The NXR Podcast - February 04, 2023


BONUS EPISODE - A Parable For Conservatives ｜ You’re Not Fearful, You’re Just Wicked

Topics
manipulation excellence in everything Christian does
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Joel Osteen Benny Hinn Joe Biden Jesse DuPlantis Chuck Schumer Nancy Pelosi Reaping
DAILY TRUTH - How To Care For Your Elderly Parents As They Die DAILY TRUTH - “Strive For The Holiness For Without Which No One Will See The Lord”

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

162.9

Word count

3,233

Sentence count

240

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

22

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Why are the most wicked people on the planet better storytellers than Christians? Why do they have the facts on their side? And why do they care about feelings more than they do about the message they're trying to convey?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 All right, listen, guys, I get it.
00:00:01 Many of you are unable to financially support this ministry
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00:00:40 Speaking to Christians, because that's my primary audience, the fact that we have truth on our side
00:00:47 doesn't mean that we should use that as an excuse to make crappy stuff.
00:00:53 stop that stop making that excuse right facts over feelings yes facts should matter more than 1.00
00:01:03 feelings but here's the problem uh you you can talk to that purple-haired feminist 1.00
00:01:08 about why facts don't care about their feelings um but they don't care they don't care about the 1.00
00:01:17 facts. See, the reason why the wicked are so good at storytelling, I've been thinking about this a
00:01:24 lot over the last few weeks as we've spent so much time and focus and effort on upping our game
00:01:31 in terms of excellent media. I've been thinking about why are those who hate Christ, why do they
00:01:39 make the best movies and the best this? Why are they better at media? And ultimately,
00:01:47 really what it comes down to, why are they better storytellers than Christians and, to a lesser 0.50
00:01:53 degree, conservatives? Why are the most wicked people on the planet better at storytelling than 0.92
00:02:01 the people of God? I think the answer is this, because they have to be. Because if you don't
00:02:07 have the facts, right? So facts over feelings, because we do have the facts as Christians,
00:02:12 because we do have the truth, I think sometimes we can just lean on the facts, lean on the truth,
00:02:17 lean on the message, and not care at all about the medium. Lean on the message without caring
00:02:23 at all about the medium, right? The venue of that message, the way in which how it's being conveyed,
00:02:31 how it's being portrayed. And so, but if you're wicked, what I'm saying is, if you're a liar, 0.99
00:02:37 because that's what we're talking about, right? 0.98
00:02:39 If you're Joe Biden, you're Nancy Pelosi, right?
00:02:41 You're Chuck Schumer. 1.00
00:02:42 If you're just a liar, if you're Hollywood, you're a liar. 1.00
00:02:46 I mean, that's what you do for a living. 0.99
00:02:48 Then you better have good sets.
00:02:50 You better have great lighting.
00:02:53 You better have great actors.
00:02:55 You better have a great plot.
00:02:57 You better have a great story. 0.99
00:02:59 You better be good at storytelling if you are a liar. 0.99
00:03:04 Liars have to be good at storytelling. 0.89
00:03:07 They have to, because that's the only way that they could persuade anyone, right? 0.93
00:03:12 I mean, listen to false teachers, right?
00:03:14 Get away from politics and get away from Hollywood, you know, and entertainment and media for
00:03:18 a second.
00:03:18 Just think about within the church.
00:03:20 And when I say that, I don't mean true churches, but the church institute.
00:03:24 Think about that prosperity.
00:03:25 Think about Joel Osteen, right?
00:03:27 Think about Benny Hinn.
00:03:28 Think about Jesse Duplantis.
00:03:30 My goodness, he'd be a great example.
00:03:31 Jesse Duplantis, false teacher extraordinaire.
00:03:34 What is, if they teach, preach a sermon for, let's say, 40 minutes, 30 minutes of that
00:03:40 sermon, what is it going to be?
00:03:43 A deep, meticulous, biblical exegesis?
00:03:46 No.
00:03:47 Storytelling.
00:03:49 So the other day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I remember, and pulling on your
00:03:52 heartstrings and doing this and doing that, it's manipulation.
00:03:56 But here's the deal.
00:03:57 They have to manipulate because the actual contents of their message, the facts, aren't
00:04:02 facts.
00:04:03 In fact, they're blatantly false, false.
00:04:06 They're obviously false.
00:04:09 It's clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense,
00:04:12 even an unregenerate person, 0.55
00:04:14 even a non-Christian can watch Benny Hinn and say, 0.86
00:04:17 yeah, that's a charlatan. 1.00
00:04:19 That's a liar. 1.00
00:04:20 This is a Ponzi scheme, right? 0.98
00:04:22 It's so obvious.
00:04:23 So they have to be excellent at storytelling
00:04:28 because what they're trying to sell you
00:04:31 is so clearly false, it's so clearly untrue, that they have to dress it up and they have to dress it
00:04:39 up extravagantly well, very, very well. And for those of us who agree with Christ or submitted
00:04:47 to Christ and his lordship and the truth of his word, because we have the truth on our side,
00:04:52 because we have the facts on our side, the good, the true, and the beautiful. Because we don't
00:04:57 think that the beauty is needed. Because, hey, you know, to persuade someone, all I need is this pie
00:05:03 chart. Because the pie chart clearly says in statistical science that I'm right and these
00:05:12 liberals and progressives are wrong. Well, yeah, it does say that. But there's a lot of people who
00:05:19 don't care. And if we get good at storytelling, there's a lot of people who still won't care.
00:05:23 I get that. I'm aware. But some people might be won over. They might. And you might say, well,
00:05:30 we shouldn't win them over with storytelling, just win them over with the truth. I'm not talking
00:05:34 about storytelling at the expense of truth. I'm talking about the good, the true, and the
00:05:38 beautiful. That's a package deal. That's a triple-braided cord. They're not separated.
00:05:43 These aren't independent. The true is what's beautiful. Truth is beauty. So convey it as
00:05:50 though it's beautiful. Convey the truth in beautiful ways. And so that's one of the things
00:05:55 that we want to do on this channel with this ministry, right? Response Ministries is we want
00:06:00 to tell the truth. We want to tell the truth courageously, right? We are not winsomely winsome,
00:06:06 winsome, winsome guys, right? We're not the gospel coalition. Just put it out there. No,
00:06:11 there's going to be courage. There's going to be a few based moments from time to time where
00:06:17 you might even cringe. Did he really just say that? Repeal the 19th Amendment. Did Joel actually say
00:06:22 that? You know, those kind of lines, right? You've heard me say a few of those and you're going to
00:06:26 hear plenty more. So there's going to be courage. There's going to be truth. But we also want there
00:06:31 to be excellence. Excellence. Because Christ is worthy of it. And because Christians should be
00:06:37 the best. We should be the best. We have the worldview that actually makes sense of the world
00:06:44 God created. We have the truth, and therefore, if we have the truth, we should also have beauty.
00:06:50 Christians have a monopoly on beauty, and as the world continues to go apostate, as our nation in 0.91
00:06:56 America, specifically for those of you who are listening locally, who are fellow American 0.97
00:07:01 citizens, as our nation continues to apostatize and to turn its back on God, his truth, and his
00:07:08 mercy in previous generations, that will be reflected in every realm of life. It won't just
00:07:13 be their doctrine. See, doctrine matters because what a person believes affects, it has implications
00:07:20 on every other thing that that person does. If you have bad theology, guess what? You're a bad
00:07:26 artist, and it's finally starting to show. As our nation and our culture and political rulers
00:07:33 and civil magistrates continue to abandon Christ, his principles, and his words, that's starting to
00:07:40 show up in the culture, that's starting to show up in legislation, and that's also starting to
00:07:45 show up even in art, to where there's an unveiling of some big monument, and the response from even
00:07:53 just the average person is, oh my, that's embarrassing. That's ugly. Not just ugly,
00:08:00 but it's perverse. It's shameful. Certainly, you can't be proud of this monstrosity, right?
00:08:09 And so as the world apostatizes from God, it's not just that they're becoming more false and
00:08:17 less true. It's also becoming more ugly and less beautiful. And as we continue to further commit
00:08:24 to true doctrine, to the truth of God's word, we should be increasing not just with truer facts
00:08:31 or more true facts or however you want to say it, but also excellence in everything that we do,
00:08:38 not just what we say but how we say it how we convey it everything that we do right if you're
00:08:44 in construction you should make beautiful things in construction like this wood wall behind me
00:08:51 if you're media and video you should do excellent media and video like what you're seeing right now
00:08:58 and if you don't have much of a budget a lot of people say well i i want to do those things
00:09:03 I just can't, you know, I just can't afford it, then be faithful with little. Take what the Lord
00:09:09 has given you. I think too many Christians, they complain and say, a lot of Christians just don't 0.97
00:09:13 care about beauty because they don't see the correlation between truth and beauty. That's 0.77
00:09:16 what I've been addressing so far. But beyond that, another problem that Christians run into is they'll 1.00
00:09:21 say, okay, well, I see how truth, you know, and beauty relate to one another. And yeah, we should
00:09:26 do things that are excellent and beautiful, but we just don't have the resources. Hollywood has
00:09:30 billions of dollars for their productions. We just don't have... Okay, that's fine, but are you
00:09:36 being faithful with what you do have? Or are you being like the wicked servant? That's what Christ
00:09:42 calls him, the wicked servant who, because he was given one talent and his peers were given two and
00:09:48 five, instead of taking the one talent he has and working with it and getting as much mileage out
00:09:54 of that one talent for the good of the master that he possibly can, he takes it and he buries it.
00:09:58 he buries it in the sand. Right? I think there are a lot of Christians who rather than applying
00:10:05 the principle of faithful with little, be faithful with much, they're saying it's too little. And so
00:10:10 I won't be, I won't do anything with it at all. I'm just going to bury it in the sand. And here's
00:10:15 the thing about that parable. I'll say this real quick and then I'll take some questions.
00:10:19 But the interesting thing about that parable is that we often think of that servant who was given
00:10:24 one talent. His two contemporaries were given five and two. And we think of him as burying
00:10:30 his talent in the sand because, well, out of fear. We think he's the fearful servant. He's not the
00:10:38 fearful servant. He's the wicked servant, is what the Bible says. Why is he described as wicked
00:10:45 rather than fearful? Well, because the fearful are wicked. Yeah, you could make a biblical
00:10:50 principle for that, certainly. There's an association between righteousness and courage
00:10:55 and therefore fearfulness and evil. There is an evil to fearful apathy, certainly. But I think
00:11:03 it's beyond that. The reason why this guy is not called the fearful servant, but the wicked servant
00:11:08 is because he actually wasn't fearful. He claims to be fearful, but the master in the parable calls
00:11:16 him on his bluff. See, this is what he says. He says that I knew you to be a hard man. When the
00:11:23 master returns to get back his investment, he says, you know, what's going on? Where's my money?
00:11:32 Why haven't you grown it? Why haven't you increased it? And he says, well, I buried it in the sand.
00:11:38 And he says, you know, my reasoning? Well, my reasoning is because I knew you to be a hard man
00:11:45 Reaping where you did not sow.
00:11:48 Reaping where you did not sow.
00:11:50 That's the first problem.
00:11:53 There is nowhere where the master has not sown.
00:11:58 The master reaps everywhere
00:12:01 because the master has sown everywhere.
00:12:04 It all belongs to the master.
00:12:06 Everything we have was given and sown by the master.
00:12:11 The breath in your lungs come from the master.
00:12:15 your IQ comes from the master. If you have two working arms and legs, it comes from the master.
00:12:23 Your children come from the master. Your marriage comes from the master. Your house, your money,
00:12:27 everything you have comes from the master. God has never, never attempted to sow or to reap
00:12:34 where he has not sown because everything in this world was sown by God. Every good and perfect gift
00:12:42 comes down from the father of lights. He created all the cosmos, ex nihilo, out of nothing. And
00:12:49 all we ever do as creatures, he alone is the creator who makes out of nothing. But we as
00:12:57 creatures, what we do is we take what God has created, those initial resources, the cosmos
00:13:03 that he's given us, the life he's given us, the breath that he's given us, and we steward those
00:13:08 things in such a way that they grow. So anything that we have developed, it's not something that
00:13:15 we made out of nothing. It's something that we took from the Lord and multiplied. So there is
00:13:21 no place where the master has not sown. And so in this parable, going back to the parable, he says,
00:13:26 if you knew me like that, right? The servant says, I knew you to be a hard man. What he's saying is,
00:13:31 I knew you to be a harsh and unreasonable and unfair man, unreasonably hard, a hard man without
00:13:43 cause, without just cause for being so hard, a man who would unfairly and unjustly reap where he
00:13:51 didn't even sow. That's who I knew you to be. And the master calls him on his bluff. He says,
00:13:57 no, that's not fear speaking. That's not actually what you thought. You're claiming that's your
00:14:03 narrative. That's the line you've been rehearsing, planning for my return, but that's not actually
00:14:08 what you believe. And he calls on him by saying this. He answers the fool according to his
00:14:14 folly. He says, let's follow that line of logic for a second. If that were true, if you were just 0.99
00:14:18 fearful because you misunderstood my nature, my character, because you would be wrong. I'm not a
00:14:26 hard man who reaps where I don't sow. But let's just say that you thought that, that you had a
00:14:30 misconception, a misunderstanding about my character, about what kind of man I am. And you
00:14:35 thought that I was an unfair man who goes around reaping where he's never even sown. Well, even if
00:14:42 you thought that and you had this, you know, you were the fearful servant rather than the wicked
00:14:47 servant, here's what a fearful servant would have done. He would have at minimum invested my money
00:14:52 with the bankers so that upon my return, I would at least get my investment, my initial investment
00:14:59 back with interest. But you didn't do that. See, if you actually believe what you're saying,
00:15:05 if you were actually a fearful man, a fearful servant, this is how you would have behaved.
00:15:11 This is what a fearful servant would have done. No, you're not a fearful servant.
00:15:15 you're a wicked servant you buried my money in the dirt to do nothing to get zero return 0.98
00:15:24 not out of fear but out of resentment you hate me you're not afraid of me you hate me and you 0.99
00:15:33 hate me because i gave more to the other servants than i gave you and you didn't think that was fair 0.76
00:15:40 and you were bitter and jealous
00:15:43 and you held a grudge against me.
00:15:48 And because I gave two talents
00:15:50 to your friend and fellow servant over there
00:15:53 and five talents to your friend
00:15:56 and fellow servant over there
00:15:58 and only one talent to you, 0.97
00:16:01 you took offense at me
00:16:02 and you wanted to get back at me
00:16:06 by ensuring this was no accident.
00:16:10 This wasn't just fearful apathy.
00:16:12 This was deliberate.
00:16:13 You wanted to deliberately ensure that I wouldn't get a dime back on my investment.
00:16:20 You're not the fearful servant. 0.93
00:16:21 You're the wicked servant. 0.99
00:16:24 You're the wicked servant. 1.00
00:16:26 And my point is this. 1.00
00:16:28 As Christians, you may have less resources. 0.78
00:16:32 But first, step one, you should associate, draw the correlation between the true and
00:16:39 good and the beautiful truth goodness and beauty is a triple braided cord it goes together
00:16:48 because we have the truth let's not say because we have the facts we don't need to be good at
00:16:54 telling stories no let's have the facts and tell a glorious story that lives up to that it's it's
00:17:02 worthy of of the quality of the facts and truth that we've been given so first correlate truth
00:17:09 goodness, and beauty. Don't sever them. Secondly, when it comes to beauty, and you maybe don't have
00:17:16 all the resources that you would like to have, be faithful with little, trusting that eventually,
00:17:22 if it be the Lord's will, he might give you much to be faithful with much. And lastly,
00:17:29 be faithful with little, and don't be a fearful servant, and certainly don't be a wicked servant.
00:17:37 Don't say that because God has given you less than somebody else, right?
00:17:40 Well, you know, because we had $15,000 to work with our studio and Ligonier has, you
00:17:45 know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, then we're just not going to do anything.
00:17:49 No, no, we're going to make the very best thing we possibly can with 15 grand.
00:17:56 And by God's grace and his grace alone, we did.
00:18:01 And you get to enjoy that now.
00:18:02 And not just in this video, but every single video from here on out, Lord willing, until we
00:18:10 eventually do something even better. Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at
00:18:15 the end? Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry. And from the bottom of
00:18:21 my heart, I say, thank you. I cannot thank you enough. However, some of you, you just, you can't
00:18:28 afford it. In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it. Let's be honest. I mean, we're living
00:18:34 in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their 0.96
00:18:43 minds over the last three years due to COVID. We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.
00:18:50 It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession. We are living in a recession
00:18:56 right now regardless. Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.
00:19:04 You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you, but you could still
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