The American Churchman: Virtue and Leadership

Memorial Day, Family Stories, and a Brief Show Update

Welcome to the American Churchman Podcast, where we encourage men to take responsibility in their lives, love the Lord, love their families, love their community and their church. I'm your host, John Harris, and my co-host, as always, Matthew Pearson.

How are you doing, Matthew?

I'm doing good, John. I'm doing good. I'm excited to be here, as always. How are you doing?

Yeah, busy. Good. I've got a few deadlines I'm trying to meet for writing this week, so I might not do as many podcasts. We're a little late on the podcast, and part of that is some good news. I know last week, for those watching the American Churchman, I did an interview, and it was a good interview.

It was with Pastor Jerry Dorris. We talked about anons and online etiquette, but my computer was spazzing out on me, and I had to finish out the podcast on my phone. But the good news is I replayed—I don't know what you call it.

I restored, I guess, my computer. I did it twice. It was such a nightmare, but now it seems to be working fine, so we'll have a smooth podcast today.

There you go. Maybe my Wi-Fi won't be bad this time, too.

Oh, right, yeah. Between my computer and your Wi-Fi, we were having it rough a little bit.

Yeah, but it's been good so far.

Yeah, you're actually more clear than I've seen you in a while.

There we go. There we go.

But anyway, yeah, things are good. I don't know if you did anything special for Memorial Day. I went to a festival. They have a little festival, a spring fest here. For the first time in my life, I got a veteran's discount, even though I'm not a veteran.

I put on my grandpa's World War II hat to honor him on Memorial Day. I had multiple people stop and thank me for my service. It was Army Air Corps, actually. Hold on. I have the hat. Hold on. Does this look to you like a military normal?

It doesn't to me, but people thought me wearing this meant...

It looks just like a hat. It doesn't look like you're impersonating someone who served, to me at least.

Yeah, it doesn't look like official military, but it just said U .S. Army Air Corps, which obviously the Air Force is the branch now. Air Corps goes back. I think it switched in the early 50s. By the Korean War, it was the Air Force.

Anyway, my grandpa was part of the Army Air Corps. I was explaining to people, no, I'm not a veteran. My grandpa was. I'm honoring him. Yes, E .M. Smith says it's stolen valor. That's right. I got some popcorn.

There was some cinnamon toast popcorn flavor. I got a bag for myself. My wife wanted a cheddar popcorn at this little thing, this booth. It was like $10. I give the money to the lady. She won't take it.

She's like, no, you're a veteran. I'm like, no, I'm not actually. I say my grandpa served in World War II. She goes, so did my grandpa. It's still free. That was my weekend. For some reason, that made my weekend, getting free popcorn.

I don't know why. Thanks, Grandpa, from the grave, still helping me get free stuff. Did you do anything special for Memorial Day?

No, sadly, not really. It was just, oh, now work isn't putting me on today. I just worked another one of my jobs for a few hours. I was putting up yard signs for a company. I was like, OK, well, hopefully a cop doesn't cite me or whatever because I need permission from this person or whatever.

I did that for a little bit and then just hung out. My fiance also worked that day. It wasn't too special. I have a fun living situation. I live with a buddy of mine, his wife, and their one-year-old daughter.

My roommate, his wife's brother came over and cooked jambalaya. My roommate, he blessed the food. He thanked God for the memory of those who have served for us. That was kind of like a, oh, yeah, it is Memorial Day, and I should be honoring those who have done that.

Yeah, my grandfather was also a World War II veteran, Navy.

Wow, you're probably one of the only Zoomers to have a grandpa who fought in World War II. That's extremely rare.

It's because my mom didn't have me until she was 42. It's wild to think about given I'm only, I'll be 24 in two days, and I somehow have a grandfather who fought in World War II.

Do you remember him?

I do, yeah. He passed away when I was, I want to say I was 12 years old.

Okay, yeah, that's special. My grandpa lived pretty long. He died last year at 101. That was like, for me, 10, 20 years beyond what most grandpas lived to. That was a special thing, I guess, because I got to, I don't know, it was weird.

I remember it was like 2016 or 17. I was having a conversation with him, and he starts mentioning this slave that he knew. I was like, what do you mean slave? It was an actual, it was someone who lived down the road from him in Mississippi who had been a slave, and he knew a Confederate soldier who had actually fought in the war when he was a kid.

I'm doing the math, and I'm like, that actually works. That's weird. Anyway, that's really cool to have those links to the past. Someone's already correcting you, saying it's Jambalaya, not Jimbalaya.

Oh, that's skippy.

All right.

He needs to get off my case.

Yeah, I'm not from, I hesitate to say, is it Louisiana or Louisiana? I'm not from there.

I don't know how to say it right. I don't really care, but maybe I'll fix it so as to be culturally sensitive to any Louisianians out there. I probably said that wrong too.

Cajuns, yeah. I won't tell you what my relatives in Mississippi call them. They have a different word for Cajuns. Anyway, we're going to start with an attribute of God like we usually do. This is the only fake attribute of God I think on the list, right?

It's not actually an attribute. It's an extension of.

I think there were some on the list that we could also say for others, but we kind of think of these as relational attributes, I guess you could say. But yeah, so today what we're going to be discussing is the wrath of God.

So I guess we'll just get started now. But yeah. All right. So as I said, today we'll be discussing the wrath of God. And as I always do, I'll start with two verses, one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament.

The scriptures have a lot to say about not only about God, but also about his wrath. But we're only focusing on two verses to talk about this today. So our first verse is Ezekiel 25, 17, where the text reads,.

And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes, and they shall know that I am the Lord when I shall lay my vengeance upon them. And then Romans 1, verse 18, the apostle Paul writes,.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. So, John, as you joked earlier about how wrath is a fake attribute of God, when we speak about the wrath of God, what we mean is the wrath of God can be characterized not necessarily as an attribute of God, but rather almost as a function of God's righteousness, whereby he exercises retributive justice against the wicked.

So while we can say that when we speak of wrath, oftentimes what we think of is sort of like an emotion of anger. And this could be like, there could be wrath, which is sinful. That's oftentimes how we speak of like the vice of wrath is in a specifically sinful manner.

But then there's also just anger or fury when you're stirred towards anger by something unrighteous that's happened. And when it's directed by your faculties and in a way that is well-mannered and ordered and it's not out of control, that is a just anger.

So when we speak about wrath, oftentimes we have this sense of emotion, but God himself, he is without passions. And thus we can't say that he literally burns with anger. Rather, when we speak about God, burning with anger, feeling a sense of wrath, the scriptures characterize him as such for the sake of our human minds being able to understand both the severity of sin and the manner by which God exercises his judgment.

So this wrath of God is manifested. And we'll talk about this a bit more at the end, because there's a lot of debate about, you know, not just like, there's lots of debates surrounding the atonement in general, but when talking about penal substitutionary atonement, we have a lot of discussion and debate about the nature of how is it that Christ bore the wrath of God?

Is there like a severance within the Godhead whereby Christ is separated from the father or something like that? So we're not going to talk about that just yet, but this wrath is, you know, part of the preaching of the gospel, because in the death of Christ, wrath was manifested, wherein Christ voluntarily underwent the punishment of sin in our place and becoming a curse for us.

As the apostle Paul speaks about in Galatians 3 .13, where he quotes the law talking about cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree. And this wrath is also manifested in the damnation of those, of those who do not have faith in Christ.

So speaking a bit more about what this wrath is. As I said, this wrath is essentially, it can be characterized as an extension or function of God's righteousness in the form of retributive justice. Therefore it can be characterized to be metaphorical, or if we want to use like a more fancy word, an anthropopathism.

That's another way we could say it. I think I've actually used that word in a past attribute. I don't remember, but so when we speak about God having, what was that?

I don't know if I could say it. Anthropopathism.

Anthropopathism. You have to do the path.

Yeah.

And it is a real word. You can look it up. It's kind of like an anthropomorphism, but, you know, it's talking about, you know, feelings of emotion and objects which ordinarily can't exercise emotion, such as like pathos.

Is that?

Yeah.

Oh, I see. Okay.

It sort of relates.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.

So God having wrath. This is a metaphorical. This is a metaphorical understanding of an extension of God's righteousness in the form of retributive justice.

God.

And the reason we say that is because God did not learn by experience to be wrathful or full of anger. It's not like God was like this in a certain state of being. He created man. Man did something bad.

And then God's like, oh, something finally went against my will. I feel this burning in me. I'm upset. And he kind of learns how to be wrathful and grows in it. No, it's that's not the case, but rather the God who is without passions.

He correct. He characterizes himself in such a way, as I said earlier, to accommodate human understanding, to show the severity of sin and the manner in which he executes judgment. So this wrath, when we talk about wrath, this can be distinguished into three general kinds.

And these distinctions I've, I've borrowed these from Richard Moller's, not his dictionary of Greek and Latin theological terms. I'm lifting my computer up. It's actually balance on the book, but on his in volume three of his post-reformation dogmatics.

But essentially it can be characterized in these three ways. It can be characterized as general wrath, temporal wrath, and everlasting wrath. God's general wrath is that which all of humanity is subjected to by virtue of the fall.

It's why we are characterized as children of wrath. And essentially it's God's judgment that we would be born into sin, that we'd be cut off from the garden of Eden and that we would be without, without his favor, without a supernatural grace.

That would be his general wrath. His temporal wrath is that wrath, which is manifested against both the godly and the ungodly in this life via earthly punishments for sin. And even in this one, even in temporal wrath, we would still distinguish between God's exercise of wrath against the godly and the ungodly and exercising wrath against the ungodly in this life.

God does so as a loving father towards his beloved children. He does this with love and discipline, sort of trying to direct them onto a better path. So in the same way that a father who is angry with his son and bears punishment to him, he may not be sinning in his anger.

Rather, this is just an exercise of, you know, giving a child a punishment to make them better. And it's done out of love for the child because he sees that this is what they need versus the sort of punishment in this earthly life for the ungodly.

This sort of temporal anger, he meets out as Lord or Prince rather than as loving father, whereby he treats these people as enemies by enacting revenge or giving punishment for sin. And then finally, the last one is God's everlasting wrath.

And this is characterized in his punishment for unbelievers in eternity, where he for all eternity subjects those who hate him to eternal torment. So now a bit more on the crucifixion and how Christ atones for sins.

In atoning for sins, Christ bore the wrath of God in the set of sinners, being a propitiation for sins. And this is somewhat pivotal in understanding of the gospel, seeing what we deserved was placed on Christ so that we may not go through it and that we in exchange receive the righteousness of Christ.

But even in saying this, we do have to be careful speaking in this way. This does not mean that God, remember, as we said before, God is without passions. This does not mean that God was burning with literal anger against Christ so as to cause a division or schism within the Godhead because, you know, God is perfectly unified.

All the persons share in essence. They all share the same will. Rather, it is that God brought about the penalty of sin on Christ so that he may be a substitute for sin. And I could go on a bit more about this, but I figured instead there's this book from Stephen Charnock, who actually has a great book on the attributes of God.

But in Stephen Charnock's book on the atonement, he has an incredible section on this. And it's a bit of a lengthy read, but I figure that it would actually give us a lot of, it would help us to understand what we mean in talking about the wrath of God when speaking of the atonement.

And he writes, and he essentially is saying why it is that we can say that Christ underwent wrath and what we mean by that. So he writes,. This crucified Redeemer only was able to effect this work. He was an infinite person consisting of a divine and human nature.

The union of the one gave value to the suffering of the other. The word of God was passed and is threatening. His justice would demand its right of his veracity. A sacrifice there must be to repay the honor of God by parent, by bearing the penalty of the law, which could not be done by the strength and holiness of any creature.

All the created force in the earth and the strongest force of angelic nature were too feeble for so great a task. Justice must have satisfaction. The sinner could not give it without suffering eternal punishment.

Jesus then puts himself into our place to free us from the arrest of justice and bear those strokes, which by virtue of the law, wrath had prepared for us. The dignity of his person puts a value upon his punishment and renders it acceptable for us.

It being a death superior in virtue to the death of worlds. It was a death, which justice required. And at the sight of it, justice was so calm that the sharp revenging sword drops out of its hand. God had smelt and it's so sweet a savor that he had fully pleased him.

He can now pardon the sins of believers with the glory of his righteousness, as well as of his grace. He can legally justify repenting center. God has been served and the passion of the redeemer, his justice and holiness were glorified and the law accomplished.

The honor of God is preserved. And the author of the law righted the justice of God Sweden. By this propitiation for sin, God is rendered propitious to guilty man and stretches out his arms of love instead of branching his sword of vengeance.

And that's the end of the quote. And the most important thing to note there is not that Christ suffered what we would call like, you know, eternal torment, because, you know, like how is God to be able to suffer for all of eternity, but rather it is that by virtue of the very person of God being, you know, eternal God, yet also man, he is able to undergo this as Tronach said, the dignity of his person, the dignity of his person puts a value upon his punishment.

And that's why Christ's sacrifice is acceptable for us. That's why we can say that Christ underwent the wrath of God in our stead, that we may bear take of the righteousness of him. And that all that to say is the wrath of God in a nutshell.

That was great.

Divine Impassibility and the Meaning of God’s Wrath

I do have a question and conceptual clarity asked it though, where in the Bible does it say that God is without emotions? I think you said passions, but I know that's a classical theology concept, but even Augustine I think talks about this, but how do you biblically frame that when God speaks of things like I mean, Jesus, I mean, you could say, I guess this was the hypostatic union,.

Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.

So maybe I should use a different, but God, even in the old Testament metaphors, like he wants to gather in his, his children and he cares for the Sparrows. And it seems like there's emotional language, right?

Yeah, certainly. So when we talk about God being without passions and we like make this claim, this is sort of those things where it's like saying, where does the Bible say the word Trinity, you know, or where does the Bible say, Jesus says I am God worship me.

It's not something which is explicitly stated, but rather it's when you read the whole scope of scripture, you sort of piece it together and you do this through reason, basically illuminated by the Holy ghost.

I was typing on my computer. Cause I was trying to actually pull up the Westminster confession of faith where it sort of it speaks of the character of God. And it actually has a lot of the scripture references.

Cause I thought that that may be helpful, but what the Westminster confession sites is acts 14, 11, and 15, where the text says when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices saying in the speech of Laconia, the gods are come down to us in likeness of men and saying, sirs, why do you do these things?

This is the apostles speaking. We also are men of like passions with you and preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities onto the living God, which made heaven and earth and the sea and all things that are therein.

So in characterizing the deity to the people of lice, Laconia they, they explicitly distinguish the divinity by saying, no, we are men of like passions with you. So that's like, I guess you could say a more explicit Bible verse, but essentially what it comes down to is the character of God, that God is not moved in the same way that we are.

And when the scripture speak of this, this is analogical language. And part of the reason why it's important to say that God is not moved with emotions and things like this is because is partly because of the fact that God is a promise making God.

Now anybody can make promises, but it's very easy to break those promises or not be loyal to those promises because you feel as if you've been wrong. You feel these things and emotions are very swaying.

Yet when we know that God is without passions, we can truly say that no matter what, God's not going to like have these feelings, which push them in one way or the other, rather God is going to stick to his promises.

So when we speak about God being without passions, we say this because it is of the character of God that he is eternal. He transcends these human emotions, which oftentimes move us in absurd manners.

And again, when the scripture speak about God as having passions or things like this, it's doing so in an analogical way. And the same way that we would say that, you know, God, you know, God has wings or God carries us in his womb or things like that.

So we recognize all the time that scripture speaks of, you know, very, you know, not so literal language about God. And so we sort of take that hermeneutical approach and apply it to God in consistency with his character throughout scripture.

And that sort of is how we get there. That's the word sell long version of my answer there.

Well, just so people know, I just looked this up and it's interesting to me. I didn't actually realize this, but the Westminster confession says there is, but one only living and true God who is infinite and being in perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible without parts, body parts, or passions.

That's actually where I just went to, to pull that ax verse because I knew that the Westminster, I couldn't remember the verse off the top of my head, but I remember that Westminster had said some had said that God was without passions.

And then also this is the 39 articles. There is, this is article one of the 39 articles. There is but one living and true God everlasting without body parts or passions. So this is something I actually, I'm going to just admit I have not thought through this really.

And so this is actually kind of new to me.

I don't know.

Maybe I've heard it.

I mean,.

I'm assuming that would have been maybe in a seminary class. I was asleep if they talked about it,.

But yeah,.

It strikes me as maybe my evangelical brain is so used to God expressing love. And I think a lot of the songs, especially that we imbibe are somewhat even effeminate, especially newer praise and worship songs.

And I don't listen to that on the radio or anything, but it's hard to not be an evangelical institutions and not hear those things. And so it,.

It see,.

It definitely reinforces that idea that God is very emotionally kind of invested in his creation, which when you hear he doesn't have passions or something, it just hits you weird.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway.

And that,.

Yeah,.

When we say that God's without passions, that doesn't mean that he's not like actually invested. If anything, the fact that he is without passions, like it's hard for us to conceptualize.

He's more invested,.

Right?

He has a stronger devotion and investment in us, which transcends the mere passions of human emotion. But if you want to sort of like get like a general understanding on that sort of thing, James E. Dollazal has a very great,.

Very brief book.

It's only 176 pages put out by reformation heritage books called all that is in God, evangelical theology and the challenge of classical theism. And that was pretty helpful for me. Or if you want to go through something, which is a bit more of a slog, you can just,.

I guess,.

Read Aquinas, but he can be a bit much sometimes.

Oh, yeah,.

I know.

Oh,.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

No,.

I was just going to say, I just looked it up and apparently there is a book about divine.

Impassibility,.

Which Dollazal actually contributed to. So if you want to get that too,.

I guess.

It's amazing. It is amazing. The depth of theology that comes from this, this book we have the Bible and how many things can be written about it. And anyway,.

Well,.

We're going to move on. I think that's, I'm gonna have to chew on that a little bit myself.

I,.

The first thing that came to mind was I'll just say this in closing, I guess, is when Romans one uses the word pathos, I think it's pathos to talk about the,.

The,.

The,.

The basically the disordered passions that, that lead you into greater depths of depravity. And,.

And,.

And,.

And this is presented as something that does kind of, it leads you in a direction,.

Right?

And that's what, I think that's what we're talking about here is God's not led in a direction by, by passions, whereas it's very human to be, to break even vows that you make and so forth.

It's,.

It's because you feel a certain way.

Anyway,.

Let's move on. Let's talk about the subject here, which is not to get into juicy details, which I think some people probably want and it attracts them to a video like this. And admittedly, I put the figures, I don't know if you saw it,.

Matthew,.

But I put the photos of four recent evangelical leaders who had some, I would consider moral failings. Although Brian chapels is the least of these, but Brian chapels is still quite notable, which we'll get to in a second.

And, you know,.

You,.

There's podcasts that will just devote time to getting into all the details. And I don't want to do that, but I do want to just briefly kind of summarize what's happened here in the last few months. And then talk about an article that, that I have for truth script where I tried to address this with Josh Bice.

But since then,.

There's been some more before we get to that though,.

I just,.

I just realized this,.

Matthew,.

I totally neglected this and I should say it. So first of all, truth script. If you like this podcast, please contribute to true script. It's a 501 C three, you go to true script .com. And I'll just say that we're having a meeting soon and we're going to be discussing some big plans.

And I,.

Yeah,.

Having the resources to do it is very important. So the other thing is there is one link in the info section for this video, and it is a link to Matthew Pearson's wedding registry. So I'll let Matthew talk about that, but I gave him permission.

I said,.

Yeah,.

Sure.

If there's people in the audience who know Matthew, they've listened and they want to contribute to that. That's totally fine.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

This is definitely the most griftery thing that I'm doing is using a internet clout for that. But no, it's just a, it was a little bit of a,.

You know,.

We,.

My fiance and I are working on our registry and stuff like that. And we have like a fund that people can contribute. And there were a few people that DM me asking like,.

Hey,.

Can I have like access to that or whatever? You know, I'd love to help you out. But you know, the thing is, is that with the wedding registry thing, it kind of links to all the details about the wedding.

And it's like,.

You know,.

I love all of you, but we are going to come to complete capacity. And I don't know if there's any weirdos out there that might show up and try and cause a disruption. So just for safety, but because I know some people were asking, we did make a Gibson go for some of the funds for that.

A lot of it will go into just like the honeymoon fund. And then like anything else after that will just be in like the savings, like for wedding stuff and things like that. So anything would of course be appreciated if you feel so inclined.

But, you know,.

I figured I just put that out there. A part of me does feel like,.

Oh,.

I feel like a grifter right now. But then,.

You know,.

The other part of me is like,.

You know,.

People are generous. People have asked, and if you don't want to, you don't have to. And so,.

You know,.

I said,.

I said,.

We'll just do it. And a lot of y 'all have been very helpful already. And just,.

You know,.

Just seeing the smile on my fiance's face when I let her know,.

Oh,.

This person has donated X amount. And just like,.

You know,.

It's really a, it's a great blessing and I'm more than thankful to God for it. So just figured I'd plug it one more time.

So,.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The young preacher is just starting out. It's not exactly the most,.

Uh,.

High paying,.

Uh,.

Position there. So I know for a wedding, obviously the gifts that come in, that was how my wife and I started out was wedding gifts.

And,.

Um,.

Some of that went to honeymoon, but then some of it went right into savings. And oh,.

Yeah,.

You were trying to start and all of that. And so,.

Um,.

All right,.

Well,.

Let's talk about the subject at hand.

So, um,.

Just to review real quick. So people know about the Steve Lawson situation. I don't think I have to say anything about that. Obviously he was kind of at the top of the evangelical reformed world. And he had a relationship with a girl that is his granddaughter's age and it turned physical.

Uh,.

But it was a longer, it was like a five-year relationship that was emotional for most of that time. And so he was disqualified and it was handled in, in a very poor way. I've cataloged that on conversations that matter, but then right after, I shouldn't say right after, but within the last two weeks, we've had Josh Bice, the president of G3 ministries found out,.

Uh,.

That he had a number of Anon accounts. I think he had two or three, and then he had multiple email addresses he was using to disparage,.

To,.

Uh,.

Try to ask challenging questions and embarrass and drag up,.

Uh,.

Dirt on people that, some of whom were people he worked with, even in his own ministry in order to jostle for position. And obviously the motivation behind that is pride and wanting to not,.

I mean,.

He even tried to knock down Bodie Bauckham and John MacArthur to knock these guys down so that you and your ministry, your organization is the one left standing that people trust.