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

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 for unity of common conviction, unity of knowledge, not just

00:01:00.720 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 to

00:03:25.320 stop. Otherwise, yes, we are Protestants, but we don't want every individual Protestant to just be

00:03:31.220 his own Pope. So Mr. Reese, what do we do about that? Thanks for having me on brother. So I think

00:03:36.920 that what we have to do is we have to realize that there are different rallying points for unity

00:03:41.560 And there's the rallying point for the state, there's the rallying point for the church, for the household, and then for the individual.

00:03:47.460 And so I think that thinking about these different covenant spheres and how they're supposed to think about functional unity is key.

00:03:55.020 And so, you know, we are Americans, and so we're very used to thinking about the individual operating just sort of atomistically.

00:04:00.080 And so we go, okay, so the goal is to glorify God.

00:04:03.160 Great.

00:04:03.620 So now we have a joint, you know, North Star.

00:04:06.680 We have a target that we're ultimately getting to.

00:04:08.780 It's a few light years away, but we're going to we're going to be moving there.

00:04:12.320 And so then you have sort of this, OK, the law of God is the means by which we're supposed to get moving towards that that target.

00:04:19.960 And so in addition to that, we kind of go, OK, 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.

00:04:27.680 And we just think about the individual. And so we forget that individuals are supposed to be cooperating inside of the other covenant institutions.

00:04:36.720 And so we've spent time talking about the household and how the household functions well.

00:04:40.820 And so if individuals are in covenant with God, we're supposed to glorify God, then we go, okay, how do we interact with other people?

00:04:47.000 And the principal places are the household, the church, and the state.

00:04:50.520 So with the household, you're looking for extreme unity, right?

00:04:54.220 Because you think about this, if you're a man, you're looking to lead somebody and have her be your helpmate for the rest of your life.

00:05:00.480 and she's going to have to be able to deal with you in all sorts of details and be able to submit

00:05:05.060 to you in enormous detail. And so a wife is looking for, you know, you're looking for a 0.60

00:05:10.760 godly man, but you're choosing a boss, right? And so this idea that you've got to pick a man that

00:05:16.060 you think has good character, that has good doctrine, and that you feel like you're able

00:05:20.140 to resolve conflicts in a way that is ultimately going to go appealing back to the Word of God,

00:05:25.400 and you've got the church to protect you in terms of there being, you know, abuses or whatever,

00:05:30.300 But the state, I mean, you know, a man can be unfaithful or a woman could be unfaithful and then just leave with half the stuff.

00:05:37.660 And so the church is sort of the only public protector we've got there right now.

00:05:42.520 But so choosing well in marriage and raising your children, you have all sorts of room for ordering your children to fulfill preferences.

00:05:50.980 Right. So there's a way the household sort of becomes a place where you're training unity and you're training obedience and you're training operational unity and where you have more minute detail.

00:06:00.300 And then you can pay people to do work inside of the household.

00:06:03.760 And if they want to keep taking the money, then they've got to keep obeying in detail, right?

00:06:07.900 So that's sort of – unity is easier to obtain there.

00:06:11.080 What we find is when we move to the church, when we move to the state, we start to have a lot more fracturing, and it's difficult.

00:06:17.040 And people tend to either kind of try to make the church like the household or the state like the household, or they try to make the household like one of those higher institutions, and then you don't have efficient management.

00:06:27.120 So we need to recognize there's a different form of government, generally speaking, in the lower governments than in the higher governments.

00:06:34.040 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 where the patriarch is ruling the home.

00:06:41.980 But then you get to the church, and you've got a monarchy in the form of Christ as the king of the church.

00:06:46.760 But there's supposed to be a plurality of elders.

00:06:49.380 There's supposed to be this ability to deal with the removal of officers 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.

00:07:00.860 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 this general order of genocide, and he goes, oh, oh, this is a problem. Like, that's the level of

00:07:50.940 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.

00:09:39.820 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.

00:11:17.520 So, but I want to suggest that covenants are binding across generations.

00:11:21.940 And so if that's the case, if covenants are binding across generations, then we, whether

00:11:29.640 we find it convenient or not, may have to think about covenants that have been reached

00:11:35.140 before 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.

00:12:03.640 There's a rallying point that's 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

00:15:39.620 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,

00:16:04.000 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.

00:17:35.820 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 kind of unity, the best kind of

00:19:59.340 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.

00:20:15.180 Are you a Christian struggling to find companies that align with your values and beliefs?

00:20:19.580 Well, then Squirrely Joe's has you covered for all your coffee needs.

00:20:24.060 All of their coffee is hand-selected and roasted fresh every day by a family of fellow believers.

00:20:30.240 Try them out and you'll savor exceptional coffee while knowing that your investment supports

00:20:35.260 a company committed to following God's teachings and upholding truth and righteousness,

00:20:41.360 ensuring that your hard-earned money contributes to the growth of God's kingdom.

00:20:45.860 Stop giving your hard-earned dollars to pagans who support evil.

00:20:49.580 Right Response listeners have access to an exclusive deal.

00:20:53.980 Your first bag of coffee is free.

00:20:56.680 All you have to do is cover the shipping.

00:20:59.040 So head on over to squirrelyjoes.com forward slash Right Response.

00:21:04.120 Again, that's squirrelyjoes.com forward slash Right Response

00:21:08.220 to claim your first free bag of coffee today. 0.97

00:21:12.520 Visit thewordsoap.com today.

00:21:15.080 Again, that's thewordsoap.com. 0.89

00:21:17.540 Everyone needs soap. 1.00

00:21:19.580 So wash yourself in the Word.

00:21:24.760 That's excellent.

00:21:25.680 I agree with everything you said there.

00:21:27.180 And I think that the idea that we begin with, we have this unity of care in order to get

00:21:33.660 to the unity of the faith.

00:21:35.840 Exactly.

00:21:36.540 So that the conversations and persuasion have the relational context to keep happening.

00:21:41.880 Absolutely.

00:21:42.600 And so I think that's exactly right.

00:21:44.200 So we care for each other in that way in order to make it so that we can keep discussing.

00:21:48.380 So we're removing as many offenses as we can so that the offense of disagreement is the thing that's there as the focus.

00:21:55.440 So the goal is to close it out.

00:21:56.700 In manufacturing, you talk about the idea of work in progress.

00:22:00.580 And work in progress is a really dangerous thing because you just end up with all this.

00:22:04.320 You've got raw material inventory.

00:22:06.080 You take it in.

00:22:07.060 You make it work in progress.

00:22:08.240 It's been altered.

00:22:08.900 It can't be made into something else now.

00:22:10.800 So you have all the illiquidity.

00:22:13.080 You can't turn it into something different that you would have if it were a finished product.

00:22:16.540 But you have none of the value of a finished product.

00:22:19.200 And so the finished product is valuable because you can sell it.

00:22:22.480 The raw material is valuable because it's able to be turned into all sorts of stuff.

00:22:26.920 And the stuff that's work in progress has all of the negatives of both and none of the positives of either.

00:22:34.080 And so it's when you have disagreements, it's sort of work in progress. 0.72

00:22:39.240 And I think the goal has to be between Christians to seek to limit the work in progress. 0.60

00:22:45.240 We don't try to bring up everything under the sun that we can think of that we might disagree about.

00:22:49.040 But instead, your goal is to find unity, have a common care, and to then seek to resolve disagreements by seeking to be careful and self-control.

00:23:00.580 And I think some people who like to debate, I think a lot of people who are really gifted in a prophetic way just like to debate.

00:23:07.860 And they go and they want to debate with people whether they're mature or not.

00:23:11.080 and because those people haven't matured into a place of being careful about what disputes they're

00:23:17.360 opening up, they sort of end up making strife all over the place. And we could joke about this

00:23:22.240 as the cage stage, which is basically people who care about doctrine coming to realize some

00:23:26.720 important doctrine and then realizing they want to debate about that. And then they learn about

00:23:30.140 other neat things that matter in the Bible and debate about those. So I think one of the really

00:23:34.780 important things for pursuing unity is recognizing what you talked about as the unity of care

00:23:39.580 and the unity of love, but then using those things to help to resolve disputes.

00:23:45.480 So the question becomes, what order do you pick disputes to have?

00:23:50.200 Because I could just walk around finding people and being like,

00:23:52.680 let's argue about head coverings.

00:23:54.920 Or I can say, let's argue about whether the scriptures are infallible

00:24:01.520 and systematically true.

00:24:03.240 Real quick, just out of curiosity, are you a head covering guy?

00:24:06.840 Yeah, we do head covering at our church.

00:24:08.540 And so people bring it up early because they see women covering their heads and they go, so do I have to, we have to like cover our heads together?

00:24:15.360 Like, well, to the men, no.

00:24:16.500 Exactly. 0.95

00:24:17.080 To the women, no, either. 0.95

00:24:18.200 But we think that they should, but that's something that we don't require, for example, for membership. 0.73

00:24:22.940 Exactly.

00:24:23.400 We don't require it, but my wife and daughters wear a head covering and I've talked about it.

00:24:28.760 And I try not to make it a point of division, but it's another one of those things.

00:24:32.660 It's like, you know, the Bible has something to say about this.

00:24:35.460 there is a right position. And especially when you study that one in light of the text, but also

00:24:40.400 throughout church history, I mean, the, it's the dominant lion's share of church history is

00:24:46.220 head covering until, until really, you know, I mean, late 1800s and especially, you know,

00:24:51.980 the 1950s and sixties. And there were even, you know, with the temperance movement, you know,

00:24:56.400 and first wave feminism and things like that, they, they, uh, certain groups of women in local

00:25:00.960 churches even scheduled like the same Sunday that they, in protest, they were all going to 0.99

00:25:04.960 take off their hats and throw them down. And you look at that and then you look at what it was

00:25:09.160 teamed up with. And it's like the same group that was anti head covering was the same group,

00:25:14.100 you know, that was propelling feminism and all. And when you look at the history of it, it's like,

00:25:18.680 it's hard to argue that this is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's very clear

00:25:24.480 in the scriptures, but I also think that one of the things that we try to look for is how can you

00:25:28.740 avoid making additional barriers without dishonoring the Lord. Our goal is to honor the

00:25:35.620 Lord. And then how do we also make it so people can initially come in? And I think that the idea

00:25:41.200 that one thing is, I think the goal actually is over time, we want the church to come to unity

00:25:46.500 in a place where we actually end up making it more complicated to become a member and more

00:25:51.200 complicated to become an officer. An officer today should be required to have a lot more knowledge

00:25:56.140 that an officer would have been required to have

00:25:57.580 in the third century in the church.

00:25:59.360 And that's because we have all the work

00:26:00.940 that was done beforehand.

00:26:02.100 But also probably less knowledge

00:26:03.720 than a Puritan officer would have had in the 1700s

00:26:07.340 because sadly we have regressed.

00:26:11.780 Absolutely.

00:26:12.340 So I mean, you read like the commentaries

00:26:14.240 that the great Baptist John Gill wrote

00:26:16.220 or the great Presbyterian Matthew Poole

00:26:19.000 or something like that.

00:26:19.860 And the scholarly level on that

00:26:21.100 versus like the stuff that gets published today,

00:26:23.520 You know, it's just, you know, you go, I'm going to keep reading Gill and Poole.

00:26:28.340 So I think this idea of the pursuit of the goal of greater unity of the doctrine, one

00:26:34.000 of the things that happens, I think, in Ephesians in the text is it talks about the idea of

00:26:38.740 the bond of peace and this idea of bearing with one another in love and endeavoring to

00:26:48.600 keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

00:26:51.520 And I think the bond of peace, whenever you see the word bond in Scripture, you should be thinking about covenant.

00:26:57.360 This idea that you form a bond that's established by oaths or by vows.

00:27:04.620 And so the bond of peace is the covenant of peace or the covenant of grace. 0.57

00:27:09.060 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.

00:27:20.840 And so this idea that the context of covenant, and so I think the other thing you mentioned

00:27:26.420 is this idea of how do you make it so it's not impossible for people to join.

00:27:29.440 And I think that you have to recognize the biblical idea that there are levels of maturity.

00:27:35.740 And so the Apostle John talks about children, young men, and fathers.

00:27:41.260 And so what I think is important is that you have sort of a minimal set of doctrine that's

00:27:47.280 that's necessary to teach people in sort of membership classes are typically how this gets

00:27:52.280 done in churches. But you have some sort of a church government. And I think the idea of a

00:27:56.300 shorter catechism, like the whole purpose of differentiating between a larger catechism and

00:28:01.860 shorter catechism in the Presbyterian tradition is to say the shorter catechism is the milk

00:28:06.400 that's necessary to help somebody to come to the table so they can commune. And then a larger

00:28:11.760 catechism is how you mature somebody and it's meat and i think this i this realization that

00:28:18.060 there's a there are stages in the process of development of the christian life and we're so

00:28:22.940 individualistic in america that we like to pretend like everybody's journey is totally unique

00:28:27.700 and it's just like no actually my experiences are overwhelmingly going to be have points of

00:28:35.320 reference that are similar in the experiences of of believers throughout history and that are

00:28:39.840 referenced obviously in the scriptures and the scriptures give us a a you know complete set of

00:28:45.140 all the stuff we need to address all the experiences that we have in the christian life

00:28:48.100 right but so so this idea that there's there's sort of there's stages so the the the child

00:28:53.320 the young man and the father um and i think that what we need to recognize is what's really

00:28:58.520 necessary for for the child is going to be essentially you're going to have a commitment

00:29:04.160 to the doctrine of the scripture and its authority you're going to have a a some sort of a shorter

00:29:08.780 catechism or something like that for introductory teaching for people and then you're gonna you're

00:29:14.200 gonna have in that introductory category you're gonna necessarily have you know the solos tulip

00:29:19.200 trinity incarnation and a basic federal headship of of adam and christ you don't have to have a

00:29:25.940 really elaborate covenant theology whatever but you need to understand that you're sinful in adam

00:29:29.940 and you're you're you're you're righteous in christ right and so those those things are going

00:29:34.720 to give you here's the stuff we got to give to people and so often people treat like tulip like

00:29:40.260 it's some like grand thing that you need to deal with when you're a father or whatever it's just

00:29:44.740 like that's that's milk that guards the solas um and and so then you you also need to have a

00:29:51.160 commitment to the basic law order that the ten commandments summarizes and and some sort of a

00:29:57.240 commitment about based upon that local church you're going to have to deal with how the sacraments

00:30:00.880 that are administered. You're going to have to deal with some sort of submission to church

00:30:04.380 authority. And then you're going to have to deal with prayer because it's essential to the

00:30:10.320 Christian life. So that's actually the content of the Shorter Catechism. And so, you know,

00:30:16.220 those things, I don't think you look at the Shorter Catechism, I've had a lot of really

00:30:19.400 solid Reformed Baptist friends that basically are like, yeah, I agree with the Shorter Catechism

00:30:22.900 in elaborate detail, except when we get to the baptism part, right? And so it's just,

00:30:26.620 And, you know, you can just grab that slightly.

00:30:29.200 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.

00:30:35.220 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 the basics of the faith.

00:30:44.860 Right.

00:30:45.560 No, you're right.

00:30:46.360 This is not elite theological, you know, higher education for theologians.

00:30:55.200 We've just, the bar has fallen so far that I remember Voddie 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.

00:31:20.740 many people in the church just instinctively begin to push him towards the pastorate and say,

00:31:27.400 well, you should consider going to seminary. I think you're called to be a pastor. And part

00:31:30.700 of the reason we do that is really to protect ourselves, our own apathy towards doctrine

00:31:37.340 and these kinds of things. So what we want to do is, because he's got to be called to

00:31:41.800 pastoral ministry, because if he's not, that's how we assuage our guilty consciences. Because

00:31:46.240 if he's not, well, then maybe he's just, um, maybe this is actually normative. Maybe he's just, uh,

00:31:52.500 your average, you know, young Christian man. Um, and so then, you know, then, then what do I say 0.99

00:31:58.040 about myself? You know, but if I can say like, oh, well, he's, you know, he's a Christian 2.0.

00:32:03.840 He's, he's one of those rare special guys. Then I can, then I can maintain the illusion that,

00:32:09.140 um, that I'm, you know, I'm not bad. I'm just the average Christian and he's above average

00:32:14.280 when the reality is, no, the bar has slipped and fallen so much that the guys right now that we

00:32:20.480 send to seminary to be pastors, you know, again, going back to, you know, earlier times in the

00:32:26.680 1700s and 1800s, these just would have been, you know, many of them would have just been your

00:32:31.980 average Christians. Yeah. And I think one of the things, you know, you pointed out in a lecture 1.00

00:32:38.500 that I was able to enjoy hearing you give, you had said that, you know, all over the place,

00:32:43.560 We're essentially in a place where we keep promoting people to their point of incompetence.

00:32:47.980 And I think a part of that is any gifting at all that might relate to some office, the tendency to push people up.

00:32:53.920 And I think what you just brought up, that idea of trying to assuage your own guilt, is a part of why.

00:32:59.640 And so you have been an advocate in your book.

00:33:03.000 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.

00:33:11.280 was we've dissipated our energy as a church and therefore made it so we're incapable of

00:33:16.060 accomplishing anything. So we're, we're too spread out. We're led by people who are in positions that

00:33:21.720 are just above their point of competency. And so that's obviously a recipe for success. And so

00:33:27.640 that's why we're winning all over the place. Just, we're all tired of winning, right? This is,

00:33:31.620 this is, this is what we're going through. It's winning exhaustion. So that's, it's obviously

00:33:35.900 destructive of all those ends so i mean if we think about the process of maturing and we think

00:33:42.180 we need to pull people in and mature them and have well-ordered sort of teams and i think there's

00:33:48.180 also this idea that the young man is differentiated in john in first john he says the young men fight

00:33:54.500 and so the the fighting of the young men is is an indicator you're trying to you raise children

00:34:02.080 until they've got basically those things in place where they understand the basic doctrines,

00:34:07.540 they understand the basic law order, they understand how to use the means of grace.

00:34:12.120 And then they're kind of getting into the rhythm of Christian life with, you know,

00:34:15.540 how does their worship go and stuff like that.

00:34:18.060 And then they're also trying to get into, how do I get into Christian community, right?

00:34:21.240 So once they're plugged into those things, most people, a lot of pastors look at that like,

00:34:25.540 great, success, we're done here.

00:34:27.200 Like, this is like masterful, like this guy, this is done.

00:34:30.200 Well, that's when they're able to now be useful fighting men.

00:34:34.800 And so that idea that the fighting, then you have them go and do ministry, you have them do evangelism, you have them work through you, and you're starting to go through things like, let's talk about the confession.

00:34:44.860 Let's talk about the larger catechism.

00:34:46.080 Let's get an overview of the Bible.

00:34:47.660 Let's make it so you have some idea of how the books of the Bible fit together.

00:34:50.560 You're starting to really get them the system.

00:34:52.420 And they're going to get lumpy in different areas, and they're going to be really good at this and terrible at that.

00:34:57.660 And your goal is to help to make a more mature, developed individual where their weak points are not disastrous anymore and their strong points are really able to be used powerfully.

00:35:09.800 Right.

00:35:10.140 And so in First John, you're right, because it's those three categories.

00:35:13.960 I remember preaching through First John and for the little children, there's a major emphasis, really only two emphases.

00:35:20.060 uh one is on um that uh that you recognize that uh it's the the doctrine of adoption that you

00:35:27.240 recognize that god is your father um and so understanding father god and in in that you

00:35:32.820 know the father uh the father is god but the father is not the son and the father is not the

00:35:37.900 spirit your basic trinitarian doctrine uh you could include you know you could derive from that

00:35:42.700 that there's at least a a minimum understanding of trinitarian theology um so understanding you

00:35:49.040 know, God is father adoption. And then the second emphasis for little children is the forgiveness

00:35:53.260 of sins, uh, that from the first day of conversion, um, that there is inherently, um, a basic

00:36:00.640 understanding of salvation. And so I think a lot of, when I think of, you know, catechisms for the

00:36:05.600 new believer, a lot of it is going to be a basic doctrine of God, theology proper, knowing God is

00:36:10.520 father and the father is distinct from the son and the spirit, and then the forgiveness of sins.

00:36:14.620 soteriology and an understanding of salvation that God saves and also how God saves. But then for

00:36:20.740 young men, you're right. It's, I write to you young men because you have overcome the evil one.

00:36:25.500 And then when he, and he repeats all these things twice. And then the, you know, the second time

00:36:29.860 when he says it, I write to you young men because the word of God dwells richly in you. And so then

00:36:35.040 he gives the means by which they have overcome the evil one. They haven't just done it by brute

00:36:39.180 strength. They've done it by the indwelling, rich indwelling of the word of God. And so

00:36:44.280 now it's moving from just theology proper and soteriology to a more comprehensive biblical

00:36:51.580 theology, you know, from Genesis to Revelation is how you could exegete that the whole word of God

00:36:56.820 is now dwelling in you. And then with the word of God, the law word of God. And so understanding

00:37:01.660 more of, you know, God's law. And then lastly, I write to you fathers. And that one almost seems

00:37:06.560 the most simplistic but i think it's actually that you know it's it's the most beautiful and

00:37:10.000 complex um of all uh but i write to you fathers for you know he who is from the beginning um and

00:37:17.260 so now there's this this ancient of days um and not just ancient of days speaking of god himself

00:37:22.280 but this ancient passed down historic body of doctrine you know him who is from the beginning

00:37:29.460 you and this uh that you now are the embodiment the full embodiment of all those saints who came

00:37:35.400 before you the full work of the christian theology and doctrine that's been passed down generation

00:37:40.260 from generation and first john will preach i guess is what i'm saying so no that's that's

00:37:44.900 amazing thank you for that brother that's awesome and i think one of the glorious things about the

00:37:48.480 tail end of it with the fathers is it basically repeats you know you you know the father it's

00:37:53.320 like twice right there's a full circle yeah it's like this emphasis on the deep deep knowledge of

00:37:58.880 god right it's like it's a hebraism of this like you know god you know god like it's the deep

00:38:04.320 knowledge of God. So we just, the knowledge of God is how we are sanctified. And the word of

00:38:09.740 God is how we get the knowledge of God. And that results in the bearing of fruit. And so I just,

00:38:14.080 you know, this idea that the deep knowledge of God, the rich knowledge of God is how we're

00:38:19.860 matured. And that as pastors, we have to teach the doctrine. We also have to rebuke people

00:38:28.020 because we become blind. And so this rebuking part, it's always been the hardest part for me

00:38:32.120 of the pastoral ministry is just the rebuking, the correcting of showing them what to put

00:38:36.600 on, right?

00:38:37.600 And then you have this training in righteousness.

00:38:39.640 This is the 2 Timothy 3, 16 stuff, where the Word of God is profitable for or useful for.

00:38:44.320 And the training part of walking through it, giving the example, giving on the spot, rebuke

00:38:50.080 and correction and helping to watch and give critique and all that kind of stuff where

00:38:55.040 you're helping them to work it out.

00:38:57.380 I think that that's what the young man stage is really about.

00:39:02.060 The young man stage is really about helping them to do that in the context of fighting.

00:39:06.920 And the child stage, you're doing that in the context of sheltering, right?

00:39:09.960 You're giving the protection of the Christian community.

00:39:12.060 You're trying to protect them from heresy and all that.

00:39:13.980 The young man stage, you're like, hey, go read this heretical stuff.

00:39:16.440 Let's talk about it.

00:39:18.320 Critique this thing.

00:39:19.840 Let's go out here.

00:39:20.780 Let's go engage on the street and do evangelism with other people.

00:39:22.980 or, okay, do apologetics in your own community and network

00:39:26.120 and the people that you know

00:39:26.980 and try to evangelize and pull them in.

00:39:29.200 And we oftentimes just try to get people saved

00:39:30.740 and then just try to get them to go evangelize right away.

00:39:32.940 And I go, hey, let's get you saved.

00:39:34.740 Let's great.

00:39:35.540 Now let's disciple.

00:39:36.520 Let's get the basic stuff in there.

00:39:37.940 And once they're young men, you kind of go,

00:39:39.600 okay, now let's train.

00:39:41.380 Now you can sort of take some risks more in your network.

00:39:45.440 Opportunity arises and you're immature.

00:39:46.960 Okay, great.

00:39:47.820 But there's sometimes where you have to kind of

00:39:50.600 push past boundaries where people don't want to talk about things to the Lord, don't want to know

00:39:55.480 what's going on with you becoming a Christian or whatever, and you've got to take risks of pushing

00:39:58.460 past. I think that young man stage is really where you want to encourage people to take those risks

00:40:02.440 in their network is by the time when they're a little, they've become a little bit competent at

00:40:06.140 using the sword. And so that thing, I think from there, the young man, I think a lot of times

00:40:13.580 a young man who's learning to fight, that's really a great place for a guy to be a deacon

00:40:17.200 because there's two promises with the office of deacon.

00:40:21.520 The office of deacon has the promise that you'll gain boldness

00:40:24.380 by exercising it well and that you'll get good reputation.

00:40:27.880 And those are things you really need for the office of elder.

00:40:31.240 And I wish, you know, God's providence and everything,

00:40:34.260 but, you know, I didn't go through the office of deacon

00:40:36.900 before becoming an elder.

00:40:38.820 And I think that in a lot of ways,

00:40:40.800 it may have been a good thing for me to help me to be better

00:40:43.980 at things like rebuking because I would have had to go through

00:40:46.420 more of that grind in that less, um, less high office, uh, being kind of forced to go through

00:40:53.700 some of those conflicts without as much stress on it. Um, and so, so that's just something that

00:40:58.220 is a lot of the deaconate people don't think they think of the deacon's food drive. They think,

00:41:02.040 you know, well, it's just, you know, it's just charity. It's just welfare. You're, you know,

00:41:05.880 you're, uh, caring for the physical needs of widows and orphans. And, um, and, and that's

00:41:11.420 just to misunderstand the descriptive nature of Acts chapter 6 with these seven men. Number one,

00:41:17.580 like just the bar, seven men filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom. It's not that we need to be

00:41:22.560 filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom so that we can pass out soup. The saints are doing, back to 0.81

00:41:28.620 Ephesians 4, the saints are responsible as the executive office of carrying out the work of

00:41:34.480 ministry. But what these deacons are going to be doing is organizing that work, seeing to it that

00:41:39.920 no widow is overlooked. But not just that, widows have already been overlooked. And so they're doing

00:41:44.420 a ton of reconciliation and conflict management. You have not just two individuals or two households,

00:41:50.940 you have two entire sects of a massive church in Jerusalem. We know it's a large church because

00:41:57.320 3,000 are added to the faith at Pentecost when Peter preaches in Jerusalem. So a massive church,

00:42:02.980 and you can basically look at it and divide it in half. Half of the church is upset at the other

00:42:08.140 half and vice versa. The Hellenistic Jews who are saying that our widows have been overlooked in the 0.87

00:42:13.440 daily distribution and then the Hebraic Jews. And so the deacons are coming in and they're not just 0.83

00:42:17.660 making sure that poor people get fed. The deacons are coming in and people are at each other's

00:42:23.500 throats and they have to solve this conflict and seek reconciliation, restoration between two

00:42:30.340 halves of the church that are right now on the verge of threatening to, they're right on the

00:42:35.500 verge of a church split. And we're not even a century in to the Christian gospel. And so this

00:42:41.320 is a massive task laid before them. And then I think of, you know, that's all descriptive and

00:42:46.720 things that, you know, principles we can glean from the text. But then prescriptive in terms

00:42:50.680 of the qualifications of deacons that we find later in 1 Timothy 3, it totally makes sense

00:42:55.820 when you cross-reference Acts 6 and 1 Timothy 3, that the one distinctive, and of course we can

00:43:01.400 assume by way of implication that an elder should have this qualification as well. But the fact that

00:43:06.540 the apostle Paul underneath the inspiration of the spirit finds it necessary to specifically

00:43:11.600 mention one distinct qualification for a deacon that's not mentioned for the elder, which is he

00:43:17.340 must not be double-tongued. And I think there's something unique to the office of deacon that

00:43:23.020 it's kind of like mom in a household that can get, if the kids are being manipulative, can get

00:43:28.040 pitted against. Mom becomes this mediator, this going back and forth in between dad,

00:43:35.860 head of household, and then the children, the citizens of this household state. Mom can be 0.88

00:43:42.020 tempted if she's not wise and sanctified and godly to say one thing to the kids and then another 1.00

00:43:47.120 thing to dad. And so too, I think deacons between elders and congregants, the congregants,

00:43:54.920 there's things that eventually do need to rise to the level of elder, but there's a lot of things

00:43:59.060 that don't where the elders need to devote themselves to the reading and preaching of the

00:44:02.520 word of God and prayer and study. But you know, the deacons should care for this and, and there

00:44:08.320 could be a temptation in the diaconate to, you know, just to hush, hush, tell the congregants,

00:44:14.760 tickle their ears, tell them what they want to hear. And, and even bad mouth the elders like,

00:44:20.200 yeah, I know that, you know, he's not sensitive and yeah, he's kind of, you know, was harsh the

00:44:24.120 other day, this elder, this pastor, and I'm really on your side. And then, you know, in a deacon and

00:44:29.320 elders table and in a meeting, oh yeah, I understand, you know, the congregation's immature.

00:44:33.940 And so there can be this temptation when you're doing conflict resolution between two parties

00:44:38.460 and the deacons probably had that same temptation, not just with elders and congregants, but to

00:44:43.080 groups of congregants, the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebraic Jews and the temptation to be

00:44:48.620 double-tongued. And so all that being said, for that particular portion of an elder's role that

00:44:54.400 does include conflict management, man, you can really cut your teeth in conflict management

00:44:59.940 as a deacon, because I think that's a massive portion of what the deaconate does.

00:45:06.020 Are you desiring to change your financial trajectory and build multi-generational

00:45:10.400 wealth for your children and grandchildren? Our sponsor, Private Family Banking Partners,

00:45:14.980 invites you to join a growing number of like-minded individuals, families, and entrepreneurs

00:45:21.420 who are working together to form a unique part of the parallel economy. With private family banking,

00:45:28.280 you will learn how to establish a privatized banking system that will increase the value

00:45:33.820 of the money and savings that you already have flowing through your life. Join this growing

00:45:39.380 community today as a part of putting post mill talk into post mill action by contacting a private

00:45:45.400 family banking partner today by emailing them at banking at private family banking.com also see

00:45:52.800 the show notes below to schedule a discovery call and get a free copy of the ebook protect your

00:45:58.620 money now how to build multi-generational wealth outside of wall street and avoid the coming

00:46:04.300 banking meltdown america is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing christians

00:46:08.480 to do their duty before God and not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments

00:46:12.360 of men.

00:46:13.520 Rees Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on

00:46:18.340 the wall, but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God that

00:46:23.060 we're supposed to obey.

00:46:24.360 Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.

00:46:28.920 We want to find manufacturing businesses and use them to make sure that we can maintain

00:46:33.100 our capacity to do things here.

00:46:35.760 Reese Fund, Christian capital, boldly deployed.

00:46:40.620 Brother, that was excellently described.

00:46:42.440 I mean, like, the scenarios, I have scenarios flashing through my head from stuff I've seen throughout my life of exactly that.

00:46:48.320 And I think, so, what we do in our diaconal training is we go, okay, there's doctrine portion, but part of the practical portion is conflict resolution, which requires you to know basic biblical counseling, and catechesis.

00:47:01.300 And so you think, you know, that's all private ministry stuff, right?

00:47:03.920 It's not a function of church government, but deacons, as they're doing that, as they're

00:47:08.060 engaging people's lives, so often they're going to, people go, I need mercy ministry

00:47:11.340 help.

00:47:11.640 It's like, great.

00:47:12.140 Do you know how to, are you running a budget or are you just like blowing your money?

00:47:15.420 Right.

00:47:15.560 And so, so this idea of like basic life management stuff, like, like budget and, um, and how

00:47:20.960 to deal with conflict, how to deal with, uh, basic biblical counseling and how to deal

00:47:25.520 with, you know, basic catechesis.

00:47:26.860 And so you, you get so much, you get so much done that way.

00:47:31.000 And I love that work, actually, of going in and doing that.

00:47:34.120 And I've recently had to get that more off of my plate because I just don't have time for it.

00:47:40.000 I'm drawn to doing it.

00:47:41.660 And so I'm having to deal with that.

00:47:43.920 I'm really enjoying preparing some of our newer Deaconal nominees, for example, on some of that.

00:47:49.280 So it's been a fun training process.

00:47:50.640 But that is so practical.

00:47:52.280 I think it's something that people don't understand.

00:47:54.600 And so if you're a deacon and you're giving mercy ministry, you're going to see the details of someone's house.

00:47:59.340 You're almost there, and you're unavoidably going to run into those problems

00:48:03.960 and helping people to get to that place.

00:48:06.320 And that Jethro principle from Exodus 18 that you just mentioned,

00:48:09.260 not everything gets to the elders, not everything gets to, you know,

00:48:12.300 if you believed in a series of courts, for example, that were beyond the local church,

00:48:15.820 you might say not every one of them goes to those higher courts too.

00:48:18.160 So that whole thing.

00:48:20.760 So how does this all fit into unity?

00:48:23.380 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.

00:48:40.740 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.

00:48:48.940 And the more complex problems are able to be dealt with by the fathers in the faith.

00:48:52.140 Right.

00:48:52.580 And so you're able to have well-reasoned, well-done stuff as opposed to overloaded officers, overloaded elders.

00:49:01.180 They're able to really do a great job of teaching through the points of disagreement that become more complex.

00:49:08.060 And they can start to give you your handouts and organized information and all that kind of stuff.

00:49:12.780 And so I think one of the examples of this has happened in the church just in our own time,

00:49:17.760 Pastor Philip Kaiser has like amazing handouts for like every sermon he gives.

00:49:21.380 Just these great handouts of the organization of the stuff.

00:49:25.660 And I think that must testify to the fact that at their church, they're able to really well organize that to give this guy the time to actually put together these amazing documents for these sermons.

00:49:36.400 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.

00:49:44.520 That's going to encourage unity in the faith.

00:49:46.800 And so there's this proper division of labor.

00:49:50.640 And so then the fathers being those who are really, really deeply knowledgeable, being

00:49:56.660 those who are able to teach the more advanced elements, and they're able to carefully guard

00:50:01.340 the confessional standard.

00:50:03.260 And so they're going to be able to pick, and we talked before about the idea of when you

00:50:07.200 pick conflicts, you want to pick the more basic ones as opposed to the less basic ones.

00:50:11.960 And so the Westminster Confession, the London Baptist Confession, you look at the order

00:50:15.380 of the chapters, they're systematically ordered.

00:50:17.280 The first one's on scripture, how do you know?

00:50:19.340 And the last one's going to be about the Day of Judgment.

00:50:21.960 And so you have this stuff that it kind of builds, chapter one, scripture, chapter two, the nature of God, chapter three, the decrees of God.

00:50:31.480 So how does God do things in terms of creation and providence?

00:50:34.580 And it just rolls out in this logically ordered way.

00:50:37.300 When you have disagreements, your goal is to see, well, do we agree about the more basic things?

00:50:43.700 And you avoid fighting about all the hot button issues.

00:50:46.260 And your goal is to drive the discussion to the points that are more systematically foundational.

00:50:53.080 And that way you can actually find where the real source of disagreement is, as opposed to fighting about a bunch of little hot button issues at the top.

00:51:00.960 You're trying to go, OK, well, do we actually agree that the word of God is true?

00:51:04.360 Do we agree that the word of God is systematic and non-contradictory?

00:51:06.800 OK, do we agree that God is this God?

00:51:10.900 And so when you get to disagreements with, for example,

00:51:12.800 between Calvinists and Arminians, you're disagreeing at chapter 2.

00:51:16.880 You're disagreeing about the nature of God.

00:51:19.640 And so talking about a bunch of other stuff there,

00:51:22.700 we need to come to agreement about who God is, what he is.

00:51:25.980 And so you're trying to find the point of departure,

00:51:29.180 where it is in the system, and to be able to work through that there.

00:51:32.180 And that's, I think, part of what fathers train the young men in.

00:51:35.980 The young men who like to fight are going to kind of pick whatever battles

00:51:39.840 And part of how you help them to have discipline is to say, don't fight about everything that comes across your path.

00:51:46.440 You find the point of disagreement that's most basic with the person and try to focus on that.

00:51:52.660 And sometimes there's practical things you've got to deal with along the way, like a sin that manifests itself.

00:51:56.420 That's less basic.

00:51:57.440 You've got to deal with it.

00:51:58.620 But you're also trying to overlook as many sins as you can so you're not rebuking people about everything all the time.

00:52:04.740 So these are, I think these are some of the practical tactics of unity before we go back

00:52:09.420 to some of the bigger, broader ones.

00:52:10.920 I don't know anything you want to add about the tactics of unity.

00:52:13.760 Yeah, no, I think that's really good.

00:52:15.600 You know, you need the theological triage so that you have an order of priority for

00:52:20.140 fighting.

00:52:20.800 What's worth fighting about?

00:52:22.140 Where do we fight first?

00:52:23.900 Which hills to die on?

00:52:25.440 And in order to have the theological triage, you need systematic theology.

00:52:29.620 Biblical theology is indispensable.

00:52:31.260 but but i think for purposes of triage systematic theology is key and you know people are bothered

00:52:38.140 by that they don't like labels they don't like systems you know and and all those kinds of things

00:52:43.440 and um and you'll put you know pretty little cliches in order to defend your position for

00:52:48.300 why you don't like you know systems or labels um but but really it's a rejection of authority

00:52:53.300 it's uh it's a reject it's wanting to be your own pope and make all of your own decisions and

00:52:58.840 and atomistic, individualistic. It's arrogance. It's rooted in arrogance. Systematic theology,

00:53:04.320 just for the listener, is not imposing man's systems on the God-breathed text. Instead,

00:53:10.700 it's going to the text, reading it carefully, and then discerning out of the text, not reading

00:53:16.700 systems into the text, eisegesis, imposing our systems, but it's looking at the text and saying,

00:53:21.820 well, what do we know about the character and nature of God? Well, we know that he's a God of

00:53:25.360 order. He's not a God of chaos. He's not a God of disorder. So I'm not imposing a system on the

00:53:31.320 text. I am counting on the God of order that he has placed a system in the text, and I want to

00:53:36.840 find it. So I'm not bringing a system to the text. I'm drawing out of the text a system. And then

00:53:41.700 when we have systematic theology, it is constructed in not biblical order of Genesis to Revelation,

00:53:48.300 but in logical order. And in that logical order, there's an order of priority. And so that sets

00:53:55.300 the triage of, of, um, must believe, should believe, may believe, and then we're able to

00:54:01.380 start there. And that helps us, I think, from some of the, the further fracture fracturing and, um,

00:54:07.720 and dividing, uh, to be able to, you know, because part of the reason that we're dividing on some

00:54:12.800 things is because, you know, part of it is, is being too petty and too particular, but part of

00:54:17.340 it also is putting the cart before the horse. Uh, some, some of these divisions, uh, we're dividing

00:54:23.080 now on social justice or the solution for social justice with so-and-so, which ironically, we

00:54:30.000 should have been divided with so-and-so from the very beginning. I think, for instance, people in

00:54:37.100 the last couple of years have felt shocked that James Lindsay is not on our team. And I'm like,

00:54:44.480 guys, he's an atheist. He's not even in the realm of, like, we're shocked. So James Lindsay,

00:54:53.080 And turns out he wants to guard all the benefits of a Christian nation that afford him the ability to just to go through life, to have, you know, to not be, you know, just it preserves his liberty and all these kinds of like all that comes from the Christian faith. 0.52

00:55:13.440 There is no liberty apart from the Christian worldview. 0.66

00:55:15.360 So it turns out he wanted to defend, you know, seemingly defend some basic, you know, but he was never defending the Christian faith.

00:55:24.680 He was defending what the Christian faith produced for him, its blessings. 0.74

00:55:29.040 But then when it comes to actually the solution, he doesn't want a Christian nation.

00:55:35.780 He just wants, you know, classical liberalism as a later fruit of the Christian worldview.

00:55:42.260 um and but that's that's not my goal my goal is not to uh to bring us back to the you know the

00:55:48.400 good old days of the 1980s my goal is no i want a distinctly uh christian nation and of course i'm

00:55:55.960 not going to be able to count on someone like james lindsey um to be a co-belligerent towards

00:56:00.520 that aim and so um so my point is you know some some of the fracturing that we're having now not

00:56:05.900 all of it but some of the fracturing we're having now is we're we're actually we're just starting

00:56:11.560 to realize that that we're divided on chapter for instance to put it into like confessional terms

00:56:16.240 we're divided on chapter 27 well you know and it's like i'm losing allies i'm losing friends

00:56:21.720 yeah but honestly you're you're divided on chapter 27 but if you've been a little bit more discerning

00:56:28.440 you would have realized that you you were already divided on chapter two and three and four and

00:56:32.320 of course uh of course this was not going to happen so i think assuming the center that's

00:56:37.460 you know, I think there's a geographic application of this. I think there's an ideological

00:56:41.640 and methodological application of this, certainly a theological application of this. But right now,

00:56:47.720 in terms of what time is it, the sons of Issachar, what do we do today? They knew the times and they

00:56:52.620 knew what Israel should do. So they weren't just commentators. Oh, I know the times. I know how

00:56:56.740 bad it is. No, no, they also had a plan. They knew what Israel should do. And I think right now,

00:57:01.920 what Israel, the church of Jesus Christ needs to do given the times is we need to realize that

00:57:07.440 our high watermark, like you've so wonderfully said, is behind us, unfortunately. We've actually

00:57:13.380 regressed because of sin, because of foolishness, because of compromise. So we need to go back,

00:57:18.700 and also we need to assume the center. It is not a time for spreading out. That is the ultimate

00:57:26.320 goal, to be fruitful and spread out over the whole earth and subdue it through the Great Commission 0.98

00:57:30.980 and the cultural mandate. But right now, I think we need to fall back. We've spread too thin. We 0.97

00:57:37.060 need to fall back from behind enemy lines. We need to consolidate. I think in the name of the

00:57:41.100 game right now is consolidation geographically, theologically, and then go and find what's the

00:57:46.760 lowest, you know, the, well, not the low, but what's actually the highest common denominator

00:57:52.720 where we can agree. And how close is that towards the highest watermark we have thus far in 2000

00:57:59.860 years of church history? Okay. So here's where we can agree now. Here's the Westminster Confession

00:58:04.440 of faith. Okay. Let's consolidate here where we can agree. Let's spend the next 50 years seeing

00:58:09.660 if we can get back to the high watermark that we had 500 years ago. And now let's push forward,

00:58:18.320 you know, and now we can talk about maybe spreading out again. Those seem so clear to me,

00:58:23.600 like just practical, basic strategy and tactics. But man, you'd be surprised. You know, that's

00:58:30.620 basically, you know, some of, some of, you know, the, the content from my talk that I gave at the

00:58:34.520 new Christendom conference. And, and I was encouraged. A lot of people loved it, but it

00:58:39.240 was a love hate kind of a lecture that I gave the people who loved it, really loved it. And then

00:58:44.140 there were a few people that really, really, I mean, you know, they're like, this was my least

00:58:48.880 favorite talk because I told, I, cause I, I just, I just kind of straight up told people what to do.

00:58:55.560 like we don't have time stop being cute this is what you need to do and that you know and i think

00:59:01.340 that's kind of what we need right now we need a few people to say like okay that's enough that's

00:59:05.020 silly it's always been silly stop it and this is what we need to do and i think the need you know

00:59:11.180 essentially the things you point out to people is they need to move to a place where there's 0.92

00:59:15.140 already a solid church and really a solid christian borough where there's economic activity

00:59:20.660 church activity there's hospitality there's there's people that are going to be helping

00:59:25.140 to work together that are desirous of accomplishing the same goals and you need a good good amount of

00:59:30.100 unity there that's hard to find in a lot of places so being willing to move there and if

00:59:33.980 you can't move for some reason like you've got duties you've got stuff that ties you there

00:59:38.520 whatever maybe you've already got some of the beginnings of it okay well focus the energy on

00:59:42.860 making that work um if you can't make it work there then you've got to leave yeah so there's

00:59:49.580 either there's either already a solid church there where this is happening or a solid church

00:59:53.620 requires a little bit of pushing and effort to get to building that borough or you have the capacity

00:59:59.620 to do it and a duty to stay or you need to leave and that's it and and so that's how simple that

01:00:05.440 is and i think most people we over evaluate what we're able to do on our own in time frames and

01:00:11.680 so we need to realize the need to divide labor to accumulate capital to to to to make it so we can

01:00:17.260 build off of what other people have already started. And so I think a lot of people miss

01:00:21.240 out on that. And so places where that's happening, where there's

01:00:25.200 education, Christianity in the church, households that are in good order, money being

01:00:29.300 made with businesses, all that stuff together, that's sort of the stuff

01:00:33.140 that's necessary for a Christian borough. I've been

01:00:37.160 calling it the Geneva strategy before I heard the idea of that. Just the idea that

01:00:40.920 you flee to a place where you can consolidate, get control, and then you can project power

01:00:45.060 out. And so you're going to look at what happened in Geneva. And so, but I think there's two things

01:00:50.360 there that have to also be focused on, which is church unity through confessional covenanting,

01:00:56.700 and then the civil order. And so you talked about, I think you might disagree here, and I'd be

01:01:01.860 curious about whether it would be helpful for people to think about how the order around this

01:01:05.920 is in the civil order, I would say we can have a highest common denominator without regard to

01:01:12.480 really the history. And we just kind of go, can we agree on a basic political platform of

01:01:18.140 seeing Christ acknowledged as the king of kings, his word acknowledged as the authoritative thing,

01:01:23.480 biblical Christian liberty defended as defined by the Bible, and biblical justice administered

01:01:28.260 as defined by the Bible as to be sort of four big political goals. And then how do you make

01:01:34.100 that happen? Well, I think there's an ordinance of civil covenanting that we have to be willing

01:01:39.900 to swear to pursue those things together, then we have to be willing to commit to certain actions

01:01:45.220 around that. That's going to be things like having a shared arbitration system. It's going to be

01:01:50.420 swearing to defend each other if they start to come after each other. You know, they come after

01:01:55.540 you as a Baptist or me as a Presbyterian, the idea that we'd be willing to come and defend each other

01:01:59.040 or provide sanction for each other. This idea that we would swear to argue with each other

01:02:04.640 about the disagreements in order to seek to come to greater unity until we die.

01:02:09.560 And that's where I think that context happens of having that debate to try to get back to

01:02:15.620 a high watermark.

01:02:16.540 It's inside of a civil covenant where we're already swearing to accomplish certain things

01:02:21.520 together.

01:02:22.820 And then our goal is to see ecclesiastical unity and greater unity inside of that.

01:02:27.820 So I think we have the freedom, because of our context, to have a more loose civil covenant

01:02:34.240 where we're swearing certain things to each other than we might have in an ecclesiastical context.

01:02:39.780 Because I think it'd be sin for us to fall away from the, in the church, kind of the high water

01:02:45.620 mark that's been attained. I think it's our job to rally around that. And so that other thing

01:02:51.160 that's necessary inside of a civil covenant is we need to start having commitments to meet in some

01:02:56.780 areas to make sure that we are physically fit and prepared to competently make sure that we do our

01:03:05.020 duties as men and to have some sort of way where that's financed. And so those are the components

01:03:12.160 of the civil covenant that I think are necessary. And those are the places that make us that we're

01:03:17.980 meeting physically. One of the things you said in your speech that you gave at the conference

01:03:22.600 recently was this idea that when you're seeing each other in person and interacting in person

01:03:27.740 how it helps now that happens at the local church but i think also this idea of some sort of regular

01:03:33.100 training together in the context of a civil covenant is another place where that occurs

01:03:37.460 where you you have that camaraderie in the trenches and everything and as you're doing

01:03:41.480 business with each other and doing hospitality from house to house those are the things that

01:03:45.640 would encourage that growth in unity and the discussions and would also create social pressure

01:03:50.160 on elders between those churches that are connected in that way to keep talking with

01:03:54.380 each other and to try to work through those differences and to have public discussion

01:03:57.620 where they're accountable for the words that they say to each other.

01:04:01.280 Right. That's good. Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. I think you and I, the only disagreement we

01:04:06.200 would probably have would be minor, but it matters, but it wouldn't be a grandiose,

01:04:12.540 you know, massive disagreement, but would just be on the civil covenanting, just, you know,

01:04:19.700 how theologically, uh, what, what is that, you know, that highest common denominator, you know,

01:04:25.700 that, uh, that we would accept for that, but everything, all the other elements of, you know,

01:04:29.540 arbitrating our own, uh, disagreements per first Corinthians chapter six, that's just a clear

01:04:34.780 biblical, uh, principle that we're not, you know, we're not going to the pagan courts, um, unless,

01:04:39.960 unless we absolutely have to, that we're first trying to arbitrate, uh, disputes, uh, among

01:04:44.920 Christians with our own courts, uh, that there would be some kind of shared, um, uh, resources,

01:04:50.940 financial resources, uh, in order to accomplish our goals. Um, all those kinds of things completely

01:04:55.820 agree with that the local church, ecclesiastical covenant, uh, covenanting, I think, uh, there must

01:05:01.080 be a, um, a higher, um, higher watermark for that, uh, for that theological standard within the

01:05:08.180 ecclesiastical covenanting, uh, realm. And I think that that, that high, the highest watermark that

01:05:13.380 we currently have within 2,000 years of church history is from the Reformation. And so going

01:05:18.100 back and saying, this is what we need at the church level. And then at the civil level,

01:05:23.120 at this point, and I'm open to being persuaded, but at this point, I'm convinced that at the

01:05:28.280 civil level that we need, it needs to be a pan-Protestant project. So it must be distinctly

01:05:33.420 Christian. I would advocate for a prelude or a preamble adopted to the constitution that is 0.97

01:05:40.460 that is the Apostles' Creed, that distinctly names the Lord Jesus Christ and the triune God

01:05:45.880 as the sole object of our worship, that we are a Christian nation. And then from that,

01:05:53.360 I think there can be no debate in terms of legislation that the state is obligated under

01:06:01.640 God, that the state won't be blessed and a nation won't be blessed any other way, that the state

01:06:07.440 is mandated by God to reward the righteous, punish the evildoer, and that that necessarily

01:06:13.160 includes both tables of the law, that you cannot just have a state that legislates horizontal laws

01:06:20.060 in terms of the second table of the law, love for neighbor, commandments five through 10. But

01:06:24.100 that's basically to try to hang the laws, the second table of the law in regards to love for

01:06:32.620 neighbor in midair. And so it has to necessarily include the first table of the law. So I would

01:06:36.820 say, you know, uh, apostles creed, um, and 10 commandments, um, you know, and I would add to

01:06:43.120 that the apostles creed, I would add the solas, um, and saying, uh, and this is the gospel. So,

01:06:48.240 um, uh, that, that we need, uh, the solas added to that. And that's what gets you, uh, not just,

01:06:53.860 um, uh, a pan Christian, but a pan Protestant, uh, project that's distinctly Protestant that

01:07:00.420 says to the Catholic, Hey, you're welcome to be a part of this, but this is Protestant. Um, and,

01:07:05.000 we're not going to abandon the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so this is what we're doing. You're

01:07:11.020 welcome to participate, but we're going this direction and you don't get to, you can be in

01:07:16.020 the car, but you don't get to drive. The Protestants are driving. And I think the only area, you know, 1.00

01:07:21.540 correct me if I'm wrong, where we disagree is I think everything I said, I think you're on board

01:07:26.040 for. So ecclesiastical covenanting confession, give us the Westminster, give us the 1689 over

01:07:32.000 here, creed, and then we'd add the solas. We're both two tables of the law, guys, in terms of

01:07:37.920 the state and legislative, blasphemy laws, blue laws, Sabbath laws, those kinds of things.

01:07:43.260 And then, you know, the last thing is, I think you would say, yep, give me the solas and give

01:07:48.200 me tulip. And I think that's the, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's the only place where

01:07:52.120 I say, ah, you know, maybe 500 years from now, we'll get, we'll get tulip in there. I don't know

01:07:57.620 if we're ready for it yet. Yeah, and I would say the reason I think that is because I think TULIP

01:08:03.020 is sort of the guardrails for the solas, right? If you abandon total depravity and you abandon

01:08:10.560 the idea of limited atonement, you know, you're abandoning with total depravity that it's by

01:08:16.960 grace alone. You abandon limited atonement, you're abandoning that it's by Christ alone. So

01:08:20.680 these are almost definitional guardrails, I would say, for that. And so I think that's what the

01:08:25.900 purpose was. And I think, you know, when you look at the Synod of Dort being an international

01:08:30.340 Protestant Synod, that capturing that and trying to guard the gospel, a reformed view of the gospel,

01:08:36.240 I think that the historical context, they're saying, if you abandon this stuff, you're really

01:08:40.160 abandoning the reformed view of the gospel. And so I think that it's necessary if we're going to

01:08:44.600 be able to guard it as being a Christian movement as opposed to rejecting that. So that's obviously

01:08:51.520 a controversial statement many people would be be outraged by that but you know if christ on a

01:08:58.060 basic level limited atonement's where the rubber hits the road here everybody everybody freaks out

01:09:01.900 at limited atonement so just john owen's solution here is this okay let's think about this logically

01:09:06.480 for a second if christ died for some of the sins of some people nobody's saved if he died for some

01:09:12.920 of the sins of all people still nobody's saved if he died for for all of the sins of all people

01:09:19.280 everybody's saved and if he died for all the sins of some people then some people are saved the only

01:09:23.420 one of those is biblical it's the last one that's limited atonement he paid for all the sins of some

01:09:28.100 people and if he paid for all the sins of all people then everybody's saved that's universalism

01:09:32.800 that's unavoidable and you want to say oh well faith is the connector there it's like okay

01:09:36.580 is faith is unbelief a sin that christ paid for or not yep right that's what i was gonna say

01:09:42.080 yeah is rejected so it's like oh he paid for all of your sins but you still have to accept his

01:09:46.180 payment? Well, is the rejection of his payment a sin? Yes. Did he pay for that sin? Yes. So,

01:09:51.820 yeah. So I'm, I'm with you in terms of, um, I think it's thoroughly biblical. John chapter 10,

01:09:56.520 the shepherd, he doesn't lay down his, his life for goats. He doesn't lay it down for wolves. Um,

01:10:01.620 you know, he, but he lays down his life for the sheep. So there's a particular redemption,

01:10:05.300 a definitive redemption. Uh, so I think it's firmly biblical, but it's also thoroughly logical,

01:10:10.820 uh, because it really does call into question the justice of God. Uh, if Jesus died for people who

01:10:15.860 ultimately go to hell. What is hell but the wages of sin? It's the wages of sin, the payment

01:10:21.640 for sinning against a thrice holy God. And if people are paying that price, that penalty

01:10:27.860 themselves, and Jesus died for them, and Jesus' death on the cross is penal substitutionary

01:10:34.520 atonement, which is the heart of the gospel, it's the penalty for sin, then you're actually

01:10:40.420 accusing, is levying an accusation against God himself in regards to his own essence and

01:10:46.280 character that God is unjust. God is demanding double payment. He's demanding two punishments

01:10:52.820 for one crime. This person sinned against him, and that person has to pay it off for eternity.

01:10:59.500 And also, his son Jesus, God chose to subject his own son, his beloved son, to make a second

01:11:07.900 payment for something that is already being paid for eternally by that person in hell.

01:11:13.740 And so logically, biblically, in terms of theology proper and doctrine of God, his essence,

01:11:20.520 his character, his nature, justice being called it.

01:11:23.500 So I'm fully on board with that.

01:11:26.140 And I think I could even get on board in terms of, I think you're right in terms of the five

01:11:30.080 points of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, not being even a separate category in so much

01:11:36.000 as they are just a further, they're the footnotes and the further fleshing out of the five solos.

01:11:41.040 So I like that as well. I think that's, I think that's true. Which is why I would absolutely

01:11:46.660 demand the tulip for ecclesiastical covenanting, but it's just still not quite there for civil

01:11:53.400 covenanting. So let's talk about the pragmatics of this for just a minute, right? So you're

01:11:58.260 advocating the people gather around a point. I think that's brilliant. I think it's absolutely

01:12:02.480 necessary i think that's that's that's a practical point that people need to hear and i think that

01:12:06.620 that um you pushing on that and helping people to feel freed from the guilt mongering that's been

01:12:13.140 done that you need to like you know you need to be a missionary in blue land and you also need to 0.97

01:12:18.300 send your kids to public schools so they can become communist and gay right like so this this 0.97

01:12:22.700 whole this whole problem you're trying to free people from it and saying no no no come into a 0.98

01:12:28.020 christian enclave right right that's that's absolutely the case i want to say those enclaves

01:12:33.680 are what need to organize and need to connect yes what's going to happen what's going to happen is

01:12:38.680 is those things we need to be very careful about that and and the reality is we're going to make

01:12:44.880 cities on the hill and every place else is going to be hell on earth right and and so if we have

01:12:51.060 light and we're careful there to guard it i think that the idea of connecting the international

01:12:57.380 reform uh you know they're they're reformed throughout the the states uh we're gonna we're

01:13:03.700 gonna end up having that network and if we carefully guard that the reality is there's

01:13:10.120 about 30 million evangelicals in the country maybe 10 million of those are calvinistic or whatever

01:13:15.720 and and so if that's the case a few million gathering together and becoming more unified

01:13:23.260 is going to be far more powerful

01:13:24.900 than a dissipation of our doctrine

01:13:26.700 and trying to have a larger coalition.

01:13:29.040 What's going to happen is there are two things

01:13:30.880 that the Lord promises.

01:13:32.600 I just still see that.

01:13:33.140 Here's where I'm confused.

01:13:34.060 I still see that as an ecclesiastical,

01:13:35.540 so not a local church covenanting,

01:13:37.800 but still this broader ecclesiastical,

01:13:40.000 because what you're describing is still between churches.

01:13:43.560 Okay, so what I'm talking about is these boroughs.

01:13:46.240 So here's the deal. 0.67

01:13:47.160 So being Presbyterian, right,

01:13:48.220 I believe in covenanting between multiple local churches.

01:13:51.900 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.

01:13:59.340 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.

01:14:04.580 They would have seen the value, but you're right.

01:14:06.100 It would have been volitional, and it would have not been formally binding.

01:14:09.800 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.

01:14:16.840 So there should be an ecclesiastical covenant and a civil covenant.

01:14:19.180 And I want to see the churches covenanting with each other, but I also want to see their

01:14:23.960 boroughs, the towns, the zones, these little, we have a civil sphere.

01:14:29.060 So for example, you know, in Phoenix, there's apologia, which, you know, I have a lot of

01:14:34.020 confessional disagreements with them.

01:14:36.840 They hold the, not quite the London Baptist, but I think, for example, I think we disagree

01:14:40.060 on like Sabbath and some other stuff too. 0.80

01:14:42.440 And so I'm happy to argue with them about that stuff and say, you know, I think you're

01:14:46.160 wrong about that.

01:14:46.840 I think God's sin, whatever.

01:14:47.880 and they can say the same thing about there and we debating it trying to come to unity

01:14:51.920 but but then on a civil level we should be able to be in covenant i should be happy to come and

01:14:56.820 protect jeff durbin or jeff or james white if something happens to them in the civil sphere

01:15:01.380 so then we'd be arguing with each other also in that context of being under a shared one

01:15:06.160 so i think the same thing with with you so that'd be the civil element and i'd be trying to encourage

01:15:10.620 when you were describing boroughs that's what threw me off when you said boroughs i instinctively

01:15:14.500 thought churches. And in that, because I would put it in the category of not the state, but

01:15:19.840 households, the family, I was thinking about Christian classical schools. So I was thinking

01:15:24.200 churches and schools, but you were thinking more like, not Christ church, but Moscow, right? Not

01:15:32.120 Calvin's church, but Geneva. So you were thinking towns. And so included in that is not just the

01:15:37.260 church and the school, but businesses, economy, not just household things, but even civil leaders

01:15:42.960 in that realm. And so I hear you on that. But one thing I definitely agree with is,

01:15:47.460 and you may be right, but one thing I definitely agree with is at the ecclesiastical level,

01:15:54.500 and this is even coming from a Baptist, so you know it's something, but even at the ecclesiastical

01:15:59.840 level of churches, going back to just that and leaving towns on the side for a moment,

01:16:04.920 one of my concerns is that people will assume the center, they will congregate, they will fall back

01:16:10.060 from behind enemy lines, but they'll have 17 different boroughs to choose from, which is

01:16:15.040 good. I don't think we just need, the whole world can't move to Moscow. So we need more than one

01:16:19.040 borough. Right now, I think we need to be honest with ourselves. We don't have 10,000 boroughs.

01:16:23.940 A lot of guys might think, oh, I have a borough. You probably don't. So I don't think we have a

01:16:29.520 thousand boroughs, but we better have more than one borough. So let's say it's a hundred boroughs

01:16:33.400 spread out around the States. We need to consolidate, fall back from behind enemy lines

01:16:38.240 and assume the center and go to these boroughs.

01:16:40.820 But then those boroughs,

01:16:42.380 this is one of my biggest concerns,

01:16:44.220 is the leaders, ecclesiastical leaders of these boroughs,

01:16:47.880 they better be getting in some serious face time

01:16:51.280 with each other. 1.00

01:16:52.040 Because it's not helpful if we go to the Christian boroughs, 0.99

01:16:55.440 but then our hundred Christian boroughs 0.92

01:16:57.320 all disagree with each other. 0.67

01:16:59.580 Yeah, and that's been really,

01:17:01.260 one of the things I've found really hard

01:17:02.580 and that I have found refreshing specifically about you,

01:17:06.180 but also David Shannon, Chocolate Knox, I've seen the two of you really be connectors

01:17:13.500 who are trying to help other people, and I've seen you be open-handed with things like honor,

01:17:20.700 where there's this willingness to spend time to talk to people and to argue through things and

01:17:25.840 to try to be charitable in interpretation, the willingness to sit down, to talk, to communicate

01:17:31.860 through the electronic means we've got to get time,

01:17:35.360 but also this idea of trying to spend time in person

01:17:38.800 and to argue about stuff, talk through things,

01:17:41.400 try to flesh things out in detail,

01:17:43.460 spend the time that you have to spend on it,

01:17:46.000 and then to connect other people and try to encourage that.

01:17:49.420 And so I think that, God willing,

01:17:53.120 let's say we don't lose and end up in the concentration camps,

01:17:55.380 but instead we win.

01:17:57.220 The victors that write the history,

01:17:59.600 hopefully we'll get to the point of the two of you guys

01:18:01.520 as significant connectors in the cause.

01:18:05.260 And so I think that that's a key part of it.

01:18:07.700 And that's a priestly gifting, right?

01:18:09.040 You think about leaders, what kind of gifting they've got.

01:18:11.780 If they've got prophetic gifting, they're great teachers.

01:18:14.120 They can argue well.

01:18:14.880 They can deal with the logical ordering and all that.

01:18:17.500 The priestly is the relational and trying to build the hedges

01:18:21.420 and protect the team and the cause.

01:18:25.240 And then the king leader really can get stuff done,

01:18:27.160 making things happen, organizing things,

01:18:28.700 making sure the trains run on time.

01:18:29.900 and so that that stuff we need all of that and and we that's why we need we all have our our clay

01:18:36.720 feet and we need the giftings of each other and so I think that the priestly are going to be the

01:18:42.600 ones that really help to gather people together to work and then the prophetic are going to be

01:18:47.740 able to really focus on arguing to try to come to greater unity and the king they're going to

01:18:51.840 really make sure stuff gets done and everybody's got those giftings to various degrees so I mean

01:18:55.700 nobody's like free from doing any of those things we all have to do all of them but some people are

01:18:59.380 going to be better at others and lean in on some of those pieces. And so I just, um, I think my

01:19:04.600 hope is that people see the value of working with each other. It's so easy to just not do it.

01:19:10.480 It's about, you know, you can build your own fiefdom. You can do all this stuff. Like if

01:19:14.140 you're not making the effort to connect, it's so easy to try to isolate and try to build your own

01:19:20.300 thing and to, to be away from other people. Right. Yeah. Especially, you know, the, the PTSD

01:19:28.800 can can click in you know especially if you've um if you feel like you've been hurt in the past

01:19:36.120 you know then it's just i'll just i'm going to build a moat build up the walls and we'll just

01:19:42.040 we'll do our own thing we'll insulate and um and we won't partner with anybody and that's part of

01:19:48.420 the reason why i you know why i want to do things like host conferences and have as many guys there

01:19:53.980 as I possibly can, because honestly, it works as an accountability measure. So, you know, like we've

01:20:02.020 announced our conference, it's 10 months away. So one of the things now that all 15 guys, you being

01:20:07.800 one of them, that we, you know, it's not, it's not written in a contract necessarily. And one day,

01:20:12.480 you know, maybe it should be, but, but it just informally in the back of all 15 of these men's

01:20:18.480 minds is like, I've got 10 months where I need to play nice. I can't, you know, like, because I'm

01:20:26.100 going to see all these guys, we speak in a conference with them. So for at least for the

01:20:29.200 next 10 months, I probably should be a little bit nicer to them on Twitter. I probably don't need to

01:20:32.920 burn these bridges. I probably, you know, those things really help. And, you know, to, you know,

01:20:38.540 I think together for the gospel and those kinds of things, you know, with the gospel centered

01:20:42.160 movement and, you know, new Calvinism, massive problems for one, just new Calvinism. I don't

01:20:47.520 want new Calvinism. I want old Calvinism, but, you know, to at least one particular area where

01:20:53.860 it wasn't an utter train wreck, um, there, there was, um, uh, you know, good can truly be said

01:21:01.280 about guys like, you know, Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan and CJ Mahaney with three different,

01:21:08.300 you know, theological positions, um, saying, yeah, but we're, we're going to, you know,

01:21:13.820 we love each other. We love each other. The problem is, you know, that 20 years went by

01:21:18.620 and they still had three different theological positions and there was no, it didn't even seem

01:21:25.560 like it was on the table as, as one of their goals was to, Hey, but also maybe, you know,

01:21:30.300 what if we agreed? You know, so it didn't even seem like that was one of their aims,

01:21:33.480 but I will say that like probably the greatest fruit out of that movement was these massive

01:21:40.340 events where everyone said, we're at least united on this. And what we want to do, I think one of

01:21:47.280 the things that we want to do with whatever you want to call it, with Christian nationalism,

01:21:51.300 with theonomy, new Christendom, whatever, post-millennial hope. But one of the things

01:21:56.680 that we want to achieve is a theological maximalism. I think we've had for too long

01:22:01.940 a theological minimalism where you really did have some genuine relationships and it really did

01:22:06.960 uh, have the ability to pack out a 20,000 person, um, event once a year. And there really is fruit

01:22:13.220 from that. There, there really are some blessings. I don't want to unnecessarily disparage that

01:22:17.780 movement because there's plenty of things that I can disparage that part. I don't want to

01:22:21.580 disparage. And yet even that part is good as it was, uh, was still, um, it was a theological

01:22:28.820 minimalism. It was, it was, you know, basically it was, it was just kind of one step above

01:22:34.520 Billy Graham from back in the day, you know, Billy Graham is just like, well, you know,

01:22:38.680 the great commission has to be, um, fulfilled. And, uh, the biggest thing that's standing in our

01:22:43.820 way is, uh, that we've, uh, we've spread too thin, divided our forces, you know, so if we're

01:22:49.120 going to fulfill the great, basically the logic was this, we want Jesus to come back. Uh, we need

01:22:53.800 to fulfill the great commission for Jesus to come back. Uh, in order to fulfill the great commission,

01:22:57.700 we need to be on the same team. And in order to be on the same team, uh, we need to lower the bar

01:23:02.960 doctrine divides, you know, and that's where you got, you know what I mean? That's, and, and,

01:23:07.440 and, and so, uh, you know, and then the new Calvinist, you know, gospel, you know,

01:23:12.860 Calvinist resurgence movement of the last, you know, 30 years or so was basically that,

01:23:17.520 uh, but with a little higher bar and hopefully by the grace of God, what we're doing would be,

01:23:23.240 it would be the, the good parts, Billy Graham esque and new Calvinism ask, except, um, it would

01:23:31.040 go from basically no theological commitments and then some theological commitments to a lot

01:23:36.340 of theological commitments, a theological maximalism that is Calvinistic and not even

01:23:43.400 new Calvinism, but old Calvinism tried and true and getting back to the historic watermark. And

01:23:49.040 then hopefully our kids can take it further. Absolutely. And so you used early on in our

01:23:54.940 conversation here, kind of three categories, the must believe, should believe, and the may believe.

01:24:01.040 And I think that the way of defining those, the must believe is sort of the here's the stuff you need to positively show understanding of to come to the Lord's table.

01:24:11.340 And that's sort of the that would be sort of the stuff you require for the child in the church.

01:24:16.580 Right. So whatever your church membership covenant is, at the same time, you don't want those children in the faith openly denying what you're confessing in terms of your church confession.

01:24:27.900 But the idea is that they're not going to have thought through a lot of it, right?

01:24:31.560 And so the point is that once they become aware of points of disagreement, the should-believe

01:24:36.820 stuff, you know, pastors come in and spend a lot of time trying to argue through and

01:24:40.420 show them why they're in error and help to get them to the place where they're getting

01:24:44.720 there.

01:24:45.000 So the young men are being trained up to the should-believe, and the fathers are maintaining

01:24:49.400 all of the should-believe.

01:24:51.280 And then there's the may-believe stuff, which is stuff that hasn't been captured in a

01:24:54.540 confessional standard yet that your church has adopted and that stuff is the stuff that we debate

01:25:00.040 about in the hopes of having another advancement in the high watermark and so you know maybe that'd

01:25:05.360 be the phoenix confession or maybe it's the dallas confession whatever and and so this this idea that

01:25:11.520 at a certain point that we are seeking to go beyond right that we we rally around the should

01:25:17.340 believe and we have a must believe bar that's sort of the membership and you're training the must

01:25:23.240 believe into the should believe. And then there's the, you know, the may believe stuff. We're trying

01:25:27.700 to argue about that after we've been able to come together and rally. And then we're trying to

01:25:34.060 further define, but we give liberty on the may believe stuff, you know, in terms of some of the

01:25:40.220 ways of, of, of, of which views of, of eschatology of, of, you know, cause you could have like a

01:25:46.640 historic post-millennialism or you could have a, a partial preterist post-millennialism, which I

01:25:51.220 hold to, you know, and that kind of thing. And you could even have like an optimistic

01:25:54.580 amillennialism. Some of the types of, you know, some of the views are going to make it so that

01:26:00.080 you're essentially saying, yeah, I want to be a part of this movement, but I also think we're

01:26:04.200 going to lose. And, and I'm not sure where that line draws exactly, but my point would be this

01:26:09.440 probably a broader range on the eschatology, which has not been captured in the confessional

01:26:14.160 views than you would have on a lot of the other stuff that's lower down there. And so those are

01:26:19.680 I hope those definitions for the must believe, should believe, may believe, I hope that's a

01:26:25.220 helpful divider. I don't know if you disagree about how to break that down. Yeah, no, that's

01:26:28.640 helpful. I agree. Well, let's go ahead and start landing the plane. Any final thoughts for this

01:26:34.040 episode on unity and theological maximalism and civic covenanting and ecclesiastical covenanting?

01:26:40.880 Any final words for us? I think that the main thing people need to walk away with is realizing

01:26:46.780 if we want to see a civil unity where we've got a Christian state, what you need to do is you need

01:26:51.580 to be encouraging discussion with people where there's a desire to gather around a civil covenant.

01:26:58.200 We have to covenant to do these things first and to protect each other first before we're going to

01:27:02.140 be able to accomplish it. Unless we have a duty in place with defined duties, we're not going to be

01:27:07.360 able to accomplish the goal. So the commitment to do it and then the gathering around and fulfilling

01:27:14.120 those commitments. In order to see that happen, we need to see churches concerned about ecclesiastical

01:27:20.060 unity as well. And so we need to have a concern for that. We need to be praying for it. The unity

01:27:26.040 of the church is something that powerfully encourages evangelism. The love of the church

01:27:32.440 powerfully encourages evangelism. Christ promises that those things cause the world to repent and to

01:27:37.840 be convicted. And so if we maintain the law of God carefully, and if we seek unity in terms of

01:27:43.000 the forms that we have, those things allow us to have a common voice. And so the three to 10 million

01:27:49.740 Calvinists in America should be seeking to unify in that way. And we would see a growth. And so 0.58

01:27:56.860 that idea of seeking to figure out what's the high watermark to gather around and debating those

01:28:02.300 differences. So I really think Presbyterians and Baptists are the guys that are generally,

01:28:07.140 most of the believers are presbyterian or baptist right and so there needs to be a focus on

01:28:13.060 discussing those things in the context of a civil covenant where we're discussing coming to those

01:28:18.260 things and and coming to agreement about these things to have a shared confession debating about

01:28:23.500 baptism debating about church government are very important for us to eliminate the practical

01:28:28.180 dividers that prevent us from having a shared church then in addition to that you need to the

01:28:33.580 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 and 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 you've got stuff that you can pour into this.

01:28:52.540 Because if you don't have resources, you can't do any of this work.

01:28:55.240 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.

01:29:06.120 The reality is that solid men can run their house, run their estate, and be public officers.

01:29:14.760 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 as children,

01:29:21.400 That's necessary to make it so you've got the resources to do what you need.

01:29:24.520 George Washington was able to march 1,000 men at his own expense to the relief of Boston

01:29:28.420 when it was under siege by the British.

01:29:30.700 One of my goals is to make sure I could march 1,000 men to Dallas

01:29:33.540 to come to your guys' relief if there were need.

01:29:36.840 And so that idea of trying to pull together that sort of utility,

01:29:40.360 the capacity to actually do stuff, having resources to make things happen.

01:29:44.860 And so if you want to do that, you have to govern yourself well.

01:29:47.980 The only way to not be enslaved to sin is to have a deep knowledge of the truth.

01:29:51.000 it makes it so that you're a father in the faith. If you have a knowledge of God that's deep,

01:29:54.820 if you have a knowledge of God that's deep, then you govern yourself because it's the knowledge

01:29:59.160 of the truth that sets men free from slavery to sin. And so I want to encourage men to seek

01:30:03.720 the knowledge of God deeply and to make sure they're exercising discipline in all the areas

01:30:08.500 of life, seeing their piety not just be an internal thing that's about a relationship

01:30:12.400 between them and God, but it pushes out to the edges, their duty over their sphere.

01:30:16.580 So I think that's the capacity to see unity occur. It is to know God deeply yourself, govern your home well and have resources, encourage your church to grow in depth and to encourage unity between other churches by discussing the differences and seeking to covenant together.

01:30:31.980 and by seeing that occur in the civil sphere,

01:30:35.080 having leaders and having Christian men

01:30:36.800 throughout the country who are committed

01:30:39.660 to seeing the acknowledgement of the reign of Christ

01:30:42.620 over the state, having them covenant together

01:30:44.980 and having these necessary components work in harmony.

01:30:48.220 Amen, well said.

01:30:50.220 Well, thank you, Mr. Rees, for coming on the show

01:30:52.180 and we will talk more in the near future, Lord willing.

01:30:55.500 And thank you to the listener for tuning in.

01:30:57.260 We hope that this has been helpful for you.

01:31:00.420 We want both.

01:31:01.660 We want our cake and eat it too, because we think that's what the Lord wants.

01:31:04.980 We want incredible unity and covenant with one another.

01:31:10.500 And we also don't want to lower the bar.

01:31:12.700 We want a theological maximalism and unity.

01:31:15.940 I think that's what Ephesians 4 is.

01:31:17.540 Ephesians 4 is not just talking about kumbaya love while everybody has a different position,

01:31:23.000 a different conviction.

01:31:24.480 And I don't think Ephesians 4 is saying, yep, we'll attain the full stature of the maturity

01:31:28.840 of Christ.

01:31:29.420 and by the time we get there, there'll only be three of us. I just, I reject both of the,

01:31:34.420 that's just, that's not what the scripture teaches. The scripture is saying high bar

01:31:38.860 and we're all going to make it. We're going to make it. So no man left behind and high bar.

01:31:46.940 And that's, I think that's a lot of what I've, as I've gotten to know you, I think that's a lot

01:31:51.280 of what you have been giving yourself to outside of the local level as you try to be a voice to

01:31:57.280 the church at large is don't lower the bar, but also let's team up. Let's agree. So God bless you

01:32:04.660 for that ministry. And I hope it's helpful for the listener and we'll see you again soon. Thanks for

01:32:08.840 tuning in.

The NXR Podcast - September 09, 2024

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

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript