Pastor Brandon Oliver Interview

Introduction to No Compromise Radio and the Guest Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and you can email me Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. A couple new books are out, Jesus and Cancer, and then the Law Gospel book. Just hit the Amazon printer, Law Gospel A Primer.

That's not a primer, but a primer. You can order that. If you want to order a bunch, you can email me Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. We've been doing the show for 15, 18 years, something like that. And on Wednesdays, I like to have guests on the show.

And so those guests are my friends, theologians. I don't think I've had any of my enemies on. I don't like to have enemies. I wanted to give them a platform. So I have a newer friend, Brandon Oliver. Thanks for being on No Compromise Radio and welcome.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Brandon Oliver’s Ministry in Iowa, Louisiana

Brandon, tell me what you do and tell me how we met. Those are two good questions to start off with. At least I think they're good questions. Yeah. I'm the pastor of First Baptist Church.

Here in Iowa, Louisiana. Now here in Louisiana, they actually pronounce it Iowa. Anytime I talk to someone outside of the state, I call it by the name Iowa. Well, it's just so funny because I see.

The word Iowa and I'm thinking, wait a second, Iowa, Louisiana, what is going on? That's just like saying Texas, Alabama, isn't it? Yeah, just like that. But they call it, they pronounce it.

Iowa. So if I talk to locals, I keep it at Iowa. If I talk to somebody outside, we call it Iowa. And how long have you been there pastoring? I've been here a little over 13 years.

That is excellent. And where'd you get your theological education?

I went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Got my MDiv.

Nice. And have you had a theological maturation since then? Or is there anything that you could admit on the air that maybe you used to believe. You don't believe anymore? What's changed, if.

Anything? Well, my understanding of law gospel, in fact, I had no understanding of law gospel. I assumed the gospel, I knew the gospel, but I was a very heavy law preacher and would beat people with the law and not give much gospel.

Now, I would also offer invitations in the sense of invite people to Christ, but I never offered the gospel as a form of motivation or fuel to drive people to follow the Lord and to be committed to Him.

It was a lot of law. You need to do this, this, this. So, that was my preaching. That's changed.

Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude in Preaching

Well, it's interesting, Brandon, we both would know songs like When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, right, in Southern Baptist circles and just Baptist circles in general, Bible churches. And we would sing the lyrics, but we wouldn't incorporate that into our preaching.

So, the lyrics that I'm thinking about When I Survey the Wondrous Cross song goes like this, love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. And why did we not get that? Why did we not understand guilt, grace, gratitude?

Why did we not understand that it's the love of Christ that motivates and not just law bashing? What do you think we were missing?

Just the background of the churches. For me, personally, just being part of a church that assumed the gospel, but didn't see the gospel as something that Christians need in a daily living. It was more of the gospel's for lost people.

We need to get people to trust Christ and preach the gospel to them, but give people the law. So, that background for me, personally, I just never saw the need for the gospel. It was just, okay, you're saved, you're in the kingdom, so this is what you need to do.

Make sure that you're saved, stay saved, and continue to walk the straight and.

Narrow. So, I have had kind of a theological maturation like you have had. And for the most part, I think the people at the church that I pastor have come along with me on that theological maturation, in particular, Christ-centered preaching, law gospel, guilt, grace, gratitude.

Have you lost anyone? Has there been any pushback? How's the church received.

The maturation of its pastor? Good question. The people have responded very well. They're starting to see the hope of the gospel. I've actually apologized to the church a few times in just sermon preaching just about how I was blind to this and how I hammered them with the law.

So, most people have responded well. They see the hope of the gospel that Christ motivates their living, that the law is a guide, but it can't motivate them. And so, I think it's increased their assurance, their joy in Christ, seeing the Lord Jesus in a new light.

So, it's been very good in the church. No pushback. I've had no pushback. So, I've been blessed by the Lord to not have any pushback on that. That's awesome. Today on No Compromise Radio,.

We're talking to Pastor Brandon Oliver in Iowa, Louisiana. I'm looking at the map right now,.

Brandon, and is Roy's Meat Market any good? Very good. It's a Cajun kind of meat restaurant.

The ones I see on the map, I see Love's Casino. I see Iowa Way Donuts, Roy's Meat Market, Spring Market, Dirty Rice Saloon, and Rabideau Sausage Kitchen. That's what I see.

Yeah, those are various places in the town. Rabideau's is another meat specialty place.

Small-Town Life, Football, and Outdoor Culture

Where you get Cajun foods. What's it like pastoring in such a small town?

Different. It's unique. You get to know the people, the town. I've gotten somewhat involved in the town with the football games. I pray at most of the games when they ask me to come.

I'm going to interrupt you right there. So, you're talking to somebody who lives in New England. We don't do any praying up there publicly. So, the town asks you to pray before the football game?

Tell me about that. Yeah. So, one of my former deacons of the church, he is the voice of the Iowa Yellow Jackets, and he's the one that speaks on the mic. He would ask me to come and be in the press box with him, and he would ask me to pray.

And so, it became kind of a pattern. Every home game, I would show up and be in the press box,.

And then I would lead a prayer over the game. Nice. And did you pray for Iowa Yellow Jackets to win, or what did you pray for? I never prayed for victories. I just prayed for protection and that Christ would be glorified during the games.

Amen. How did we meet? What's the story behind that? Why would I let you on my show? Yeah, the 2024 pact from this October,.

I attended, and after the last session, I went up to you and just thanked you and wanted to meet you. Because actually, Mike, it was because of you that I'm law gospel, and I have a better.

Understanding of the law gospel distinction. Well, praise the Lord. We just pass it along. R. Scott Clark teaches me, and he said, I didn't come up with it. I just taught what Michael Horton did. Michael Horton learned it from somebody else.

And so, that's very, very encouraging. I remember that conversation, and it's fun to learn and grow. And one of the things I think about heaven and its glories will be, we'll continue to learn all kinds of things about the Lord since he's infinite, and that'll be part of the glories of heaven.

I am looking at some notes here, Brandon, about Cramner, Bishop Cramner, back in the 1500s in England. And he was ministering to people that were coming out of the Roman Catholic Church. And so, for communion, he gave something called four comfortable words, and those words were verses.

Come to me, all who labor and heavy laden, I'll give you rest, John 3, 16, 1 Timothy 1, 15, about Christ coming into the world to save sinners, and then 1 John 2, 1 and 2. Tell me how the Lord's Supper has changed at the church that you pastor there in Iowa in light of law gospel.

I think I know the answer, but I'd like to hear it.

The Lord’s Supper as Spiritual Nourishment and Gospel Invitation

Yeah, definitely. Well, prior to my understanding of law gospel, it was you need to examine yourself. You need to make sure that you're right with the Lord. If you're not right with the Lord, don't take this.

If you're not serving the Lord, if you miss church a couple Sundays, you don't need to take. So, it was really a lot of brow beading. Examine yourself. Make sure you're right with God. Since coming to an understanding of law gospel, it has shifted to now this is a means of spiritual nourishment.

It is a reminder of God's promise of covenant keeping, faithfulness to those who look to Christ by faith, and that all who are looking to Him by faith, we invite you to come. I actually read from the Heidelberg Catechism, I think it's question 81, where it says who are permitted to come to the Lord's table, and it's those who recognize their sin, grieve their sin, but know that Christ has covered their sin.

Those are the ones that are invited. Hypocrites and those who don't see their need for Christ are not to come. So, it's shifted from brow beading, examine yourself, to this is Christ being offered to you, a reminder to the elements of the gospel, the good news for you.

That is wonderful. And, you know, in the life game called comparison, and somebody's tougher or weaker than we are measuring ourselves against other people, if you said to people, if you missed a couple weeks not to take it, you were even tougher on people than I was.

If you missed a couple Sundays, don't take this.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you probably think the same way I do. In my prideful moments in the past, I would say to myself, and I would never say it out loud, but just deep down, I would think to myself, I got educated, I moved 3 ,000 miles away to a little town of 7 ,000 people here in New England.

And again, I would never say, hey, I'm God's gift to you, but just maybe have a little bit of that attitude sneak in here or there. And I thought, you know, they're blessed to have me. Now I look back and I think how patient those people were with me.

How long suffering is, I would, of course, say some things that were right, but heavy on the law and just whacking them over and over and over. So I wonder if you think the same way.

Long-Haul Pastoral Ministry and Serving with Humility

Yeah, I do. One of the things, Mike, about my ministry when I left seminary was that I told myself and told the Lord that wherever I go to pastor, I wanted to stay for the long haul. I didn't want to be the kind of pastor that would go and jump from church to church.

I saw this in Southern Baptist life, that guys coming out of seminary would go to a small church and then they would jump to another church. So I wanted to go and stay for the long haul. And yeah, there was a sense of pride and welling in my soul at times where I'd been here for a long time.

But I have to remind myself that I'm serving the Lord. The Lord has been gracious to and these people have been very gracious to me and patient with me. But I wanted to earn their trust and their love by serving them as Christ serves his people.

Louisiana Culture, Church Life, and Worship Order

So if I went there some Sunday in Louisiana, in Iowa, what would I think about the folks in terms of what's the industry there? What do they do? What do the men like to do on the side for hobbies? Kind of what's the flavor of, I mean, I think there are four states I've never been to.

Louisiana is one of them. So what's the, I don't know, demographic, what do guys like to do?

Just tell me about the church a little bit. Yeah. So this area, there are a lot of, I would say, plants that people work in, PPG oil plants. So that industry is real prominent here. And I've got several guys in the church that work for those plants.

A lot of the guys here are big hunters, avid hunters, duck, deer, quail, pigeon. Fishing is prominent here. So a lot of the hobbies of the people in the church involved outdoor activities. They call.

The state the Sporkman's Paradise. Do you hunt? No. But you pray at football games, so they give you some credit for that. They do. Now tell me about the worship service. I looked at the website and started listening to one of your sermons that I really enjoyed in Philippians, on Philippians chapter two.

Is it, what kind of liturgy would we find if we walked in there?

Yeah. So over the years, I've shifted that, you know, as a pastor, you take time to make changes slowly. We have gone from just singing a few songs to where we have an organized worship service. So our service will begin with opening of an Old Testament reading, then a pastoral prayer, singing, another New Testament reading.

Well, a New Testament, not another, but New Testament. A time of corporate confession, acknowledging the gospel, and then the sermon, and then a closing response of hymn, but not an invitation. I don't offer invitations like most Southern Baptists, where we encourage people to walk in Iowa.

I encourage people to look to Christ, rest in Christ, but we have a response of hymn. We respond to God's word through song.

What's interesting, as I think about a worship service, and I think about God's revelation, whether it's general in nature, in the stars, or if it's special, whether it's, you know, the Lord Jesus on earth talking or the Bible, there's this kind of back and forth revelation response, right?

You see a baby being born and you're in awe, and you just kind of move back and forth in that. And so I know some churches, they'll end with the sermon, and then you kind of walk out because you hear God's word at the end, but there's something in me and probably most other people, when you hear a sermon and you hear good news, then you want to sing about it.

And so I think it was Martin Luther who said, there can never be too much singing in the world. There probably can be too much singing in a church service if the sermon's only 20 minutes, but I like the very end where we respond with a song of praise.

I agree. Yeah.

Expository Preaching, Christ in Genesis, and the Road to Emmaus

So, if I'm thinking about ministry and things that have changed over the years, did you originally start verse-by-verse teaching out of seminary? How did you find your way to do that? And if you've been doing it for a long time, what has changed?

And this might relate back to the law of gospel thing again, but what's changed in your preaching? Not content necessarily,.

But format? So, even before going to seminary, I was aware of expository preaching. I had a youth minister when I was converted at the age of 16 who introduced me to R .C. Sproul, and I began listening to Sproul, reading his books, and through reading Sproul, there was a branch out to other what I would call reformed ministers.

And so, I was introduced to expository preaching through this youth minister and R .C. and others. So, coming out of seminary, expository preaching was the focus of my ministry. Over the years, I would say the changing with preaching would revolve around pointing back to Christ.

I feel like Christ was missing from my sermons in the sense of if I preached a sermon that was heavy to law, I would preach that sermon and exposit the sermon, but never bring the gospel back or try Christ back.

So, right now, I'm preaching through Genesis, and as I'm working through Genesis, I'm looking to bring Christ back into the text, this redemptive hermeneutical principle where the whole of Scripture is about the Lord Jesus.

And even Jesus tells in the Gospels, especially Luke, there on the road to Emmaus, that when he's talking to the men, that the Bible, the Old Testament, it speaks about him, the law, the prophets. So, I look at my preaching now, how do I incorporate Christ into this message and bring him out, even though he may not be there overtly?

So, that's one of the ways my messages have changed, and I want to come back to Christ and the gospel.

Peter. Awesome. I like to say to pastors, do you think you'd be asking too much to talk about Jesus for ten minutes this Sunday during.

Your sermon? James. Not at all. And I did talk about Christ in my sermons, just never offered him as in the gospel to fuel our obedience. It was more just like, this is what God wants you to do, and you need to do this.

If you're not doing it, you might not be saved.

Peter. Well, it's interesting as I think about that, Brandon, with Rome and Protestants back in the day, if you've got a huge mural or stained glass of Jesus as judge, and then it's exacerbated by a pastor that's just law heavy, I don't think it's right, but I can see the psychological attraction to someone who's kind and loving and accepting, like Jesus' mother, Mary, right?

You're like, what's going on here? Here's something I want to do that I haven't done on the show before, but you can be my guinea pig. I'm going to read you a passage from the message translation, if you want to call it that, and then you have to tell me what passage I'm reading, okay?

You're ready for that?

Peter. All right.

Brandon I'll see if I can do it.

Peter. All right. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like we wanted to do when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat.

It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with a whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.

He did this all on his own with no help from us. Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus. Any guesses?

Brandon Romans 5, perhaps?

Peter Well, that was Ephesians chapter 2, verses 3 through 6.

Brandon. You know, my thought was Ephesians,.

But I went back to Romans.

Peter. Okay. I don't know. I mean, once in a while, he gets it right, but I just looked at that and I thought, what in the world is this guy doing? He started off the Ephesians chapter 2 chapter with, it wasn't so long ago that you were mixed, mired up in that old stagnant life of sin.

So, that's true.

Brandon Look, I never read the message.

Peter I know. Well, for the show, you know, this is a radio show, so you have to try to keep it moving. What else is happening down in Louisiana with Southern Baptist? Are you seeing kind of the Founders Movement take a foothold?

Are you seeing other pastors in your neck of the woods embracing the doctrines of grace or law gospel or redemptive historical? Have you seen that in others?

Brandon. Not really, Mike. We are probably the only church in the area that has a good law gospel distinction, and there's not very many Reformed churches here. There's a Presbyterian church. I think it's a PCA, and there's another church that's a London Baptist 1689 church in Lake Charles, which is outside of Iowa.

But there's not a lot of Reformed circles here. It's really ripe for Reformed theology and the doctrines of grace. Look, I would have told you years ago I was Reformed, but I really wasn't Reformed because I wasn't confessional, and I was Calvinistic in my soteriology, but I had no understanding of the Reformed faith.

So, it's not very prevalent here. Catholicism is the dominant religion or church here in this area.

Federal Vision, Social Justice, and Discovering Law and Gospel

Peter. Now, you said that the Lord used not no code, but did you start listening to the show, and that's how you found us? Or how did we come across each other's paths? I mean, we met, of course, in October, but did you start listening to the radio show, or what happened?

How did that work?

Brandon. Well, let me tell you the story. God's Providence. My wife came to me, Mike, a couple years ago, and she was part of a Facebook group. She started asking me about Federal Vision. Have you ever heard of Federal Vision?

There's this group I'm in. They're saying some things about Federal Vision. At that time, she was reading some books by some women who were caught up in the Federal Vision movement. And when she first told me about it, I was kind of like, I'm not very interested.

I didn't get much thought to it. At that point in my life, I was more involved with the SBC about the social justice movement. So, what happened was I was watching a John Harris podcast called Conversations That Matter.

You happened to be the guest, and I was watching this podcast, and I heard you talking about law and gospel. And what you were saying, Mike, was really encouraging to me. I was like, wow, I've never heard this before.

So, I watched it again. Then I started listening to No Compromise radio. Well, on that podcast, you mentioned a book called The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson. So, I picked that book up, started reading it, came across The Moral of Modern Divinity, bought that book, started reading it.

And just my eyes began to open up and see this law and gospel. And then I started to read a little more on Federal Vision. And so, that's how I got into the law and gospel distinction and came to understand it was through God's providence coming across the podcast, because Harris was dealing a lot with the social justice issues in the Southern Baptist.

And I was kind of watching him to gain some insight on what's going on in.

Our convention with social justice and all that. I love that story. And it's interesting because when I first talked to John and met him, I know his dad. And you look at social gospel, and you realize there's no gospel in it.

It's just all law. And if there is any gospel, they just blend it, which turns it into all law as well. And with Federal Vision, them being mono-covenantalists, blending law and gospel. Once you see law and gospel, it helps so much, whether it's discernment, whether it's preaching, whether it's assurance, whatever it might be.

So, I'm glad you told me the story. I sometimes wonder why am I in front.

Of this microphone every day? Oh, yeah, definitely. I'm so thankful that the Lord providentially brought that podcast to my attention, and watching you talk with him and talk about the law and gospel, and then recommend some books.

And then I turn around and read these books, and then go back and watch the podcast again so I can gain a better understanding. I'm just so thankful that the Lord worked in such a way to open my eyes to see this.

Amen. Well, today we've had Pastor Brandon Oliver on. Good job today, Pastor. I'm glad to have you on. You can go to the website if you want to hear him preach. I-O-W-A-F-B-C, I-O-A-F-B-C, I assume it's firstbaptistchurch .org.

And there's no pictures, so we can't see what he looks like, but you can listen to him, which is the important part. And you can always email me, mikeatnocompromiseradio .com. Pastor Brandon, thanks for being on the show today.

I really appreciate you and your ministry. You've been an encouragement to me. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate.

You having me.