The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - A Candid Conversation Of The State Of The American Evangelical Church

00:00:00.400 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.

00:00:04.080 This is Theology Applied.

00:00:11.920 All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:15.720 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:19.320 Today, I am privileged to have as our guest a personal friend of mine, Dave Weichel.

00:00:24.620 He has recently started a podcast called The Reformed Operator.

00:00:29.380 He serves in the military here in San Diego, California.

00:00:33.440 He's also in training at his local church.

00:00:36.280 It's an OPC church in training for eldership. 0.67

00:00:40.080 He used to be a Baptist, like all Presbyterians.

00:00:43.440 They're born Baptist and eventually transfer over. 0.72

00:00:47.100 If it wasn't for Baptist churches, Presbyterians would have no pool for gaining members.

00:00:51.040 And so he's one of those many guys.

00:00:54.280 I don't have no pool to baptize anybody yet. 0.86

00:00:55.760 So, yeah, they don't need a pool, the Presbyterians. 1.00

00:00:59.920 They're just a little bit of water.

00:01:01.300 They're more environmental friendly, more conscious of the environment. 0.79

00:01:04.520 Beauty baths and showers.

00:01:06.100 Yeah.

00:01:07.340 So Dave is a good friend of mine and was a part of our church for a little bit as they were transitioning him and his wife.

00:01:15.300 And so I'm going to let him share a little bit of that story with just his journey into Reformed theology, his journey into Presbyterianism.

00:01:24.060 And so anyways, all that being said, a friend of mine, and I'm honored to have you on the show.

00:01:29.520 So Dave, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and maybe give us, our listeners, your testimony.

00:01:35.480 How did you come to Christ?

00:01:36.920 Yeah, sure.

00:01:37.580 So I kind of grew up moving all over the place.

00:01:40.320 My parents were in the military, so I lived all over.

00:01:43.560 My parents were fairly devout Christians.

00:01:46.640 But one of the things was, is we would just go to basically any church.

00:01:50.460 I mean, for a while we went to an Anglican church.

00:01:52.500 a big part of the background though and the the critical piece of it was I grew up charismatic

00:01:58.420 and so a little bit of background as well like I had to insert this because Colossians 2.8 is a

00:02:09.520 is a key verse for this company C2.8 I actually worked at that store and none of this world in

00:02:17.320 the mall and their their key verse there is Colossians 2.8 see to it that no one takes a

00:02:21.300 captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on the ways of the world rather than

00:02:24.940 on Christ. And so I grew up in a very Christian background. But I would argue that even in 0.97

00:02:32.380 being raised in that I ended up not being Christian. I wasn't a Christian until about

00:02:40.740 five or six years ago. And my parents would pursue these churches that were very, very

00:02:48.180 focused on word of faith and specifically like speaking in tongues and healings.

00:02:56.480 And that really affected me in a lot of ways, specifically because I was looking for this

00:03:01.300 miraculous experience to kind of prove that Christ was real, that God was there, and that

00:03:08.480 that was really the only way that I could ultimately verify to myself that this was

00:03:13.880 actually true and so i set myself up kind of as a standard and had some bizarre bizarre encounters

00:03:21.200 i don't know how far you want me to get into that but uh in the charismatic church because i was i

00:03:26.880 was a leader that's always interesting yeah um yeah yeah so there's i don't know how familiar

00:03:33.460 you are with todd bentley yeah he was uh he was a big part of uh one of the visiting guys who would

00:03:42.140 show up very often. And I remember very specifically, he took us the youth leaders out to I think it was Panera, we went back up to the youth room. And he started telling us about all kinds of interesting stuff. One of those things is that he was raising dead people. I was like, Alright, cool. Do you have any videos of that? And he's like, Oh, no, I don't want to be a stumbling block. And I was like, Well, you're telling me about it. So where's the testimony?

00:04:07.280 right um and and so that was a very unique experience then he went further and this is

00:04:15.220 where it gets kind of weird he started talking about being caught up into the third heaven

00:04:18.460 and visiting with jesus and jesus invites him into a bed and proceeds to rub him with oil

00:04:26.100 and it was a very very bizarre situation and i was like i even then i was like uh i gotta go to

00:04:35.140 the bathroom and I got up walked out and I just didn't come back and I stayed in the church for

00:04:42.020 quite a while and then we moved and that was a big part of my background and what undid me was

00:04:46.880 I actually went to a concert and at that concert I started feeling the same feelings I would feel

00:04:54.720 when the the worship music was going and people were speaking in tongues and people are getting

00:04:59.220 and slain in the spirit and I was like well if I can feel the same real feeling and it's all about

00:05:05.720 my feelings like how is this any different like I'm not missing out on anything by not being in

00:05:10.260 the church and so I wandered off for a long time uh and I actually uh by the grace of God I met my

00:05:19.360 wife and we started working through some things together and and uh we both came to faith

00:05:28.160 Ultimately, we were both baptized through a Wesleyan church, Skyline.

00:05:34.680 And then ultimately, we came to start reading scripture.

00:05:39.940 And as I started reading scripture, I was like, wait a second.

00:05:42.980 Like, I wasn't trusting in Christ alone for my salvation.

00:05:46.140 I wasn't seeing myself as a sinner.

00:05:49.040 And I hadn't been given a new heart.

00:05:51.240 I wasn't a really repentant person, and I was missing being led by men in the church who would come alongside me, help me through scripture, who had been through a lot of the things that I had, rather than being devoted completely to just a kind of life coaching.

00:06:12.140 it was more about pointing out, like, here's what's in scripture. I read through Matthew

00:06:16.580 Henry's commentary along with the yearly Bible reading plan. And I was like, yeah, there's just

00:06:21.560 no, no way that I could refuse this. I mean, this is, and that's kind of how I came to reform

00:06:28.600 theology after coming to faith. So that was a real big part of it was just reading the word of God,

00:06:35.060 which is the most effective means. Yep. That's great. Yeah. It's funny. You mentioned Todd

00:06:41.180 Bentley, I remember at the time I was, I guess I would have still been in my last few years.

00:06:49.080 Undergrad, I was in Dallas, Texas, going to Dallas Baptist University at the time.

00:06:53.600 I was at Jack Deere.

00:06:56.100 He wrote, surprised by the voice of God and surprised by the Holy Spirit.

00:07:00.540 So I was still in my charismatic days.

00:07:03.260 And so I was in his church and Todd Bentley was a big deal.

00:07:06.880 Jack Deere was one of the guys, he was the pastor of the church I was a part of at the

00:07:10.020 time and he was one of the guys who uh sat on the platform at one of the was it pensacola florida

00:07:15.860 is that where bentley was where was i remember him it was florida he's based out of but he was

00:07:22.560 all over the place like yeah i mean he traveled a lot but i remember one of the things that he

00:07:27.940 like that was always stood out uh was like he predicted that at one of his revival meetings

00:07:34.380 that jesus was going to physically manifest on the stage with him and uh which you know so things

00:07:40.760 like that uh which is i admire his boldness you know because it's kind of like a like a do or die

00:07:47.300 kind of situation it's you know it's it's not going to happen and when it doesn't happen um it's

00:07:52.760 going to be difficult to to backpedal and to somehow explain why your prediction was completely

00:07:58.080 false but uh but yeah he was a very interesting character he was a big deal for a while at least

00:08:04.080 in the, in the camps, it sounds like you and I were both in. And so, yeah, my testimony is

00:08:08.060 similar, raised in the charismatic church. And, um, I went to Christ for the nations. I don't

00:08:13.480 know if you're, I think you're familiar with Christ for the nations. I have you heard of that

00:08:17.340 Christ for the nations. Yeah. I actually was accepted for admission there and then ended up

00:08:22.320 not going. Yeah. Good for you. Good call. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was rough. So I did, I did that

00:08:30.260 for my first two years of school.

00:08:31.820 And it was definitely a health

00:08:33.900 and wealth prosperity preaching school.

00:08:36.580 One of the professors there,

00:08:37.580 I remember he said he was talking about faith

00:08:40.660 and he said that if we had enough faith

00:08:42.880 because all of our sickness and disease

00:08:45.260 and all those things are ultimately rooted

00:08:46.840 in a lack of faith.

00:08:48.220 And so his argument was that if we had enough faith

00:08:50.580 that we would never die,

00:08:52.040 that we could actually live forever.

00:08:54.360 And that was very interesting.

00:08:56.840 So anyways, all right.

00:08:58.360 Well, praise God that he brought you out of that.

00:09:00.260 And sounds like he used the instrument that he always does.

00:09:03.240 He used his word.

00:09:05.200 And it's really sad.

00:09:08.200 I mean, one of the things that I pick out of your testimony is that, yeah, God used men in your life at a certain point.

00:09:14.460 But it sounds like initially the man that God used was somebody that you actually didn't have a personal relationship with, namely the late great Puritan Matthew Henry.

00:09:24.120 And I think it's it's beautiful, but it's also tragic because that's my testimony.

00:09:31.180 That's so many people's testimony. For me, it wasn't Matthew Henry, but so many guys in our generation, you hear their testimony and it's like like they just they needed a spiritual father to to exegete the scripture for them and to teach them the word.

00:09:46.440 And because local churches had such an absence of biblically grounded, you know, theologically sound men who are willing to come alongside young men and disciple them, we have, I mean, we literally today we have tens of thousands, if not more people with a testimony very similar to yours and mine, which is that they were discipled by somebody who's either dead, you know, or somebody that they never even personally met like R.C. Sproul or John Piper.

00:10:16.440 you know that uh that we have this kind of testimony it's the word of god uh doing the

00:10:21.380 work of god but but it's the it's the word of god being you know like john macarthur you know um

00:10:26.460 the the word of god the truth of god being unleashed one verse at a time as a man is is

00:10:32.680 exegeting the word interpreting and and shedding light on its meaning that's how god saves that's

00:10:39.220 how god nourishes that's how god develops us disciples us grows us and ultimately we love to

00:10:45.800 see that happen in the local church with men who are physically present there. They can have a

00:10:49.880 personal relationship with individuals, younger men in the church. And sadly, it seems like

00:10:57.200 there's an entire generation of young men who were discipled on YouTube because they didn't

00:11:02.660 have a man like that, you know, who's actually literally present in their local church because

00:11:07.280 there's been such an absence. And so it's sad. I think that's one of the things that, you know,

00:11:12.020 we probably want to discuss on this episode as we're the title that we've kind of crafted for it

00:11:17.240 is a candid conversation of the state of the American evangelical church and I think that's

00:11:23.980 kind of starts to get get to our subject at hand a little bit that we just right now it seems like

00:11:29.740 we're still recovering from a generation that uh that their mantra was doctrine divides right and

00:11:36.600 so they just they didn't want to get they didn't want to get technical they didn't want to get

00:11:39.700 specific. Ambiguity was massive. Everything was vague and everything was theologically

00:11:49.680 very shallow. We only want to center on the things that are essentials. Let's not go any

00:11:55.620 deeper than that because we're just going to start driving all these fault lines and fracturing and

00:12:00.640 dividing the church. And so out of, I don't know, a desire, an incentive to somehow quench

00:12:09.180 division in the church the the church our previous generation uh our parents generation it seems like

00:12:15.700 they just had an aversion towards doctrine and then you know young guys like you and i had all

00:12:21.080 these questions that were never answered and some rebelled and left the church and some such as

00:12:28.560 yourself maybe rebelled but in god's mercy were brought back to the church and god did a lot of

00:12:34.440 that through social media and through online ministries. And I'm grateful for that. So,

00:12:40.700 all right, well, let me get to another question here. A little bit more about your personal

00:12:46.000 testimony that this is kind of where I started to develop a friendship with you and kind of came

00:12:52.580 into your story. But I was somewhat involved in a season and you and your wife, Natalie,

00:12:59.340 in your life when you guys were in the process of leaving a church that you had thoroughly been

00:13:06.600 involved in for quite some time. And I know that you loved that church. I know that it was very

00:13:11.340 difficult for the two of you to make that decision ultimately to leave. And so I was just wondering

00:13:16.460 maybe kind of again, I think, because I think that this could be used as a case study

00:13:21.720 for the larger church within maybe the Reformed camp

00:13:26.940 or at least evangelicalism.

00:13:29.200 Could you share a little bit about that experience

00:13:31.100 and why you decided to leave a church that I know that you love?

00:13:36.920 Yeah, it's kind of a unique situation.

00:13:41.040 It was an Acts 29 church, which kind of brings some...

00:13:45.960 Acts 29 is a network.

00:13:47.660 It's not a denomination, but sometimes it gets bandied around

00:13:51.280 And like kind of it's like a semi denomination, but not really the way some people use the term.

00:13:57.200 But we saw a lot of changes happening over a period of two years where things started getting brought in intersectionality, critical race theory specifically and specifically like ways that things were being handled as far as conversations about race.

00:14:19.420 And you see that we're starting to bring in these lenses as adaptive tools, but they're completely outside the scope of scripture because they take an inherently unbiblical premise of multiple races.

00:14:34.940 There's only one race, which already we're on dangerous ground there, but it permeates into everything else.

00:14:45.000 The way you do homeless ministry, the way that you do how you handle a woman who's about to have an abortion. 1.00

00:14:52.380 Like, how do you handle that situation?

00:14:54.380 And usually it's just in that view, it's just hopefully give them some counseling later.

00:15:01.540 right there's there's a sense of relational emphasis rather than on a this is the truth

00:15:11.660 like please turn from what you're doing repent um and there that really came to a boiling head

00:15:18.100 because the the real danger to a lot of that is is when you start to find things like uh the

00:15:26.280 calvin's institutes and you start reading through it and you're like wait a second

00:15:30.820 Like, so what are your views on, on how, how do we apply the law as Christians?

00:15:36.760 Right.

00:15:36.940 What does that look like?

00:15:38.460 And then things start falling off and your, your ministry then becomes focused on making

00:15:46.720 people feel comfortable to find Jesus where the gospel is an offense, right?

00:15:51.760 No matter what you do, the gospel is still an offense.

00:15:55.480 Right. 0.97

00:15:55.960 And so that's, that's the part where things started to kind of come undone, because you're starting to see these biblically faithful families are like, we're putting the emphasis in the wrong area, like, we need to feed the sheep. And we also need to draw in sheep, we don't want to build up goats. 0.59

00:16:12.020 And the real danger is when you're not practicing that rightly, you can slip very quickly into some dangerous terrain.

00:16:20.740 And ultimately, that was a big part of why we left is just a really poor handling of a lot of the conversations that are coming out right now.

00:16:33.000 Yeah. And none of them are actually conversations, as I know you would agree.

00:16:37.160 it's basically it's a think tank session with a bunch of people who already hold the same view

00:16:43.040 it's an echo chamber anytime there's actually a conversation where you know I think of you know

00:16:49.400 there was like that historic panel I forget which conference it was but it was like Chandler was on

00:16:54.300 it Keller was on it I think Piper was on it a few few big dogs and then there was Votie Bauckham

00:17:00.380 and and Votie just kept getting shut down they were talking about racial reconciliation and

00:17:06.820 oppression and those kinds of things. And Votie disagreed and he was being completely respectful

00:17:12.080 and thoughtful. And, uh, and you can just tell like, they, like they, they wouldn't engage his

00:17:17.780 arguments. It was just, uh, you know, it was logical fallacies, ad hominem, you know, like

00:17:22.700 you're not being sensitive and just shutting him down. And it's funny. It's like, uh, what Votie

00:17:27.320 was attempting to do was actually have one of those conversations. We keep hearing people talk

00:17:31.660 about, right. Everybody talks about that. We're going to have a conversation on race. We're going

00:17:34.820 to have a conversation on this conversation on that. And Bodhi was, you know, I guess he just,

00:17:39.280 you know, took them at their word that they actually wouldn't have a conversation. And so

00:17:42.300 he was just sharing his point of view. And, and he was just so quickly dismissed. The irony for me

00:17:48.020 is it's, it's funny that what he was pushing back on what he was disagreeing with, it all had to do

00:17:55.000 with ultimately, you know, like race and, you know, intersectionality and dividing the world

00:18:03.340 up into you know groups of oppressors and oppressed and it had a lot to do with the black

00:18:08.640 community and black people being oppressed and so the irony to me is that you had a bunch of white

00:18:14.060 men telling the one black guy on the stage to shut up because he's disagreeing with them over whether 0.94

00:18:20.940 or not he's oppressed yeah it's just i mean it was just it was silly so but yeah man i i go ahead 0.95

00:18:29.220 go ahead oh i was just gonna say i just recently like i've been finishing my uh undergrad recently

00:18:36.100 and i actually came across some stuff that really brings out where that that view comes from that a

00:18:42.980 a black person is actually a white person and it's this uh there's a guy named noam chomsky

00:18:48.900 and he's a linguist it's all about internalizing so they flip the external internal and it's

00:18:54.740 basically that internally you've now this thing that was external to you so you've internalized

00:19:01.220 it and so now it doesn't matter what you are it's now what you identify as so there's like right

00:19:05.940 that's split but noam chomsky is the guy who came up with that i didn't realize that until a couple

00:19:11.140 weeks ago i was like oh wow right well that gets into the you know the whole like um skin folk and

00:19:18.100 but not kin folk that's the idea you know like black voices the idea that um you know black

00:19:24.100 voices doesn't it doesn't it's not as simple as just meaning that you're black and you have a

00:19:29.420 voice you can be black and not have a black voice you can have a black exterior like what you're

00:19:35.460 speaking so you can have black skin in terms of your ethnicity but not a black voice because

00:19:40.800 you've been so oppressed uh that you've been ultimately you've accepted your oppression and

00:19:46.400 and so now your voice is actually you're an uncle tom your voice is actually just a voice of of the

00:19:52.540 oppressor it's a voice that's been uh it's been suppressed so long and it's been captured now 0.60

00:19:58.640 it's like almost like a stockholm syndrome that you now are just a puppet for the white man for 0.71

00:20:03.920 the master you know and uh and speaking on his behalf so although you're you're skin folk you 0.79

00:20:09.960 are black exterior in the exterior you're not kinfolk um you're not actually uh black because

00:20:17.100 you're not uh ultimately you're not you're not in line with the narrative you know some other 0.77

00:20:21.760 pushback, you know, because people are like, we need to elevate black voices. And it's like,

00:20:24.720 I love black voices. I like Virgil Walker. I like Daryl Harrison. I like Votie Bauckham. I like

00:20:29.960 Candace Owens. I like Larry Elder. I like Thomas Sowell. Like I love black voices. I got a lot of

00:20:35.160 black voices that I listen to. They're fantastic. And the problem is that they'll say, yeah, but

00:20:40.220 those aren't black voices, even though they're black men and women, they're not actually black

00:20:44.960 voices. And one of the lines you'll hear people say is like consensus matters. I've heard people

00:20:49.080 say that like consensus uh matters meaning that but at the end of the day like like get get outside

00:20:55.120 of you know just uh the category of ethnicity and racial divides uh what you're saying is like

00:21:01.800 that's just that's just mob justice consensus matters like that's that's the whole problem

00:21:07.180 in our nation right now is that we're we're continuing to gravitate towards in our politics

00:21:12.540 and in our um and in this cultural war all these guys we're uh we're gravitating towards

00:21:19.620 a way of doing life a way of doing setting up society in such a way that that 51 percent

00:21:26.040 can just strong arm and absolutely demand anything from the 49 percent it's it's not a

00:21:33.140 democratic republic uh anymore and so there's just so much at stake uh at stake and so yeah

00:21:40.240 it's it's crazy um i i liked it uh what who was it chomsky is that who you said yeah he's a he's

00:21:46.940 a linguist from the mid-century uh 1950s on i don't remember exactly when gotcha he's a he's

00:21:59.580 a very influential for the whole linguistics piece of it yeah cool um going back to you know

00:22:06.440 the church that you guys ended up leaving and then you, you know,

00:22:09.080 you kind of found refuge with us for a season and then went ahead and landed

00:22:13.100 at the church you're at now. What's the name of the, it's Pilgrim.

00:22:15.840 What is it? Pilgrims or Providence?

00:22:19.920 Pilgrim. Yep.

00:22:21.380 Pilgrim church. All right, cool. Orthodox Presbyterian church.

00:22:24.920 Providence is your daughter's name, correct? Yep. That's right.

00:22:28.500 Providence is also a good church name though. That wouldn't be bad.

00:22:31.040 Yeah, I know.

00:22:32.420 It wouldn't be a bad one.

00:22:33.740 that yeah cool so um so in leaving going back to that leaving that church you talked about like the

00:22:40.620 law of god and i think that's important for our listeners just to understand i think that's

00:22:44.960 another thing that's just happened in is specifically the reformed camp and acts 29 i

00:22:49.980 think is a great um a great example of this as you know i was an acts 29 pastor and decided to

00:22:57.020 leave the network about two years ago um for a host of reasons one of the big ones being you

00:23:03.320 critical race theory um i just got tired at a certain point right after like six years in a row

00:23:08.680 of going to our annual conference and uh and being told that i was racist for not having enough black

00:23:16.020 people in our church there's a certain point you know where you just like you know and i was

00:23:20.140 pastoring in point loma it's less than two percent point loma san diego less than two percent black

00:23:24.440 people um and so you know and it's just like what like what do you do you know what i mean like i

00:23:30.680 think of like what do you do if you're in you know Montana you know or South Dakota you know

00:23:36.960 and you go to this you know national annual conference and it's like like there are no 1.00

00:23:42.800 black people you know like black people don't live where I live you know like shouldn't the 0.95

00:23:47.340 church be an accurate reflection of the community that they're in and even with that you know like 1.00

00:23:52.120 I do believe that there's something there but this idea that like yeah just it puts way too

00:24:00.400 much emphasis on ethnicity way too much emphasis on diversity the idea is that we want to like we

00:24:06.300 believe that the kingdom of god is diverse at large and like every tribe tongue that's right

00:24:11.840 and nation like so like conrad and bayway and votie bacham i don't think they're concerned

00:24:16.320 about having a certain percentage of their churches being white because they're in africa

00:24:22.280 people there are black you know so their churches are like you know like they're black it's a it's

00:24:29.260 makeup of you know and so i mean if we live in a in a town that's very diverse and there are

00:24:34.500 plenty of places like that in america then yeah it stands to reason that our churches would be

00:24:40.240 you know an accurate reflection of the community that we live in i think there's something to be

00:24:45.140 said for that but yeah it just it got emphasized so much um but but it wasn't just it wasn't just

00:24:52.200 race it really was like what you're getting at these things are like not conflated they're

00:24:56.680 correlated like it really there's a correlation between the law of god and as the law of god

00:25:02.140 continued to like deteriorate and in my assessment and the church at large you had this you know

00:25:08.160 surge of critical race theory intersectionality this massive obsession with you know with racial

00:25:16.000 reconciliation and and women not being oppressed and all these different you know categories of

00:25:23.640 oppressed groups and hearing them out. And it's because, I think in many ways, it's because we

00:25:29.440 lost the standard, right? We lost the standard. So you just start creating, you replace it with

00:25:34.160 all these other ones. And so like, I'll never forget, I remember, you know, one of the panels

00:25:40.140 at one of the Acts 29 conferences that I was at, they got a bunch of guys, I think Thabiti was,

00:25:47.440 he was the guest speaker for that conference. Thabiti was there. And then you had,

00:25:53.640 like eric mason you had leonce crump uh a guy named brandon washington a few different black

00:26:00.680 guys uh who were leaders in the network and uh and then matt chandler was moderating and i remember

00:26:07.160 you know it was like one of the shootings had just happened uh i can't remember which one

00:26:12.280 it wasn't michael brown it was a little bit later than that but it was another shooting

00:26:16.040 and but it just happened like two days ago and it was just the whole panel was just like you know

00:26:21.080 know how could this happen this is so wrong our nation is systematically racist and and i remember

00:26:27.840 i just kept thinking like do we know that this shooting was was actually unjust like do do we

00:26:34.500 don't even have the facts yet like we don't even have like we can't even the the the presupposition

00:26:40.560 that you guys have can't be substantiated not yet like eventually hopefully facts more facts will

00:26:46.220 come out you know and and i remember just being it was like the law of god right the idea of two

00:26:51.300 or three witnesses the idea like all those kind of things it just it didn't matter it had no

00:26:55.760 relevance in their minds it had no importance it was just this thing happened and all that matters

00:27:01.540 is how it makes me feel so it doesn't it doesn't matter if this was actually according to the books

00:27:07.340 if it was actually right for the police officer to draw their weapon into fire none of that is

00:27:12.460 relevant what's relevant is that people are hurting and then boom man the go-to verse always

00:27:17.760 is romans 12 right rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn and i just i

00:27:24.340 remember i was just thinking it was the first time i had this thought i've used it a lot since then

00:27:28.740 but i remember thinking like if roe versus wade was overturned tomorrow in our nation

00:27:32.980 i remember thinking just like there would be millions of people mourning millions of people

00:27:38.800 would be mourning their legal right to murder their children in their womb and so as christians

00:27:44.800 look at poland right now yeah yeah explain that a little bit yeah so out in poland uh they

00:27:51.880 basically outlawed uh abortion and now everyone's taken to the streets they said they had their

00:27:58.840 biggest protests in like at least the last half century wow and it they've just i mean this the

00:28:06.840 pictures are insane but they made the decision like look we're not going to murder babies

00:28:12.080 and we're going to be consistent in the way that we value human life right and people are furious

00:28:18.900 and people are mourning and so that that's the that's the problem so it's like mourn with those

00:28:23.260 who mourn so do we mourn with those who are mourning the loss of uh of their ability uh to

00:28:29.680 do that which is wicked in the sight of god like obviously the answer is no so i think implicitly

00:28:35.000 in a text like that, we just have to implicitly understand that what the Lord is saying is like

00:28:40.280 mourn with those who are mourning righteously. And we forget the first half of the verse is

00:28:45.140 rejoice with those who rejoice. And I think of rejoicing, biblical rejoicing. And if we just

00:28:50.400 take that and cross-reference over to 1 Corinthians 13, it says, you know, that love, actual biblical

00:28:56.820 love, not just our culture's definition of love that changes day to day, but God's standard for

00:29:04.160 love is, you know, it rejoices in the truth. So if we're looking at late Romans 12, rejoice with

00:29:11.100 those who rejoice, but we're called to model biblical love. Well, love only rejoices in the

00:29:20.000 truth. It doesn't rejoice in lies. It doesn't rejoice in wickedness. It doesn't rejoice in

00:29:26.120 unrighteousness. It rejoices in the truth. So I think we could just, we could look at a text like

00:29:30.900 that rejoice with those who rejoice so long as it's in line with the truth and therefore mourn

00:29:36.560 with those who mourn so long as it's in line with the truth and the problem is that the truth

00:29:41.360 sometimes takes a little bit of time for it to surface right so there's you know some event in

00:29:46.540 our nation um before we just you know immediately start drawing you know lines of division and

00:29:53.180 taking sides and protesting and going to the streets or having another conversation at you

00:29:59.260 know the gospel coalition conference or whatever about race like before we do all that and start 0.98

00:30:04.620 citing the most recent event as proof positive for for injustice and oppression like like no

00:30:11.220 like love rejoices in the truth and love also mourns with things that are truthful and so one

00:30:18.760 of the things we have to wait for by a biblical standard in the law of god is we have to wait for

00:30:22.580 the truth to come out and we should investigate and so there has to be permission for us to be

00:30:28.700 caring for us to be sympathetic not empathetic not suffering in right because then we're no good

00:30:34.500 to the person but suffering with sympathetic comes from compassion so we want to be compassionate

00:30:40.060 we want to be caring but we also we can never be caring at the expense of truth that's that's

00:30:45.840 when we start to compromise truth we're no longer actually loving we're no longer actually being

00:30:51.580 caring so we want to love the person as much as we can while holding on to the truth it's like

00:30:56.200 The person is drowning in quicksand and they may be screaming out in that moment, get in

00:31:01.800 the quicksand and drown with me.

00:31:03.380 And I think that's what a lot of our nation right now and the church, I just want you

00:31:07.300 to drown with me.

00:31:08.660 Empathy, right?

00:31:09.720 The Democratic Party is the party of empathy, right?

00:31:12.740 And whereas we've made empathy like the greatest of all virtues, but empathy, it's not like

00:31:19.640 nowhere in the Bible is empathy ever described as a virtue.

00:31:22.600 And I would argue that empathy actually hamstrings, especially someone in the position of leadership, their ability to actually love and nurture and lead the people that God has assigned to them.

00:31:34.500 This idea of I'm just going to drown with you rather than I'm going to put one foot in the quicksand and reach out one hand, but I'm also going to hold tight with standing on solid ground with my other foot and holding on to a branch and a tree or something that's solid.

00:31:49.840 And namely the truth.

00:31:51.840 I would, you know, identify that as God's standard, God's law, God's truth.

00:31:57.440 And so I'm going to hold on.

00:31:58.340 So I'm going to love you as much as I can.

00:32:00.500 But one of the things I'm going to do is I'm not just going to extend to you what you want.

00:32:04.660 I'm going to extend to you by God's grace exactly what you need.

00:32:08.580 And you need compassion.

00:32:10.460 You need sympathy, not empathy, but sympathy.

00:32:13.640 You need someone to listen.

00:32:16.000 But you also, I know for me, when I'm hurt, I don't just need someone to listen.

00:32:21.840 I need someone to ask me thoughtful questions. I need someone to push back. I need someone to

00:32:27.480 cross-examine, right? Like the problem is one is thought right until the other comes

00:32:31.740 in cross-exam. I need people to cross-examine my frustration, cross-examine my venting,

00:32:38.360 cross-examine my self-pity, cross-examine my, you know what I mean? Like, because I'm not infallible.

00:32:44.820 And so I don't mourn infallibly. I don't get angry infallibly. I mean, it is my anger, my sadness, my frustration, all these things, they're drenched. They're absolutely drenched with my flesh and with the world that's constantly shaping or seeking to shape and inform my views.

00:33:05.060 And so the flesh, the world, the devil, the three great enemies of the Christian pilgrim, they're all influencing me.

00:33:12.260 I cannot ultimately remove myself from those things.

00:33:16.140 I live in this world.

00:33:17.180 The devil is real.

00:33:18.280 And my flesh, right, sin still remains within the members of my being.

00:33:22.000 As long as I'm in this life, I have not yet been saved from this body of death.

00:33:26.780 My soul has been saved, but I'm still in this flesh.

00:33:30.220 So I need someone not just to listen to me, not just to affirm me, not just to cry with me, but I need someone to challenge me.

00:33:38.640 I need someone to challenge me.

00:33:40.340 And one of the ways we do that is we cross-examine and we ask for evidence.

00:33:46.280 We ask for facts, not just how do you feel.

00:33:49.420 You feel this way, but what are the facts?

00:33:52.740 What actually happened in this most recent shooting that made you so upset?

00:33:56.920 What actually, you know, and that's at a political national level, but in individual churches, you know, and so my concern is that through racial reconciliation, through critical race theory, intersectionality, what really seeped into the church is as we started just gospel everything, right?

00:34:14.500 Gospel centered, gospel centered, gospel centered, and I'm all for gospel centrality, but we made it gospel myopticism.

00:34:20.040 It's only gospel.

00:34:21.620 We got rid of the law and especially the third use of the law, right?

00:34:25.600 That the law of God is good.

00:34:27.040 We delight in it.

00:34:27.800 It's a lamp unto our feet.

00:34:29.380 We're not obeying the law in order to gain God's favor, but we are obeying the law as

00:34:33.880 a response of gratitude for the favor we freely have in Christ by grace through faith in him.

00:34:40.640 But we've gotten rid of the third use of the law.

00:34:43.000 The standard of God was removed.

00:34:45.320 And then all of a sudden we have standpoint epistemology.

00:34:48.360 We have relativism.

00:34:49.600 We have feelings over facts.

00:34:51.320 We have all these different human fleshly standards coming in the place.

00:34:57.880 And we have no way to cross-examine them because there's no ultimate truth anymore.

00:35:02.800 There's no universal reality, absolute reality that we're able to say doesn't line up with this.

00:35:12.480 And so, yeah, man, I've experienced that as a pastor in our local church level.

00:35:17.400 And I think that's a lot of what you and Natalie were experiencing in the church that you were coming from was just this gravitational pull away from the law of God.

00:35:30.140 And it starts, I think it starts with, it sounds so good.

00:35:34.480 It starts with like this obsession with grace.

00:35:38.360 It's all about grace, you know, and it's new covenant theology.

00:35:42.220 And it's just the way of Jesus.

00:35:45.220 It's just following Jesus.

00:35:46.460 How is he leading? It's like following Jesus is great, but how do we follow Jesus? How does Jesus communicate his will to me? Through the law. It's not just this subjective little, you know, Jiminy cricket on my shoulder, you know, like, and so as churches move away from the law, they move into gospel myopticism, gospel everything.

00:36:09.700 They don't preach the law.

00:36:11.600 They get rid of the third use of the law.

00:36:14.460 And to me, it's not a coincidence. 0.79

00:36:16.100 The moment that that happens, that church becomes, or that individual, or that nation,

00:36:20.720 whatever it is, becomes immediately susceptible to things like critical theory, things like

00:36:26.180 intersectionality, like identity politics.

00:36:29.440 And I think, would you agree that like, that's a lot of what, maybe, I don't know if you

00:36:34.960 could put more language to that, but I felt like that's what happened with your church.

00:36:39.700 yeah it because you start to drift to this place like calvin's three uses the law is that the law

00:36:46.620 convicts us of our sin the law is of use to the magistrate to show how to rightly rule and then

00:36:53.000 the third use and this is the one that that gets a lot of people tangling up all the time is that

00:36:59.400 it shows the christian how they can uh rightly obey god and it shows the christian like hey this

00:37:06.080 is what this is what pleases god is obedience and that isn't your salvation but it works from

00:37:14.380 uh your being justified in christ you're you're saved by grace alone through faith alone and it's

00:37:22.220 not a faith that is alone like your faith once once you're regenerate you're going to obey

00:37:27.480 and obedience is like a it's like a cuss word uh you say obedience or duty duty is another one we

00:37:35.760 like to say roles uh instead of duty no you're right and it's one of those things we we adopt

00:37:43.460 a lot of language that is just i mean honestly it's hollow and deceptive philosophy it's that's

00:37:49.000 like one of my favorite passages of scripture but um i have some things as far as like how

00:37:53.940 post-modernism has kind of crept into the church and specifically go for it into how yeah so so

00:38:01.360 kind of how we think in terms of what scripture is like the first question that satan asks is

00:38:08.440 did god really say right and we look at that in terms of you know what is what is god really

00:38:16.140 saying here questioning what's in the text which it's fine to ask questions about the text but then

00:38:22.220 when you start approaching the text with critical questions there's this guy gerda this is a lot of

00:38:27.660 like the postmodernism stuff but specifically he's about deconstructionism right as i call it

00:38:34.380 like reforming or deforming they're all about simper deformanda we're all about simper reformanda

00:38:40.160 so it's like you're either in one of those two camps where deconstruction is the camp of

00:38:46.000 postmodernism so you have gerda and his thing is um he he says authorial intent has nothing to do

00:38:53.740 with the text it's all it's all terms that are couched in other things you say something like

00:38:58.620 freedom or mankind and he means something entirely different it's all this package of

00:39:04.660 all these different secret cultural things that are hiding in the background and when you say

00:39:08.800 that word it actually means something that is not what the word's meaning is so you start peeling 0.58

00:39:14.120 apart stuff and this is where we see that suddenly now uh whiteness if you've seen that thing from

00:39:20.660 the smithsonian uh it's like a package of of privileges that the smithsonian institute put

00:39:27.080 out on whiteness it's not whiteness it's western culture right uh which stems from

00:39:33.720 they based it out of british common law and british common law where they get that from

00:39:39.280 the 10 commandments yeah that's where that's where they got their system of thinking about

00:39:44.900 how to be just and so what what they're trying to do is race back down as quickly as possible

00:39:50.200 to the bottom of your brainstem and get you to be as tribal and emotional as possible and they

00:39:57.540 want to reset it all the way back to that it's they talk about this even with social media how

00:40:04.200 it's a race to the bottom of the brainstem but ultimately it it's part of this system that is

00:40:11.020 introduced in the garden in genesis 3 it's just questioning with uh with right that oh well i

00:40:19.840 actually don't believe that's what that says and now you're searching out not that right what has

00:40:24.540 God said but something I heard recently was like what are the women's voices in scripture and that's

00:40:30.860 not what we're concerned about we're not worried about men's voices or women's voices right we're

00:40:35.580 worried about God hath said yeah God's voice God's voice that's right that's right and so we see the

00:40:43.700 other part of it is when they they buy into this there's a couple things that kind of come along

00:40:48.280 with the package so there's a recent statement from beth moore saying that paul isn't jesus so

00:40:55.020 it's kind of this red letter bible theology like it's this biblical theology of the only thing

00:41:01.440 that matters is the red letters that are in there and everything else is kind of like subtext right

00:41:06.640 as though as though the apostle paul and the lord jesus christ in their inscripturated writings

00:41:13.340 were at odds with one another that is such a destructive that's how you destroy the whole

00:41:18.960 bible that's that that's what you're talking about that's deconstruction you pit you take

00:41:23.980 something that's actually aligned where there's actually not any division and you insert division

00:41:29.100 and you and you make them at war go ahead this is really interesting that's what you've just

00:41:35.520 carried over into how this plays out uh it comes from two guys hegel and marx and hegel's thing

00:41:42.560 this dialectical idealism which is there's these two ideas one is the thesis one is the system

00:41:49.540 that we have now sitting up here and then here comes the antithesis and it's like hanging out

00:41:55.840 ready to fight and they're both at odds and the only way for those two things to resolve to any

00:42:00.860 form of truth is through conflict so the thesis and the structure and the antithesis basically

00:42:09.720 the tearing down of the structure. And through that, their goal, and this is Marx played into

00:42:14.440 this with materialism, but for Hegel, it's idealism. It's how do we get to this experience

00:42:20.200 of God and his triangle? Hegel had a triangle of religion, philosophy, and art. And so when we look

00:42:30.180 around, we see that philosophy and art are completely inundated with this system. Religion

00:42:35.280 is the one that's behind the power curve and so they're trying to push this in as best they can 0.98

00:42:40.380 to get it into the church to destroy it through pitting everything against each other and out of

00:42:46.180 order or rather out of chaos will come order and so then we see it with marx right and that's

00:42:52.460 dialectical materialism so it's we don't have ideals there is no ideal there is no morality

00:42:59.860 there's no transcendent value there's only the revolution which is material stuff go ahead

00:43:07.200 power structures yeah so it's all these things are outward representations so it's kind of a

00:43:12.940 blending of the two where you see like why are you burning down buildings because it's destroying

00:43:18.620 the structures that exist and something new will emerge that's right supposedly better and that's

00:43:25.240 what we're looking at with scripture because the basis of the system when a postmodern epistemology

00:43:31.680 how i know what i know what how i think and arrive at truth claims their founding statement is a is

00:43:40.360 not a so no two a's are alike there is no a there's only this weird mix of my idea of a

00:43:48.460 so that's their

00:43:50.720 system of thinking

00:43:52.340 completely pitting one thing

00:43:54.720 against the other

00:43:55.460 in conflict

00:43:57.420 and

00:43:58.240 here's a perpetual resolution

00:44:02.500 into what's called synthesis

00:44:04.200 so you have your thesis which is

00:44:06.700 what would be you know

00:44:08.220 constitutional America and then you

00:44:10.620 have your antithesis

00:44:11.740 which is whatever other

00:44:13.880 cases coming into the picture

00:44:16.180 whatever system you want to replace that

00:44:18.460 Uh, and, or for the church, for instance, it would be scripture as the foundation.

00:44:23.220 Well, we want to push back and say that like, well, we can't really know anything that's

00:44:26.980 in the scripture because these men wrote scripture and what was their influence.

00:44:32.660 Right.

00:44:33.140 So now we start asking questions to try and resolve to the synthesis where it's pitting

00:44:38.340 those two things against each other, destroying everything and emerging with something new.

00:44:42.720 And it's always what I call deforming, but that's that synthesis where those two things

00:44:48.040 are pitted together we don't believe it's true and we're searching for what's valuable so uh i'll

00:44:53.920 apply this real quick is recently there was a someone was asking the question of where are the

00:44:58.720 women's voices in scripture earlier that's their question is we're looking for something very

00:45:07.240 specific that's not the author it's not as intent so we got to remove that intent and now we can

00:45:14.640 start picking apart everything through, again, Derrida's deconstructionism. So it's this vicious

00:45:19.560 cycle of just all these different systems and how we view scripture coming together and just

00:45:25.700 destroying scripture in the long world. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think,

00:45:31.340 I can't remember who said it, but I think for you and I, you know, the idea of just completely

00:45:38.460 demolishing and deconstructing everything you know our our sentiment is that um that that's

00:45:45.220 that's going to lend towards chaos that's going to lend to it like that's it's it's going to be

00:45:50.300 a disimprovement it's not going to make things better it's going to make things worse and so

00:45:53.980 sometimes i just sit back and i wonder like why why are people so dead set on just uh seeing the

00:46:00.500 world burnt you know like the joker you know on uh batman returns you know some people just you

00:46:06.140 know, Alfred said, some people just want to watch the world burn. And it's just like, that's,

00:46:09.760 that's a hard person for me to understand, you know, because I feel like there's always an

00:46:13.380 incentive. You know, you want power, you want money, you want, you know, something. And, and I

00:46:19.660 think there is an incentive. I think there, you know, I think there's a deep desire for power.

00:46:24.680 But then the question is like, well, how are you going to get power if you just burn everything

00:46:28.800 down? How, how is that, how is that connected? Because you and I, we see it as just like,

00:46:34.560 everybody's left with nothing um but but then people think that like if they burn everything

00:46:39.540 down if they deconstruct everything that there'll be a positive result and like where does that

00:46:44.260 where does that principle where does that like concept even come from and then you know like

00:46:50.020 you start to think you're like oh i know where that comes from it comes from our public schools

00:46:54.420 it comes from evolution it comes from the big bank like if if you at an early at your earliest

00:47:00.720 ages have been taught and have subscribed to the idea that that order comes out of chaos right

00:47:07.040 that's what evolution that's why as christians we you know theistic evolution is is a false doctrine

00:47:13.060 like we reject that god did not create the world by using evolution as his tool for for one like

00:47:21.220 we believe that death entered the world through sin whereas if if god right so just replace the

00:47:27.120 Big Bang with God, but still keep everything else that evolution theorizes, and you have

00:47:32.960 theistic evolution. But even if that were the case, even if we replace the Big Bang with God,

00:47:37.640 we have theistic evolution, God using evolution over millions of years in order to eventually

00:47:42.980 build up to Adam and Eve. Well, then what we have ultimately, when we say God using evolution as

00:47:48.120 his tool to create, what we're really saying is that God's using death as his tool to create,

00:47:53.520 Because that's what evolution is all about. Evolution is that you have this highly intelligent, well-crafted life form, but it's sitting on top of a mountain of skeletons.

00:48:09.500 it only came to be through not just millions of years right we always think of that when we think

00:48:16.540 of evolution but really it came to be over millions and trillions even of deaths deaths like

00:48:23.780 this this little organism came and lived for you know three and a half minutes but it didn't you

00:48:29.760 know it only had half of a lung you know and it wasn't fully and it died you know but a better

00:48:34.520 organism and it died and it died and it died and we're not just talking about you know single cell

00:48:38.860 organisms we're not just talking about a a mitigated entropy and we're talking about

00:48:43.080 we're talking about animals we're you know we're talking about highly uh complex um uh physical

00:48:50.060 beings all the way up to like things like homo erectus and then you know like you're talking

00:48:54.840 about like man-like creatures all the way and and you're not just talking about a few of them died

00:48:59.400 you're talking like millions of them had to live for for you know for at least a couple hundred

00:49:05.840 thousand years, and speaking of Homo erectus, a type of man, and died, and died, and died, and died,

00:49:12.200 and died, and died, and died, all these organisms, all the way up to finally you have a fully

00:49:17.800 functioning, developed male Homo sapien, and female Homo sapien, and then God breathes His breath

00:49:26.780 into them. They have a soul, and finally God did it. God created man, but on a mountain of death,

00:49:35.100 And the reason we would reject that is for a number of reasons. But one of the simplest reasons that I always give to Christians who, you know, subscribe to evolution and think that evolution is somehow, you know, can be cohesive with biblical teaching, which is completely at odds. 0.94

00:49:49.980 in the same way that Marxism, in the same way that socialism, in the same way that critical 0.92

00:49:54.160 theory and evolution also, it is a demonic ideology. It is at odds. It can't be used as

00:50:03.940 an analytical tool. It can't be separated from its ultimate worldview. It's attached to a worldview.

00:50:09.880 It says something about God. And if nothing else, what evolution says about God, if it were true,

00:50:15.300 If evolution were the way that God created all the things that we see today, what it

00:50:20.000 would say about God is that God created life by using death, which would say that God is

00:50:25.360 a liar in Genesis chapter 3 when his word tells us that death entered the world through

00:50:31.280 sin.

00:50:32.800 If evolution, if theistic evolution is true, then no, death entered the world through

00:50:37.340 God because he had to use it.

00:50:40.380 God was dependent on death in order to ultimately create life. And so we would have trillions of

00:50:48.020 deaths way before we ever got to Genesis 3, way before there ever was a garden, way before there

00:50:53.820 ever was Adam and Eve, and way before God ever gave them His law, a positive precept, His natural

00:50:59.680 law, the Ten Commandments written on both of their hearts. And in addition to that, one positive

00:51:03.780 law one one precept namely you know thou shall not eat of of the tree of the fruit of of the

00:51:10.860 tree of the knowledge of good and evil like way before we ever got there and the first sin the

00:51:15.920 first sin of course would be lucifer you know but the first sin from man before we ever get to the

00:51:20.900 first sin which god says that's the reason death entered the world that's the reason uh why why

00:51:26.260 why the whole world is groaning why the why why why everything is is ultimately dying and groaning

00:51:34.140 and with eager expectations you know wanting the the sons of god to be revealed and for jesus to

00:51:40.120 to restore all things like the reason why the world is is in this this state of death that it

00:51:47.280 is is is because of sin but theistic evolution teaches the exact opposite it says death came

00:51:52.820 along millions, if not billions of years before sin ever entered the world. Death was not introduced

00:51:59.840 by man and his rebellion against God. It was introduced by God himself, and God introduced

00:52:04.900 it precisely because he had to. He was dependent upon death as his tool to create life. He could

00:52:11.320 not create life without it. And my whole point in saying all that is, one, Christians, you know, 0.99

00:52:18.240 That's just kind of a little freebie. 0.99

00:52:19.760 Christians, please reject evolution and its teachings of theistic. 1.00

00:52:23.860 Yeah, it's an oxymoron, a jumbo shrimp, you know, like, yeah, so, you know, or like an 1.00

00:52:30.080 intelligent Democrat, you know, it's just a, it's an oxymoron.

00:52:34.540 It just doesn't, got him, it just doesn't even exist, right, theistic evolution.

00:52:39.980 But aside from just that being its own side point, if you have a whole generation of people 0.87

00:52:46.060 and it has seeped into Christians, right?

00:52:48.500 It's become this Christian doctrine of theistic evolution.

00:52:51.100 So it's in the church.

00:52:52.020 It's certainly in the world.

00:52:52.900 If an entire generation of millennials have been discipled,

00:52:58.240 because that's what schools do.

00:52:59.460 That's what the public school does.

00:53:00.980 Disciples children and indoctrinates them. 0.80

00:53:03.200 And so if they've been discipled and taught

00:53:05.700 that life comes from death, right?

00:53:09.300 That order comes from chaos,

00:53:11.460 then then why wouldn't they burn things down to get what they want

00:53:16.180 makes logical sense i mean it doesn't make logical sense but in their minds

00:53:21.680 because they because logic has long been cast aside and they wouldn't know logic if it slapped

00:53:27.160 them in the face so because they've gotten rid of the logic right the logos the word christ because

00:53:32.820 they've they've gotten rid of god's law they've gotten rid of god's logic they've gotten rid of

00:53:36.280 god's word um then then in their minds like so all that back to what i was originally saying is

00:53:42.360 just like for you and i we see deconstructionism as just this completely fallacious illogical

00:53:49.160 silly and and and ultimately it's dangerous but this silly notion that that by destroying something

00:53:56.340 i could improve it we're like like we we still have that mindset of like if something's broken 0.91

00:54:02.100 you don't just throw it away but but you you look for the the problem and and like if my car is not

00:54:08.820 running it doesn't mean the whole car is systematically broken it doesn't mean my whole

00:54:13.920 car is systematically racist right it just means it could just be that one piston isn't firing the

00:54:18.760 way that it's supposed to it could just mean that you know what i mean it could and so what we do

00:54:23.180 is is we we begin to investigate and if we find one thing wrong we don't say that that one thing

00:54:29.060 substantiates our theory that the whole thing is broke. No, we just, we just say all that proves

00:54:34.100 if I find one bug, that doesn't mean it's the feature. It just means I found one bug. Now there

00:54:39.460 could be some more, but finding one problem does not substantiate a theory that the whole thing

00:54:45.360 from, from, from floor to ceiling is completely broke. And so we're still of a mindset, you and I

00:54:51.760 and, and, and biblical Christians that if something's broke, um, you, you ultimately, you,

00:54:57.480 don't just throw it on the ash heap and burn it and think that magically some utopian, you know,

00:55:06.120 problem-solving worldview will arise from the ashes. No, like if something's broke, we have to

00:55:12.380 do the hard work of fixing it. That's the whole thing. I love what you said, like the

00:55:17.500 semper deformanda versus, you know, semper reformanda. Like, no, we reform. We don't,

00:55:24.820 So we take what God's given us and we say, man, this is wonderful.

00:55:30.420 The Constitution of the United States of America is wonderful.

00:55:34.280 And the fact that our nation had race-based slavery for as long as it did, we see that as a bug, not a feature, right?

00:55:43.060 And so we don't say we need to get rid of the Constitution or we need to get rid of, you know, the whole system of two or three witnesses.

00:55:48.880 And we need to get rid of, you know, like, no, we say we need to reform.

00:55:53.500 we need to reform things there are there are isolated pieces of systems we find it in in

00:55:59.680 we find it in our government we find it in our culture we find it in the church

00:56:03.120 and wherever we find something that's not in line with the truth of god's word we want to reform it

00:56:07.900 we want to change that we want to fix it what we don't want to do is take the baby with the bath

00:56:13.380 water and throw the whole thing out and and then just sit back on our haunches and and assume that

00:56:19.060 magically something will come yeah so anyways i'm saying all that to say i completely i completely

00:56:27.180 agree with you it's it's it's reforming rather than deforming it's um it's it's it's reformation

00:56:34.640 not revolution um it's it's not it's not just taking the whole thing and saying it's all bad

00:56:41.260 let's throw it all away um and and then just and then just imagine that if we burn it all down

00:56:47.500 like the joker right some men just want to watch the world burn like the joker wanted to watch the

00:56:52.200 world burn because he liked chaos because he's clinically insane i think people today they're 0.75

00:56:57.200 not clinically insane they want to watch the world burn because not because they just they're insane 0.74

00:57:01.620 and they enjoy chaos they want to watch the world burn because they've been taught from grade school

00:57:06.660 that chaos produces order they've been taught a lot and they actually think that deforming

00:57:13.180 will ultimately improve something and they've just been played we just live in a generation that's

00:57:19.000 been played there's a i i copied down this verse real quick that i i found incredibly helpful

00:57:27.000 with this because it's always this idea of maybe we'll arrive at the truth at some point like we

00:57:32.000 have god's word it's right here in front of us um and first timothy three five through seven says

00:57:38.700 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power avoid such men as these for among

00:57:44.560 them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins

00:57:49.180 led on by various impulses and this is the key verse 7 always learning and never able to come

00:57:56.320 to knowledge of the truth that's right just as janice and jambres opposed moses so these men

00:58:02.400 also approve or i'm sorry oppose the truth men of depraved mind rejected in regard to the faith

00:58:09.840 and the the whole thing is just disintegrating any form of another thing they bring up is

00:58:17.360 propositional logic and it's like well no we appeal to a standard and we reason from that

00:58:24.180 standard and that's biblical you look at uh exodus 20 right the the fourth commandment

00:58:30.520 verses 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all

00:58:37.160 your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it, you shall not do any

00:58:44.060 of your work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle

00:58:49.320 or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth,

00:58:56.860 the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day therefore the lord blessed the

00:59:01.720 sabbath day and made it holy he appeals to creation to a six-day creation right and then

00:59:09.440 on top of that he's using propositional logic according to the standards of scripture

00:59:15.300 yeah god created male and female he he went through everything that we need to know in

00:59:23.840 genesis and so we're going to work out from that and here it is in scripture laid out right in

00:59:29.840 front of us we'll still deny it right yep you're right yeah we we just keep getting cute with the

00:59:36.220 text and yeah it was just like how do we know that's what it really means how to who are you

00:59:40.340 to say what god means by his word um it's like yeah and but we just we lose everything we lose

00:59:47.660 every premise we lose every foundation um yeah and the world the world will not improve through

00:59:54.360 those kinds of means well um we try to keep our episodes typically around i don't know anywhere

00:59:59.780 for some of them are shorter 35 minutes some of them are longer so we've gone about an hour so

01:00:03.880 uh let's let's do this um i want you to give give you a chance just to tell our listeners how they

01:00:10.280 can uh follow your podcast and follow you and some of the things you are doing and uh also we um for

01:00:16.020 our club members. If you haven't already become a responder, we encourage you guys listening to

01:00:20.600 this podcast to become a responder. That's what we call our club members. That's the only way this

01:00:25.380 ministry can continue is through your generous prayers and support. And our responders, one of

01:00:32.080 the kind of incentives that we give to you as our thank you for your support is we have our bonus

01:00:39.000 reel. So each of our guests that we're hosting on this podcast, Theology Applied, we have them stay

01:00:44.680 on a little bit a little bit after we end the episode for our kind of behind the scenes

01:00:50.440 conversation our bonus hour and so our bonus question for Dave is you Dave I know because

01:00:58.680 you're a friend of mine we've talked about it you personally subscribe not merely to

01:01:02.520 complementarianism but what you would describe as biblical patriarchy and so I was wondering

01:01:09.000 if you would stay on for our bonus edition conversation with me and you for just a few

01:01:13.460 more minutes and explain this view biblical patriarchy and why you choose to hold to it so

01:01:20.240 me and dave are going to come back we'll do a bonus thing but as we end the podcast uh dave

01:01:25.100 would you just tell our listeners a little bit about what you're doing how they can keep up with

01:01:28.460 you yeah and thanks again for having me on and uh giving an opportunity just to work through some

01:01:34.940 of the word of god and looking at what it's doing in the world in the real world that's

01:01:39.900 right around us. You can check out our website at reformedoperator.com. We have a podcast

01:01:46.800 available basically anywhere you can find a podcast. We're there. It's Reformed Operator.

01:01:52.840 You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram. We update that pretty regularly. And we use the

01:01:58.560 McShane reading plan. So you can follow us on Twitter. And we have also a Westminster

01:02:03.360 standards reading plan as well that's included on there that we try to update every day on Twitter.

01:02:09.900 So, yeah, that's how you can get a hold of us. And again, thanks a lot for having me on.

01:02:15.060 Absolutely. Thanks for for coming on the show. Appreciate it. All right. That concludes our show.

01:02:19.720 Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. And if you haven't become a responder, go ahead and do that.

01:02:24.840 And I'm going to stay on a little bit longer and talk to Dave about biblical patriarchy, which I have no doubt will prove to be interesting and probably a bit controversial.

01:02:34.960 All right. Later.

01:02:36.020 I see. Thanks for tuning in to Right Response Ministries. As a reminder, all of our resources

01:02:41.040 should only be used as a supplement and not a substitute for the local church. Be sure to check

01:02:45.640 out our website, rightresponseministries.com, or download our free app. There you can find out how

01:02:51.080 to join our team by supporting us monthly as a responder. As a responder, you will receive a

01:02:57.080 Soli Deo Gloria t-shirt and a physical copy of Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved? Also,

01:03:03.300 you'll receive an ongoing 10% discount on all items in the store as well as access to free

01:03:09.080 digital copies of all current and future books in the store. Thank you for your generous support.

The NXR Podcast - January 21, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - A Candid Conversation Of The State Of The American Evangelical Church

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript