doing

08:28

And what happened with the fire And how you guys are recovering from that Yeah, so I woke up on New Year's Day At like 4 a .m.

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to a phone call From a firefighter buddy of mine Saying that our church had burned

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So I went down there As I was walking up, he handed me my preaching

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Bible Which survived with just sort of exterior burns And went in and saw that the building had gone up in flames

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A wall heater that we didn't even know existed Shorted out or something like that And the building caught on fire

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And yeah, by God's grace, our church is doing great When we started the church revitalization The church didn't really have the gospel

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But they had a building Now we have the gospel But we don't have a building Which is infinitely to be preferred

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So we're meeting in a local church First Baptist Church here in Decatur, Alabama Very kindly let us use their chapel

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Which is exceedingly nice I mean, it's amazing

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I tell our people not to get used to it We're going to build back uglier We're Puritans at heart

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And so yeah, we're meeting there We're trying to figure out insurance stuff It's kind of tricky

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But yeah, everything is going well Yeah, I tell you what First of all, build back uglier is a funny phrase

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That would make a good bumper sticker for your church As you guys are rebuilding We're going to build back uglier

09:58

That's funny And you're right, insurance And this is probably a boring topic for anybody else

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But for me, like, you know It's just me and you Yeah, nobody else cares But like, you know, like in our state

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We have to deal with hurricanes just about every year I mean, thankfully where we are in Jacksonville It's not so bad because it's north

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Florida Southern Florida gets hit all the time And they don't even offer wind insurance

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For churches anymore Because of all of the hurricane stuff

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And so yeah, I mean, I just The difficult things people don't think about Is being pastors

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Like having to think about building insurance Having to think about what you're dealing with right now That's something that a lot of people

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Don't even realize is part of the job You know So tell me about your podcast

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I know you have Room for Nuance And you have another show, right? You have a couple of things Defending Confirm Defending Confirm is an apologetics podcast

10:55

That I started with Russell Berger Another guy from the American Gospel He worked for CrossFit as a high -level executive

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He got fired because he wouldn't support an LGBTQ event And supported a gym owner

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Who didn't want to participate in an LGBTQ event And so he got fired

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So that happened while he was an elder At our local church And we were teaching an apologetics

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Sunday school class And the people said Wow, you kind of have a good dynamic together Which we kind of already knew that We actually met doing evangelism

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Outside of an abortion clinic So Russell's a little bit more of a bulldog I'm a little bit more pastoral

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And we kind of balance each other out And so yeah, we just set up a camera And started talking about stuff

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And the Lord really seemed to bless it Not with a wide reach But sort of a narrowly deep impact

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We did our series on critical theory Not to sound too much like a hipster But before it was cool, you know

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And especially during 2020, 2021 A lot of elder boards sort of used that series

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To figure out where they were on the woke stuff So yeah, we were attacking wokeness

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And critical theory stuff a while ago Which is funny Because these days people call me woke Yeah It's an interesting experience

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And then we did some stuff on church planting movements Which is not a good thing It sounds like it would be

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It's actually a really horrendous missiology It's a view of church planting

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That is really unbiblical But it has sort of taken over Southeast Asia Particularly in the

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IMB circles And so that was also, I think, pretty useful So yeah, that's

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Defend and Confirm And then we have Room for Nuance Which is my podcast

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Where I try to bring on subject matter experts And not rush them So I remember

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I got invited onto a show To talk about critical race theory And they said, okay, we have 20 minutes

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And I was like This is really complicated stuff, you know

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So I said, okay, what we need to do Is stop going shorter and shorter and shorter We need to do it like Rogan does

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And what Lex Friedman does Give people time If they've spent their whole lives Or the last 20 years studying this thing

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We need to, yeah, give them ample room To talk about stuff Because it's complicated Stuff is complicated

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You need to nuance your arguments And I'm still using that word Regardless of what Joe said

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You can tell him I said that For the sake of clarity, yes But nuance is how we get to clarity

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We add shades of meaning Not to obscure the truth But to get more clear on the truth

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Anyways, as I told Joe and Doug These days it feels like Defending Confirmed Is our conservative podcast

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And Room for Nuance is our podcast For liberals Now that's a joke But some people in the comments section

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After that interview Didn't take it as a joke But I hope you do No, I was actually going to mention that I thought that was funny

13:59

Because like you said You got the one where you got the bulldog with you You know, the guy who's the Kind of the stronger voice

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And you're there And you guys are You're being pastoral with him But then you have the other podcast Where you're letting people come on And talk about their positions

14:10

Talk about where they are And have you ever heard the term The Dunning -Kruger effect?

14:16

Yeah Okay, for people who don't know what that is That's the idea That when someone first learns about something

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They have this massive feeling Of confidence But then as they learn more about it

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Their confidence drops Because they realize how little they know And then as they begin to grow in their knowledge They become more confident

14:34

But what happens is The guy at the beginning Who's super confident That's the 20 -minute guy When you're talking about What made me think of that Was when you said

14:42

Somebody wants you to come on Like if somebody I've had people say Come on and describe Can you explain Calvinism in 20 minutes?

14:48

No, I can't I can tell you the basics Of the five points of Calvinism But it's not going to convince anyone

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It's not going to provide anyone With enough understanding To really come to a conclusion about it

15:00

It's not helpful I did I mean I've done series On each of the points

15:05

And obviously I'm a Calvinist That's the title of my show But you can't do this In 5 minutes

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Or 10 minutes Or even 20 minutes And so I think you're right The long form opportunity To give people the opportunity

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To speak into the subject That they have studied for 20 years Is much better than to hear

15:24

The 10 -minute opining Of a guy who's been studying this for 20 minutes Yeah I think people think

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That these podcasts have to be short Because people won't listen to them If they're longer And that's just not true It's another case of like Evangelicals being a little bit

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Behind the curve on Kind of what's happening In the broader culture Like long form podcasts

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Are the fastest growing medium In the world There's a reason why Rogan Got a couple hundred million dollars

15:48

From Spotify to do a show So yeah I found that people love it I actually don't love it

15:55

When it goes too long But some people out there You know Can lock in for 3 or 4 hours

16:01

Yeah I think There's a balance You know I have a hard time Because most of my

16:07

Most of my viewers Most of my audience Is on YouTube Because I started doing comedy stuff And that's what really got people

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To begin watching our show And so my audio podcast Isn't as well listened to As the

16:20

YouTube is watched And that's cool for me But a lot of people will message me And say hey man I can't watch

16:26

YouTube For an hour Because my phone won't let me do it Like my phone clicks off And I'm not paying $15 a month

16:32

For YouTube premium So that's where I've had To point people Okay well if you

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If you like the long form stuff Go listen to it Because what's the use Of looking at my face

16:43

For an hour Or looking at you know Our faces That's so interesting Our audio is like 10 to 1 to our

16:50

YouTube Yeah It's the opposite It's the opposite for me My But it But it

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Again 90 % of my content Is Is video based

17:01

It's either It's funny It's You know I have a show called Church Soup Which is a new show

17:06

It's sort of like SNL And some of the jokes don't work If you're not looking Because I tried I tried posting

17:12

Church Soup To audio And it didn't work Because Yeah because you gotta You know when I make a joke About Joe Biden or something

17:18

And there's a picture of him It just fits better Yeah It doesn't really work And again I hope we're not

17:23

Boring the audience This is like We're like shop talk here You know Podcasting shop talk But this is I love to talk to guys

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Who kind of We do the same thing Because we can learn From each other I had a great talk with Matt Whitman last week 10 minute

17:37

Bible hour And dude we stayed on For an extra half hour After the show And just talked

17:42

About Yeah what we do And I was I was grateful Grateful for that He's a great dude

17:48

Alright so I wanna I wanna talk to you I have a few questions here Oh first of all

17:54

Before I even get to this Bible Dinger said Did you get their shirt? That was one of the questions I texted those guys this morning

17:59

Said I was interviewing you Well that's a great question I actually Hey Amber Sorry My wife

18:05

That's okay Amber! No I'm just kidding Where is my super suit?

18:11

Woman! I actually still don't know If I've gotten it Don't know if you got it

18:16

Okay Alright well they I texted them I said hey I'm gonna Have Sean on this morning What should I ask him? And that was the first question They said

18:22

Ask if he got our shirt Hey did I Did I get a shirt From Bible Dingers? Is it

18:28

Is it the one that says Bros before foes? Oh Yeah I guess so Yeah Bros before foes

18:35

I got the shirt I was out of town Well thank you Amber For being on the show

18:41

Just audio But we appreciate it Don't come back in Again Sorry about that Well let me say this

18:50

To the guys at Bible Dinger I didn't get a shirt And text me if you want my size

18:58

Alright so Yeah well I'm an extra small That's that's that's the

19:03

Yeah Yeah Alright so You You have gotten

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Some negative Feedback from Rosario And from Joe Rigney Regarding the name nuance

19:17

And so You just said earlier You know I'm defending it I'm sticking with it

19:24

Isaac Stanley On social media He said How many more blows To the kneecaps Is he going to take

19:29

Before he changes The podcast name And so that was a question I wanted to start with Is Has this

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Has this Negative Response to the name Giving you any Thoughts Are you going to stick

19:42

With what you're What you're doing Yeah No I'm doubling down Doubling down Okay Doubling down Especially because It's There's this weird thing

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Sometimes Amongst conservatives Of whom I am the foremost Where You're You're a little

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Manic On the one hand You don't You're like You don't want to give up a word Like evangelical Right Whereas like some

20:03

Left leaning Squishy Christians Are like Ah you know That that word has become corrupted

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We need to abandon it And all the conservatives Are like no This is a good word And I'm like Yeah I agree

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Or they want to bring back The word patriarchy Which I actually don't think is Super smart

20:20

For a couple different reasons But The word nuance Is a word that does not belong to the left

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I disagree with Rosaria It's not a postmodern neologism The word nuance

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Predates postmodernism And And I don't want to give that word up to liberals It's not their word

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They can come and try to Take over a word and make it their own And But like No This is a word that belongs to anyone

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Who is trying to pursue truth And I just don't know of another word That really captures the essence

20:50

Of what I'm trying to do As well as nuance Rigney says We need to use the word clarity But Nuance and clarity

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Are not synonymous Clarity is the end goal Nuance is the means by which We get there

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Brother you're a pastor You've probably Experienced this before Where you're sitting down And you're talking with someone

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And you're trying to lead them With God's word And they think they've understood it And they They'll say something to you

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And you'll say Oh that's not quite right Let's nuance that a little bit You've got a shade of meaning

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To help everyone get to the truth Right My guests on the show

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I want to do like a super cut one day Of all of our guests Who use the word nuance

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As they're talking to me Trying to explain their position These aren't liberals They're conservatives You know they'll say

21:38

Oh no let me nuance that a little bit So No The word doesn't belong to the left I can't think of a better word

21:44

And I think practically This is what we do all the time That's what Joe does It's what I think one of my favorite comments

21:49

Was how Joe Somebody said Joe Rigney Gave an incredibly nuanced answer To the question

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Why should we not use the word nuance You know so I think we're doing it anyway So I'm going to keep it Gotcha Gotcha Yeah and You mentioned as being a pastor

22:07

That you know When you sit down with someone I'll tell you that One of the hard things That I've experienced

22:13

Let me clarify something real quick You're in the reform camp As far as your soteriology

22:19

Are you a reform baptist Is that how you define yourself Even though R. Scott Clark Wouldn't allow you to do that Yeah that's right

22:25

Not a 1689er But reform baptist Yeah Yeah me too We hold to the first London Not the second

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London There's a whole story behind that So in that One of the things

22:38

I found And I'm thinking of a person Specifically in our church That sometimes has a problem With using language

22:44

That sounds very fatalistic When he's trying to describe His reformed view of salvation

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And I have to draw him back I have to reach out and say Brother what you're saying

22:57

Sounds like It is fatalistic The words you're using Are not the words

23:03

That scripture uses It's not even the words That the reformers used You're using words

23:08

That are I think hurtful In the sense that They're going to cause people

23:14

To misunderstand What we're saying And so in that sense We could say we're talking

23:20

About nuance right You're not nuancing that correctly Whether we're talking About the trinity The hypostatic union

23:28

Complementarianism Reformed soteriology There's always a lot Of parsing out

23:34

Not quite this And not quite that And you know You gotta be really careful Yeah It's just how you do theology

23:40

Even if you're not a pastor Yeah I mean Consider the Athanasian Creed You know

23:46

I mean And I would never say The Athanasian Creed Is just an example of nuance But doesn't it say

23:52

You know He's this and not this And this and not this And this is You know We're saying

23:57

He's completely this And yet still this And all of these You know The way that it's describing

24:03

What's that based on 300 years Of trying to figure it out Yeah You know 400 years Of trying to figure out

24:09

When we describe Christ's nature As being You know Ver Homo Ver Deus Even that phrase

24:15

You know What does it mean To be truly God And truly man That's a difficult thing

24:20

To describe You know Recently I had a conversation With a Muslim Who visited our church

24:27

And he visited Because he was invited By a member To come sit in And he sat And he did not worship

24:32

He just sat there And then afterwards He wanted to talk to me And He His big hang up Like most

24:40

Muslims Was on the doctrine Of the Trinity And as I was trying To describe As I was trying To open up The word of God to him

24:47

And show him what it says He did not like That Having to explain

24:53

These things In a nuanced way He wanted Well I just think God is completely one And I think

24:58

You've over complicated it And I was like Yeah But God is not God is not complicated

25:04

But yet at the same time God is Greater than we Can understand Yeah And so we have to describe

25:10

These things In that way So With that being said When we talk about The subject of doctrine

25:18

One of the things That I've done on the show Several times And I've had different people on We talk about doctrine

25:24

In regard to I use concentric circles Other people Go differently But we would say

25:29

The center circle For us we say Definitional Denominational And then

25:38

Doubtful And so by that we mean The things that make someone A Christian Are in the center circle

25:43

Those are definitional To the faith And then the second tier Would be things that Divide denominations

25:50

Things like baptism And who is to be baptized Yet we would still say Those people are Christians And then the third tier

25:56

Would be things that we would say Are doubtful Even within a church There can be differences On things like eschatology

26:03

And things like that You know, those ideas So do you find No I know

26:09

And that's I'm just fixing to go there Because I'm leading into a question And the question is this

26:16

One, do you find that helpful Do you use something like that When you're teaching your people These are the things that are

26:22

Essential, these are the things That are non -essential And where is the nuance For people who have difficulties

26:28

With these things Yeah So that What you're describing Is theological triage

26:34

I think that's the phrase That was The term that was coined By Al Mohler It was helpfully picked up on By Gavin Ortlin Who wrote a fantastic book

26:43

On how to do it Called Finding the Right Hills To Die On And It is just so good

26:49

So if any of your viewers Or listeners Want to know more about How to do theological triage

26:55

For the sake of Getting more gospel Under our feet That's the great resource there

27:01

Yeah I mean, we're Again, so The thing about nuance is We're doing this all the time

27:07

So when you're in a church And you're trying to help a member Who's really struggling with something He doesn't think a doctrine

27:12

Is as important as you think It is or he should think it is Or maybe he

27:18

Has put too much emphasis On a particular doctrine And you're trying to help him see That it's actually not A first order issue

27:24

It's a second order issue You're having to do All kinds of nuance stuff That doesn't mean you're not

27:29

Using the Bible Or you're not being clear You're not being direct You walk to 1 Corinthians 15 You try to show them

27:35

Here are the matters Of first importance And then you go to Romans 14 And you go to 1

27:40

Corinthians And you show them Matters of the conscience And you try to help them Think through that And it's just a very

27:46

Nuanced conversation Like, okay One person holds one day As more holy than another This person does not

27:53

One of them is right There's actually A correct theological position When Paul is talking about Meat offered to idols

28:01

He's clear There is no such thing As a demon Okay, so one person Has the theological

28:08

Idols are fake This person is actually Theologically correct But he can be correct In a way that's actually incorrect

28:13

And so it's an incredibly Nuanced conversation And you're having to help them See that What's even more fascinating Is cultural pressure points

28:23

On our theological triage So, theonomy In my opinion

28:28

Is becoming a second order issue I think In a different context

28:34

It would be a third order issue Like, if I go to a house church in China There's not going to be

28:40

A theonomy controversy That I feel like is bumping up Against the gospel In our context

28:45

It feels like it very much is So, even there It's not even like a chart

28:51

Like, the concentric circle thing Is great And by the way I love the alliteration I don't know if you learned How to do that in seminary

28:57

But bravo But in reality It's less like a chart

29:04

That goes like this Or even circles It's more like this 3D, 4D thing Where you're moving chess pieces

29:11

In different dimensions To try to figure it out That's a very long, rambly answer I don't even know

29:16

If I remember your original question But boom, there you go No, I think that helps

29:21

In stepping back and saying It's not as simple As just the three circles And this is what

29:26

I've told people I've said The three circles are a way For us to simply identify That there are things That make

29:32

Christians Genuine Christians And there are things That don't make Christians Genuine Christians And that's really the heart of it

29:38

And then there are things That would separate churches But wouldn't necessarily Separate believers And I do want to clarify

29:45

You said there's no such thing As demons I don't think you meant to say that Oh, sorry No such thing as idols Thank you

29:51

Thank you for that Because when you said There's no I was like Somebody's gonna hear that Somebody's gonna Somebody's gonna use that Against you

29:57

So I know you believe in Yeah Sean DeMars doesn't believe in demons That's right That's right

30:03

Yeah Okay So And that's another thing People do People will take Ten seconds of something

30:09

That we say Either out of context Or something we incorrectly say Or whatever And make us into An enemy for no reason

30:16

Well, that's why I never I never jump on the bandwagon When somebody posts a clip

30:22

Of some person In evangelicalism Who says something like Whether it's from a pulpit Or an interview

30:28

If you spend as much time Talking about whatever In front of people

30:33

You're gonna mess up It's gonna be You're gonna have a weird Freudian slip Or something

30:38

You know Or you're gonna be having An off day Or whatever You know And yeah

30:44

I try to give them As much grace As I hope people would Give me Yeah And this would

30:51

You know Just last week And I'm not I'm not gonna ask you To opine on The subject matter

30:57

But just last week The issue with John MacArthur Where it was The quote that came out Where he said

31:03

There's no such thing As PTSD There's no such thing As OCD And those things And you know

31:09

I was tempted to You know Respond And I had some friends You know We were talking about Maybe doing something

31:15

On the podcast about it But I ultimately Decided not to do it I said One It's been

31:20

Responded to To the hilt Everybody felt the need To respond And at this point It's just gonna be White noise

31:26

If I say anything To add on But ultimately I do think That was a place Where Where John Was trying to be

31:34

And I call him John Like we're friends Dr. MacArthur As I was like Like Where Dr.

31:40

MacArthur Was trying to be pithy And Did he say some things That I disagree with Yes Did he say some things

31:47

That I think Maybe were Were incorrect But at the same time He's He's He's in that context

31:53

Where People are only listening To ten seconds Of what he said And much of what he said

31:58

I would agree with I think over medication Is a problem I think over diagnosis Is a problem Self -diagnosis All these things

32:04

Can be a problem It's the issue of The five seconds Of things that he said That were probably Problematic And were problematic

32:10

For a lot of people That's the issue And so That's the hard part

32:17

About being in front of people Yeah That's the hard part About being Everything you say Is dissected

32:22

Yeah And It's like Matt Matt Matt last week He said It takes a special psychosis

32:28

To do what we do You know To get out and just talk And let people Sort of die You know

32:33

Take everything you say apart And And that's what we're That's what we're dealing with So with that Thought Continuing To move through These questions

32:44

That I have here Specifically regarding The question of nuance And being a pastor

32:49

What is the most difficult Well Let me make sure I get this question Exactly how

32:55

I want to ask it What is the most difficult Time Where As a pastor

33:04

Someone trying to Over nuance something Has created an issue With you

33:10

And And Maybe within your church And I have an Idea Maybe if Maybe if I give you A nudge

33:15

Might help Because I'm not sure I'm questioning it Right Where somebody might come in And say Something like On the

33:21

LGBT issue And someone might say Well You know We have to meet these people Where they are

33:26

We have to You know We have to love them And their sin So therefore We have to nuance this

33:31

To the point Where we can no longer Really address it as sin That's kind of the thought I'm thinking Yeah Yeah I don't think

33:37

You can over nuance something I think you can obfuscate Again Nuance is adding

33:43

Shade of meaning To help us arrive At the truth So Again This comes back

33:50

To like a lexical thing You know Are we going to let that word Take on sort of a broader Range of meaning

33:56

I want to fight To restrict that And keep the meaning Very narrow But yeah Like what you're talking about Is a real thing

34:02

And it Could be LGBT stuff today It could be Oneness Pentecostalism tomorrow

34:07

You know The case studies

34:13

Could be endless But yeah When somebody comes in And they weaponize questions

34:18

They play the devil's advocate You know I tell people

34:23

I've had members Where I've had to sit them down And say like Listen The devil has enough advocates Of his own

34:28

He does not need you In this situation That is not helpful There's a way That you can ask a question

34:34

That is honoring To God That is humble That is in the pursuit of truth And there's a way

34:39

That you can ask questions And make assertions And try to add shades Of meaning That's moving us

34:44

In the opposite direction And as a pastor You kind of have A pretty good sense Of that You know Your antennas

34:50

Are finely tuned And yeah And then It just depends

34:55

On the context You know Is it one -on -one Are we in a small group setting If it's a small group Do I have to Cut that person off For the sake of the group

35:03

To protect them From anything That could go wrong If it's one -on -one

35:09

You might indulge them But that takes A lot of wisdom too There are two proverbs

35:14

Back to back One says Do not answer a fool According to his folly

35:20

The other says Do answer a fool According to his folly And that's not a contradiction That's just us Needing to apply wisdom

35:27

To figure out the situation Is this someone That I should respond to And indulge in Or is this a question

35:33

I should indulge Or is this a question Or is this someone Who's Sent by Satan To suck up All of my

35:39

Time and energy So yeah It's tricky It's tricky I love the phrase

35:44

Weaponize questions I've never I don't know That I've heard that before But I know exactly What you mean by it

35:50

People who Well I was just Asking a question No You were creating Conflict You were

35:56

Sowing division Some questions are You know Are intended to do Just that I remember

36:03

Very early on In my ministry Being in Sunday school And there were just There were a few people

36:09

Who it seemed like Were very at odds With a lot of What I was teaching And they always Came in with With questions

36:15

That didn't have anything To do with what I was teaching It was more Just to get off track And I actually Had people come to me

36:21

After class I remember this And said I can't I can't enjoy the class They're not

36:26

Letting you teach So our Wednesday night Inductive Bible study We have verses

36:32

On the whiteboard We have someone Who teaches it Who leads And asks a bunch of questions And sometimes We'll get people

36:37

Who will do that And like I tell our Like you have to Cut them off This has to be Edifying for the group

36:43

This is not just A one on one conversation With you and the teacher In a vacuum seal too You know

36:49

And then I get That's fine I'd rather risk Hurting one person's Feelings Who's monopolizing

36:54

The conversation Versus Rob edification From the other 50 people in the room No that's wise

37:00

And that's very pastoral That you know Considering This this Because you see

37:06

What the person is doing It's it's it's not And it may be Somewhat innocent They may not realize

37:12

They're doing it But they're doing it All the same Whether whether they're Whether they're being Intentionally divisive Or just you know

37:18

Perhaps ignorantly Or or innocently Either way It's creating the same The same problem

37:24

Yeah And so when we When we address The subject of And I do want to move

37:30

On to some other Listener questions I just I really like this This conversation I I You use the word

37:37

Obfuscation All right And I If you could Define for us The difference

37:42

Between How you understand Nuance And I'm so I can't even say it Yeah Yeah Yeah I mean again

37:50

Nuance is just Trying to add meaning For the sake of clarity Shades of meaning You know

37:56

Okay God is sovereign But man is Responsible In order to Parse that out

38:01

You There's a lot of Shading that needs To be done It's kind of like Like my haircut

38:08

Right Like To flow from Here to there You can't just Draw like a

38:13

Hack A hack of a line You know You need to shade it in That's what a good fade is That's what you're doing With nuance

38:19

You're trying to go from Like this thing God's total sovereignty To man's complete Responsibility Which seems like They should meet

38:26

In such a way That it's just A really harsh line But nuance Allows you to smooth

38:31

That out So the two truths Blend seemingly together Obfuscation Is where you

38:37

Muddy the waters You know You just go in there And you try to make Things as I mean If you read

38:42

Basically anybody's Ph .D. dissertation There's a lot

38:48

Of obfuscation If you read Most liberal Christian theology It's obfuscation And that can come

38:53

Grammatically If you read It can come With the vocabulary You choose to use

39:00

Thomas Sowell Actually talks a lot About this His writing Is a Is a phenomenal

39:06

Example of someone Who is smart enough That he can take A subject matter And make it simple

39:12

Simple To the reader Right That's the sign Of true genius You can take something That's complicated enough

39:18

For you know A Ph .D. program And you can give it to someone You can give it to an Eight year old Or a ten year old Which is

39:23

Kind of what Thomas Sowell does With economics But he He is

39:28

In marked Contrast To a lot of his Opponents Whenever he's Discussing an issue Who are always

39:34

Making things muddy And less clear And whenever I sense that In someone

39:39

When it feels like They're trying to Muddy the waters Not only is there Just a dialogue issue But now there's a

39:44

Trust issue You know Yeah Cause like I can have a Conversation With you

39:49

If I feel like We're both Trying to move In the same direction Here's a pretty

39:55

Classic example Of this Piper One time Was asked You know How do you Deal with C .S.

40:01

Lewis And his wonky Views on Inerrancy And his Flirtation With universalism

40:08

And all this Stuff You give him A pass But like You're so hard On Rob Bell And Piper said

40:16

I feel like Lewis Is failing Towards the truth Whereas With Rob Bell I feel like He is

40:23

Trying to lead People into error And he's doing it By muddying the waters Lewis is failing

40:28

But he's trying to Get people closer To the truth He's trying to Clarify things Whereas Rob Bell Takes that which is

40:34

Exceedingly clear In scripture And tries to muddy Those waters So that's where The trust issue comes in Yeah So you're most

40:44

Well Recently The two interviews You did that were most At least

40:51

Clipped and people Talked about them Was the Lig interview And I've known

40:56

Lig for years You know I had an opportunity Years ago to go to A When Ligonier Used to have a

41:03

Pastors conference It was only a hundred guys And you could go And it was very special You got to really Spend time with RC And Ligon Duncan And Stephen Or Steve Lawson Steve Lawson Those guys

41:16

And so Really enjoyed that Had an opportunity to You know Just really be close

41:22

And ask questions And I was very Very grateful for that In a formative time In my ministry But Some of what

41:30

Lig said Really Seemed like shots Across the bow At certain people

41:35

And it was taken And such And was responded to As such And then you did The response Was you going And talking to Doug And Joe Rigney So Out of that Out of those two

41:47

What do you think Was the most Valuable thing That has come Out of those two

41:53

Conversations And if you could just say That both of them Nuanced Or both of them Lack of nuance Yeah Something simple

41:59

What do you think Because I would say In the last month I've seen more of those clips Than anything else

42:05

People posting them Talking about them Things like that What do you think Was the most valuable thing That came out of that? You know man

42:11

I'm not sure I think I think The temptation Is to ascribe value

42:18

To something In the immediacy Whereas That often proves

42:26

Proves to be unwise You know like Oh This happened And I think

42:32

This is fruit I think True lasting fruit Is usually easier To discern Than the Kind of Five years

42:38

Ten years Down the road So yeah I don't know I'm going to withhold Judgment on that And say

42:44

Circle back with me In five years If the Lord tarries That's a carefully Nuanced answer I appreciate it

42:51

Staying on brand baby Yeah Well I do want to ask you this

42:56

Because I don't know Your position on it And I'm not trying To nail you down I'm just curious Probably the thing

43:01

That with The lig interview That I was That most Caught my attention Was when he addressed

43:07

The issue of abolitionism And how he said And I'm paraphrasing here

43:13

But it almost seemed Like he was saying It was like a Johnny come lately Kind of situation You know The pro -life movement

43:18

Has been doing this For four decades That you know The abolition movement Is relatively new And a lot of people Took great offense to that So Did you

43:28

In that moment Did you feel like Okay this is going to be This is going to be The thing That's going to get

43:34

People's attention Or did it Not even register Because It's been Didn't even register Didn't register

43:39

No I did not expect Any of that to happen Yeah I even had

43:44

Interestingly Someone who's a Friend of Ligon Who thought that I should not have Shared that video

43:51

Really? Who thought he was That was him Not at his most nuance You know You're supposed to be

43:57

Room for nuance You're supposed to be Room for nuance And that wasn't him At his best You shouldn't have Shared that It's like well I mean

44:03

I'm not I can't control How nuanced people are I just invite them on And you know Give them the opportunity

44:08

Yeah Yeah that's right And again Stuff Sometimes we say things That we don't mean

44:13

Or we're not as careful In interviews as we could be Yada yada yada Whatever I wasn't even thinking about it

44:19

Actually We did the interview At Cross Conference And Ligon's assistant Told us He only has 45 minutes

44:25

He has to be out the door So I was just like In my mind I'm like okay Next question What else do

44:30

I have to ask Ligon Duncan While he's here Thankfully I was able to set up A second interview with him

44:36

Where I got to talk to him About all the stuff That I think really matters That people should Not write him off For like The regulative principle

44:43

He literally wrote the book On the regulative principle And if you're a Presbyterian His covenant theology stuff

44:49

Is the best there is Being wrong That's the best

44:54

There is Yeah yeah But anyways I was just thinking about All the questions I needed to ask And I didn't have time for Yeah so hindsight is 20 -20

45:04

No that's That's fair And I do want to get to Some of our listener questions

45:09

Because there's So many good ones But these are just questions I have You know Seeing you do what you do

45:14

Listening to him And I know that was the thing That stuck out to me So I'll ask two quick questions And we'll move to listener questions

45:20

And those will go kind of quick What do you feel like You learned about Ligon That you didn't know

45:28

And about Doug That you didn't know Going in Something you took away

45:33

That you were like Okay that I didn't realize He was going to say that I don't know that I learned anything about Ligon Maybe his middle name

45:40

You know Okay What was his middle name I maybe I don't even remember But it's on there

45:45

So if I need it I can go back and check I must have forgotten too Yeah You know

45:51

I think Ligon Is truly It's not an act It's not an act He's not a politician He is truly

45:56

One of the kindest And I don't mean that In like a sissy way I mean that Like you know The fruit of the spirit way

46:01

You know He is truly One of the kindest Gentlest Most faithful brothers

46:08

I have ever met And he truly is a friend And I think that People writing him off Over some uncareful comments

46:17

In an interview Over something That's just so Politically charged right now Is Is silly

46:23

So To not answer your question And say what I want to say No Yeah Yeah It's like listen

46:31

Every Every person that we respect Is going to disappoint us John Piper Had Rick Warren At his pastors conference

46:39

Terrible mistake You know You know John Piper has cussed From the pulpit

46:44

You know We all make mistakes John MacArthur Said something stupid about PTSD And OCD And You know

46:52

Just there's nobody Who hasn't made a mistake The guy who discipled me Mark Dever Has admitted that he

46:57

Probably shouldn't have given out Divided by faith As broadly as he did So Anyways His ministry is still

47:05

Incredibly fruitful Useful Valuable Do not write him off And then as far as Doug Wilson goes

47:11

You know I think what was really fascinating Was Actually being in Moscow It took me 16 hours

47:18

It was like A series of Misfortunate events To get to Moscow And I show up In the middle of nowhere

47:25

Idaho In this small city Of 25 ,000 people And you see

47:31

A microcosm Of the culture war There's a university With about 20 ,000 people

47:37

Staff Students All that stuff And then there's like Everyone else in town Is somehow related to Doug Wilson You know

47:43

In their church Yeah And It literally When you walk down Their sort of main street

47:51

Which is like They call it downtown Which is kind of sad It's like Six blocks But it's like There are pride flags

47:58

Hanging from some of these Shops And then The other shops are like They belong to Canon Press Or New St.

48:05

Andrews So it's not like They're on the internet Seeing the culture war Out there and responding to it

48:10

It's right there In their small town In the middle of nowhere Idaho I thought that was fascinating That's Yeah And That's a cool observation

48:21

And it's great that you actually Get to go do that I mean You're not You're not on live Stream with Doug I mean

48:28

You were in the same room with him Yeah Well I chose that very intentionally Because I knew

48:33

So for example Like this show is great Like it's easy for you and I to chat And we're not talking about We're not getting deep in the weeds

48:41

Although we can But You know I got dad jokes ready to go I hope we get to that Yeah, yeah

48:48

But I decided early on With Room for Nuance I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna do

48:53

This I wanna be in the same room with someone I wanna Hopefully spend time with them A little bit

48:58

So we get to know each other Because I want the conversation To be as useful as possible And I think when you're trying to have

49:04

So like I had a guy on yesterday Andrew Spencer To talk about Creation care

49:10

Environmentalism He's a conservative Who's advocating for that It's a really complicated subject I wanna be able to look in the whites of your eyes

49:17

When we have that conversation And And so Same thing with Doug Wilson and Joe Rigney Like That conversation

49:25

Whether you think it was terrible Or edifying Would have been Very different If we had done it via remote

49:32

You know Being in the same room really helps And then I got to talk to Doug afterwards Which I thought was also

49:38

Really interesting Yeah That's awesome And I 100 % agree with you I think

49:44

I think this is a difficult medium To really have a conversation We do our best Because it's all we can do

49:50

But Yeah This is the post -COVID world Because Zoom introduced us to this opportunity

49:56

And now Other Stream yard and everything else All right Let's get to some of these

50:01

Social media questions And Because there are several of them We'll keep it pithy

50:06

Just answer You know Obviously take as long as you want I have nowhere to go But I don't wanna

50:12

Monopolize your time Keep it pithy Or take as long as I want Well Let me say it this way

50:18

I'm here to hang with Keith I got all day Okay Okay I just have so many

50:24

I guess is the thing Is that Because everybody Everybody wanted a piece of Sean And so So First question up For the

50:32

From our buddies At the Bible Dingers Because I asked them What question they would ask And they would say Ask him to tell everyone

50:38

His hot take on holidays So what is it about you and holidays? What is it What do you Are you

50:43

Are you a non -Christ Non -Christmas Non -Easter guy Are you If by hot take

50:49

They mean Observe the regulative principle And believe what the Puritans believe Then ooh It's hot

50:54

You know Yeah I think that there's a liturgical calendar In the Old Testament God's people

51:01

Who were Coming under the Mosaic Law Were given Holy days To observe

51:06

In the Holy Land As the nation of Israel I think in the New Covenant You see all of those holy days

51:12

That whole liturgical calendar Fulfilled by Christ Even the Sabbath If you are in Christ You are in your

51:17

Sabbath rest We now observe the Lord's Day And so I think That is our liturgical calendar From Sunday to Sunday I think the problem comes

51:26

Whenever you try to Create holy days Out of thin air Which the Bible does not prescribe

51:31

There's no prescription for Christmas Or Easter in the Bible Every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday The problem with that Is manifold

51:39

I don't know if you want me to Get into that But Anytime God's people Go to worship God In a way that he has not prescribed

51:46

Problems arise Okay Can I ask a follow -up question? Please Just because This is an interesting thing

51:53

I did a show back on Christmas About celebrating Christmas So I may take a different view But we don't do it

51:58

In our church We don't have a worship service That's Christmas We don't have worship Now We do talk about resurrection

52:04

Typically on Resurrection Sunday But I preach verse by verse So whatever text I'm in Is going to be what I'm in Well, yeah

52:10

So With that being said Do you think that Celebrating a holiday

52:17

But not as a worship time Is still not something That we should do as Christians And I'm just curious

52:22

Yeah, so Going back to Romans 14 One person observes one day as holy And another person does not

52:28

I think this is a matter of Christian conscience So That doesn't mean There's not a theologically right answer

52:34

And it also doesn't mean That we shouldn't try to convince people Of the theologically right answer But we should do so In such a way that recognizes

52:41

That if brothers disagree with us Even if it's a sin That like They just have to give an answer

52:46

To the Lord And this is not a first order issue So I think Where I would want to draw A hard line

52:52

Is for churches Binding the consciences Of their members By requiring them

52:57

To participate in their Liturgical calendar Because if I'm a member Of your church I, you know

53:03

Like I'm committed to you So Whatever you do On a Sunday morning Is something that If I'm committed to you

53:09

I need to participate in So I think Churches need to be Extra vigilant

53:14

And careful Not to unnecessarily Bind people's consciences Over homeschool Over holy days

53:20

Over X, Y, or Z I don't think a church Should have a Christmas tree I don't think Christmas trees are pagan

53:27

And even if they used to be They're not today Nobody looks at a Christmas tree And thinks about Worshiping the God of whatever

53:32

Okay But People do Disagree People's consciences Will be bound over A Christmas tree or not

53:39

Up on the stage When you're worshiping On a Sunday morning So I think churches Should avoid that I think that where the

53:45

The freedom comes Is for individual Christians And individual families To work through that As they see fit

53:50

Not rendering a judgment On other Christians With whom they disagree I think that's a great answer

53:56

And honestly I mean We haven't had a Christmas tree For years And we don't have one In the church anywhere

54:01

Not even It's not on the chancel It's not anywhere We just don't We just don't do it And there are a few people Oh well why don't we do

54:06

Christmas trees Well we just We're not doing that here You can do it at your house It's fine You know You can have a Christmas tree In every bedroom

54:11

Whatever We don't care That's right And that's a whole other issue

54:17

The American flag Thing is a Whole other conversation Well that was That's great And maybe

54:22

Maybe what I could do Is I can I can encourage you To come back on with me In December And we'll talk about Christmas That'd be great

54:29

Just to have An entire episode On that topic Alright Manuel Monadero I think

54:36

I'm saying His name incorrectly I apologize Manuel He said If you weren't a Baptist What denomination

54:42

Would you be? I think that's a great question Yeah I think I'd probably be In the PCA Okay That's fair That's fair Yeah I mean

54:51

They've just They're holding fast I mean I think their polity I think Presbyterian polity

54:56

Will always lead To the death Of their denomination A hierarchical superstructure Of interlocking court systems

55:02

If the germ gets in At the bottom It's always going to make Its way up to the top Having said that Presbyterians Have a long track record

55:12

Of maintaining faithfulness Even if they lose The denomination And they have to go Start a new one The faithful Presbyterians Are going to do that So like If I was

55:20

If I moved to a town And there's only One reformed church In that town If I had to choose

55:25

Between going to A squishy Baptist church Or a reformed PCA Like Yeah Redundant Or going to a

55:32

PCA church I would go to the PCA church Yeah I've actually That's funny

55:38

Because A while back I said on my program I had a little different view I said if I had a choice

55:43

Between a Baptist church And a Presbyterian church I would choose the Baptist Even if it wasn't reformed But what I meant was

55:49

It would have to be solid In every other way It would You know Because I do believe When I say squishy

55:55

I'm talking about Pragmatic And all that other stuff And that's And that's what people Thought I meant And I had to come back

56:00

And clarify I said no If it's not holding fast To God's word And those things Obviously we can differ

56:06

On Calvinism But I just You know I'm like you If it was a squishy You know

56:12

Church that's That's Not holding fast To God's word And those things And sure I'm going to go To the PCA church

56:18

Absolutely Yeah Absolutely Alright Poppy Carlton asked

56:24

Could your level of Jiu Jitsu Beat my level of Karate? So I think this is A great conversation What level are you

56:30

In Jiu Jitsu? I'm a brown belt Then you can definitely Beat my Karate I have no doubt

56:37

If it was anything over blue I was going to say You probably got me So Yeah Yeah Well I'm going to Sorry go ahead

56:44

I was going to say I did I did Jiu Jitsu For a while And I did go To do a competition And I got wiped

56:50

I did two fights I lost both And the second one I was so demoralized Because the first guy Beat me so badly

56:56

I was like not even The second fight I was I shouldn't have lost But I still did Because I lost

57:01

My confidence But I do love I do love Jiu Jitsu But I've been a Karate Student and teacher

57:07

For 30 years I started Karate In 1994 I have a fifth degree Black belt in Shotokan So Real Karate Not McDojo Karate Yeah I mean

57:17

I do work with A lot of kids So You know We still We teach them

57:23

The real techniques And everything But what we call Bunkai Which is understanding The Kata movements I have to water down Some things for kids

57:30

You know You don't teach kids To punch people in the throat And kick people in the groin You know Unless it's for self defense So So there are

57:35

There are Nuances To To that But I do I do have a problem

57:41

With McDojos for sure And guys who just Give away rank Which is a Huge problem It's like It's like diploma mills

57:47

In the In the Christian world Where people have You know Multiple doctorates Who've never been to seminary And guys who have

57:52

Multiple black belts Who've never really Been in a fight I say if you've never Had a black belt If you've never had A black eye You don't deserve

57:57

A black belt So That's right Yeah Yeah Alright so But one day

58:03

Hey somebody did say this They said James Kern said We should You and I should Have a pay per view fight To raise money for missions

58:09

So if you ever want To come to Jacksonville I have the mats And you can just Wear me out For thirty seconds

58:15

And then we'll That's about probably As long as it would Take you to tap me I'd be down That'd be fun

58:23

Kofi Kofi asked I don't know If you know Kofi He's a pastor

58:28

He's a great guy He asked who can Bench more The answer is you I know absolutely The answer is you

58:33

But what do you bench? You know man I haven't benched for a while I used to be a power lifter

58:39

I think my best was like 395 So not that Not that great I didn't use gear

58:44

Or anything So Well the fact The fact that you're In triple digits Means you beat me So There you go

58:50

No I can I can bench triple digits But not much I've That's just not

58:55

Not my strong suit So Yeah That's okay All right Why are you a Mexican food snob?

59:01

These are great questions By the way What does that even mean? Yeah so I When it comes to Mexican food

59:07

I will I will either eat Like Trash Like Taco Bell I know what

59:12

I'm getting I'm gonna have diarrhea later Right? The rest of my night Is gonna be bad But I'm choosing

59:18

To have Taco Bell Or Like authentic Mexican food I grew up in Southern California Like really good

59:24

Mexican food And by the way Here in Alabama We have all these amazing Taquerias Because All these

59:31

Migrants come up And they open these Little tienditas And they open up Taco shops in the back And we have amazing

59:37

Mexican food I'll eat that But I will not eat Middle of the road White people Mexican food I mean I will

59:43

I will if I have to If it's like You know We're going out to lunch And there's no other option I visited

59:48

Do you know who Lim Lane is? He's a pastor down there by you Lim is one of the guys Who asked a question Hold on wait

59:53

Who is Oh wait Lim is the one who Asked the Mexican food question There you go There you go I was teaching And he's in Lake Butler, Florida And they have like Two restaurants

01:00:00

They have like A restaurant called Jack's And this Terrible Mexican restaurant You know And And so I ate it there

01:00:08

You know But I don't want to I don't want to eat White people Mexican food If I don't have to Okay So If I didn't realize

01:00:17

You were that close Because Lim Lim is only an hour from me And Lim and I Used to go to the same Pastor's meeting

01:00:23

We would do this Meeting every couple months And get together So I've known him for a while That's cool man

01:00:28

If you're ever that close again You gotta come see me And Maybe we can plan a thing Where I can do something

01:00:34

With both of you guys You know Yeah that'd be fun That'd be fun We'll do our We'll do our fight for sure

01:00:39

Yeah Get the mats out Because I teach at our church Our karate class is actually In our church It's a

01:00:44

It's a It's a Once a week karate club Thing that we do Russell Alright Sorry Russell Berger is also

01:00:53

A brown belt in Jiu Jitsu He was a four time Army Ranger A A four time deployed

01:00:58

Army Ranger He's a legit Killing machine And we used to have Jiu Jitsu mats

01:01:04

In our In our upstairs space At the church So our studio was One half of the room And the other half

01:01:09

Of the room was Where we would go Try to kill each other During lunch time And I'm not kidding When I tell you

01:01:14

Russell has put me to sleep In our church building Nice Yeah Nice I've come downstairs

01:01:22

Sweaty It's kind of out of it Are you okay Yes I just need time To wake back up From the rear naked choke

01:01:31

Alright So I've got Some serious More serious ones And again You know

01:01:36

Spend as much time As you want on each But real quick One last funny one Jake Korn You know

01:01:42

Jake Korn From From Facebook He wants to know Why you keep making fun Of him on your show And I have no idea What he's talking about So maybe you do

01:01:49

Yeah Jake Korn Is One of those guys Who has a good sense of humor Doesn't take himself Too seriously

01:01:55

And Sarcasm And mocking Is like my love language Okay So if I Start making fun of you

01:02:01

That feels like We have We have a connection So I've never actually Met Jake And maybe in person

01:02:07

We would hate each other But as far as online We like to make fun Of each other Well he

01:02:12

I am Personal friends with him He's He and I In fact we just had lunch About a month ago

01:02:18

And because he lives A couple hours north In Savannah Jake's a great guy And we've been friends

01:02:24

Since he's been on the show Many times So So if you come If you come To see us We'll have to get

01:02:29

Jake To come see you as well And you make fun of him To his face I think he would be I think he would be

01:02:34

More than happy for that Nice All right A little bit more Serious questions here

01:02:41

You changed the name Of your church Somebody's asking About that Why you changed the name

01:02:46

And did you leave The church of God Yeah Ooh Somebody Somebody's keeping up So Susan Susan White Asked that question

01:02:54

Okay I don't know her Yeah So the church Revitalization It was a church Of God church

01:03:00

Which If you don't know Much about them No creed But the Bible Female pastors No church membership

01:03:08

And It's a It's kind of A crazy story I tell the story A little bit In Rebelty or Will But it's kind of A crazy story

01:03:14

Of how I got Connected to this church And if Any other church That held To any of those beliefs

01:03:19

Asked me to be their pastor In a million years I would say no But God has a sense of humor Providentially This actually

01:03:27

Worked And Not under my preaching But They stopped being Egalitarian And became Complementarian And Then they

01:03:35

Adopted church members Anyways All this stuff I told them When they interviewed me I think the church of God Is unhealthy I think it's dangerous

01:03:42

If I come to be your pastor I'm going to Lead you out of the church of God And They Said okay

01:03:49

But I don't think they believed me Because I got there And I started doing all the stuff I said I was going to do And they were like What the heck

01:03:55

And I was like Oh Okay Because I told you I was going to do this But now

01:04:01

You're surprised That I'm doing this So anyways It took us about four years To get the church To a place of Health Amongst the members

01:04:10

So that we could Actually leave the denomination And And we did And so we changed

01:04:15

The name of the church But we actually changed The name of the church first Because it was Sixth Avenue church of God And it was really hard To invite people to church

01:04:23

When that's in your name You know So I actually Don't like that name either

01:04:30

I have another name For a church Which I can't share with you Because then people will steal it It's literally The perfect name for a church

01:04:37

Is it Elevation Part 2 Part 2 Yeah It's Grace Community I just thought of it

01:04:45

Yeah So anyways But we The part of the stipulations

01:04:50

Were that you could only put Community If you changed If you took Church of God out You could only replace it

01:04:55

With community And so for me That seemed like it was A pretty good trade -off So we changed it from Sixth Avenue church of God To Sixth Avenue community church

01:05:05

Yeah Nice Yeah Okay So Scott Packett Asked this question

01:05:11

He said I wonder if It has cost him Friendships To go to Moscow And do the follow -up interview

01:05:17

With Doug Wilson And Joe Rigney You've already talked A little bit About your experience

01:05:22

Or he asked about your experience But have you Did you get negative feedback From going out there? You don't have to name names

01:05:27

Or anything But did anybody Tell you that was a bad idea Or you shouldn't have done that Or you were wrong? Yeah You know

01:05:33

I think the whole Moscow embargo thing Is halfway true I think it's I think it's halfway true

01:05:39

The truth of the I think Where I think it's wrong Is that There's not really

01:05:45

Like a cabal You know Like a shadowy syndicate Of evangelicals Pulling levers

01:05:50

In a back room Trying to keep Douglas Wilson From being platformed That doesn't mean

01:05:56

That people aren't trying To keep Douglas Wilson From being platformed The question is why Some people would

01:06:02

Describe it To more nefarious purposes You know He's a truth teller And they don't like that You know And they're against the prophet

01:06:07

I take the view That he's kind of just Spent 20 years Saying some pretty wild stuff

01:06:13

That doesn't mean I disagree with him On everything I actually find him Incredibly helpful In some areas But he also

01:06:19

You know Whether he's talking about The history of chattel slavery In America Or you know Talking about I don't know

01:06:27

I don't want to get Into all of it But you know Douglas Wilson's Public ministry As well as I do And he gets right up To the line

01:06:33

On a lot of things And that is difficult For some people to stomach Every leader Has things

01:06:39

That they've said Or done That is You know A little wonky But with Douglas Wilson There's kind of like Five or ten

01:06:47

Of those things So Is the Is the embargo real Well kind of But maybe not

01:06:53

For the reasons That people think Back to me I have had some Friends Express Express some

01:06:59

Very serious And strong concerns About my decision To do the interview But it

01:07:05

None of it Was like Actually One of them Was a little hysterical

01:07:12

But But none of them Have been like You're not my friend anymore Or you're cut off Or we're not going to Partner with you

01:07:19

In any way Because You have partnered With Douglas Wilson On that episode That's a long answer

01:07:25

I hope it's edifying No No It's helpful You know I've I'm not Connected to Moscow In any

01:07:33

In any official sense But I've done a lot of I've done a lot of jokes And And use their name And Doug Knows I've done

01:07:40

I've did a debate with him Well A mini debate with him On the subject Of post -millennialism And I use his name all the time

01:07:46

With his permission I've I asked him personally Does it bother you That I call myself Harbor Freight Doug Wilson And I Actually take pictures

01:07:52

Of the people And sign You know The little joke You know It's a funny thing So I don't have As a negative opinion

01:07:58

I see Like you said The areas I agree And the areas I disagree But I do receive emails

01:08:03

Periodically from people Who say You shouldn't be Even mentioning Doug Wilson You shouldn't even be

01:08:09

Saying his name You shouldn't You shouldn't You know This is not funny This guy is This and that And the other

01:08:15

And so I I kind of get Where you're coming from You know From what I'll just say

01:08:21

Like I'm thinking about Young guys in my church Okay Do I want The young men

01:08:27

In my church To have A Moscow Flavored ministry The Moscow mood ministry

01:08:32

I don't I don't want that I I think As careful As Doug is

01:08:38

With his view Of sarcasm And the serrated edge And all of that The obvious fruit From people

01:08:44

Both in person And on the internet Who try to do What Doug Wilson does Is pretty bad fruit

01:08:49

I don't want my people To be post millennial I don't want them To be theonomous I'd be happy For them to homeschool

01:08:55

But I wouldn't want them To hold the homeschooling position We homeschool I would be happy For them to do that But not to hold

01:09:02

Their position In quite the same way That Doug does None of that In my mind

01:09:07

Means that He's a heretic I think maybe The most emphatic And severe

01:09:13

Pushback That I've gotten From the episode Hasn't actually been In relation To the Moscow mood Stuff at all It's actually been

01:09:19

From PCA people Who are like Swearing up and down That because of His federal vision

01:09:24

He is a heretic I mean I had One PCA buddy I won't tell you His name here But I mean

01:09:30

I can show you The text message It's a wall of text Where he's trying To show me Demonstrate the fact That Doug is a heretic

01:09:36

And listen If you really think That Doug is a heretic Then you're right To push back I just disagree

01:09:41

With your assessment At all Yeah No I think that's fair And yeah Like you said

01:09:46

People are coming To different conclusions Based on things That they know That maybe I don't know Or things that they've heard But what

01:09:52

I've seen And heard is There are things I agree with Things I disagree with And that's

01:09:57

Pretty Pretty Pretty common About everybody That's a teacher

01:10:03

Especially a teacher At his level Where he's got You know People that are following him And people that Defend him when they shouldn't

01:10:08

And people that You know That happens too Tim Archer Asked this question

01:10:16

This might be a simple one What's your favorite Bible translation? That's a great question For a pastor You know

01:10:23

I think I used to Would have said The ESV But I actually think The NIV 2000

01:10:30

Not the one Where they started Getting wonky On the gender stuff I think that I think the

01:10:36

ESV Can be clunky Sometimes In their In their attempt To go for a literal translation It's not as clunky

01:10:43

As the NASB But it can be clunky Sometimes And this is This is also

01:10:49

Like What do you mean For like sermon prep Well sermon prep The NASB is helpful Not as helpful

01:10:54

As actually knowing Greek What would I Prefer the members Of my church to use

01:10:59

You know So The message is not A Bible translation It's Like a paraphrased commentary

01:11:06

I think The NLT Is a little Too Dynamic equivalent For me Although D .A. Carson Argued And still argues

01:11:14

For the legitimacy Of that So that gives me A little bit of pause But I think If you're in the CSB Early NIV ESV world

01:11:21

That's a pretty Tight shot group That I'm Happy with Cool Sounds good Yeah we

01:11:26

I preach from the ESV Because that's What's in the pews And I figure If somebody comes in Who doesn't have a Bible They're gonna

01:11:31

Grab the one That's in front of them And so I just I want it to Sound the same You know

01:11:37

Our elders all have Different Bibles One has a new American standard One has a new King James So I We're not winning

01:11:43

That battle As far as bringing Us all together But at least The new person Who doesn't know What they're reading Or maybe it's the

01:11:48

First time they've Held a Bible In years They're gonna Sound the same It's gonna sound the same As what's coming From the pulpit Yeah Do you believe

01:11:56

This is from A person called Cleansed Leper He said do you believe The gospel coalition Has lost its relevance

01:12:02

And if not Who do you believe Their target audience Is now And that's a good

01:12:08

Question I think it's It's a complicated Question So allow me to Nuance my answer

01:12:17

The The reality Perception matters Perception matters Over the last

01:12:23

Five to seven years I know that there Is a massive swath Of reformed

01:12:28

Evangelicalism That no longer Pays attention To the gospel coalition It's just a fact

01:12:34

They just don't Many of They would have They would have Read the articles That would have been On the blogs

01:12:40

They would have Used them as resources If If a TGC video Came up in their feed

01:12:45

On their YouTube timeline Or whatever They would have Probably seen Probably clicked on it And watched And now they don't

01:12:51

So in some sense You have to say That it has lost Some relevance Having said that I know for a fact

01:12:59

That TG It's not like I'm like I'm not a board member You know Anything like that I'm friends with Colin Hansen But we don't like Talk every day

01:13:06

But I know That TGC is Growing It's still growing It's not like They're They're dying

01:13:11

Or anything like that So It seems like The relevance For them Has probably shifted We could speculate

01:13:17

On to where it shifted Or as to why It has shifted But yeah

01:13:22

Its relevance Has certainly shifted I'm gonna ask you Two more questions One serious

01:13:27

And one We'll end on a funny note That way it'll be A nice positive Fun question

01:13:33

But this This one's a little more serious This is from a friend It's at Truthseeker3222 On Twitter But I know him personally

01:13:39

We actually have lunch together And he asked this question He says that In your interview

01:13:46

With Doug Wilson You said you don't agree With theonomy Would you And This is

01:13:53

The way he says it I'm gonna I'm gonna reword his question Because he says Can you ask him to define Theonomy in detail

01:13:58

And how he thinks A theonomist would apply Theonomy In addition Ask him a thorough Scriptural answer

01:14:04

As to why he should not Expect the death penalty For adultery Okay, that's a lot So how about I ask this

01:14:10

When you say you disagree With theonomy What do you mean by that? What parts of theonomy

01:14:15

Do you think are Are inapplicable For the church Or do you think Theonomy in general

01:14:21

Is just not a helpful term Sort of like Liggs said He just thinks Theonomy was It was a Something that he had to deal with Years ago

01:14:27

And now it's reared Its ugly head again What are your thoughts? Ma 'am So let me just First of all say

01:14:33

Russell Berger and I On Defend and Confirm Podcast Just finished a series On theonomy Where we walk through All of our critiques

01:14:39

So if you want to hear A like A significant Thorough Biblical Historical Critique Of theonomy

01:14:48

We do that there This is probably not The venue for that So Sure I think

01:14:54

I think what's difficult is When you use the word theonomy You immediately have to Ask Which version of theonomy

01:14:59

Are you Are you talking about I think general equity Theonomy Is a little silly

01:15:05

It's It's It's kind of It's It's like It's kind of Defined Like God's law

01:15:10

We just want to apply God's law We want to do so principally Well I think All Christians Want to do that Particularly I think the heart

01:15:20

Of the issue With theonomy Is the question Of covenants Where do you View yourself

01:15:25

Under which covenant And how does that Flow out So with a Baptist hermeneutic

01:15:30

I see a significant Discontinuity Between the covenants Not Not Not dispensational

01:15:37

But I think It really does come down To the question of What do you see

01:15:44

Secular society As Do you see Do you see society The civil magistrates Under Any kind of covenant

01:15:50

With God That is binding In relation to the Mosaic law And the answer to that Is no I think Secular societies

01:15:56

Are under the Noahic covenant That was given At Genesis 9 Which is then Elaborated on In Romans 13

01:16:02

Which gives the government The ability to Use the sword To punish evil And reward good

01:16:07

And then they're going to say Well by what standard Do you define Evil and good And that leads to A whole other conversation

01:16:13

But that's I think maybe The shortest answer I can give you In On this platform

01:16:19

No that's great And And I do I'm glad that you You mentioned your Your video

01:16:25

If you'll send me the link I'll put it in the show notes Because I think people Would be interested in And I know I'm going to go listen to it

01:16:30

Because this is This is a subject That you know We've dealt with And I love R. Scott Clark When I had him on the show

01:16:36

He said I always salute General equity When he walks by So So When you said

01:16:44

General equity Is a little silly I thought that was Kind of funny In the same spirit As he said

01:16:49

All right Well I know There's more questions But some of them Are a little harder We take longer

01:16:54

And some of them Are just We've kind of covered In other areas So this is the last one And I think for me Very important You've now met

01:17:01

The real Doug Wilson And you've met The Harbor Freight Doug Wilson So the question

01:17:06

That is being asked By Travis Van Meter Who's a friend of mine Is who was more impressive The real

01:17:11

Doug Wilson Yeah Or the Harbor Freight Doug Wilson Definitely the real Doug Wilson You know Yeah By a mile

01:17:18

You know You know It's interesting Doug I had dinner

01:17:24

With him And his wife Nancy He is everything That you would expect Him to be He is intelligent

01:17:29

He's affable Dare I say it He is nuanced I asked him A thousand questions

01:17:35

Over our dinner I wanted it to be A learning opportunity Though I disagree With him On some pretty significant

01:17:41

Secondary matters Of doctrine I still figured Like yeah I have a lot to learn From this brother

01:17:49

And yeah He is everything That you would expect Him to be And so I was really encouraged

01:17:55

By our time together Having said that Wow Can I just say The Harbor Freight Doug Wilson You are the best

01:18:01

Knock off version Of Doug Wilson That there could be You know You are the Diet Mountain Lightning Of Doug Wilson Well I appreciate that And I appreciate

01:18:14

How silly That even the question is This whole thing started With a picture With me and Another guy

01:18:21

And he looked like He looked like He looked like Jeff Durbin And I looked like A little bit like Doug Wilson So we said So I think

01:18:29

Jeff Durbin Reminds me of Chris Angel Yes Yes He is a karate guy

01:18:35

Too right If you took A karate guy And told me That he was really Into magic For like a decade

01:18:42

And then he moved To the You know The southwest part Of the United States That would be

01:18:49

Jeff Durbin Yeah I can imagine Him preaching In his sunglasses On a Sunday morning Oh well

01:18:55

Yeah No Do you know Greg Moore Deadman Walking Podcast Well he and I Got a picture

01:19:02

And I put Harbor Freight Jeff Durbin And Doug Wilson Because he looks like Jeff and I look like Doug And that's

01:19:08

How it all took off And became fun So Well Sean man I appreciate you Taking time today

01:19:14

Just to get to Know you better And for the audience To get to know you better I'm going to point them Towards the shows

01:19:20

If they haven't seen The show with Lig I encourage them to go see that If they haven't seen the show With Doug and Joe I encourage that And obviously

01:19:26

This show on Theonomy I think would be very Beneficial for people So I'll take those links And do that Is there anything else

01:19:33

You want to share with people Any projects you have going on Or anything you want To remind people As we're Getting ready to close

01:19:39

Well I wanted to Tell you a story real quick If that's okay Do you have time Sure No I'm good

01:19:45

Yeah Have I ever told you The story about my friend With the big pumpkin head No No Would you like to hear it

01:19:52

I would love it Oh is this a dad joke Okay go ahead No this is not a dad joke Oh it's not a dad joke I have a dad joke

01:19:57

But this is just a story Of my friend who has A big pumpkin head Okay go ahead This is how he got it I mean literally A pumpkin head

01:20:03

So he found a genie In a lamp one day You know what I'm talking about A genie I know what a genie is

01:20:08

So he loves the lamp The genie comes out He gets three wishes Wish number one He obviously asks

01:20:15

For all the money In the world And he gets it Genie grants his wish Now he's rich Richer than Elon Musk And everyone else combined

01:20:22

But what's the one thing Money can't buy Love Right so Wish number two He wishes for the most

01:20:29

Beautiful woman in the world And genie grants his wish And he has the most Beautiful woman in the world So now he has all the money

01:20:36

In the world And he has the most Beautiful woman in the world What else could he possibly Wish for I mean money can buy everything

01:20:42

And what money can't buy He has He has one wish left And this is where I think

01:20:48

He kind of drops the ball He wishes for a big pumpkin head Isn't that weird

01:20:58

Yes it is very weird Is that it

01:21:03

Is that the story That's the story I mean he had one wish left He could have wished for anything

01:21:09

And he wished for a big pumpkin head Why Why Why did he wish for a big pumpkin head I don't know

01:21:15

Okay The fact that you're Is that your child Who just yelled A big pumpkin head He loves to try to steal my thunder

01:21:23

Okay And she was like three seconds too late Okay That was probably a little disappointing

01:21:31

Let me try this one Alright I was in Germany I was in Germany Doing like a reformation tour

01:21:37

And I went to go visit The graveside of Beethoven You know who I'm talking about Sure Not the dog from the 90's movies

01:21:44

No I The composer Right Yes So I went and I met his gravesite

01:21:51

And I'm thinking Wow this is powerful And I hear Beethoven's 9th playing Do you know what I'm talking about His symphony

01:21:56

I Yes I can't remember it in my head But I know what you're talking about Yeah And so I'm looking around And I'm thinking

01:22:03

Wow this is so moving But I can't There's nobody playing the instruments There's no speakers So now

01:22:09

I'm a little confused But I had to leave So I came back the next day To try to figure it out When I show up the next day

01:22:14

I hear Beethoven's 8th And now I'm thinking I'm being pranked or something You know like Ashton Kutcher is going to Jump out of the bushes

01:22:21

And tell me I'm being punked There's no videos There's no speakers There's no nothing So I mean

01:22:28

I had to go But I couldn't sleep that night It was keeping me awake Where is this music coming from I pushed back my flight

01:22:34

My flight home So I could go back And investigate a third day I show up On the third day I hear Beethoven's 7th

01:22:40

Playing And that's when it hit me This guy is decomposing You know what

01:22:49

I'm saying Oh no no I get it I get it That was great Because it went 9 8

01:22:55

No no D Okay He's decomposing

01:23:00

That's great Wonderful Wonderful Sean Well I appreciate you being on I appreciate you sharing

01:23:07

About your ministry And all the things That you have going on And your wonderful Dad jokes Oh yeah

01:23:13

So thank you for For that And Appreciate you being on Hey I think humor

01:23:19

Is an unlisted Fruit of the spirit Brother Thank you for your ministry Thank you for Helping Christians Be happy And smile

01:23:26

And laugh more Can I pray for your ministry Before we go Would love for that Yes please Lord Thank you for my brother

01:23:33

Keith Thank you for Building him in such a way That He Finds joy

01:23:40

In bringing Other Christians Joy We pray that you would Bless his ministry Lord Help him not get bogged down In any controversies

01:23:47

But to just walk The faithful path Help him to be A faithful Father Husband Pastor And bless this

01:23:56

Podcast To the glory of your name We pray Amen Amen Thank you

01:24:01

Sean I super appreciate it Very much Yep Yep And I want to thank All of you for being a part

01:24:07

Of your Calvinist podcast Today I want to say Keep in mind Again That if you want to Get a hold of me You can do so Through KeithFoskey .com

01:24:13

Thank you for listening To the show My name is Keith Foskey And I've been your Calvinist May God bless you