THE CONFERENCE - Reformed Confessionalism - Session 2 - Joel Webbon
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Summary
In this episode, I discuss the first of seven doctrines to rule the world, Reformed Confessionalism, and the role of God as a viceroy and ruler in ruling the world. I also discuss the question: Who really rules the world? And how does God rule it?
Transcript
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This is what I want to discuss. So the first of these seven doctrines to rule the world
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is Reformed Confessionalism. And so what I want to do is I want to take those two words
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and speak a little bit on each of them. What does it mean to be Reformed? What does it mean
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to be confessional? But before even getting to that, I want to address the subtitle of the
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conference. So, you know, Blueprints for Christendom 2.0. The subtitle, it didn't need it. You could
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have just left it there. It was a catchy title. Good enough. But, you know, after careful
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consideration, I decided to become worse. And so I thought the subtitle, it really rub some people
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the wrong way. And I think that there's an immense value. There's a ministry in that. Eric Kahn is a
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faithful minister in that arena. From time to time, I like to enjoy him. The nice thing about X
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Twitter is that if I ever get in trouble, you know that every three hours, I've got another tweet from
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merit coming that'll take the focus off of me. You know, so it's a it's it is a ministry and he
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faithfully does it. But all that being said, you know, this subtitle of seven doctrines for
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ruling the world that bothered people. Well, you don't rule the world. Yes and no. Yes and no. So
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so starting with reformed confessionalism and starting with that word reformed, what's the
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first, you know, the first rule fight club, right? You don't talk about fight club. Well, what's the
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first rule of Christendom? What's the first rule for ruling the world? It's properly understanding
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that you don't rule the world. So in the ultimate truest sense, King Jesus rules the world. In the
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ultimate truest sense, when I say reformed, what I mean by that is certainly much more can and
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should be included in that word reformed. It can mean much more, but it cannot mean less than the
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absolute sovereignty of God over all things. As the late great R.C. Sproul once said, there's not
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one maverick molecule in all the universe. And the first foundational doctrine for the Christian
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in understanding properly their role as a viceroy, as a lowercase r ruler, lowercase k king in ruling
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the world, the first thing that they must understand is that there is a king above them,
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That God is meticulously sovereign in his ruling, in his reigning, in all things.
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And yet, although God is the one who rules the world, the next question that we need to answer is how?
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How has God, who is sovereign, who is king of kings and lord of lords,
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how has he determined for his rule and reign to advance and be stewarded in this world?
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And the answer is, through his image-bearing creatures.
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That's not even a uniquely post-millennial idea.
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You can't even get past the first two chapters of Genesis without grappling with this idea.
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It's God's world, but in creation, what God does is he appoints and delegates rulership, dominion, to Adam.
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But then the question for us, and this is where certain eschatological positions come into play,
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and there are some debates and disagreements on this,
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and some people are wrong and some people are right but the question is is is this dominion
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that that God holds and the ultimate sovereign sense but that he in a secondary sense gave and
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delegated to Adam and then Adam he forfeited by his sin and handed over to Satan where is the
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football now right so it started with God it was passed you know to Adam Adam dropped it and fumbled
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did and Satan picked it up and is that still where the rule and dominion lies or did something else
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happen in this great redemptive gospel story and and this thing that happened doesn't have anything
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any bearing on on rule on kingly rule and I would argue I think the scripture argues that yes
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something happened and yes the football has has changed hands because in this gospel story there
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is a second Adam there's a better Adam and it's crazy just to think of all the different
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distinctions I mean you could draw this out for days right the first Adam he begins this
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probationary period in the garden as a full-grown mature man. Jesus begins his conquest as an
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infant. Jesus has to resist sin as a two-year-old. Adam can't do it at mature adulthood, and Jesus
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does it as a toddler, right? And Adam is able to do this in a protective, conducive environment
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of plenty. A garden where there's only one tree off limits. Everything else is a yes.
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Whereas Christ, as he's living in his earthly ministry, and then especially when you look at
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his temptations in the wilderness, Adam is in a garden with plenty. Christ is 40 days fasting
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in a wilderness with nothing when Satan comes to tempt Eve where Adam is there with her in the
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garden it's not as though he's absent when the temptation of our first father and mother takes
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place it is in the context of plenty in a world that is unfallen with two individuals who who are
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born mature in adulthood. Jesus starts as a child, as an infant, and he grows in wisdom and stature
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and favor with God and man. And then he's confronted in the wilderness, not a place of plenty, but a
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place that is desolate, a place of lack. He's hungry and Satan comes to tempt him. And the second Adam,
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the final Adam, the better Adam, he succeeds where the first fails. And I want to just address that
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real briefly. Some of the, you know, like we can do, you could call it post-millennial
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myth busters, you know, a fun game show. Well, you know, Jesus, you know, you post-millennial
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guys, you're nothing like Christ. You're doing precisely the opposite of what he did. You
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know, Satan confronted Jesus in the wilderness and took him up on a high hill and showed
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them, all the kingdoms of the world, and held that out as a temptation, but as a viable offer.
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Just for the record, it wasn't a bluff. It was sinful. It was a sinful temptation, but it was
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not a bluff. Satan is offering the kingdoms of the world because, in a very real sense, he has them
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at that time, at that moment. God, who is still sovereign over all, including Satan, you think of
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the book of Job, Satan has to ask permission, and there are very clear boundaries that are prescribed
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to him by God. Satan is always on a leash. Just for the record, even the Old Testament, Satan still
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was on a leash. I would simply argue that the leash is significantly shorter now, post-Christ,
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but he's always, he's a creature. He's always been a creature, and all creatures do not have
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autonomous freedom. There's something to be said for freedom, but not autonomous libertarian
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freedom. Satan has never had that. But at this time, as he's confronting Christ, he does have
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a rather long leash. He was the prince of the air. He was a ruler, in a sense, under God's
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sovereignty, but still with dominion over the kingdoms of the earth. Why? Because God, who is
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ultimate king, gave dominion in delegation to Adam, and Adam forfeited it and gave it to Satan.
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and when this moment happens in the wilderness it's the exact parallel opposite of the first
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and the last Adam the first is in a garden plenty protection provision Christ is in the wilderness
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hungry and he's tempted by Satan and here's the thing Satan says if you bow down and worship me
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I will give to you dominion and kingship over all the kingdoms of the earth.
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And the answer of Christ, of course, is, well, I don't want that because I don't care about politics.
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Well, that's the G-H-E-Y version of Jesus, but not the biblical version of Jesus.
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Jesus is not a pietist, and he is not effeminate.
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but jesus doesn't say to satan i have no interest in worldly kingdoms no what jesus rejects and
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refuses is satan's offer to give him those kingdoms because jesus fully intends on taking
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those kingdoms and he does he does and he does so by his life death resurrection and glorious
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ascension. He takes rightful dominion over these kingdoms. But the very next question is,
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does the football now stay with Christ? Well, in one sense, the ultimate highest answer is yes.
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But in a lower sense, in terms of human agency and means, God is sovereign over the ends.
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but God brings about his sovereign purposes and ends through means through human agency
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and Christ now is the second Adam who has taken not been given but taken back dominion over
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earthly kingdoms from Satan he then delegates that just as God did in the garden with Adam
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he now does with us his church that Christ is actually expanding of the increase of his
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government, there shall be no end. He is expanding his kingdom, his rule, his reign in this world,
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not cataclysmically and suddenly at the very end of the age, which will likely be next Thursday,
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but instead progressively and gradually, like yeast, leaven, and a lump of dough or a mustard
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seed that grows not overnight, but progressively in this gospel age, in human history, through time
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and eventually fills the earth. Christ is progressing. Shout on, pray on. We are gaining
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progressively, gradually ground. And Christ is doing all this through the agency, the means
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of his church. Christ's body. You are Christ's body. You are his hands and feet. This is not
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the prosperity gospel. That's another post-millennial myth buster. This is not the prosperity gospel.
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if I teach my children as a father every Friday on your way home from work, you should stop by
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the nearest convenience store and buy a Texas lotto ticket and play the same numbers and use
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your mother's birthday. And if you do this faithfully, week after week for several years,
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eventually you will win. That's the prosperity gospel. But me teaching my children, if you work
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heart, beginning at a young age, and if you make vows to your spouse and keep them, and if you
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practice integrity in business and in friendship and in parenting, then ordinarily, over a long
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period of time, long obedience in one direction, ordinarily, not as a guarantee, not that you're
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entitled and that God somehow owes this to you, but ordinarily as a general principle, you'll
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experience blessing. That's not the prosperity gospel. That's called Bible. If obedience doesn't
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bring blessing ever in this life, if that is not something that we can speak as a general principle,
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then you have to discount so many volumes of the scripture. I don't even, there's hardly anything
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left to preach. And somewhere along the line, we determined that the prosperity gospel was not
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merely faith in our faith. That's wrong. That's heresy. It's not merely the power of manifestation
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or the power of positivity or wishful thinking. All that really is the prosperity gospel, which
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really is a damnable heresy. But somewhere through the power of pietism and apathetic
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theology, I want to say some other words, but we'll leave it there, an apathetic theology,
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we equated the prosperity gospel not just with faith in our faith or the power of positivity
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or manifesting, but we actually began to truncate and define the prosperity gospel
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as any teaching that asserts even the possibility
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We started calling approximately 85% of the scripture heresy.
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And when I say us, just to put a fine point on it,
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that verses and principles and passages of Scripture
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that say things like, I don't know, something like this,
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the reformed camp began to at least subconsciously and indirectly assert that that's wrong.
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The prosperity gospel really is a false gospel.
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But the pietism gospel really is a false gospel.
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there really is blessing guaranteed in the life to come,
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but ordinarily as a general principle in this life as well as a result of obedience.
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if i don't get incarcerated and i don't leave my wife and abandon her and cause my children to be
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bastards then yeah my kids are practically it stands to reason they're going to be better off
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than other people's kids who do those things that's not white privilege that's christian
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blessing and i know that it's there and i can count on it being there because the bible told me so
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and that's not faith in my faith that's faith in god the giver of all good things
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for those who would trust and obey until 15 minutes ago that was just called basic christianity
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and now i have to teach on these things and here's a crazy thing i teach on these things
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and thousands of people subscribe to my youtube channel
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like some people ask what what was your strategy over these last three years right response just
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came out of nowhere and burst it like i literally this was my strategy i came up with this incredibly
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novel concept i thought what if i did a podcast it was just called theology applied
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and i'm not saying that to brag i'm saying that as an indictment on 95 of the church
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My wife and kids, you know, maybe a church of 100 people as a faithful local pastor, and that's it.
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You know how pathetic it is that I'm standing up here right now in front of 800 people?
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All I decided, by the grace of God and His grace alone, was, hey, maybe obedience is not just theoretical.
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call. Maybe obedience is not androgynous, right? That the highest calling of any Christian, whether
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you be male or female, husband or wife or adult or child or master or slave, it's just to glorify
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God and enjoy him forever. Okay, great. How? Of course, that's the highest call of every Christian
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to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The question is how? And when we get to the how
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in daily practice, is that answer exactly the same for a husband as it is for a wife? No.
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So biblical manhood is not X, Y, and Z. Great. What is it though? Because it's something.
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And it's not just something inwardly. It's not just something spiritually. It's not just
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something theoretically. It's something that I can say to my young son. In very practical terms,
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this is what you do, not just who you are, not just what you believe. Christian obedience in
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the Christian life is never less than who you are, but it is so much more than who you are.
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It begins, all Christian obedience begins as a matter of the heart, but it ultimately should
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come out of our hearts. A wise man once said, you know, theology comes out of our fingertips. Of
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course it does. How could it not? And if it doesn't, what do you call theoretical obedience?
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You call it disobedience. That's what it is. What do you call androgynous obedience, generic
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obedience? Obedience is merely of the heart. And so it really doesn't matter your station in life
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whether you be a husband or a wife or a child or a parent,
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and therefore it is universal, it is androgynous,
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because disobedience and reformed obedience, as of late, have been synonymous.
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So you do rule the world. If you are in Christ, you rule the world. In the ultimate, highest sense,
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no. First rule of dominion is to know that you don't rule the world, but God does. Second thing
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to know, though, is that God works through means, and he has appointed his image-bearing creatures,
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and especially and particularly those who have faith in Jesus Christ, his church, to be the
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means and human agency by which he carries out the progressive and gradual growth of his reign,
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his rule, his dominion in this earth. Not merely the 17th dimension, but in the world. You know
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who cares about the cosmos, the physical, natural world, the world that actually exists, that's not
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just theory. The people who care about the world are Democrats, liberals, progressives, socialists,
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communists, the devil, and God. For God so loved the world. The only group of people that I can
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even think of who don't care about the physical world is Christians, particularly over the last
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150 years. I'll leave that one open-ended. What happened 150 years ago? Schofield.
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Darby. So, we should care about the things that God cares about, which is never again,
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hear my disclaimer, never less than matters of the heart, never less than those things which are
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eternal. This is not an argument of substitution. This is not an argument of saying God cares about
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the physical and not the spiritual. That's not the argument. The argument is both, not less,
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simply more. So you do rule the world. This dominion has been given to you, and there are
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certain set of doctrines, a certain way of interpreting and understanding God's infallible
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word that are more helpful and more suitable for exercising godly dominion.
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so you could call it doctrines to rule the world and it doesn't make you a prosperity preacher
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it makes you a logical evangelical thinker which again looks like heresy to most of the
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evangelical world right now because they lost their minds reformed okay last confessional
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So reformed, certainly much contained in that word.
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But I'm arguing that it can't ever be anything less
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Do not waste your, the enemy is at the gate.
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We've got a million babies being murdered annually
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annually in this country alone and that's a low number that doesn't even begin you can't track
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the enemies at the gates you cannot listen to me you cannot afford to take the next 40 years
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to do theology a la carte i get it i know you want to i know that you still think
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and oh, turns out confessional is the way to go.
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When we were living in neutral world, fine, you know, fine.
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You say, well, I'm Calvinistic Baptist and not Reformed
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They want you dead. They hate your children, and they hate you, and we don't have 40 years for you
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to find out what good theology is and be like, oh, turns out this guy was right the whole time.
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Everyone, just like Sproul used to say, everyone's a theologian. The question is not whether but
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which. You're either a good one or a bad one. So, too, apply the same principle. Every Christian
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is confessional. You either have a tried and true historic confession of faith,
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or you have the confession unwritten organic in constant fluctuation that you're currently
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writing in the back of your own head those are your options the historic confession tried and
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true or your confession and in love as your brother in christ let me encourage you with
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these words your confession sucks it's not that good you think it's good it's not it's not that
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good. So stop wasting time. Your children can't afford for you to waste time. Don't work for 40
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years theologically to a confession. Do not see a confession as the finish line of your theological
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work. A confession is not something to work to. It's something to work from. It's the starting
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place. And say, well, but I don't know. I haven't read all the scripture citations. And you're
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telling me to start with man? Uh-huh. Well, why not start with the Word of God? It's so silly,
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and I really don't have time. Everybody has an interpretation of the Word of God. No one
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has the luxury of saying, I don't have an interpretation. I don't have theology. No
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creed but Christ. Who's Christ? Oh, well, he was born of a virgin Mary. Did he live a sinless life?
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we don't have time for Christians to be cute
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tried and true way to say, this is what the Bible says. Well, I'll take the Bible over the
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confession. That's not the dichotomy. The confession is simply saying, this is what the
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Bible means. And you're going to do it or they're going to do it. And when in doubt, you're not
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choosing man over God. The confession written by man, which is fallible over God and his word,
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which is infallible. No, what I'm asserting is this. You have no option. It's not whether but
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which. You will read the scripture through an interpretive lens. And that interpretive lens
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of what does the scripture mean comes from man. So it is the scripture, God, interpreted through
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a lens, interpretive lens, man. So now the only question is not God or man. It's which man? You
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or somebody else's and honestly in this moment of time given the state of the church and the state
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of theology we don't need to be popping out any confessions anytime soon by god's great you know
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maybe there is a confession yet to be written that could be superior to the westminster probably not
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probably i mean there's one the 1689 but other than that right probably not right there's probably
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We're probably not going to beat that, but maybe we could because the confessions are fallible.
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Not as fallible as you, not as fallible as Fred's confession in his head, but they are fallible.
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And so therefore, it does theoretically stand to reason that they could be topped, but probably not in 2024.
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the reality is our fathers and our grandfathers and prior generations recent prior generations
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we passed on pretty much any hope of being theological superiors to the reformers or the
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puritans but by god's grace our great great grandkids i'd like to think that our brightest
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minds are not just behind us but before us i don't think they're in our generation
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And it may be, like Dusty was talking about small beginnings, it may be that all you do
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in your generation is set your kids up to succeed. And well done, good and faithful servant. That is
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a ministry, a massive ministry. I don't think we have a Calvin today, but I don't think we only
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have a Calvin of yesterday. I think we will have a Calvin of tomorrow. And part of this idea of
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Christendom 2.0 is believing two things, and this is a winning motto. It is looking with honor to
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the past with our fathers and looking with hope to the future. Honor towards our fathers, hope
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towards our future. What evangelicalism by and large has done for at least 60 years, and we could
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argue much longer, but at least the last 60 years, what it has done is it said your fathers were bad
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when you teach an entire generation i would argue two or three generations by this point
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in the west you teach them your fathers are bad your future is bleak and they don't really get
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to work but if you teach them say your fathers weren't perfect they were men they were fallible
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they had problems but the headline that's the footnote the headline of the story is that your
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fathers should be honored and your future is hopeful. That's it. Blueprints for Christendom
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2.0, in a nutshell, it's post-war sentiment, revisionist history. What you've been taught
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over the last 60 years in regards to the past is largely a lie. And what you've been taught
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by dispensationalism for the future, which only includes nine or 10 days left, is also a lie.