The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - The Reformed World Is Too Divided with David Reece

00:00:00.000 Welcome back to another Theology Applied episode. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right

00:00:04.560 Response Ministries. In this episode, I am welcoming the CEO of Armored Republic, Mr. David

00:00:09.340 Reese. He's also a local pastor. We're talking about civic covenanting, ecclesiastical covenanting.

00:00:15.680 Basically, to break it down, we get very practical. Theological terms will be included,

00:00:20.300 but so will definitions and explanations and practical marching orders, applications,

00:00:25.520 takeaways, things that we can do, the average Christian on the ground. But basically,

00:00:29.580 this is it. We want a theological maximalism and unity, and not just unity of common care.

00:00:38.060 Hey, we disagree, but we still love each other. No, a unity of common conviction. We're united,

00:00:44.060 not just because we tolerate one another in the midst of disagreement, but we're united

00:00:48.740 because we're actually achieving the knowledge of the faith, the knowledge, the same knowledge

00:00:54.780 of the Son of God. And Ephesians 4, unity of common conviction, unity of knowledge, not just

00:01:00.740 a unity of common care, but a unity of common conviction. So a lot of what evangelicalism has

00:01:06.320 done over the last 50 years and even longer is a theological minimalism, lowering the bar

00:01:13.080 doctrinally, as low as we can get because, well, doctrine divides and we need to be united. And

00:01:19.360 The only way to be united is to stop caring about truth or to care about a lot less truth.

00:01:25.660 But is there a way from the scripture, does God give us a method, a strategy for being

00:01:31.900 united and not lowering the bar theologically?

00:01:35.920 I think there is.

00:01:36.960 Mr. Reese thinks there is.

00:01:38.780 And that's what we're going to lay out for you today.

00:01:41.860 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:01:45.380 This is Theology Applied.

00:01:49.360 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with

00:01:57.160 Right Response Ministries. In this episode, I'm welcoming back to the show, Mr. David Rees. He

00:02:01.460 is the CEO of Armored Republic. He's also a local pastor. And we're going to be discussing

00:02:06.440 balkanization, division, and also unity. Truth unites. It also divides. But there's got to be

00:02:15.660 some kind of stopping measure. Truth matters, but we don't want to unnecessarily divide over

00:02:24.980 the most minute expressions of tertiary truths. And right now, it seems like in the evangelical

00:02:32.160 world that we are fracturing and splintering further and further and further. And when brothers

00:02:39.480 dwell in unity together, it's pleasing to the Lord and God hates division. And so we're trying

00:02:43.900 to think of ways and offer some practical principles in this episode for what things

00:02:49.860 are worth dividing over, what things are not worth dividing over, and how can I ensure

00:02:54.400 that the people that I align with today, that are not their enemies 15 minutes from now.

00:03:01.080 I think a lot of us, you know, in the woke wars 1.0 of 2020, we had a lot of co-belligerents

00:03:08.360 and a lot of guys that we would have said are on the team, and it hasn't been that long

00:03:12.100 in just a few short years from 2020, guys who we would have said initially were all on the same

00:03:18.420 team. Now we find ourselves splintered and fractured. So at a certain point, that's got

00:03:25.180 to stop. Otherwise, yes, we are Protestants, but we don't want every individual Protestant to just

00:03:31.040 be his own Pope. So, Mr. Reese, what do we do about that? Thanks for having me on, brother.

00:03:36.340 So I think that what we have to do is we have to realize that there are different rallying points

00:03:40.440 for unity. And there's the rallying point for the state, there's the rallying point for the church,

00:03:44.660 for the household, and then for the individual. And so I think that thinking about these different

00:03:49.620 covenant spheres and how they're supposed to think about functional unity is key. And so,

00:03:55.360 you know, we are Americans, and so we're very used to thinking about the individual operating

00:03:58.740 just sort of atomistically. And so we go, okay, so the goal is to glorify God. Great. So now we

00:04:03.960 have a joint, you know, North Star. We have a target that we're ultimately getting to. It's a

00:04:09.000 few light years away, but we're going to, we're going to be moving there. And so then you have

00:04:13.920 sort of this, okay, the law of God is the means by which we're supposed to get moving towards that,

00:04:18.500 that target. And so in addition to that, we kind of go, okay, so that's what we're supposed to do,

00:04:24.940 but matters of preference, you're supposed to be able to do all sorts of things. And we just

00:04:28.420 think about the individual. And so we forget that individuals are supposed to be cooperating inside

00:04:34.720 of the other covenant institutions. And so we've spent time talking about the household and how

00:04:39.120 the household functions well. And so if individuals are in covenant with God, we're supposed to glorify

00:04:44.300 God, then we go, okay, how do we interact with other people? And the principal places are the

00:04:48.740 household, the church, and the state. So with the household, you're looking for extreme unity,

00:04:54.060 right? Because you think about this, if you're a man, you're looking to lead somebody and have

00:04:58.220 her be your helpmate for the rest of your life, and she's going to have to be able to deal with

00:05:02.540 you in all sorts of details and be able to submit to you in enormous detail. And so a wife is

00:05:08.480 looking for, you know, you're looking for a godly man, but you're choosing a boss, right? And so 0.83

00:05:13.480 this idea that you've got to pick a man that you think has good character, that has good doctrine,

00:05:18.960 and that you feel like you're able to resolve conflicts in a way that is ultimately going to

00:05:23.740 go appealing back to the word of God. And you've got the church to protect you in terms of there

00:05:28.680 being you know abuses or whatever but the state i mean you know a man can be unfaithful or a woman

00:05:34.480 could be unfaithful and then just leave with half the stuff right you know and so so the church is

00:05:39.740 sort of the only public protector we've got there right now but so choosing well in marriage and

00:05:45.260 raising your children you have all sorts of room for you know ordering your children to fulfill

00:05:49.580 preferences right so there's there's a way the household sort of becomes a place where you're

00:05:53.880 training unity and you're training you know obedience and you're training operational unity

00:05:58.200 and where you have more minute detail, and then you can pay people to do work inside of the

00:06:02.860 household. And, you know, if they want to keep taking the money, then they've got to keep obeying

00:06:06.960 in detail, right? So that's sort of, unity is easier to obtain there. What we find is when we

00:06:12.180 move to the church, when we move to the state, we start to have a lot more fracturing, and it's

00:06:16.100 difficult. And people tend to either kind of try to make the church like the household or the state

00:06:21.180 like the household, or they try to make the household like one of those higher institutions,

00:06:25.220 and then you don't have efficient management.

00:06:27.300 So we need to recognize there's a different form of government,

00:06:29.760 generally speaking, in the lower governments

00:06:32.900 than in the higher governments.

00:06:34.060 As an individual, it's a monarchy.

00:06:35.760 You're governing yourself.

00:06:37.240 In the household, you've got essentially a monarchy

00:06:39.060 where the patriarch is ruling the home.

00:06:41.980 But then you get to the church,

00:06:43.740 and you've got a monarchy in the form of Christ

00:06:45.320 as the king of the church,

00:06:46.680 but there's supposed to be a plurality of elders.

00:06:49.400 There's supposed to be this ability to deal with the removal of officers

00:06:52.940 and all that kind of stuff.

00:06:53.700 Right. So you've got you've got this this issue of there's sort of a more of a power struggle that could occur and there's less centralized power.

00:07:01.180 Right. And with the state, you know, even though you can have a you could have a monarchy that is a valid government that God himself appointed generally a Republican form of government.

00:07:14.060 and those things are, are, uh, have different tendencies, but you, you're going to have a

00:07:20.520 hard time, even with the absolute monarchy, there's a difficulty of knowing what's actually

00:07:24.580 going on. The tendency of absolute monarchs is to start delegating out everything to a bunch of

00:07:28.460 different bureaucrats and they don't even know what's going on. It's kind of like in the book

00:07:30.940 of Esther where Haman has ordered the genocide of the Jews and, you know, Darius, uh, Hashuerus,

00:07:37.600 the emperor Darius, he doesn't even really know who's been executed, who's been ordered to be

00:07:41.760 executed, and he finds out his wife is one of those people, and then he finds out that there's

00:07:45.660 been this general order of genocide, and he goes, oh, oh, this is a problem. Like, that's the level

00:07:50.780 of disconnect that even in absolute monarchy you can have from having to manage a large realm.

00:07:56.780 So I think that what we're talking about principally today is unity in the church and

00:08:01.300 unity in the state and getting rallying points for that. And so I want to suggest that the

00:08:07.300 rallying point in the church, in short form, is covenanting around some sort of unity that's

00:08:13.540 defined, and the same is in the state. And those don't have to be the exact same covenant.

00:08:18.400 I think ideally they would be, but I think that the reality is that in a church you have to have

00:08:23.420 more unity than you have to in the state, and eventually the goal would be to see this idea

00:08:29.440 of a covenanted uniformity, where you have unity in doctrine, but you then capture that in a form,

00:08:35.560 an external form, and that external form is called a confession. And then you also have an

00:08:40.340 external form that's the form of government of the church and the form of worship that's going

00:08:44.700 to be dealt with. And in the state, you have similarly a constitution for the state. And so

00:08:50.260 these are the things that are getting worked out. And so in the interim, the question is,

00:08:53.940 what are the intermediate steps to advance towards those goals? So I'd be curious if you have

00:08:59.760 disagreements with those perspectives on the goals and the rallying points.

00:09:03.200 No, so far, I agree. I think, you know, one thing that's important in the church and with the state in both of those realms is just triage, you know, so in the church, you know, a theological triage of saying, you know, what must one believe, what should one believe and what may one believe, you know, you must believe this in order to be, you know, a member of this church.

00:09:30.260 You should believe this, although it may be an arena where we leave room for some degree of disagreement.

00:09:39.800 But, you know, but we still have a position that we think is right.

00:09:43.640 We're not relativists.

00:09:44.660 You should believe this.

00:09:45.940 And then there may be other areas where it's like, well, this is something that you may believe, but not necessarily even should believe.

00:09:54.120 So must and should and may, theological triage, so that you can have unity, but unity with

00:10:05.040 hopefully more than just four people, that we're not so particular in our covenanting

00:10:12.680 together that all of our covenants are inherently small, that it's just this very, very small

00:10:20.720 group of people, people that align on everything. And then, you know, and then you just, you keep

00:10:25.860 fracturing and keep fracturing and keep fracturing. Yeah. So I think that when we look at the history

00:10:33.160 of the church and we look at what the scriptures teach about the idea of how the church deals with

00:10:37.260 things, there has to be, there has to be an authoritative distinguisher between, you know,

00:10:44.020 what we have to covenant around versus not. And so if you divorce the church from any history

00:10:51.640 and you don't say that there's any covenants that have ever been reached before, then you can sort

00:10:56.920 of just say, well, we're just going to make up a new one that we think kind of meets the minimum

00:11:01.920 bounds of maybe a Christian. And then you can say, maybe we're going to have some definition

00:11:06.640 for what we think is acceptable for our officers. And then we're going to have sort of a definition

00:11:10.740 that we think could be maybe other officers that we could unite with, even though we're

00:11:14.560 not in part of the same church.

00:11:17.540 But I want to suggest that covenants are binding across generations.

00:11:22.380 And so if that's the case, if covenants are binding across generations, then whether we

00:11:29.840 find it convenient or not, may have to think about covenants that have been reached before

00:11:35.660 or decisions of the church that might have been reached before.

00:11:38.940 So, and we also have to ask ourselves, is there a cumulative work that's been done or is this sort of this chaos hodgepodge where everybody has to like study everything that's ever happened from the first century forward and kind of piece it all together?

00:11:55.740 Right.

00:11:55.900 So to cut to the chase on that, I mean, what I want to communicate is essentially I would suggest that the Reformation reached a new high watermark and there's a rallying point as defined there.

00:12:05.760 And so whether you're – if you're Baptist, you're basically going to say the London Baptist Confession is the high watermark.

00:12:11.200 If you're Congregationalist, you're going to say the Savoy Declaration.

00:12:13.640 And if you're Presbyterian, you're going to say the Westminster Confession.

00:12:16.420 And if you look at those documents, they agree about basically everything except for baptism and church government.

00:12:24.120 And so the idea that it's not possible to get to significant doctrinal unity is something that I just say that's not the case.

00:12:31.380 I mean the Holy Spirit simply does it.

00:12:33.740 The Holy Spirit does that.

00:12:35.140 So right preaching of the word, careful guarding of those things.

00:12:38.460 And so I want to suggest that on an institutional level, we need to rally to, as churches, a confessional standard.

00:12:47.180 And then as we disagree, so like in your case being Baptist, my case being Presbyterian, our job becomes arguing with each other about those disagreements to where we can come to unity.

00:12:58.680 So one of us is wrong, and so either children need to be baptized or they don't.

00:13:03.800 And so I can deal with you as a brother and as a friend and say, hey, let's talk about other stuff.

00:13:10.120 We could do other things.

00:13:11.020 And then we have to keep coming back to the point of disagreement.

00:13:14.680 And the goal is not simply to keep re-saying the same things exactly, but the goal is to say, okay, here are the verses.

00:13:21.700 Let's talk through them.

00:13:23.080 Let's work through them.

00:13:23.960 Let's work through the points of disagreement on those.

00:13:26.260 So you go back to the scriptures itself.

00:13:28.500 So this, I think, a commitment to seeking unity, not just seeking to shut up, right, but seeking to actually come to agreement.

00:13:39.560 And that happens while arguing with each other.

00:13:42.340 And I think a lot of the times, you know, the problem is that we are impatient with each other.

00:13:46.720 And we say, if I've talked to this person about this doctrine once or twice, you know, I'm just not going to talk to them about it anymore or I'm going to not be their friend anymore or whatever.

00:13:54.160 And so you go, this stuff that is not the gospel proper, if we're not in some sort of a church covenant together, then we can still be pushing to try to come to resolution on those things.

00:14:07.860 So I think the confessional standard is what we have to use to say that.

00:14:13.020 And so a lot of people are going to say that Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession is too long.

00:14:16.240 There's too much detail there.

00:14:17.320 And so I think they're going to criticize that as too detailed.

00:14:19.960 So what do you think about those as the points to rally around?

00:14:23.240 I think that's good. One, I think there's a misunderstanding of unity. So I think that's

00:14:31.020 part of the hang up is the Bible actually speaks to at least two different types of unity. Because

00:14:37.060 when we think unity, I think that we've been indoctrinated with a light, fluffy, watered down

00:14:45.580 Christianity that anytime it discusses unity, it's only talking about one kind of unity,

00:14:52.420 which is a biblical unity, but even that has been perverted. And so the type of unity in 99.9%

00:14:59.780 of sermons that discuss unity, the type of unity in view is what I would call a unity of love,

00:15:07.460 or you could put it another way. You could say a unity of common care. So this would be the type

00:15:13.200 of unity that insists in scripture that we should bear with the weak, that we should exercise charity

00:15:21.720 towards one another in the midst of disagreement. And that is biblical. There is a biblical precedent

00:15:28.460 for that type of unity. The problem is not that that type of unity is wrong. The problem is that

00:15:34.400 there's more than one type of unity. Ephesians 4 is probably one of the premier chapters that

00:15:39.600 speaks about not a unity of love or common care, but rather a unity of the faith or unity of the

00:15:46.800 knowledge of the faith, which is a unity of common, not care, but common conviction.

00:15:52.340 Ephesians 4, what's being asserted there is that one, Christ is the head of the church,

00:15:56.860 and as a good head, he gives gifts to the church in the form of leaders. Leaders are not a burden,

00:16:04.020 but good leaders is the ideal, and they should be viewed as a blessing, a gift to the church.

00:16:08.920 Christ gives different kinds of leaders, and I would say not just different kinds of leaders

00:16:13.260 for different roles and tasks, but also different stages of this church building project. So he gives

00:16:18.820 Ephesians 2.20, cross-referencing that from Ephesians 4, he gives apostles and prophets

00:16:24.140 for leg one. If we're thinking of a construction team, it's not just that the same men

00:16:30.480 are working from the project from start to finish, but there are different teams of men

00:16:36.440 who are particularly skilled in different forms of labor and one team of men, namely those who

00:16:43.740 lay a foundation, they come first. And then when the foundation is firmly laid, then we don't need

00:16:51.120 to do that part of the house building project over again. And we don't need those men. We still

00:16:58.860 need their foundation. We need their work that's already been done, but we don't need those men.

00:17:03.460 So we, we still have the foundation, which is, I would say that it's the apostles and prophets in scripture rated. So we still have the apostles and prophets. We still have their work, but we don't still have modern day apostles and prophets working, but we still have the work of the apostles and prophets. And it's a work that was good. It's a sufficient work. It's a perfect work inspired by the Holy Spirit with Christ himself as the capstone. And so it's a work that we don't need to do over.

00:17:31.220 And now you have evangelists and shepherds, teachers coming in.

00:17:35.800 And I think that's who is working now.

00:17:39.660 And there's some debate to be had.

00:17:40.940 Maybe evangelists are a second wave, and now it's shepherd teachers in the last wave.

00:17:45.700 So whether it's two waves, two stages of the work, or three, and whether it's a five-fold

00:17:51.100 ministry or a four-fold ministry that shepherds and teachers are two sides of one coin, there's

00:17:56.920 debate for that.

00:17:57.760 It's two phases and there's four offices.

00:17:59.620 You're good.

00:17:59.940 Two phases and four offices. That's my view, believe it or not. And so that being said,

00:18:06.400 I think that that's really helpful for people to realize, but here's the big point. So Jesus

00:18:10.860 is the head of the church. He gives gifts to the church in the form of men, leaders,

00:18:14.960 qualified leaders for two separate waves, stages of this work, all building one project. We're

00:18:21.140 not building two different, it's not two different projects. It's not two different houses. It's

00:18:24.620 one house in two stages. We need to know what stage we're on now so that we're not trying

00:18:29.780 to, so that we're actually framing walls and not taking a jackhammer and trying to undo a

00:18:35.880 foundation. No, that's done and it's good. And then the last thing is, what is the chief aim,

00:18:41.300 the ultimate purpose, the goal? And the goal is not unity of common care. It's not unity of

00:18:49.280 charity in the midst of disagreement. No, the goal is so that we would achieve a unity of faith,

00:18:55.780 the same knowledge of the same son of God. Not, well, I think Jesus looks like this and I think

00:19:02.320 Jesus looks like that, but we love each other and we'll tolerate each other nonetheless. That is

00:19:06.800 nowhere in view with the type of unity being discussed in Ephesians 4. It's not a unity of

00:19:11.820 common care or love. It's a unity of knowledge, faith, common conviction, so that we would no

00:19:18.360 longer be like children tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine, but we would actually

00:19:23.340 grow up into the fullness of the maturity of Christ. And Christ is not bipolar. Christ is not

00:19:29.300 schizophrenic. He doesn't have multiple personality disorder. Christ is one person. And so too,

00:19:35.640 his body should be one body that is not merely held together by love, but held together by

00:19:41.660 agreement. And so I even wrote part of that in my book. I wrote a whole chapter saying

00:19:46.700 unity of common care, right? Toleration of one another, charity towards one another in the midst

00:19:52.460 of disagreement is good. But let us never forget that the first, the first kind of unity, the best

00:19:58.980 kind of unity that we're aiming for is not that we're united merely through love in the midst of

00:20:04.940 disagreement, but we're actually united because we agree. And the way that we get there is not

00:20:10.600 through tolerance. The way we get there is through persuasion.

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00:23:06.520 that's excellent i agree with everything you said there and i think that the idea that we begin with

00:23:11.700 we have this we have this unity of care in order to get to the unity of the faith so that the

00:23:19.220 conversations and persuasion have the relational context to keep happening absolutely and so i

00:23:25.000 think that exactly right so we we care we care for each other in that way in order to make it so

00:23:29.620 that we can keep discussing so we're removing as many offenses as we can so the offense of

00:23:33.940 disagreement is the thing that's there is the focus so the goal is to close it out you know in

00:23:39.020 manufacturing uh you talk about the idea of of work in progress and work in progress is a really

00:23:43.820 dangerous thing because you just end up with all this you got raw material inventory you take it

00:23:48.880 in. You make it work in progress. It's been altered. It can't be made into something else

00:23:52.460 now. So you have all the illiquidity. You can't turn it into something different that you would

00:23:57.540 have if it were a finished product. But you have none of the value of a finished product. And so

00:24:01.520 the finished product is valuable because you can sell it. The raw material is valuable because

00:24:06.300 it's able to be turned into all sorts of stuff. And the stuff that's work in progress has all

00:24:12.380 of the negatives of both and none of the positives of either. And so, and so it's when you have

00:24:18.540 disagreements, it's sort of work in progress. And I think the goal has to be between Christians 0.76

00:24:23.940 to seek to limit the work in progress. We don't try to bring up everything under the sun that we 0.93

00:24:29.380 can think of that we might disagree about, but instead your goal is to find, you know, find

00:24:34.000 unity, have a common care, and to then seek to resolve disagreements by seeking to be careful

00:24:41.240 and self-control. And I think some people who like to debate, I think a lot of people who are

00:24:46.400 really gifted in a prophetic way just like to debate. And they go and they want to debate with

00:24:51.880 people whether they're mature or not. And because those people haven't matured into a place of

00:24:56.780 being careful about what disputes they're opening up, they sort of end up making strife all over

00:25:02.840 the place. And we could joke about this as the cage stage, which is basically people who care

00:25:06.780 about doctrine coming to realize some important doctrine and then realizing they want to debate

00:25:11.100 about that, and then they learn about other neat things that matter in the Bible, and it's a debate

00:25:14.420 about those. So I think one of the really important things for pursuing unity is recognizing what you

00:25:20.140 talked about as the unity of care and the unity of love, but then using those things to help to

00:25:26.240 resolve disputes. So the question becomes, what order do you pick disputes to have? Because I

00:25:33.100 could just walk around finding people and being like, let's argue about head coverings, or I can

00:25:39.160 say let's argue about um whether the scriptures are infallible and systematically true and then

00:25:45.540 okay well just out of curiosity are you a head covering guy yeah we do head covering in our

00:25:50.440 church and so people bring it up early because they see women covering their heads and they go

00:25:54.140 so do i have to we have to like cover our heads together like well to the men know

00:25:58.300 exactly yeah women know either but we think that they should but right that's something that we

00:26:03.000 don't require for example for membership exactly we don't require it but um but my wife and

00:26:08.100 daughters wear a head covering and I've, I've talked about it and I try not to make it a point

00:26:12.280 of division, but it's another one of those things. It's like, you know, the Bible has something to

00:26:17.120 say about this. There is a right position. And especially when you study that one in light of

00:26:21.260 the text, but also throughout church history, I mean, the, it's the dominant lion's share of

00:26:27.180 church history is head covering until, until really, you know, I mean, late 1800s and especially,

00:26:33.740 you know the 1950s and 60s and they were even you know with the temperance movement you know

00:26:38.540 and first wave feminism and things like that they were they uh certain groups of women in local

00:26:43.080 churches even scheduled like the same sunday that they in protest they were all going to take off 0.92

00:26:47.420 their hats and throw them down and you look at that and and then you look at what it was teamed

00:26:51.580 up with and it's like this the same group that was anti-head covering was the same group you know

00:26:56.460 that was propelling feminism and all and when you look at the history of it it's like it's hard to

00:27:02.520 argue that this is a good thing yeah yeah so i mean i think it's very clear in the scriptures

00:27:07.260 but i also think that one of the things that we try to look for is how can you avoid how can you

00:27:12.180 avoid uh making additional barriers right um you know without dishonoring the lord right our goal

00:27:17.140 is to honor the lord and then how do we also make it so people can initially you know come in and i

00:27:21.960 think that the idea that one thing is i think the goal actually is over time we want the church to

00:27:28.040 come to unity in a place where we actually end up making it more complicated to become a member

00:27:32.380 and more complicated to become an officer, right?

00:27:35.160 An officer today should be required

00:27:37.160 to have a lot more knowledge

00:27:38.260 than an officer would have been required

00:27:39.420 to have in the third century in the church.

00:27:41.100 Right.

00:27:41.500 And that's because we have all the work

00:27:43.060 that was done beforehand.

00:27:44.220 But also probably less knowledge

00:27:45.860 than a Puritan officer would have had in the 1700s

00:27:49.480 because sadly we have regressed.

00:27:53.900 Absolutely.

00:27:54.460 So I mean, you read like the commentaries

00:27:56.380 that the great Baptist John Gill wrote

00:27:58.360 or the great Presbyterian Matthew Poole

00:28:01.140 or something like that.

00:28:01.840 And the scholarly level on that versus, like, you know, the stuff that gets published today, you know, it's just, you know, you go, I'm going to keep reading Gill and Poole.

00:28:10.540 So I think this idea of the pursuit of the goal of greater unity of the doctrine, one of the things that happens, I think, in Ephesians in the text is it talks about the idea of the bond of peace.

00:28:22.540 and this idea of bearing with one another in love

00:28:28.820 and endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

00:28:33.640 I think the bond of peace, whenever you see the word bond in Scripture,

00:28:37.300 you should be thinking about covenant.

00:28:39.480 This idea that you form a bond that's established by oaths or by vows.

00:28:46.760 And so the bond of peace is the covenant of peace or the covenant of grace. 0.61

00:28:51.240 But it's also a bond that establishes peace between Jew and Gentile and all that, where there's this, in the new administration of the covenant of grace, we're sharing together in this covenant administration. 0.61

00:29:03.260 And so this idea that the context of covenant.

00:29:07.000 And so I think the other thing you mentioned is this idea of how do you make it so it's not impossible for people to join.

00:29:11.980 And I think that you have to recognize the biblical idea that there are levels of maturity.

00:29:17.160 And so the Apostle John talks about children, young men, and fathers.

00:29:23.420 And so what I think is important is that you have sort of a minimal set of doctrine that's necessary to teach people in sort of membership classes are typically how this gets done in churches.

00:29:35.540 But you have some sort of a church government and I think the idea of a shorter catechism,

00:29:39.260 The whole purpose of differentiating between a larger catechism and shorter catechism in the Presbyterian tradition is to say the shorter catechism is the milk that's necessary to help somebody to come to the table so they can commune.

00:29:53.060 And then a larger catechism is how you mature somebody and it's meat.

00:29:57.420 And I think this realization that there are stages in the process of development of the Christian life.

00:30:04.140 And we're so individualistic in America that we like to pretend like everybody's journey is totally unique.

00:30:10.700 And it's just like, no, actually, my experiences are overwhelmingly going to be have points of reference that are similar in the experiences of of believers throughout history and that are referenced, obviously, in the scriptures.

00:30:23.620 And the scriptures give us a a complete set of all the stuff we need to address, all the experiences that we have in the Christian life.

00:30:30.240 But so, so this idea that there's, there's sort of, there's stages. So the, the, the child, the young man and the father. And I think that what we need to recognize is what's really necessary for, for the child is going to be essentially, you're going to have a commitment to the doctrine of the scripture and its authority.

00:30:48.520 you're going to have some sort of a shorter catechism or something like that for introductory

00:30:53.280 teaching for people. And then you're going to have in that introductory category, you're going

00:30:58.380 to necessarily have the solos, tulip, trinity, incarnation, and a basic federal headship of

00:31:06.160 Adam and Christ. You don't have to have a really elaborate covenant theology or whatever, but you

00:31:09.980 need to understand that you're sinful in Adam and you're righteous in Christ. And so those things

00:31:16.620 They're going to give you, here's the stuff we've got to give to people.

00:31:20.160 And so often people treat like tulip, like it's some, like, grand thing that you need to deal with when you're a father or whatever.

00:31:26.700 It's just like, that's milk that guards the solas.

00:31:30.900 And so then you also need to have a commitment to the basic law order that the Ten Commandments summarizes and some sort of a commitment about, based upon that local church, you're going to have to deal with how the sacraments are administered.

00:31:44.220 You're going to have to deal with some sort of submission to church authority.

00:31:47.420 And then you're going to have to deal with prayer because it's essential to the Christian life.

00:31:53.540 So that's actually the content of the Shorter Catechism.

00:31:57.280 And so, you know, those things, I don't think you look at the Shorter Catechism.

00:32:00.740 I've had a lot of really solid Reformed Baptist friends that basically are like, yeah, I agree with the Shorter Catechism in elaborate detail, except when we get to the baptism part.

00:32:08.100 Right.

00:32:08.220 And so it's just that, you know, you can just grab that slightly.

00:32:11.340 If there's not a better Baptist catechism that can be used, you can grab that, you know, replace the baptism part and you've basically got something.

00:32:17.360 So I think that those that idea, if there's a rejection of what's there in the shorter catechism, there's a fundamental rejection of of the basics of the faith.

00:32:26.520 Right. No, you're right. This is not this is not elite theological, you know, higher education for theologians.

00:32:37.340 We've just, the bar has fallen so far that I remember Voddy Bauckham saying, you know, years ago that anytime you find a young man who is zealous for the Lord and, you know, possesses some, you know, some theological, you know, inclination, like, hey, he's got some potential, you know, in the theological realm, seems like he's got a sharp mind and he's zealous for theology and he knows a few things.

00:33:02.860 many people in the church just instinctively begin to push him towards the pastorate and say,

00:33:09.540 well, you should consider going to seminary. I think you're called to be a pastor. And part

00:33:12.840 of the reason we do that is really to protect ourselves, our own apathy towards doctrine

00:33:19.480 and these kinds of things. So what we want to do is, because he's got to be called to

00:33:23.940 pastoral ministry, because if he's not, that's how we assuage our guilty consciences. Because

00:33:28.380 if he's not, well then maybe he's just, um, maybe this is actually normative. Maybe he's just, uh,

00:33:34.640 your average, you know, young Christian man. Um, and so then, you know, then, then what do I say 0.99

00:33:40.180 about myself? You know, but if I can say like, oh, well he's, you know, he's a Christian 2.0,

00:33:45.960 he's, he's one of those rare special guys. Then I can, then I can maintain the illusion that,

00:33:51.320 um, that I'm, you know, I'm not bad. I'm just the average Christian and he's above average

00:33:56.420 when the reality is, no, the bar has slipped and fallen so much that the guys right now that we

00:34:02.620 send to seminary to be pastors, you know, again, going back to, you know, earlier times in the

00:34:08.820 1700s and 1800s, these just would have been, you know, many of them would have just been your

00:34:14.120 average Christians. Yeah. And I think one of the things, you know, you pointed out in a lecture 1.00

00:34:20.640 that I was able to enjoy hearing you give, you had said that, you know, all over the place,

00:34:25.700 We're essentially in a place where we keep promoting people to their point of incompetence.

00:34:30.120 And I think a part of that is any gifting at all that might relate to some office, the tendency to push people up.

00:34:36.040 And I think what you just brought up, that idea of trying to assuage your own guilt, is a part of why.

00:34:41.780 And so you have been an advocate in your book.

00:34:45.120 You advocate this idea that gathering around a particular location so you can work together, the need to concentrate because we've diffused too much.

00:34:53.420 was we've dissipated our energy as a church and therefore made it so we're incapable of

00:34:58.200 accomplishing anything. So we're, we're too spread out. We're led by people who are in positions that

00:35:03.860 are just above their point of competency. And so that's obviously a recipe for success. And so

00:35:09.760 that's why we're winning all over the place. Just, we're all tired of winning, right? This is,

00:35:13.780 this is, this is what we're going through. It's winning exhaustion. So that's, it's obviously

00:35:18.040 destructive of all those ends. So, I mean, if we think about the process of maturing and we think

00:35:24.300 we need to pull people in and mature them and have well-ordered sort of teams. And I think there's

00:35:30.320 also this idea that the young man is differentiated in John, in first John, he says the young men

00:35:36.180 fight. And so the, the fighting of the young men is, is an indicator you're trying to, you raise

00:35:43.680 children until they've got basically those things in place where they they understand the basic

00:35:49.080 doctrines they understand the basic law order they understand how to use the means of grace

00:35:53.760 and then they're kind of getting into the rhythm of christian life with you know how does their

00:35:58.520 worship go and stuff like that and then they're also trying to get into how do i get into christian

00:36:02.520 community right so once they're plugged into those things most people a lot of pastors look at that

00:36:07.280 like great success we're done here like this is like masterful like this guy this is done well

00:36:12.520 that's when they're able to now be useful fighting then right and so and so that that idea that the

00:36:19.340 fighting then you you have them go and do ministry you have them do evangelism you have them work

00:36:22.840 through you and and you're you're starting to go through things like let's talk about the confession

00:36:26.920 let's talk about the larger catechism let's let's get an overview of the bible let's make it so you

00:36:30.320 have some idea of how the books of the bible fit together you're starting to really get them the

00:36:34.020 system and they're going to get lumpy in different areas and they're going to be really good at this

00:36:38.660 and terrible at that. And, and your, your goal is to help to make a more mature, developed

00:36:44.580 individual where their weak points are not disastrous anymore. And their strong points

00:36:49.520 are really able to be used powerfully. Right. And so in, in first John, you're right. Cause

00:36:54.520 it's, it's those three categories. I remember, you know, preaching through first John and for

00:36:58.500 the little children, uh, there's a major emphasis, uh, really only two emphases. Uh, one is on, um,

00:37:04.560 that, uh, that you recognize that, uh, it's the, the doctrine of adoption that you recognize that

00:37:09.880 God is your father. Um, and so understanding father, God, and in, in, in that, you know,

00:37:15.020 the father, uh, the father is God, but the father is not the son and the father is not the spirit,

00:37:20.340 your basic Trinitarian doctrine, uh, you could include, you know, you could derive from that,

00:37:24.920 uh, that there's at least a, uh, a minimum understanding of Trinitarian theology. Um,

00:37:30.060 so understanding, you know, God is father adoption. And then the second emphasis for

00:37:33.880 little children is the forgiveness of sins, uh, that from the first day of conversion, um, that

00:37:40.180 there is inherently, um, a basic understanding of salvation. And so I think a lot of, when I think

00:37:45.980 of, you know, catechisms for the new believer, a lot of it is going to be a basic doctrine of God,

00:37:51.100 theology proper, knowing God is father and the father is distinct from the son and the spirit,

00:37:55.120 and then the forgiveness of sins. So theriology and an understanding of salvation, um, that God

00:38:00.380 saves and also how God saves. Uh, but then for young men, you're right. It's, uh, I write to

00:38:05.300 you young men because you have overcome the evil one. And then when he, and he repeats all these

00:38:09.420 things twice. And then the, you know, the second time where he says it, I write to you young men

00:38:13.540 because the word of God dwells richly in you. And so then he gives the means by which they have

00:38:19.180 overcome the evil one. They haven't just done it by brute strength. Uh, they've done it by the

00:38:23.180 indwelling rich indwelling of the word of God. And so, uh, now it's moving from just a theology

00:38:29.200 proper and soteriology to a more comprehensive biblical theology, you know, from Genesis to

00:38:35.520 Revelation is how you could exegete that the whole word of God is now dwelling in you. And then with

00:38:40.720 the word of God, the law word of God. And so understanding more of, you know, God's law. And

00:38:45.300 then lastly, I write to you fathers. And that one almost seems the most simplistic, but I think it's

00:38:50.120 actually that, you know, it's the most beautiful and complex of all. But I write to you fathers

00:38:55.120 for, you know, he who is from the beginning.

00:38:58.880 And so now there's this, this ancient of days and not just ancient of days, speaking of

00:39:04.000 God himself, but this ancient passed down, historic body of doctrine, you know, him who

00:39:10.820 is from the beginning, you and this, you now are the embodiment, the full embodiment of

00:39:16.220 all those saints who came before you, the full work of the Christian theology and doctrine

00:39:20.760 that's been passed down generation from generation.

00:39:23.340 and first john will preach i guess is what i'm saying so no that's that's amazing thank you for

00:39:27.720 that brother that's awesome and i think one of the glorious things about the tail end of it with the

00:39:31.660 fathers is it basically repeats you know you you know the father it's like twice right there's a

00:39:36.640 full circle yeah it's like this emphasis on the deep deep knowledge of god right it's like it's

00:39:41.700 a hebraism of this like you know god you know god like it's the deep knowledge of god so which is

00:39:47.900 the knowledge of god is how we are sanctified right and and the word of god is how we get the

00:39:52.580 knowledge of God. And that results in the bearing of fruit. And so I just, you know, this idea that

00:39:58.200 the deep knowledge of God, the rich knowledge of God is how we're matured. And that as pastors,

00:40:05.940 we have to teach the doctrine. We also have to rebuke people because we become blind. And so

00:40:12.060 this rebuking part, it's always been the hardest part for me of the pastoral ministry is just the

00:40:16.020 rebuking, the correcting of showing them what to put on, right? And then you have this training

00:40:20.960 and righteousness this is the second timothy 3 16 stuff where the word of god is profitable for

00:40:25.820 useful for and the training part of of walking through it giving the example giving on the spot

00:40:31.900 rebuke and correction and and helping to you know watch and give critique and all that kind of stuff

00:40:37.060 where you're helping them to work it out um i think that that's what the the young man stage

00:40:42.680 is really about the young man stage is really about helping them to do that in the context of

00:40:48.060 fighting and the child stage you're doing that in the context of sheltering right you're you're

00:40:52.600 giving the protection of the christian community you're trying to protect them from heresy and all

00:40:55.780 that the young man stage you're like hey go read this heretical stuff let's talk about it like

00:40:59.440 you know what critique this thing you're like let's go out here let's go engage on the street

00:41:03.860 and do evangelism with other people or okay do apologetics in your own community and network and

00:41:08.400 the people you know and try to evangelize and pull them in and we oftentimes just get people

00:41:12.480 saved and then just try to get them to go evangelize right away and i go hey let's let's get

00:41:16.360 you safe let's let's great now let's disciple let's get the basic stuff in there and once they're

00:41:20.600 young men you kind of go okay now let's let's train now you can sort of take some risks more

00:41:25.300 in your in your network opportunity arises in your immature okay great but you're you know this

00:41:30.960 there's some times where you have to kind of push past boundaries where people don't want to talk

00:41:35.880 about things of the lord don't want to know what's going on with you becoming a christian or whatever

00:41:39.240 and you got to take risks of pushing past i think that young man stage is really where you want to

00:41:43.380 encourage people to take those risks in their network is by the time where they're they're

00:41:46.540 a little they've become a little bit competent at using the sword um and so that uh that that

00:41:51.620 thing i think from from there the young man i think a lot of times a young man who's learning

00:41:57.260 to fight that's really a great place for a guy to be a deacon um because there's two promises

00:42:02.300 with the office of deacon the office of deacon has the promise that you'll gain boldness by

00:42:06.760 exercising it well and that you'll get good reputation right and those are things you really

00:42:10.900 need for the office of elder. And I wish, you know, God's providence and everything, but, you

00:42:17.080 know, I haven't, I didn't go through the office of deacon before becoming an elder. And I think

00:42:21.740 that in a lot of ways, it may have been a good thing for me to help me to be better at things

00:42:26.440 like rebuking, because I would have had to go through more of that grind in that less, less

00:42:32.620 high office, being kind of forced to go through some of those conflicts without as much stress

00:42:37.380 on it. And so that's just something that- And that is a lot of the deaconate. People don't

00:42:42.100 think, they think of the deacon's food drive. They think, well, it's just charity. It's just

00:42:46.940 welfare. You're caring for the physical needs of widows and orphans. And that's just to 0.99

00:42:54.060 misunderstand the descriptive nature of Acts chapter six with these seven men. Number one,

00:42:59.700 like just the bar, seven men filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom. It's not that we need to be

00:43:04.700 filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom so that we can pass out soup. The saints are doing, back to 0.81

00:43:10.760 Ephesians 4, the saints are responsible as the executive office of carrying out the work of

00:43:16.620 ministry. But what these deacons are going to be doing is organizing that work, seeing to it that

00:43:22.060 no widow is overlooked. But not just that, widows have already been overlooked, and so they're doing

00:43:26.560 a ton of reconciliation and conflict management. You have not just two individuals or two households,

00:43:33.060 You have two entire sects of a massive church in Jerusalem.

00:43:37.580 This is a, we know it's a large church because 3,000 are added to the faith at Pentecost

00:43:41.720 when Peter preaches in Jerusalem.

00:43:43.180 So a massive church, and you can basically look at it and divide it in half.

00:43:48.240 Half of the church is upset at the other half and vice versa.

00:43:51.460 The Hellenistic Jews who are saying that our widows have been overlooked in the daily distribution

00:43:56.380 and then the Hebraic Jews. 0.97

00:43:58.120 And so the deacons are coming in and they're not just making sure that poor people get 0.87

00:44:01.280 fed.

00:44:01.640 Um, they, the deacons are coming in and people are at each other's throats and they have

00:44:06.900 to solve this conflict and seek, you know, reconciliation, restoration between two halves

00:44:12.780 of the church that are right now on the verge of threatening to, to it's, they're, they're

00:44:17.200 right on the verge of a church split.

00:44:18.900 And, um, and, and we're not even a century in to the Christian gospel.

00:44:22.980 And so this is a massive, uh, task laid before them.

00:44:26.400 And then I think of, you know, that's all descriptive and things that, you know, principles

00:44:29.840 we can glean from the text. But then prescriptive in terms of the qualifications of deacons that we

00:44:34.720 find later in 1 Timothy 3, it totally makes sense when you cross-reference Acts 6 and 1 Timothy 3

00:44:40.420 that the one distinctive, and of course, we can assume by way of implication that an elder should

00:44:46.220 have this qualification as well. But the fact that the Apostle Paul, underneath the inspiration of

00:44:50.560 the Spirit, finds it necessary to specifically mention one distinct qualification for a deacon

00:44:56.740 that's not mentioned for the elder, which is he must not be double-tongued. And I think there's

00:45:01.940 something unique to the office of deacon that it's kind of like mom in a household that can get,

00:45:08.040 if the kids are being manipulative, can get pitted against. Mom becomes this mediator,

00:45:13.940 this going back and forth in between dad, head of household, and then the children,

00:45:19.800 the citizens of this household state. Mom can be tempted if she's not wise and sanctified and 0.94

00:45:26.640 godly to say one thing to the kids and then another thing to dad. And so too, I think deacons

00:45:33.160 between elders and congregants, right? The congregants, there's things that eventually

00:45:38.520 do need to rise to the level of elder, but there's a lot of things that don't, where the elders need

00:45:42.600 to devote themselves to the reading and preaching of the word of God and prayer and study. But,

00:45:47.660 you know, the deacons should care for this. And there could be a temptation in the deaconate

00:45:52.760 to, you know, just to hush, hush, tell the congregants, tickle their ears, tell them what

00:45:57.980 they want to hear. And, and even bad mouth, the elders like, yeah, I know that, you know,

00:46:03.340 he's not sensitive and yeah, he's kind of, you know, was harsh the other day, this elder, this

00:46:07.580 pastor, and I'm really on your side. And then, you know, in a deacon and elders table and in a

00:46:12.740 meeting, oh yeah, I understand, you know, the congregation's immature. And so there can be

00:46:16.780 this temptation when you're doing conflict resolution between two parties and the deacons

00:46:21.460 probably had that same temptation, not just with elders and congregants, but to groups of

00:46:26.880 congregants, the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebraic Jews and the temptation to be double-tongued.

00:46:31.420 And so all that being said, for that particular portion of an elder's role that does include

00:46:37.180 conflict management, man, you can really cut your teeth in conflict management as a deacon,

00:46:43.120 because I think that's a massive portion of what the deaconate does.

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00:48:25.040 respect choice brother that was excellently described i mean like the scenarios i can have

00:48:42.080 i have scenarios flashing through my head from stuff i've seen throughout my life i'm exactly

00:48:45.780 that and i think so what we do in in our diaconal training is we go okay there's doctrine portion

00:48:51.340 but the part of the practical portion is conflict resolution which requires you know basic biblical

00:48:56.600 counseling and catechesis right and so you think you know that's all private ministry stuff right

00:49:01.580 it's not a function of church government but deacons as they're doing that as they're engaged

00:49:06.060 in people's lives so often they're gonna people go i need mercy ministry help say great do you know

00:49:10.100 how to do are you running a budget or are you just like blowing your money right and so so this idea

00:49:14.460 of like basic life management stuff like like budget and um and how to deal with conflict how

00:49:20.100 to deal with basic biblical counseling, and how to deal with basic catechesis.

00:49:24.640 And so you get so much done that way.

00:49:28.700 And I love that work, actually, of going in and doing that.

00:49:31.800 And I've recently had to get that more off of my plate because I just don't have time

00:49:37.340 for it.

00:49:37.680 I'm drawn to doing it.

00:49:39.340 And so I'm having to deal with that.

00:49:41.600 I'm really enjoying preparing some of our newer diagonal nominees, for example, on some

00:49:46.740 of that.

00:49:46.960 So it's been a fun training process.

00:49:48.300 But that is so practical.

00:49:49.840 I think something that people don't understand.

00:49:52.280 And so that if you're a deacon and you're giving mercy ministry, you're going to see

00:49:55.300 the details of someone's house.

00:49:57.040 You're almost there and you're unavoidably going to run into those problems and helping

00:50:02.560 people to get to that place.

00:50:04.000 And that Jethro principle from Exodus 18, you just mentioned, not everything gets to

00:50:07.700 the elders, not everything gets to, you know, if you believed in a series of courts, for

00:50:12.040 example, that were beyond the local church, you might say not every one of them goes to

00:50:14.660 those higher courts too.

00:50:15.800 So that whole thing.

00:50:18.280 So, how does this all fit into unity? And I think that people, you know, you go read the Ephesians text that you mentioned before, Ephesians 4, you're going to find everybody operating according to their station makes it so that people are able to divide the labor efficiently and encourage people to be trained.

00:50:38.280 So if immature believers are being trained by young men in the faith, by deacons and stuff in the faith, then that's able to be done.

00:50:46.780 And the more complex problems are able to be dealt with by the fathers in the faith.

00:50:50.640 And so you're able to have well-reasoned, well-done stuff as opposed to overloaded officers, overloaded elders.

00:50:58.860 They're able to really do a great job of teaching through the points of disagreement that become more complex.

00:51:05.280 and they can start to give you your handouts and organized information and all that kind of stuff.

00:51:10.460 And so I think one of the examples that this has happened in the church just in our own time,

00:51:15.440 Pastor Philip Kaiser has like amazing handouts for like every sermon he gives,

00:51:19.480 just these great like handouts of the organization of the stuff.

00:51:23.020 And I think that must testify to the fact that at their church,

00:51:25.940 they're able to really well organize that to give this guy the time

00:51:29.700 to actually put together these amazing documents for these sermons.

00:51:33.580 And so that kind of stuff where the teaching is able to be done well, have it be, here's handouts, here's information, here's stuff you get to look at as a congregation, that's going to encourage unity in the faith.

00:51:44.460 And so there's this proper division of labor.

00:51:48.320 And so then the fathers being those who are really, really deeply knowledgeable, being those who are able to teach the more advanced elements, and they're able to carefully guard the confessional standard.

00:52:00.940 And so they're going to be able to pick.

00:52:03.220 And we talked before about the idea of when you pick conflicts,

00:52:06.460 you want to pick the more basic ones as opposed to the less basic ones.

00:52:09.640 And so the Westminster Confession, the London Baptist Confession,

00:52:12.460 you look at the order of the chapters.

00:52:14.020 They're systematically ordered.

00:52:14.960 The first one's on Scripture, how do you know?

00:52:16.960 And the last one's going to be about the Day of Judgment.

00:52:19.280 And so you have this stuff that it kind of builds.

00:52:23.360 Chapter 1, Scripture.

00:52:24.860 Chapter 2, the nature of God.

00:52:27.080 Chapter 3, the decrees of God.

00:52:29.080 So how does God do things in terms of creation and providence?

00:52:32.260 And it just rolls out in this logically ordered way.

00:52:35.240 When you have disagreements, your goal is to see, well, do we agree about the more basic things?

00:52:41.380 And you avoid fighting about all the hot button issues.

00:52:44.180 And your goal is to drive the discussion to the points that are more systematically foundational.

00:52:50.660 And that way you can actually find where the real source of disagreement is,

00:52:54.540 as opposed to fighting about a bunch of little hot button issues at the top.

00:52:58.720 You're trying to go, okay, well, do we actually agree that the word of God is true?

00:53:02.040 Do we agree that the word of God is systematic and non-contradictory?

00:53:04.480 Okay, do we agree that God is this God?

00:53:08.480 And so when you get to disagreements with, for example, between Calvinists and Arminians,

00:53:11.700 you're disagreeing at chapter two.

00:53:14.580 You're disagreeing about the nature of God.

00:53:17.320 And so talking about a bunch of other stuff there,

00:53:20.380 we need to come to agreement about who God is, what he is.

00:53:23.480 And so you're trying to find the point of departure, where it is in the system,

00:53:28.360 and to be able to work through that there.

00:53:30.080 And that's, I think, part of what fathers train the young men in.

00:53:33.660 The young men who like to fight are going to kind of pick whatever battles.

00:53:37.720 And part of how you help them to have discipline is to say,

00:53:40.000 don't fight about everything that comes across your path.

00:53:44.240 You find the point of disagreement that's most basic with the person

00:53:48.540 and try to focus on that.

00:53:50.340 And sometimes there's practical things you've got to deal with along the way,

00:53:52.640 like a sin that manifests itself.

00:53:54.100 That's less basic.

00:53:55.180 You've got to deal with it.

00:53:55.880 but you're also trying to overlook as many sins as you can

00:53:59.660 so you're not rebuking people about everything all the time.

00:54:02.520 So I think these are some of the practical tactics of unity

00:54:05.860 before we go back to some of the bigger, broader ones.

00:54:08.600 I don't know anything you want to add about the tactics of unity.

00:54:11.420 Yeah, no, I think that's really good. 0.74

00:54:13.340 You need the theological triage

00:54:15.840 so that you have an order of priority for fighting.

00:54:18.480 What's worth fighting about?

00:54:19.640 Where do we fight first?

00:54:21.580 Which hills to die on?

00:54:23.140 And in order to have the theological triage,

00:54:25.380 you need systematic theology. Biblical theology is indispensable, but, but I think for purposes

00:54:30.960 of triage, systematic theology is key. And, you know, people are bothered by that. They don't

00:54:36.420 like labels. They don't like systems, you know, and, and all those kinds of things. And, um,

00:54:42.140 and you'll put, you know, pretty little cliches in order to defend your position for why you don't

00:54:46.360 like, you know, systems or labels. Um, but, but really it's a rejection of authority. It's a,

00:54:51.700 it's a reject it's wanting to be your own pope and make all of your own decisions and atomistic

00:54:57.500 individualistic um it's arrogance it's rooted in arrogance systematic theology just for the

00:55:02.560 listener um is not imposing uh man's systems on the god-breathed text instead it's going to the

00:55:09.080 text uh reading it carefully and then discerning out of the text not reading systems into the text

00:55:15.500 eisegesis imposing our systems but it's looking at the text and saying what do we know about the

00:55:20.560 character and nature of God? Well, we know that he's a God of order. He's not a God of chaos.

00:55:25.040 He's not a God of disorder. So I'm not imposing a system on the text. I am counting on the God

00:55:31.080 of order that he has placed a system in the text and I want to find it. So I'm not bringing a

00:55:36.160 system to the text. I'm drawing out of the text a system. And then when we have systematic theology,

00:55:40.660 it is constructed in not biblical order of Genesis to Revelation, but in logical order.

00:55:47.740 um and and in that logical order there's an order of priority and so that sets the triage

00:55:53.780 of um must believe should believe may believe and then we're able to start there and that helps us

00:56:00.880 i think from some of the the further fraction fracturing and um and dividing uh to be able to

00:56:07.480 you know because part of the reason that we're dividing on some things is because you know part

00:56:12.140 of it is is being too petty and too particular but part of it also is putting the cart before

00:56:16.940 the horse. Some of these divisions were dividing now on social justice or the solution for social

00:56:24.780 justice with so-and-so, which ironically, we should have been divided with so-and-so from

00:56:29.540 the very beginning. I think, for instance, people in the last couple of years have felt shocked

00:56:36.380 that James Lindsay is not on our team. And I'm like, guys, he's an atheist. He's not even in

00:56:46.260 the realm of, like, we're shocked. Oh, we're shocked. So James Lindsay, turns out he wants

00:56:52.740 to guard all the benefits of a Christian nation that afford him the ability to just to go through 0.95

00:57:02.260 life, to have, you know, to not be, you know, just it preserves his liberty and all these kinds of 0.94

00:57:08.540 like, all that comes from the Christian faith. There is no liberty apart from the Christian 0.94

00:57:12.740 worldview. So it turns out he wanted to defend, you know, seemingly defend some basic, you know, 0.57

00:57:20.180 but he was never defending the Christian faith. He was defending what the Christian faith produced 0.57

00:57:24.520 for him, its blessings. But then when it comes to actually the solution, he doesn't want a

00:57:32.280 Christian nation. He just wants, you know, classical liberalism as a later fruit of the

00:57:39.200 Christian worldview. But that's not my goal. My goal is not to bring us back to the good old

00:57:46.400 days of the 1980s. My goal is, no, I want a distinctly Christian nation. And of course,

00:57:53.340 I'm not going to be able to count on someone like James Lindsay to be a co-belligerent towards that

00:57:58.620 aim. And so my point is, some of the fracturing that we're having now, not all of it, but some

00:58:04.440 of the fracturing we're having now is we're actually, we're just starting to realize that

00:58:10.100 we're divided on chapter, for instance, to put it into like confessional terms, we're divided on

00:58:14.860 chapter 27. Well, you know, and it's like, oh, I'm losing allies. I'm losing friends. Yeah. But

00:58:20.320 honestly, you're divided on chapter 27. But if you'd been a little bit more discerning,

00:58:26.180 you would have realized that you were already divided on chapter two and three and four. And

00:58:30.020 of course, uh, of course this was not going to happen. So I think assuming the center,

00:58:34.660 that's what, you know, I think there's a geographic application of this. I think there's

00:58:38.640 an ideological, uh, and methodological application of this, certainly a theological application of

00:58:44.420 this. But right now, in terms of what time is it, the sons of Issachar, what do we do today?

00:58:48.820 They knew the times and they knew what Israel should do. So they weren't just commentators.

00:58:53.160 Oh, I know the times. I know how bad that is. No, no, they also had a plan. They knew what

00:58:57.420 Israel should do, and I think right now what Israel, the church of Jesus Christ, needs to do

00:59:02.900 given the times is we need to realize that our high watermark, like you've so wonderfully said,

00:59:08.960 is behind us, unfortunately. We've actually regressed because of sin, because of foolishness,

00:59:14.100 because of compromise, so we need to go back, and also we need to assume the center. It is not a

00:59:20.380 time for spreading out. That is the ultimate goal, to be fruitful and spread out over the whole

00:59:26.380 earth and subdue it through the great commission and the cultural mandate uh but right now um i 0.92

00:59:31.680 think we need to fall back uh we've spread too thin we need to fall back from behind enemy lines

00:59:36.640 we need to consolidate i think in the name of the game right now is consolidation geographically

00:59:41.060 theologically and then going finding what's uh what's the lowest you know the the uh um well

00:59:47.540 not the low but what's actually the highest common denominator where we can agree um and and how

00:59:53.320 close is that towards the highest watermark we have thus far in 2 000 years of church history

00:59:58.500 okay so here's where we can agree now here's the westminster confession of faith okay uh let's

01:00:04.020 consolidate here where we can agree let's spend the next 50 years seeing if we can get back

01:00:08.320 to to the high watermark that we had 500 years ago and now let's uh let's let's push forward

01:00:15.460 you know and now we can talk about maybe spreading out again um those seem so clear to me like just

01:00:21.620 practical, basic strategy and tactics. But man, you'd be surprised. That's basically some of

01:00:29.680 the content from my talk that I gave at the New Christendom Conference. And I was encouraged. A

01:00:34.960 lot of people loved it, but it was a love-hate kind of lecture that I gave. The people who loved

01:00:40.440 it really loved it. And then there were a few people that really, really, I mean, they're like,

01:00:45.600 this was my least favorite talk because I told, because I, I just, I just kind of straight up

01:00:52.320 told people what to do. Like, we don't have time. Stop being cute. This is what you need to do.

01:00:57.660 And that, you know, and I think that's kind of what we need right now. We need a few people to

01:01:00.880 say like, okay, that's enough. That's silly. It's always been silly. Stop it. And this is what we 0.97

01:01:05.800 need to do. And I think the need, you know, essentially the things you pointed out to people

01:01:11.000 is they need to move to a place where there's already a solid church and really a solid

01:01:15.540 Christian borough where there's economic activity, church activity, there's hospitality, there's

01:01:21.500 people that are going to be helping to work together that are desirous of accomplishing

01:01:25.740 the same goals. And you need a good amount of unity there. That's hard to find in a lot of

01:01:29.380 places. So being willing to move there. And if you can't move for some reason, like you've got

01:01:34.020 duties, you've got stuff that ties you there, whatever, maybe you've already got some of the

01:01:38.200 beginnings of it. Okay, well, focus the energy on making that work. If you can't make it work there,

01:01:44.180 then you've got to leave right so there's either there's either already a solid church there where

01:01:49.260 this is happening or a solid church and it requires a little bit of pushing and effort to

01:01:53.460 get to building that borough or you have the capacity to do it and a duty to stay or you need

01:01:59.740 to leave right and that's it and and so that's how simple that is and i think most people we

01:02:05.120 over evaluate what we're able to do on our own in time frames and so we need to realize the need to

01:02:11.080 divide labor, to accumulate capital, to make it so that we can build off of what other people

01:02:16.180 have already started. And so I think a lot of people miss out on that. And so places where

01:02:20.720 that's happening, where there's education, Christianity in the church, households that

01:02:25.660 are in good order, money being made with businesses, all that stuff together, that's

01:02:29.560 sort of the stuff that's necessary for a Christian borough or a, I've been calling it the Geneva 1.00

01:02:35.500 strategy before I heard the idea of that, just the idea that you flee to a place where you can 0.97

01:02:40.300 consolidate, get control, and then you can project power out. And so you're going to look at what

01:02:44.700 happened in Geneva. But I think there's two things there that have to also be focused on,

01:02:50.260 which is church unity through confessional covenanting, and then the civil order. And so

01:02:56.460 you talked about, I think you might disagree here, and I'd be curious about whether it would

01:03:00.960 be helpful for people to think about how the order around this is, in the civil order, I would say

01:03:06.280 we can have a highest common denominator without regard to really the history.

01:03:11.780 And we just kind of go, can we agree on a basic political platform of seeing Christ acknowledged

01:03:17.120 as the king of kings, his word acknowledged as the authoritative thing, biblical Christian

01:03:22.040 liberty defended as defined by the Bible, and biblical justice administered as defined by

01:03:26.600 the Bible as to be sort of four big political goals. And then how do you make that happen?

01:03:32.360 Well, I think there's an ordinance of civil covenanting that we have to be willing to swear to pursue those things together, and we have to be willing to commit to certain actions around that.

01:03:43.940 That's going to be things like having a shared arbitration system.

01:03:47.360 It's going to be swearing to defend each other if they start to come after each other.

01:03:52.280 You know, they come after you as a Baptist or me as a Presbyterian, the idea that we'd be willing to come and defend each other or provide sanction for each other.

01:03:58.740 this idea that we would swear to argue with each other about the disagreements in order to seek to

01:04:04.160 come to greater unity until we die. And that's where I think that context happens of having that

01:04:12.060 debate to try to get back to a high watermark. It's inside of a civil covenant where we're

01:04:17.100 already swearing to accomplish certain things together. And then our goal is to see ecclesiastical

01:04:23.720 unity and greater unity inside of that. So I think we have the freedom because of our context

01:04:28.700 to have a more loose civil covenant where we're swearing certain things to each other

01:04:33.660 than we might have in an ecclesiastical context. Because I think it'd be sin for us to fall away

01:04:40.120 from the, in the church, kind of the high water market's been attained. I think it's our job

01:04:45.060 to rally around that. And so that other thing that's necessary inside of a civil covenant is

01:04:51.160 we need to start having commitments to meet in some areas to make sure that we are physically

01:04:57.960 fit and prepared to competently make sure that we do our duties as men and to have some sort of way

01:05:06.440 where that's financed. And so those are the components of the civil covenant that I think

01:05:12.240 are necessary. And those are the places that make us that we're meeting physically. One of the

01:05:16.700 things you said in your speech that you gave at the conference recently was this idea that when

01:05:21.900 you're seeing each other in person and interacting in person, how it helps. Now that happens at the

01:05:27.140 local church, but I think also this idea of some sort of regular training together in the context

01:05:32.560 of a civil covenant is another place where that occurs, where you have that camaraderie in the

01:05:37.480 trenches and everything. And as you're doing business with each other and doing hospitality

01:05:41.020 from house to house, those are the things that would encourage that growth in unity in the

01:05:45.620 discussions and would also create social pressure on elders between those churches that are connected

01:05:50.360 in that way to keep talking with each other and to try to work through those differences

01:05:53.740 and have public discussion where they're accountable for the words that they say to each

01:05:58.240 other. Right. That's good. Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. I think you and I, the only

01:06:03.160 disagreement we would probably have would be minor, but it matters, but it wouldn't be a

01:06:09.560 grandiose, you know, um, you know, massive disagreement, but, um, would just be on the

01:06:14.800 civil covenanting, um, just, you know, how theologically, uh, what, what is that, you

01:06:21.160 know, that highest common denominator, you know, that, uh, that we would accept for that,

01:06:25.140 but everything, all the other elements of, you know, arbitrating our own, uh, disagreements

01:06:29.980 per first Corinthians chapter six, that's just a clear biblical principle that we're

01:06:34.240 not, you know, we're not going to the pagan courts, um, unless, unless we absolutely have

01:06:38.780 to, that we're first trying to arbitrate disputes among Christians with our own courts, that there

01:06:44.980 would be some kind of shared resources, financial resources, in order to accomplish our goals. 0.94

01:06:51.720 All those kinds of things completely agree with that. The local church ecclesiastical

01:06:55.580 covenanting, I think there must be a higher watermark for that theological standard within

01:07:05.600 the ecclesiastical covenanting realm. And I think that the highest watermark that we currently have

01:07:11.840 within 2,000 years of church history is from the Reformation. And so going back and saying,

01:07:16.460 this is what we need at the church level. And then at the civil level, at this point,

01:07:21.620 and I'm open to being persuaded, but at this point, I'm convinced that at the civil level,

01:07:26.720 that it needs to be a pan-Protestant project. So it must be distinctly Christian. I would advocate

01:07:32.780 for a prelude or a preamble adopted to the Constitution that is the Apostles' Creed,

01:07:40.140 that distinctly names the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God as the sole object of our worship,

01:07:46.280 that we are a Christian nation. And then from that, I think there can be no debate

01:07:53.460 in terms of legislation that the state is obligated under God, that the state won't be

01:08:01.000 blessed and a nation won't be blessed any other way, that the state is mandated by God to reward

01:08:07.560 the righteous, punish the evildoer, and that that necessarily includes both tables of the law,

01:08:12.740 that you cannot just have a state that legislates horizontal laws in terms of the second table of

01:08:19.240 the law, love for neighbor, commandments five through 10. But that's to basically to try to

01:08:25.640 hang the, the laws, the second table of the law in regards to love for neighbor in midair. And so

01:08:31.520 it has to necessarily include the first table of the law. So I would say, you know, Apostles

01:08:36.160 Creed and 10 commandments, you know, and I would add to that the Apostles Creed, I would add the

01:08:42.240 solas and saying, and this is the gospel. So that we need the solas added to that. And that's what

01:08:50.200 gets you, uh, not just, um, uh, a pan Christian, but a pan Protestant, uh, project that's distinctly

01:08:57.240 Protestant that says to the Catholic, Hey, you're welcome to be a part of this, but this is

01:09:00.960 Protestant. Um, and, uh, and we're not going to abandon, uh, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so,

01:09:06.680 uh, this is, this is what we're doing. You're welcome to participate. Um, but we're going

01:09:11.020 this direction and you don't get to, uh, you can be in the car, but you don't get to drive. 1.00

01:09:15.240 Uh, the Protestants are driving. And I think the only area, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, 1.00

01:09:19.980 where we disagree is I think everything I said, I think you're on board for. So ecclesiastical

01:09:25.260 covenant in confession, give us the Westminster, give us the 1689 over here, creed. And then we'd

01:09:31.240 add the solas. We're both two tables of the law guys in terms of the state and legislation,

01:09:36.700 blasphemy laws, blue law, Sabbath laws, those kinds of things. And then, you know, the last

01:09:42.420 thing is I think you would say, yep, give me the solas and give me tulip. And I think that's the,

01:09:47.280 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the only place where I say, ah, you know, maybe 500 years from now we'll get Tulip in there.

01:09:54.820 I don't know if we're ready for it yet.

01:09:56.920 Yeah, and I would say the reason I think that is because I think Tulip is sort of the guardrails for the solas, right?

01:10:03.900 If you abandon total depravity and you abandon the idea of limited atonement, you're abandoning total depravity that it's by grace alone.

01:10:15.200 When you abandon limited atonement, you're abandoning that it's by Christ alone.

01:10:18.260 So these are almost definitional guardrails, I would say, for that.

01:10:22.520 And so I think that's what the purpose was. 0.77

01:10:24.180 And I think, you know, when you look at the Synod of Dort being an international Protestant synod,

01:10:29.820 that capturing that and trying to guard the gospel, a reformed view of the gospel,

01:10:33.940 I think the historical context, they're saying, if you abandon this stuff,

01:10:37.540 you're really abandoning the reformed view of the gospel.

01:10:39.580 And so I think it's necessary if we're going to be able to guard it as being a Christian movement as opposed to rejecting that.

01:10:48.720 So that's obviously a controversial statement.

01:10:50.160 Many people will be outraged by that.

01:10:52.920 But, you know, if Christ, on a basic level, limited atonement is where the rubber hits the road here.

01:10:58.320 Everybody freaks out at limited atonement.

01:11:00.620 So just John Owen's solution here is this.

01:11:02.960 Okay, let's think about this logically for a second.

01:11:04.700 hey, if Christ died for some of the sins of some people, nobody's saved. If he died for some of

01:11:10.700 the sins of all people, still nobody's saved. If he died for all of the sins of all people,

01:11:17.020 everybody's saved. And if he died for all of the sins of some people, then some people are saved.

01:11:20.900 The only one of those is biblical. It's the last one. It's limited atonement. He paid for all the

01:11:25.040 sins of some people. And if he paid for all the sins of all people, then everybody's saved.

01:11:29.780 That's universalism. That's unavoidable. And so you want to say, oh, well, faith is the connector

01:11:33.680 there. It's like, okay, is faith, is unbelief a sin that Christ paid for or not? Right. That's

01:11:39.220 what I was going to say. Yeah. So it's like, oh, he paid for all of your sins, but you still have

01:11:43.180 to accept his payment. Well, is the rejection of his payment a sin? Yes. Did he pay for that sin?

01:11:48.700 Yes. So, yeah. So I'm with you in terms of, I think it's thoroughly biblical, John chapter 10,

01:11:54.200 the shepherd, he doesn't lay down his life for goats. He doesn't lay it down for wolves,

01:11:58.780 you know, he, but he lays down his life for the sheep. So there's a particular redemption,

01:12:03.360 definitive redemption. So I think it's firmly biblical, but it's also thoroughly logical

01:12:08.520 because it really does call into question the justice of God. If Jesus died for people who

01:12:13.540 ultimately go to hell, what is hell? But the wages of sin, it's the wages of sin, the payment

01:12:19.340 for sinning against a thrice holy God. And if people are paying that price, that penalty

01:12:25.620 themselves, and Jesus died for them, and Jesus' death on the cross is penal substitutionary

01:12:32.200 atonement, which is the heart of the gospel, it's the penalty for sin, then you're actually

01:12:38.120 accusing, it's levying an accusation against God himself in regards to his own essence and

01:12:43.960 character that God is unjust. God is demanding double payment. He's demanding two punishments

01:12:50.500 for one crime. This person sinned against him, and that person has to pay it off for eternity.

01:12:57.160 And also, his son Jesus, God chose to subject his own son, his beloved son, to make a second

01:13:05.580 payment for something that is already being paid for eternally by that person in hell. And so

01:13:11.660 logically, biblically, in terms of theology proper and doctrine of God, his essence, his character,

01:13:18.820 his nature, justice being called it. So I'm fully on board with that. And I think I could even get

01:13:24.940 on board in terms of, I think you're right in terms of the five points of Calvinism, the doctrines of

01:13:29.880 grace, not being even a separate category in so much as they are just a further, they're the

01:13:35.520 footnotes and the further fleshing out of the five solos. So I like that as well. I think that's,

01:13:40.640 I think that's true, which is why I would absolutely demand the tulip for ecclesiastical

01:13:47.420 covenanting, but I just still not quite there for civil covenanting. So, so let's talk about

01:13:53.360 the pragmatics of this for just a minute, right? So you're advocating the people gather around a

01:13:58.440 point. I think that's brilliant. I think it's absolutely necessary. I think that's, that's,

01:14:01.520 that's a practical point that people need to hear. And I think that, that, um, you pushing on that

01:14:06.480 and helping people to feel freed from the guilt mongering that's been done that you need to like,

01:14:12.060 you know, you need to be a missionary in blue land and you also need to send your kids to 0.96

01:14:16.600 public schools so they can become communist and gay right like so this this whole this whole 0.99

01:14:21.460 problem you're trying to free people from it and saying no no no come into a christian enclave 0.94

01:14:26.600 right right that's that's absolutely the case i want to say those enclaves are what need to

01:14:31.860 organize and need to connect yes what's going to happen what's going to happen is is those things

01:14:37.940 we need to be very careful about that and and the reality is we're going to make cities on the hill

01:14:43.480 And every place else is going to be hell on earth. And so if we have light and we're careful there to guard it, I think that the idea of connecting the international reform, the reformed throughout the states, we're going to end up having that network.

01:15:03.520 And if we carefully guard that, the reality is there's about 30 million evangelicals in the country, maybe 10 million of those are Calvinistic or whatever.

01:15:14.240 And so if that's the case, a few million gathering together and becoming more unified is going to be far more powerful than a dissipation of our doctrine and trying to have a larger coalition.

01:15:26.840 What's going to happen is there are two things that the Lord promises.

01:15:29.520 I just still see that.

01:15:30.820 Here's where I'm confused.

01:15:31.760 I still see that as an ecclesiastical, so not a local church covenanting, but still this broader ecclesiastical, because what you're describing is still between churches, which to me is different than the civil covenanting.

01:15:43.940 So here's the deal.

01:15:44.840 So being Presbyterian, I believe in covenanting between multiple local churches.

01:15:49.580 And I think historically, a lot of Baptists and Congregationalists would have held the idea of a covenant between them, but the covenant wouldn't have been enforced by a court.

01:15:56.940 You'd have had an association where you meet to discuss things, but it doesn't have the authority to do anything to remove people.

01:16:02.320 They would have seen the value, but you're right.

01:16:03.800 It would have been volitional, and it would have not been formally binding.

01:16:07.520 So I'm saying there should be the church court as well that's shared, but there should also be an ecclesiastic or a civil covenant.

01:16:14.540 So there should be an ecclesiastical covenant and a civil covenant.

01:16:17.260 And I want to see the churches covenanting with each other, but I also want to see their boroughs, the towns, the zones, these little – we have a civil sphere.

01:16:26.540 So, for example, you know, in Phoenix, there's apologia, which, you know, I have a lot of confessional disagreements with them.

01:16:34.540 They hold the, not quite the London Baptist, but I think, for example, I think we disagree on like Sabbath and some other stuff too.

01:16:40.160 And so I'm happy to argue with them about that stuff and say, you know, I think you're wrong about that.

01:16:44.520 I think God's sin, whatever.

01:16:45.780 And they can say the same thing about there.

01:16:47.420 And we're debating it, trying to come to unity.

01:16:49.960 But then on a civil level, we should be able to be in covenant.

01:16:53.220 I should be happy to come and protect Jeff Durbin or James White if something happens to them in the civil sphere.

01:16:59.140 So then we'd be arguing with each other also in that context of being under a shared one.

01:17:04.080 So I think the same thing with you.

01:17:05.920 So that'd be the civil element, and I'd be trying to encourage the churches.

01:17:08.300 Because when you were describing boroughs, that's what threw me off.

01:17:10.680 When you said boroughs, I instinctively thought churches.

01:17:14.100 And in that, because I would put it in the category of not the state but households, the family, I was thinking about Christian classical schools.

01:17:21.240 So I was thinking churches and schools, but you were thinking more like, you know, not Christ Church, but Moscow, right?

01:17:29.660 Not Calvin's church, but Geneva.

01:17:31.480 So you were thinking towns.

01:17:32.860 And so included in that is not just the church and the school, but businesses, economy, not just household things, but even, you know, civil leaders in that realm.

01:17:41.360 And so I hear you on that.

01:17:42.740 But one thing I definitely agree with is, and you may be right, but one thing I definitely agree with is at the ecclesiastical level, and this is even coming from a Baptist, so you know it's something, but even at the ecclesiastical level of churches, going back to just that and leaving towns on the side for a moment, one of my concerns is that people will assume the center.

01:18:05.720 they will congregate, they will fall back from behind enemy lines, but they'll have 17 different

01:18:11.360 boroughs to choose from, which is good. I don't think we just need, the whole world can't move

01:18:15.140 to Moscow. So we need more than one borough. Right now, I think we need to be honest with

01:18:19.240 ourselves. We don't have 10,000 boroughs. A lot of guys might think, oh, I have a borough. You

01:18:23.860 probably don't. So I don't think we have a thousand boroughs, but we better have more than

01:18:28.980 one borough. So let's say it's a hundred boroughs spread out around the States. We need to

01:18:33.740 consolidate, fall back from behind enemy lines and assume the center and go to these boroughs.

01:18:38.680 But then those boroughs, this is one of my biggest concerns, is the leaders, ecclesiastical

01:18:44.440 leaders of these boroughs, they better be getting in some serious face time with each other. Because

01:18:50.140 it's not helpful if we go to the Christian boroughs, but then our hundred Christian boroughs 0.92

01:18:55.000 all disagree with each other. Yeah. And that's been really, one of the things I've found really

01:18:59.860 hard and that I have found refreshing specifically about you, but also David Shannon, Chocolate

01:19:06.920 Knox, I've seen the two of you really be connectors who are trying to help other people.

01:19:14.400 And I've seen you be open-handed with things like honor, where there's this willingness

01:19:20.080 to spend time to talk to people and to argue through things and to try to be charitable

01:19:24.180 and interpretation um the willingness to to sit down to talk uh to communicate you know through

01:19:30.160 the the electronic means we've got and to get time but also this idea of of trying to spend time in

01:19:36.180 person and to argue about stuff talk through things try to flesh things out in detail uh

01:19:41.060 spend the time that you have to spend on it and then to connect other people and try to encourage

01:19:45.800 that um and so um i think that um you know god willing we don't you know let's say we don't lose

01:19:51.740 and end up in the concentration camps, but instead we win.

01:19:54.860 The victors that write the history, hopefully we'll get to the point

01:19:58.480 of the two of you guys as significant connectors in the cause.

01:20:02.960 So I think that that's a key part of it, and that's a priestly gifting.

01:20:06.680 You think about leaders, what kind of gifting they've got.

01:20:09.480 If they've got prophetic gifting, they're great teachers.

01:20:11.800 They can argue well.

01:20:12.560 They can deal with the logical ordering and all that.

01:20:14.860 The priestly is the relational and trying to build the hedges

01:20:19.100 and protect the team and the cause. 0.98

01:20:22.920 And then the kingly really can get stuff done,

01:20:24.840 making things happen, organizing things, 0.98

01:20:26.400 making sure the trains run on time.

01:20:28.240 And so that stuff, we need all of that.

01:20:31.160 And that's why we need, we all have our clay feet

01:20:34.760 and we need the giftings of each other.

01:20:38.080 And so I think that the priestly are going to be the ones

01:20:40.420 that really help to gather people together to work.

01:20:43.700 And then the prophetic are going to be able

01:20:45.540 to really focus on arguing to try to come to greater unity.

01:20:48.360 and the king they're going to really make sure stuff gets done and everybody's got those giftings

01:20:52.260 to various degrees so i mean nobody's like free from doing any of those things we all have to do

01:20:55.600 all of them but some people are going to be better at others and lean in on some of those pieces and

01:21:00.300 so i just um i think my hope is that people see the value of working with each other it's so easy

01:21:05.700 to just not do it it's about you know you can build your own fiefdom you can do all this stuff

01:21:11.340 like if you're not making the effort to connect it's so easy to try to isolate and try to build

01:21:17.540 your own thing and to, to be away from other people. Right. Yeah. Especially, you know,

01:21:25.120 the, the PTSD can, can click in, you know, especially if you've, if you feel like you've

01:21:32.340 been hurt in the past, you know, then it's just, I'll just, I'm going to build a moat,

01:21:37.460 build up the walls and we'll just, we'll do our own thing. We'll insulate and, and we won't

01:21:43.360 partner with anybody. And that's part of the reason why I, you know, why I want to do things

01:21:48.560 like host conferences and have as many guys there as I possibly can. Um, because, uh, honestly it,

01:21:56.200 uh, it works as an accountability measure. Um, so, you know, like we've announced our conference,

01:22:00.520 it's 10 months away. Uh, so one of the things now that, uh, all 15 guys, you being one of them,

01:22:06.060 uh, that we, you know, it's not, it's not written in a contract necessarily. And one day, you know,

01:22:10.320 maybe it should be, but, um, but it just informally, uh, in the back of all 15 of these men's minds

01:22:16.540 is like, I've got 10 months where I need to play nice. I can't, you know, like, because I'm going

01:22:23.820 to see all these guys, we speak in a conference with them. So for at least for the next 10 months,

01:22:27.580 I probably should be a little bit nicer to them on Twitter. I probably don't need to burn these

01:22:30.980 bridges. I probably, you know, um, those things really help. And, you know, to, you know, I think

01:22:36.740 together for the gospel and those kinds of things, you know, with the gospel centered movement and,

01:22:40.760 you know, new Calvinism, massive problems for one, just new Calvinism. I don't want new Calvinism.

01:22:46.280 I want old Calvinism, but you know, to at least one particular area where it wasn't an utter train

01:22:53.500 wreck. Um, there, there was, um, uh, you know, good can truly be said about guys like, you know,

01:23:00.840 Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan and CJ Mahaney with three different, you know, theological positions

01:23:07.620 saying, yeah, but we're, we're going to, you know, we love each other. We love each other.

01:23:13.720 The problem is, you know, that 20 years went by and they still had three different theological

01:23:20.280 positions and there was no, it didn't even seem like it was on the table as, as one of their goals

01:23:25.620 was to, Hey, but also maybe, you know, what if we agreed, you know, so it didn't even seem like

01:23:30.200 that was one of their aims. But I will say that probably the greatest fruit out of that movement

01:23:35.560 was these massive events where everyone said, we're at least united on this. And what we want

01:23:43.300 to do, I think one of the things that we want to do with whatever you want to call it, with

01:23:47.400 Christian nationalism, with theonomy, new Christodom, whatever, post-millennial hope.

01:23:53.580 But one of the things that we want to achieve is a theological maximalism. I think we've had for

01:23:59.180 too long a theological minimalism where you really did have some genuine relationships and it really

01:24:04.300 did have the ability to pack out a 20,000 person event once a year. And there really is fruit from

01:24:11.100 that. There really are some blessings. I don't want to unnecessarily disparage that movement

01:24:15.760 because there's plenty of things that I can disparage. That part, I don't want to disparage.

01:24:19.660 And yet, even that part, as good as it was, was still, it was a theological minimalism. It was

01:24:27.760 it was, you know, basically it was, it was just kind of one step above Billy Graham from back

01:24:34.080 in the day, you know, Billy Graham is just like, well, you know, the great commission has to be,

01:24:38.160 um, fulfilled. And, uh, the biggest thing that's standing in our way is, uh, that we've, uh, we've

01:24:44.280 spread too thin, divided our forces, you know, so if we're going to fulfill the great, basically

01:24:48.300 the logic was this, we want Jesus to come back. Uh, we need to fulfill the great commission for

01:24:52.620 Jesus to come back. Uh, in order to fulfill the great commission, we need to be on the same team

01:24:57.260 and in order to be on the same team we need to lower the bar doctrine divides you know and that's

01:25:02.800 where you got you know what i mean that's right and and and so uh you know and then the new

01:25:08.000 calvinist you know gospel you know calvinist resurgence movement of the last you know 30

01:25:12.960 years or so was basically that uh but with a little higher bar and hopefully by the grace of

01:25:18.700 god what we're doing would be it would be the the good parts billy graham-esque and new calvinism

01:25:26.700 except it would go from basically no theological commitments and then some theological commitments

01:25:33.000 to a lot of theological commitments, a theological maximalism that is Calvinistic and not even new

01:25:41.340 Calvinism, but old Calvinism tried and true and getting back to the historic watermark. And then

01:25:46.900 hopefully our kids can take it further. Absolutely. And so you used early on in our

01:25:52.620 conversation here kind of three categories the must believe should believe and the may believe

01:25:58.360 and i think that the way of defining those the the must believe is sort of the here's the stuff

01:26:03.960 you need to positively show understanding of to come to the lord's table um and that's sort of

01:26:10.140 the that would be sort of the stuff you require for the child in the church right so whatever

01:26:14.900 your church membership covenant is at the same time you don't want those the children in the

01:26:21.020 faith openly denying what you're confessing in terms of your church confession. But the idea is

01:26:26.700 they're not going to have thought through a lot of it, right? And so the point is that once they

01:26:31.240 become aware of points of disagreement, the should believe stuff, you know, pastors come in and spend

01:26:36.120 a lot of time trying to argue through and show them why they're in error and help to get them

01:26:41.500 to the place where they're getting there. So the young men are being trained up to the should

01:26:44.880 believe and the fathers are maintaining all of the should believe. And then there's the may believe

01:26:50.300 stuff, which is stuff that hasn't been captured in a confessional standard yet that your church

01:26:53.980 has adopted. And that stuff is the stuff that we debate about in the hopes of having another

01:27:00.020 advancement in the high watermark. And so maybe that'd be the Phoenix confession, or maybe it's

01:27:05.440 the Dallas confession, whatever. And so this idea that at a certain point that we're seeking to go

01:27:11.880 beyond, that we rally around the should believe, and we have a must believe bar that's sort of the

01:27:19.280 membership and you're training the must believe into the should believe. And then there's the,

01:27:24.160 you know, the may believe stuff. We're trying to argue about that after we've been able to come

01:27:29.060 together and rally. And then we're trying to further define, but we give liberty on the may

01:27:34.800 believe stuff, you know, in terms of some of the ways of, of, of, of which views of, of eschatology

01:27:42.340 of, of, you know, cause you could have like a historic post-millennialism or you could have

01:27:46.260 a partial preterist post-millennialism, which I hold to, that kind of thing. And you could even

01:27:51.580 have like an optimistic amillennialism. Some of the types of, some of the views are going to make

01:27:57.480 it so that you're essentially saying, yeah, I want to be a part of this movement, but I also

01:28:01.540 think we're going to lose. And I'm not sure where that line draws exactly, but my point would be

01:28:06.920 this probably a broader range on the eschatology, which has not been captured in the confessional

01:28:11.840 views than you would have on a lot of the other stuff that's lower down there. And so those are

01:28:17.360 the, I hope those definitions for the must believe, should believe, may believe, I hope that's a

01:28:22.900 helpful divide. I don't know if you'd disagree about how to break that down. Yeah, no, that's

01:28:26.340 helpful. I agree. Well, let's go ahead and start landing the plane. Any final thoughts for this

01:28:31.740 episode on unity and theological maximalism and civic covenanting and ecclesiastical covenanting?

01:28:37.880 any final words for us? I think the main thing people need to walk away with is realizing

01:28:44.440 if we want to see a civil unity where we've got a Christian state, what you need to do is you need

01:28:49.260 to be encouraging discussion with people where there's a desire to gather around a civil covenant.

01:28:55.900 We have to covenant to do these things first and to protect each other first before we're going to

01:28:59.840 be able to accomplish it. Unless we have a duty in place with defined duties, we're not going to

01:29:04.940 be able to accomplish the goal. So the commitment to do it and then the gathering around and

01:29:11.460 fulfilling those commitments. In order to see that happen, we need to see churches concerned

01:29:16.320 about ecclesiastical unity as well. And so we need to have a concern for that. We need to be praying

01:29:21.640 for it. The unity of the church is something that powerfully encourages evangelism. The love of the

01:29:29.920 church powerfully encourages evangelism. Christ promises that those things cause the world to

01:29:34.780 repent and to be convicted. And so if we maintain the law of God carefully, and if we seek unity in

01:29:40.400 terms of the forms that we have, those things allow us to have a common voice. And so the three

01:29:45.880 to 10 million Calvinists in America should be seeking to unify in that way, and we would see 0.69

01:29:53.020 a growth. And so that idea of seeking to figure out what's the high watermark to gather around

01:29:58.560 and debating those differences.

01:30:00.500 So I really think Presbyterians and Baptists

01:30:03.600 are the guys that are generally,

01:30:05.280 most of the believers are Presbyterian or Baptists.

01:30:08.020 And so there needs to be a focus on discussing those things

01:30:12.280 in the context of a civil covenant

01:30:13.820 where we're discussing coming to those things

01:30:16.200 and coming to agreement about these things

01:30:18.920 to have a shared confession.

01:30:20.540 Debating about baptism, debating about church government

01:30:22.900 are very important for us to eliminate the practical dividers

01:30:26.440 that prevent us from having a shared church.

01:30:28.560 Then, in addition to that, the most practical thing for you to do is for you to make sure your home is in good order, where you're leading well, you're leading your family in family worship, making sure they're having stable church attendance, keeping the Sabbath, building up an estate, making sure you and your wife are a good team, that you have resources, and making it so that you've got stuff that you can pour into this.

01:30:50.300 Because if you don't have resources, you can't do any of this work.

01:30:52.320 And if you're a pastor and you're not bivocational, you're probably in a church that's larger in a lot of cases than it should be and relying upon that to feed the growth.

01:31:03.780 The reality is that solid men can run their house, run their estate, and be public officers.

01:31:12.440 And so the ability to do all of that stuff and build out a robust estate so you can leave an inheritance to your children and your children's children, that's necessary to make it so you've got the resources to do what you need.

01:31:21.880 George Washington was able to march a thousand men at his own expense to the relief of Boston

01:31:26.100 when it was under siege by the British. One of my goals is to make sure I could march a thousand

01:31:30.440 men to Dallas to come to your guys' relief if there were need. And so that idea of trying to

01:31:36.420 pull together that sort of utility, the capacity to actually do stuff, having resources to make

01:31:41.600 things happen. And so if you want to do that, you have to govern yourself well. The only way to not

01:31:46.280 be enslaved to sin is to have a deep knowledge of the truth. It makes it so that you're a father

01:31:50.020 in the faith. If you have a knowledge of God that's deep, if you have a knowledge of God that's

01:31:53.960 deep, then you govern yourself because it's the knowledge of the truth that sets men free from

01:31:58.340 slavery to sin. And so I want to encourage men to seek the knowledge of God deeply and to make

01:32:03.260 sure they're exercising discipline in all the areas of life, seeing their piety not just be

01:32:08.180 an internal thing that's about a relationship between them and God, but it pushes out to the

01:32:12.220 edges, their duty over their sphere. So I think that's the capacity to see unity occur. It is to

01:32:17.920 know God deeply yourself, govern your home well and have resources, encourage your church to grow

01:32:23.220 in depth and to encourage unity between other churches by discussing the differences and

01:32:28.500 seeking to covenant together, and by seeing that occur in the civil sphere, having leaders and

01:32:33.600 having Christian men throughout the country who are committed to seeing the acknowledgement of

01:32:39.140 the reign of Christ over the state, having them covenant together and having these necessary

01:32:43.820 components work in harmony. Amen. Well said. Well, thank you, Mr. Reese, for coming on the show.

01:32:49.980 And we will talk more in the near future, Lord willing. And thank you to the listener for tuning

01:32:54.600 in. We hope that this has been helpful for you. We want both. We want our cake and eat it too,

01:33:00.840 because we think that's what the Lord wants. We want incredible unity and covenant with one

01:33:07.060 another. And we also don't want to lower the bar. We want a theological maximalism and unity. I

01:33:13.680 think that's what ephesians 4 is ephesians 4 is not just talking about kumbaya love while everybody

01:33:19.180 has a different position a different conviction um and i don't think ephesians 4 is saying yep

01:33:24.340 we'll attain the full stature of the maturity of christ um and by the time we get there there'll

01:33:29.080 only be three of us i just i reject both of the that's just that's not what the scripture teaches

01:33:33.960 the scripture is saying um high bar and uh and that we're all going to make it we're going to

01:33:40.100 make it. So no man left behind and high bar. And I think that's a lot of what I've, as I've gotten

01:33:47.880 to know you, I think that's a lot of what you have been giving yourself to outside of the local level

01:33:53.320 as you try to be a voice to the church at large is don't lower the bar, but also let's team up.

01:34:00.740 Let's agree. So God bless you for that ministry. And I hope it's helpful for the listener.

01:34:04.500 And we'll see you again soon. Thanks for tuning in.

01:34:10.100 We'll be right back.

The NXR Podcast - June 24, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - The Reformed World Is Too Divided with David Reece

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