The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - An Epidemic Of “Weaker-Brother” Pastors!

00:00:00.000 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to yet another

00:00:04.360 episode of Theology Applied. In this episode, I was once again privileged to have my friend

00:00:09.860 A.D. Robles join me for the task. Now, I want to read something. I don't typically do this,

00:00:15.580 but I want to read something right now from the outset to set the framework, the theological

00:00:19.940 framework, for the discussion that A.D. and I have in this episode. I've written this.

00:00:25.180 R.C. Sproul famously preached a sermon called The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother.

00:00:31.660 His premise comes from Romans chapter 14.

00:00:35.160 He talks about how the church should welcome the weaker brother into membership with grace,

00:00:39.860 but he warns of the weaker brother's tendency to be a tyrant towards the rest of the body.

00:00:45.440 The weaker brother, due to his weaker faith and underdeveloped conscience,

00:00:50.360 has a bad habit of adding the traditions of men to the laws of God. Unfortunately,

00:00:57.320 he often does not do this merely for himself, but for others. For example, the weaker brother

00:01:03.300 will frequently insist that their fellow church members, and especially their pastors, not drink

00:01:09.300 alcohol, even though scripture permits the righteous enjoyment of alcohol to the glory of God.

00:01:15.000 and yet churches should still welcome the weaker brother into their membership and be willing and

00:01:21.060 in certain contexts to lay down their liberties in order to avoid becoming a stumbling block for him

00:01:27.880 but should the church welcome the weaker brother as their pastor that is the question if the

00:01:35.520 apostle paul labels the one whose conscience is wrongfully bound by man-made traditions

00:01:40.680 as objectively weaker should this individual be in a position of authority over those who are

00:01:47.500 objectively stronger according to the word of god clearly paul paul's point has to do with faith

00:01:54.680 therefore the weaker brother is not merely weaker in some kind of abstract way rather in accordance

00:02:01.980 with scripture the weaker brother of romans chapter 14 possesses less faith than his other

00:02:08.220 brothers and sisters in Christ. Such a man should be graciously welcomed into the church, but is

00:02:14.800 there not a serious problem when the church is led by those with the least amount of faith? In these

00:02:22.320 cases, by virtue of both the individual's person and position, the church becomes a context

00:02:29.960 for mass tyranny. Man-made traditions become church-wide requirements that everyone is

00:02:37.380 commanded to follow, despite Christ having purchased freedom from such traditions by the

00:02:43.060 costly price of his own blood? Is there currently a national and even global epidemic of weaker

00:02:52.740 brothers filling our church's pulpits? Wearing a mask is not a law of God, and yet many of our

00:03:01.740 puny faith pastors have wrongfully bound the consciences of all their congregants in this

00:03:07.820 regard. The same can be said of pastors requiring vaccines for worship or segregating the people of

00:03:14.820 God on the Lord's day according to their vaccination status, having a vaccined area and a

00:03:22.960 non-vaccined balcony. Pastors are actually doing this. Possessing a conscience that is so poorly

00:03:30.440 shaped is not a disqualification for salvation, that is membership in Christ's church, but it

00:03:37.900 should be a disqualification for pastoral ministry, that is eldership in Christ's church. Would not

00:03:45.600 the apostle Paul expect the office of elder to be filled by stronger brothers? The past couple

00:03:53.120 years have appeared to prove that the vast number of evangelical churches are being led by the

00:03:59.940 weakest among us according to clear biblical standards, and rampant tyranny has been the

00:04:07.640 result. You're in for a treat. Enjoy this episode of Theology Applied. Real quick, before we get

00:04:14.700 started, if you would prayerfully consider supporting Right Response Ministries, we would

00:04:19.500 be incredibly grateful. You can do so by giving a gift of any amount at rightresponseministries.com

00:04:26.540 slash donate. If you're not able to support this ministry financially at this time, you can still

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00:04:50.880 life. This is Theology Applied.

00:04:56.540 All right, so here we are once again with A.D. Robles.

00:05:01.060 A.D., I'm really glad that you joined the show.

00:05:03.660 And as you know, our topic is really, if I were to sum it up,

00:05:07.680 it's just, should I go to a church where I'm more spiritually mature than my pastor?

00:05:13.020 Talking about the weaker brother, the person with weaker faith,

00:05:15.860 and sadly, R.C. Sproul, he famously preached a sermon where he said that

00:05:19.680 he talked about the tyranny of the weaker brother,

00:05:22.140 the person who has less faith, whose conscience doesn't allow them to drink wine,

00:05:25.820 and a conscience doesn't allow them to not wear a mask or not get the jab,

00:05:30.620 that person seems to be the person who doesn't just have their conscience shaped in a particular direction,

00:05:36.840 but they enforce that on everybody else.

00:05:39.240 And when a pastor is in that position, it seems to cause a lot of problems.

00:05:43.380 So should a Christian belong to a local church where their pastor is less spiritually mature than them?

00:05:50.040 Yeah, so the way you've just described it, I would have to say no.

00:05:53.380 You know, the whole idea of the weaker brother, you know, and the kind of, you know, his theology, you know, kind of binds them in ways that he shouldn't be bound.

00:06:04.460 But, you know, you accommodate him and stuff like that.

00:06:07.240 Look, we're supposed to be following our pastors as they follow Christ, right?

00:06:11.680 And if our pastor is following Christ in a way that's like, you know, rule crazy in weird ways, like that doesn't make any sense.

00:06:19.060 when i first heard your your question by the way joel not to extend my answer too much but

00:06:23.100 i was thinking to myself like okay well what about like you know older uh christian who's not a

00:06:29.140 pastor and you know they're they've seen a lot you know they've dealt with conflict a lot they've

00:06:34.780 seen a lot of people struggle against sin and stuff and so maybe they're going to respond in

00:06:39.480 a way that's more mature in the sense that they're going to be slower to anger you know slower to

00:06:44.180 speak than maybe their pastor and in that way i would say yeah that could potentially be something

00:06:48.620 where you, maybe you're older and you're older in the faith. And so maybe you've, you know,

00:06:52.940 you've, you've fought your sin longer than your pastor has. And so, you know, maybe you're better

00:06:56.680 at it in certain ways than your pastor. And that way I could see, okay, there's some flexibility

00:07:01.080 there, but in the way you describe it, I would say absolutely not. Right. Right. Yeah, no, you're

00:07:05.800 right. Spiritual maturity is a broad category and there's multiple different markers that we could

00:07:10.980 put underneath that, you know, with the fruit of the spirit and all those things. But you're right

00:07:14.480 for the purpose of this episode, we're, you know, for our listeners, I guess, to provide a little

00:07:17.960 bit more clarity. We're talking about spiritual maturity as it pertains to the degree of a man's

00:07:22.960 faith. Paul talks explicitly in Romans chapter 14 about the person who has weaker faith. He is the

00:07:29.440 weaker brother. And just to reference it once more, some of our listeners will probably be

00:07:34.660 familiar with this sermon. If you're not, I highly recommend it. Go check it out. But it's called

00:07:38.480 The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother by R.C. Sproul, The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother. The weaker

00:07:44.800 brother is the one who has weaker faith. His conscience will not allow him to enjoy wine to

00:07:50.000 the glory of God. It will not allow him to eat meat. And so, you know, the apostle Paul says

00:07:55.760 that, you know, we shouldn't offend, go out of our way to offend our weaker brother and his

00:08:00.400 conscience. And so there are certain Christian liberties that we should be willing to lay down

00:08:04.520 for our brother. The problem is when our brother also happens to be in an ecclesiastical position

00:08:11.420 of authority. So like if we were asking the question, should the church have weaker brothers

00:08:16.800 as members? Of course, of course. And everybody, including the elders, especially the elders,

00:08:23.140 should be willing to accommodate them to some degree, right? So of course the church should

00:08:28.860 have those who are weaker brothers in the faith. But when they're pastors, so I'll just,

00:08:37.500 I'll get really, really clear here. What do you think, AD, about, have you ever heard of

00:08:42.380 when a senior pastor at a church enforces a rule for the entire elder board that they cannot drink

00:08:49.260 alcohol? Have you heard of that? Well, I'm a Presbyterian, so I don't know anything about

00:08:54.940 those shenanigans. But you go to a Baptist church. But I have heard of such things, yeah. Well, let me 0.99

00:08:59.220 tell you something I heard one time. This makes it real for me, so I'll just tell the story.

00:09:03.160 uh someone i knew was accepting a position at a seminary a southern baptist seminary and um

00:09:09.400 he was told uh to to scrub his social media of any cigars or any you know you know mixed drinks

00:09:18.740 he may have had on there and stuff like that right like that was something he had to do in order to

00:09:23.860 take the job essentially wow he could do that stuff but he couldn't put it on social media

00:09:28.960 at all like that was that was a rule and the problem with that and i think i i know you'll

00:09:33.360 agree the problem with that is um okay give me a bible verse give me bible right you know and like

00:09:40.900 that's the that's the problem is that it's it's tyranny so one thing that helpful category i think

00:09:46.880 is authority of command versus authority of counsel right so that you can counsel something

00:09:52.540 without commanding it.

00:09:55.520 But the moment that we step into the realm of commands,

00:09:59.640 then the Bible gives us a very specific

00:10:01.820 and limited jurisdiction as clergy, as pastors,

00:10:06.320 and just as brothers and sisters in Christ, as Christians.

00:10:09.420 Because even with church discipline, Matthew 18,

00:10:11.740 that's not just given to the officers of a church,

00:10:14.800 elders and deacons, but every member of the church

00:10:17.580 has an obligation that if their brother sins against them,

00:10:20.760 So church discipline doesn't start actually with the session of elders.

00:10:25.580 It actually starts often with the members of the church and arises to the session.

00:10:29.500 And so everybody has some measure, even a member in a church who's not an officer,

00:10:33.940 they're not a deacon or an elder, they have some measure of spiritual authority.

00:10:36.980 The question is, do we overstep our jurisdiction?

00:10:41.660 Are we overstepping the bounds?

00:10:42.900 Are we commanding where we should counsel?

00:10:44.940 I think of this even with like, well, when I'm doing pastoral counsel and somebody is in sin, right?

00:10:52.720 So for instance, like here's one, all right?

00:10:56.760 The guy is struggling with lust and struggling with lust often being a euphemism for the guy's looking at porn, you know?

00:11:02.400 And so the guy, he's not actually struggling.

00:11:04.660 Struggling often, you know, struggling conveys that he's actually putting up a fight.

00:11:09.020 But sadly, a lot of times there's no struggle.

00:11:12.200 It's just a sinful indulgence.

00:11:14.940 Indulging in pornography, yeah.

00:11:16.500 Exactly.

00:11:17.100 And so in those cases, what I can command, and I'm curious, you may disagree with me,

00:11:22.340 but the way I see it is I can command that that man never look at pornography ever again,

00:11:27.540 that he uphold his wedding vows to his wife if he's married,

00:11:30.920 that he would recognize that he was bought with a price, that he is not his own, 0.97

00:11:36.340 therefore honor God with your bodies, that he not join his members to a prostitute 0.97

00:11:40.500 and so unite the members of Christ's body with a prostitute. 0.95

00:11:45.120 So I can command purity. 1.00

00:11:46.840 I can command that he would mortify the flesh and put to death the sin of perversion and lust.

00:11:54.880 But a lot of pastors would then also require, which is another word for command,

00:11:59.840 it is expected.

00:12:01.840 They would expect covenant eyes, for instance.

00:12:04.660 whereas i that i think that that could be a really helpful tool that i think i could counsel i could

00:12:10.820 say i think i feel very strongly young man that you would do well to put these protective measures

00:12:18.240 on your phone or get rid of your iphone or this or that but i don't feel like the bible gives me

00:12:23.240 jurisdiction to say you've got to stop sinning but i don't think the bible gives me jurisdiction

00:12:27.920 to tell him my opinion of how how he stops sure what do you think yeah yeah yeah i i

00:12:34.620 think i would agree with that you know and i think to be honest with you and and i think you probably

00:12:38.840 would be right here with me on this if he hesitated it was like no i don't know about that covenant

00:12:43.000 eyes thing i mean that's just that's i don't know about that like you'd probably want to ask more

00:12:47.020 questions and have some more counseling sessions and be like okay i mean i'm not like i'm not gonna

00:12:51.700 it's not in the law of god but like you're gonna have to explain that one to me that makes no sense

00:12:55.980 you got to turn into the detective almost the interrogator almost a little bit for a minute

00:13:00.280 there you know right um and so yeah i think i'm right there with you you you you can't you can't

00:13:07.560 so this is another good one so right so we we've got we've got alcoholics out there and so people

00:13:12.520 that are addicted to alcohol and then you know they they come out of that right you know so a lot

00:13:18.060 of a lot of people have testimonies where they've been given over to wine and all this stuff and

00:13:22.180 then you know they the lord finds them and then they kind of just put it away and so that's great

00:13:26.920 So then, so imagine a person like that and, you know, you see them, you know, take a couple drinks or whatever, you know, to the glory of God and they're doing fine. And then one night they fall off the wagon, right? One night they just go in again. Are you allowed then to say, well, you see, you lost the right to alcohol. You just can't have it anymore. No, you're not. That's not in your purview. You can't say that.

00:13:50.580 you might be able to counsel them, though, look, you know, you don't want to go back down that road.

00:13:55.800 I mean, is it worth it? You know, is it worth it?

00:13:58.780 But you wouldn't want to command something that you're not allowed to command.

00:14:01.620 Right. Yep.

00:14:02.840 Even if you think it's a good idea.

00:14:04.400 Yep, I completely agree.

00:14:05.980 Yeah, so there's a problem with it.

00:14:07.900 I think pastors, they blur the lines often, and Christians, just brothers and sisters in Christ,

00:14:13.060 they do this also with, there are things that the Bible commands.

00:14:17.360 You must be like this. You must put sin to death.

00:14:20.100 You must be pure. You must be faithful. But then we command the means by which we attain that

00:14:27.260 purity, the means by which we attain that sanctification. Back to covenant eyes, one

00:14:32.220 more point that I would make on that is just the Bible doesn't actually prescribe covenant eyes to

00:14:37.140 a man that's single, a young single man who's struggling with lust. The Bible prescribes

00:14:43.100 marriage. Marriage. Yeah. Paul wouldn't say, hey, get covenant eyes and you should get a few 0.89

00:14:50.260 accountability partners. And Paul would say, you should have a wife. I'll never forget right before

00:14:56.960 my wedding day. I remember lamenting, not a gospel coalition lament, but like an actual

00:15:02.680 Christian lament. But I was lamenting the fact that I so badly wanted to have beaten the sin

00:15:12.020 of lust more than I had. I wanted to make more headway. By God's grace, I had made headway,

00:15:19.980 but I wanted to have more progress against that sin than I had in my singleness before entering

00:15:27.740 marriage. And I think that was a good desire, that I wanted part of it because I loved my wife

00:15:33.040 or the woman who was soon to be my wife, and I wanted to be more pure for her. But ultimately,

00:15:39.020 I wanted to honor the Lord, but I'll never forget that I just, I had this sense, it's not like the

00:15:43.580 Lord spoke to me or anything like that, but just him reminding me of his word, the Holy Spirit

00:15:48.380 working in conjunction with the word of God, and just reminding me that marriage, it wasn't that

00:15:54.280 I needed to get pure for marriage, although that would be good and right, but that marriage was

00:15:58.860 given to me as a grace for purity. And I just felt like this peace from the Lord, not saying that

00:16:04.240 that sin is okay, that lust is okay. But the Lord's saying, instead of you getting pure for

00:16:08.780 marriage, I'm giving you marriage as a grace to help you. So the fight against lust is not over.

00:16:16.120 I'm now bringing in the reinforcements. This is the best accountability partner you will ever have

00:16:21.520 here on this earth in this life, your wife, because she'll be able to help you as you fight

00:16:26.540 against lust in a way that no other man can. Or covenantized or anything like that. Yeah.

00:16:31.780 Yeah. And it was just this encouraging thing. So anyways, my point is covenant eyes and those

00:16:36.560 kinds of things can be super helpful, but when they start getting commanded, when they start

00:16:40.980 getting prescribed to where if the member of the church says, okay, I agree with you, this is sin, 0.95

00:16:47.140 I need to put it to death. And let's say you say the covenant eyes, and he actually does have some

00:16:51.160 good reasons for why he doesn't want to use covenant eyes on his phone or device because

00:16:54.480 of his work and it might, whatever. And then he has, he's like, what about this other plan? And

00:16:59.060 you're like nope it has to be then i would say that's too right that's right that absolute

00:17:03.880 tyranny and and what's interesting about this too is when when when people start prescribing things

00:17:09.840 as if they were from god you know and they're not so covenant eyes or or or you know you're

00:17:15.460 you're you're not allowed to have any alcohol anymore those kinds of things what's interesting

00:17:20.140 is they up play their own ideas of what you should do and then downplay what you're saying

00:17:26.220 because that is what the word of God says of how to beat lust.

00:17:29.360 You have your own wife.

00:17:30.820 So, so what if instead of every single time you have a young man in your office, 0.98

00:17:35.720 it's like, man, like, I don't know how to beat porn instead of saying, you know, get cut. 0.82

00:17:40.660 What if instead of doing that, you said, you need to find a wife.

00:17:43.240 Now let's work together to get one.

00:17:46.160 You know what I mean?

00:17:47.000 Maybe, maybe you need to do some, you know, work on your own, but you know what?

00:17:50.620 I'm not helped.

00:17:51.760 This one, man, I don't know if I ever told anyone this story before,

00:17:55.040 But one of the things that I saw when I attended a CREC church in Brooklyn for like six months, this blew my mind.

00:18:03.060 And I was so impressed by this.

00:18:05.900 So there was this woman and this man and woman that we met there.

00:18:09.720 They were married, and they told us their story.

00:18:12.140 They met because one of them, I forget which one, went to their pastor and said, hey, I need help, and I'd like to get married.

00:18:19.620 and they went through their CREC connections and found another person, whether it was a woman or

00:18:25.920 man, I can't remember which it was. And they connected them and they made a love connection.

00:18:29.520 It wasn't like an arranged marriage or anything, but the pastor was active and said, let's, let's,

00:18:34.060 let's find you a wife, you know, let's find you someone. And it's like, what if guys were doing

00:18:39.400 that instead of, you know, covenant, I'll help you, you know, maybe I can hook you up with someone,

00:18:45.200 or maybe I can show you how to find a girl. You know what I mean? Like, you know, presumably

00:18:49.540 the pastor's married a lot of times pastors are married i mean right you know i don't know like

00:18:54.300 and so and the same thing with the wine for example right okay so so you know one of the

00:18:58.620 things that some people think is that you know you're actually commanded to take wine and

00:19:01.980 communion right some people think that grape juice is no good in that i would be of the persuasion

00:19:06.220 that it must be wine that the bible okay great so so you're right there you're right there so

00:19:10.100 think about the guy who's like okay here's the solution for you alcoholic no wine when god has

00:19:16.980 commanded that wine is for your joy and he's commended it in one of the sacraments we only

00:19:22.260 have a couple right you know what i mean so it's like man often the the weaker brothers sort of

00:19:29.560 commands their tyrannical commands actually downplay what god has actually commanded which

00:19:34.140 is a really insidious thing about them when you think about right right and you know i think and

00:19:39.680 some people push back on this because they're going to be ardent 12 steppers and so and i i

00:19:44.620 have some problems with the 12-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous and stuff that I personally

00:19:49.440 don't think that is biblical. For me, I would say that what would it look like for a person

00:19:56.240 to be truly sanctified who has been a slave to wine? I think if a person has been a slave to

00:20:02.560 wine, then their full redemption, their full deliverance from slavery to wine is not the

00:20:08.620 ability to never sip wine ever again, but the ability to enjoy it without, without sin. Um,

00:20:15.760 that takes, and I think, you know, of course the AA person would agree with this and say that that

00:20:20.600 takes a much greater degree of self-control. Um, and then they would argue and say that it's

00:20:25.420 impossible because, uh, well, and it gets into identity and those kinds of things that, you know,

00:20:30.080 once we know it's not impossible because we see people do it all the time. Right. Exactly. Right.

00:20:33.360 I know already know it's not impossible. I know people who were a part of AA and who were, you

00:20:37.100 know labeled as alcoholics and i'll never be able to drink again i cannot drink with self-control

00:20:41.900 and i'm just like but the bible says that god has not given you a spirit of fear but a sound mind

00:20:47.560 sober mindedness he's given you self-control self-control is a fruit of the spirit you do

00:20:51.900 have it you're a christian you know and so yeah so anyways and i know that that gets into you know

00:20:57.180 people want to talk about dopamine receptors and serotonin and you know the genetic side of things

00:21:02.320 And there may be something to the sense that one individual physiologically may get more pleasure from a glass of wine than another individual in a genetic sense.

00:21:11.920 And I think that there's probably some truth to that.

00:21:14.660 But even in that regard, I don't think that that means that you are biologically hardwired to be a slave to wine.

00:21:21.460 I think that even you, you enjoy wine more.

00:21:25.360 Okay, but yeah, are you a slave of Christ or a slave of sin?

00:21:28.960 You're a new creation in Christ Jesus and you have self-control.

00:21:31.340 So, so anyways, all that being said.

00:21:32.840 And listen, at the end of the day, I don't want to, I want to say this too.

00:21:35.240 You know, you got to know yourself sometimes.

00:21:36.820 So if you're one of these people that you just can't take it, okay.

00:21:40.480 Okay.

00:21:41.120 Then, then, then what did Jesus say? 0.56

00:21:43.080 You know, if your arm causes you to sin, cut it off. 0.69

00:21:45.020 Okay. 0.60

00:21:45.880 I'm down with that.

00:21:46.680 I'm not saying you can't do that.

00:21:47.880 And I don't think you're saying that either, but, but understand that that's not necessarily

00:21:52.140 the ideal.

00:21:53.360 Right.

00:21:53.820 Exactly.

00:21:54.180 You know what I mean?

00:21:54.720 Yeah.

00:21:54.860 If that's what you got to do, that's what you got to do.

00:21:56.440 Of course.

00:21:57.240 Yeah.

00:21:57.360 And that's, and you're right.

00:21:58.500 That is commendable by Christ. 0.89

00:21:59.920 like cut off your arm, gouge out your eye, you do whatever you got to do, better to enter the

00:22:04.580 kingdom of heaven, missing an arm, you know, missing a hand or missing an eye than for your 0.98

00:22:08.300 whole body. Or not enjoying wine, you know, not enjoying God's good. It's better that you make

00:22:13.080 it to heaven without that than not make it at all, you know? Right. So if that's where you're at,

00:22:17.920 that's the level of sanctification. Like, so I think that that may be entirely appropriate.

00:22:22.120 There's somebody who has proven, they've proven a track record of debauchery in that arena of

00:22:28.640 drunkenness, then yeah, they probably need to get rid of it altogether, not have it in their house

00:22:33.980 and not, you know, all those things. But what I'm saying is not that the raging, binging alcoholic

00:22:40.380 the very next day, you know, tries to drink wine responsibly. I'm saying, but eventually I think

00:22:45.880 that should be the goal. I think that should be the goal eventually. I don't think the goal is

00:22:50.040 just this indefinite for the next 40 years. I'm never going to drink a drop again because I'm an

00:22:53.640 alcoholic. I'll always be an alcoholic because ultimately my identity is I'm a slave to wine

00:22:57.400 and not a slave to Christ.

00:22:58.740 I have problems with that.

00:23:00.360 I don't really, I don't like that.

00:23:01.720 All right, so all that being said,

00:23:02.800 when we talk about tyranny,

00:23:04.200 I think everybody, you know,

00:23:05.320 I know that it's my natural inclination.

00:23:06.980 Everybody thinks, you know, the civil realm.

00:23:08.920 They think about government, right?

00:23:10.120 So they think, you know, politicians mean tyrannical.

00:23:14.020 But God, you and I both agree,

00:23:15.920 God has established, you know,

00:23:17.020 three primary spheres of government,

00:23:18.680 the church, the home, and the state.

00:23:21.000 And would you agree that tyranny, you know,

00:23:23.280 God has, you know, I would prescribe

00:23:25.300 to biblical patriarchy.

00:23:26.420 God is a father.

00:23:27.400 this is the father's world and he works through fathers.

00:23:30.340 There are civil fathers, familial fathers,

00:23:32.220 ecclesiastical fathers, you know, so in the church,

00:23:34.540 it's men who are elders, their fathers,

00:23:36.540 spiritual fathers, and in the home,

00:23:38.760 it's the husbands, the head of the wife

00:23:40.240 and the father of the children.

00:23:41.240 So God, who is the father in the father's world

00:23:44.160 works through fathers that he's appointed

00:23:45.800 in each of these three spheres, home, church, state.

00:23:48.280 And I would argue that when a politician,

00:23:52.420 when a civil magistrate oversteps their bounds,

00:23:55.520 jurisdiction that god has clearly prescribed to them then that's tyranny but um that that's not

00:24:01.420 unique that that can happen in this the sovereign sphere of the home and that can happen in the

00:24:05.200 church so a pastor can be tyrannical a husband can be tyrannical and i think part of my problem

00:24:10.280 i did a post about this you know a while back but part of my problem is you know guys like the

00:24:15.680 gospel coalition you know they would be the first guys to jump on um on a husband's tyranny

00:24:21.460 in a marriage, right? So they would say, like if a husband said, you know, and not like if a

00:24:28.660 husband told his wife to sin, okay, then that's clear. But if a husband just said, I don't want

00:24:34.280 you to dress that way, then there are a lot of beta pastors, slimy, effeminate pastors who would

00:24:42.400 say, well, oh man, I don't think that's appropriate for a husband to tell his wife how she should

00:24:47.700 dress and, you know what I mean? And they would get involved in that, right? Like, so if there

00:24:51.600 was tension in the marriage and that became a point of tension for the husband and the wife,

00:24:55.620 the wife, you know, not wanting to do what the husband is asking, the husband saying,

00:24:59.680 you know, commanding his wife down to the way she dressed in certain regards,

00:25:04.300 then that would probably be brought to marriage counseling. Eventually it's going to cause

00:25:07.820 tension. And I feel like 90% of pastors are going to side with the wife on that one and say that 0.89

00:25:14.280 the husband that's outside of his jurisdiction. Yes, he's the head of the wife and all while 0.92

00:25:20.240 carrying their complementarian cards, but they're going to say, that's, that's too far. This is

00:25:25.360 tyranny. You need to back off. She is not required to submit to you. And then we move to the civil

00:25:32.660 realm and all of a sudden the gospel coalition and John Piper and everybody else is writing

00:25:36.880 articles about how submitting everything. And I'm like, if we're biblically, if we're going to be

00:25:40.820 fair biblically, when it comes to husband and his authority, the Bible says the wife should submit 0.85

00:25:45.880 to her husband in everything, right? So everybody will quote Romans 13 and say, you know, like, 0.75

00:25:51.720 oh, well, it just says submit and doesn't say when the government acts righteously,

00:25:54.640 it just says submit. So that implies even when the government is acting unrighteous. Okay.

00:25:58.040 Well, that's an implication. That's an inference from the text. But if we want to just look at

00:26:01.700 what a text plainly says and just move over to this sphere over here, this sphere of the home, 0.52

00:26:07.060 The Bible says that the wife should obey her husband in everything.

00:26:10.920 First Peter chapter three says that like Sarah calling her husband, Abraham, her Lord. 0.63

00:26:17.440 So if you're looking at like degrees of authority, it seems like the husband has way more authority

00:26:22.780 over his wife than God ever gives in terms of authority and jurisdiction to civil magistrate

00:26:28.820 over citizens.

00:26:30.520 Would you agree with that?

00:26:31.900 Absolutely.

00:26:32.420 And if you think about about what they would say, and you got to catch them out of context, because once you if you were to make this argument all at once, they would know what you were doing.

00:26:43.520 But if the government came out with a dress code for your for your wife, they would say, follow it.

00:26:47.740 They would. If if if your if your wife's employer has a dress code for your wife, they would say, follow it.

00:26:53.720 And so what what they've adopted is this kind of upside down kind of perverted pagan ideology where essentially what you've got is this hierarchy that essentially starts with the state up here and they've got the ultimate power, whatever they say goes and you got to do it.

00:27:11.640 And the one who has the least power is actually the family unit. And that's not how God system works. God system doesn't work that way. It's actually opposite of the way God system works.

00:27:22.200 I think you look at the Old Testament laws and you see punishments for adultery are very harsh.

00:27:28.340 They're essentially punishments for – it's what you would punish someone for sedition in a country because it's essentially your turncoat on the primary unit of government, which is the family. 0.50

00:27:44.240 So that's why the punishment is so harsh.

00:27:45.980 It's like you have you have betrayed the one most important part of God's spheres of sovereignty, spheres of government.

00:27:55.220 The family is the primary unit of the government that God gives us.

00:27:59.180 And so not only are they beta pastors who would be like, you know, side with the woman no matter what, but they also have turned they've inverted God's authority structure.

00:28:10.680 We have different spheres of authority, but the primary unit, in my opinion, is the family that God gives us.

00:28:16.360 And they want that to be the weakest and the one that has the least authority when it actually has the most.

00:28:22.220 You're absolutely right.

00:28:23.320 I've heard it said before that if you think of like home church and state, it's basically the state is authority over virtually everyone, but a very, very small amount of authority.

00:28:35.280 the church is authority over some people with a kind of like a medium degree of authority

00:28:42.200 and the home fathers especially with their children husband with a wife but especially

00:28:47.340 fathers with children have virtually limitless authority but over a very small group of people

00:28:53.140 you know so it's like like a little bit of authority over a lot of people civil government

00:28:56.640 you know some authority over some people ecclesiastical government pastors and churches

00:29:01.020 and then like virtually limitless authority,

00:29:03.780 but over just a few people, the home.

00:29:06.960 The father has authority for the children,

00:29:09.180 what vaccine they get, what goes in their body,

00:29:11.680 their diet, you know, what they're going to eat,

00:29:14.300 what they're going to wear, what they're, you know,

00:29:15.760 all those kinds of things.

00:29:16.840 Like I have a four-year-old, a two-year-old

00:29:18.840 and a one-year-old and I'm making every, you know,

00:29:22.020 like me and mom, you know, but me ultimately as the head

00:29:24.860 and the mom is really just,

00:29:26.040 she's executing the things that I've decided for our family.

00:29:28.660 but um we you know we're making every single one of their choices you know that like our kids we're

00:29:33.960 not doing Montessori you know our kids teach us who they are you know show us who they like no

00:29:38.500 we're telling them who they are and we're making decisions for them and um we're buying their

00:29:43.180 clothes for them we're doing you know they're doing what we what we're doing they're eating

00:29:47.120 what we're eating like that's right yes you know and this is why and again in god's system you know 0.91

00:29:52.440 people look at the old testament law they think it's barbarism no no see if a husband or a wife

00:29:58.020 is to go commit treason against that primary governmental unit that's a such a serious thing

00:30:03.080 in god's view that that requires the penalty that a treasonous person would get which is the death

00:30:08.860 penalty you know what i mean so so this is the thing so what's what's what's amazing about this

00:30:13.700 is you know you mentioned sort of the the the the pastor you know commands that you get covenant

00:30:19.620 eyes right right like here's the thing like like you know i could command that to my 13 year old

00:30:25.320 If I had one, you know, I could say we're installing this.

00:30:28.100 And if you want to use the internet, this is how it's going to be like, but think about

00:30:32.220 this for a second.

00:30:32.900 It's almost like you're, when your pastor does that and kind of tyrannizes you in that

00:30:36.900 way, like they almost are treating you like their child.

00:30:39.960 Because if I had an adult son and he came to me and said, Hey dad, like I'm struggling

00:30:45.100 with pornography.

00:30:46.260 Like, what do I do?

00:30:47.420 Like at that point, even then I wouldn't command him.

00:30:50.740 He's out of the house.

00:30:51.580 He's an adult.

00:30:52.380 Like, I would be like, this is what you should do, son.

00:30:55.320 but I'm not going to command it because that's not how our relationship works

00:30:58.480 anymore. So it's like, not only are they tyrannizing you,

00:31:00.560 they're treating you like a child,

00:31:01.900 like as if you're a 13 year old living in their house kind of child.

00:31:05.800 It's like, it's, it's so twisted when you think about it. And, and, and,

00:31:09.620 and, and, you know, we'll talk potentially about, you know,

00:31:12.620 could a father tyrannize? Yeah.

00:31:13.820 A father can tyrannize and we'll talk about how to define that,

00:31:16.140 but it's just so crazy. Anyway,

00:31:18.400 I just had that side thought when I was thinking about that.

00:31:20.280 That's a good thought, right? It's not only tyranny, it's demeaning.

00:31:23.060 It's demeaning. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right.

00:31:25.320 And so with that, like I think of, you know, when COVID-19 hit, you know, and bringing this, you know, making this really applicable to the, you know, the pastor question, because I get, you know, I'm sure you do too.

00:31:39.040 People email guys like you and me and John Harris all the time, you know, saying like, I don't know if I can stay in my church, you know.

00:31:45.720 And it's either because the church has embraced social justice and gone woke or it's, well, usually, you know, these birds of a feather, you know, they flock together.

00:31:56.280 But, you know, or it's the civil tyranny thing.

00:31:58.860 It's like my pastor is just drinking, you know, all the COVID Kool-Aid, you know, and my pastor's on his seventh booster shot, you know, and we haven't met as a church.

00:32:10.480 You know, church has been canceled for 20 months, you know, or whatever, or, or it got uncanceled, but then Delta hit and we got canceled again.

00:32:16.460 And now Omicron, the least deadly, you know, there's a cold going around, but it has, it has a Greek name.

00:32:24.000 And so church is canceled again.

00:32:26.100 And, and, and my, what I'm saying is that like that, that pastor who's leading his church, you know, I think a lot of pastors just didn't think through these things.

00:32:36.400 You know, so they said church is canceled and they don't think through the implications.

00:32:40.560 Like what they're doing is they're using the ecclesiastical authority that God gave them to be keepers of the Lord's table and to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, his body and his blood to his people to nourish them.

00:32:55.780 And they're saying to the people of God that the Lord's Supper belongs to.

00:33:00.180 It is their right.

00:33:01.220 Christ has purchased it for them.

00:33:03.040 They are members of the covenant.

00:33:05.180 they belong to his table christ is standing there saying come to me you know all who are weary all

00:33:11.820 who are heavy laden come to me feast on my body drink my blood and the pastors are standing in

00:33:18.240 between them they don't think of it like this but by canceling their church service the pastors

00:33:22.080 who should be the ones who not bouncers right sometimes we can over fence the table but but

00:33:27.560 pastors are they're also greeters welcoming the people of god to the lord's table and and instead 0.57

00:33:32.660 of that, they're saying, no, you blood-bought Christian who the supper was purchased for, 0.66

00:33:40.360 and it belongs to you. It's your right. You may not have it for a month, now for two months, 0.92

00:33:45.380 now for three months, now for four months, now for five months. Okay. Now you can have it again.

00:33:50.240 Just kidding. Delta. Nope. It's gone for a month, for two months, for three. And they don't think

00:33:55.760 of it like that. They think of just love your neighbor. We don't want to do any harm. And

00:33:59.000 They're not thinking there, there's so many other, the Bible's a big book, right?

00:34:03.060 It's not a 30 page pamphlet that just says, love your neighbor.

00:34:05.600 And the only way to love your neighbor is by not getting them sick.

00:34:08.280 Like, like, and these are, and, and, and I would be more sympathetic if these pastors

00:34:13.140 weren't the guys who brag about being intellectuals and being theologically astute.

00:34:17.320 So, so by their own admission, just like Jesus, the Pharisees, but because you claim to see

00:34:21.900 right by their own admission, they know, they know the theological implications.

00:34:26.720 So they're doing one thing to protect their neighbor, but that one thing is doing all these other things.

00:34:34.560 And not just to their neighbor, but in this case, we're talking about what they're doing to their brother, to their sister, to the people of God.

00:34:39.520 And so I look at that as like for a pastor to cancel the church service, I don't know, can you think of any, does a pastor have that authority?

00:34:50.220 Maybe just ask it like that.

00:34:51.120 Does a pastor have the authority to close the church doors?

00:34:53.980 Good question.

00:34:54.680 So when I start when the covid thing started, I got this wrong, in my opinion, because I said, yeah, you know, they would have the authority to do that.

00:35:02.660 And they simply do not. That's so that I've changed my view on that.

00:35:06.860 I got set straight pretty early on that one, maybe a few months or maybe a month into it, a few weeks into it.

00:35:12.740 But no, no, because here's the thing. The pastor doesn't have any authority that God didn't give the pastor.

00:35:19.880 right and so the only authority that exists is from god and so if it didn't come from god then

00:35:26.040 it didn't come then it's not legitimate it's tyranny and so it's not the road to tyranny it

00:35:30.800 is straight up tyranny so if if if you're right joel and i agree that you are that that christians

00:35:36.540 have the right to that table and god and it comes from god it doesn't come from a man that that

00:35:41.620 right well i guess the god man but anyway it doesn't come from it doesn't come from a regular

00:35:47.200 man. If they have that, then they have it and nobody can take it away from them. So they either

00:35:54.600 have it or they don't have it. And you got to make that decision. And so some of these guys are

00:35:59.160 theologically astute enough to know that people have that right. And so they're the ones that

00:36:04.840 really need to really take a good look in the mirror, a good hard look at what has happened.

00:36:09.200 How did we get duped like this for so long? And so that it never happens again, because it's

00:36:14.180 absolutely insane what's gone on. Nobody has that right.

00:36:17.380 Right. So me and you would both, just to be abundantly clear,

00:36:19.900 A.D. Robles and Joel Eben would both say that a pastor closing the church doors,

00:36:26.000 effectively what that does is it bars the people of God from Christ,

00:36:31.320 from Christ in the supper, from Christ in the preaching,

00:36:35.100 from Christ in the singing of hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, from Christ.

00:36:38.960 Joel, I don't want to interrupt you, but I just have to get this out

00:36:41.920 because I don't know if you saw this, but I saw this.

00:36:44.180 pastors trying to spiritualize this where it was like, God has judged us. And, and we need to look

00:36:50.240 at this time where we can't have the elements as a sign of God's displeasure with us. And we need

00:36:55.780 to lament it every day. And it's like, no, that's not what's happened. You've just decided that this

00:37:01.760 is happening, right? You've decided God hasn't told us that because yeah, it's dangerous, but

00:37:07.100 guess what? You know, the, the, the, the apostles did a lot of dangerous things to worship Christ

00:37:12.120 on sunday uh in in the in the book of acts right the early church did a lot of dangerous things in

00:37:17.960 order to worship church or worship god worship church worship god on sunday you know the way

00:37:23.300 he was commanded like like that made me so sick to my stomach when i heard people saying oh it's

00:37:29.560 lument it's the season that god has told us we cannot partake he did not say any such thing

00:37:34.680 right yeah no you're absolutely right we just you know what happens when we assume you know

00:37:40.200 but we just assume i you know like one verse it like uh one text it's always struck me it's just

00:37:45.740 profound is you know when um when uh paul is is miraculously set free all the prison doors open

00:37:55.760 all the prisoners are set free and like and the jailer is about to take his own life and then

00:38:02.380 paul stops him and says we're all accounted for we're all here um nobody left you know on your

00:38:07.220 watch and the, you know, the jailer and his whole household, his whole household, they,

00:38:11.360 they, you know, they get saved, they get baptized. I'd like to think that he didn't have any infants.

00:38:15.660 So his whole household that were, you know, but anyway, but the whole household gets saved.

00:38:20.060 What kind of self-respecting jailer wouldn't have any infants?

00:38:23.460 But so, but my point is like, I mean, I feel like, you know, you and I, like if we were in that

00:38:28.100 situation and all of a sudden miraculously that, you know, we're, we're arrested, you know,

00:38:32.100 persecuted for our faith and for preaching the gospel. And then the jail doors miraculously open

00:38:36.360 up like i i'm not gonna stop and ask god what that means i'm just gonna i'm gonna god wants me

00:38:43.160 to escape you know but but you know what i mean and but so it's and and that would be something

00:38:48.860 that's pretty clear you know but like with with a a virus that kills you know one percent of the

00:38:55.780 people who even get it you know like like 99 survival rate and now you know when most people

00:39:01.640 have a vaccine which you know i don't know how effective but have a vaccine that's supposed to

00:39:06.000 be effective and you know and and then more importantly than that a lot of people have

00:39:09.440 actually already got the virus and have natural immunity like myself which is arguably 13 to you

00:39:14.280 know 20 something times more durable than the vaccine like when all those things have happened

00:39:18.460 then then if it's a 99 or was a 99 you know survival rate then now it's even even more so

00:39:24.340 and if we have new strains that are less deadly than than the alpha and the delta and like then

00:39:29.420 you know like so now we're talking about something that that really arguably could be as deadly as

00:39:35.120 the flu and we didn't cancel church for flu. So all that to be said, you're saying that we just

00:39:40.880 assumed, this happens and we immediately start putting words in the mouth of God and saying,

00:39:45.180 this is a season, this is what God is doing. We're speaking for God. And so we're making

00:39:50.760 things up instead of sticking to the script. What do we know? What we know is that on the

00:39:55.420 first day of the week, Christ rose from the dead to free people from lifelong slavery to the fear

00:40:02.160 of death. So he rose from the dead to free us from lifelong slavery to the fear of death so that

00:40:07.940 we might gather on the first day of the week and the right worship of him. And, you know, that's

00:40:13.640 the marching orders. That's what's playing. And instead we go for this weird, obscure, mystical

00:40:18.320 thing instead of sticking to what is so clear. And so you and I would both say that's tyranny,

00:40:24.540 right? That's outside of pastor's jurisdiction. Totally. And you know, it's tyranny because

00:40:28.960 here's what i like to do this is not foolproof but it kind of helps me think through things so 0.96

00:40:32.780 i hear a woke pastor say something stupid about you know how he wants to you know i don't know

00:40:38.260 do something that's that's totally ridiculous right and so what i like to do often is i like 0.99

00:40:43.660 to switch around the races right so i say okay if i said this about a white person or a black person 0.53

00:40:48.660 whatever the situation warrants would it be okay it's not foolproof but at least gives you an idea

00:40:53.980 like is there some partiality here right so that do you know it's tyranny because think about this

00:40:58.560 way what if there was a husband to go back to your previous point that was demanding that his

00:41:04.140 wife for the rest of her life wear a mask for her own protection of course right also he then

00:41:11.080 demanded we're not she can't go to the worship service for her own protection of course because

00:41:16.240 it's dangerous out there and you know what covid's just the tip of the iceberg we got the flu we got

00:41:20.880 everything you know we don't know maybe there's going to be a new novel something we don't know

00:41:24.340 so she can't go to the worship service she can't partake in communion you know it's tyranny because

00:41:28.760 they'd be all over that wow how dare you they're not the authority it's like well exactly yeah you

00:41:35.340 know you don't either you're exactly right and so okay so yeah so the the mass thing so we talked

00:41:40.520 about shutting down the church because that effectively bars people from christ so so let

00:41:44.580 me ask this um what what about a pastor you know or a group of elders or whatever in a local church

00:41:49.780 who require masks, not optional, but they require them.

00:41:53.620 You cannot come and worship the Lord Jesus Christ

00:41:55.920 unless you're wearing a mask.

00:41:57.240 Is that tyranny?

00:41:59.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:42:00.260 I think it's a, you know, a lot of people think,

00:42:03.640 oh, it's just a mask.

00:42:04.720 And often the way I'll respond is exactly.

00:42:07.800 It's just a mask.

00:42:08.700 So what's the big deal?

00:42:09.620 I'm not going to wear a mask.

00:42:11.100 Right, but more seriously though,

00:42:13.360 it's like you can't require something

00:42:16.180 to make you clean enough for worship

00:42:18.860 besides what God has required.

00:42:21.560 And I don't see any mask requirement.

00:42:23.660 Right, right.

00:42:25.300 No, I agree.

00:42:26.060 And so then the YouTube troll would hop on and say, 0.98

00:42:29.880 okay, well then I'm gonna come to worship naked 0.98

00:42:33.120 or something.

00:42:33.580 And we say, well, we got a Bible verse for that. 0.52

00:42:36.600 Or a man's gonna come wearing a dress. 0.98

00:42:39.660 Well, I've got a Bible verse for that. 0.99

00:42:41.200 It's an abomination in the sight of God 1.00

00:42:43.280 when a man dresses like a woman or vice versa. 1.00

00:42:45.960 When a woman dresses like a man.

00:42:47.880 And so we say the Bible speaks to those things, that on the Lord's Day, the Bible talks about modesty, the Bible talks about prudence, the Bible talks about all those kinds of things. 1.00

00:42:56.580 So the Bible does say that we should dress and even tells us how to dress.

00:42:59.780 It doesn't say so specific like as in three-piece suit.

00:43:04.000 Sure, sure.

00:43:04.580 But the Bible does very plain.

00:43:06.420 It tells us that we should be modest and that we should be dressed in such a way.

00:43:11.520 And my understanding, 1 Corinthians 11, this is one of my understandings.

00:43:16.960 And so just for the record, my wife, she wears a head covering on the Lord's Day.

00:43:21.560 But beyond that, in a broader interpretation, my wife dresses like a woman. 0.66

00:43:27.960 So I believe that part of what 1 Corinthians 11 is getting at is that God created the two sexes.

00:43:33.520 It was his idea, and it's like everything else that he made, it's good. 0.84

00:43:36.580 And so therefore, the distinction between the genders should be, if anything, even more visible on the Lord's Day

00:43:42.780 as something that's not bemoaned,

00:43:46.140 but something that is celebrated. 0.99

00:43:47.460 So women, I think, should look extra feminine. 0.93

00:43:50.160 Now, we know from other writings, like Peter, 0.99

00:43:52.580 there's a difference between looking very feminine

00:43:55.960 and a woman looking gaudy,

00:43:58.640 trying to draw attention to herself. 0.99

00:44:00.100 Draw attention to herself, right. 0.80

00:44:01.200 Braids are not bad, but in the context,

00:44:03.380 they were braiding like silver and gold and jewels

00:44:05.940 into their braids. 1.00

00:44:07.460 And so a woman shouldn't be loud in her heart 0.99

00:44:10.740 in the way that she acts. 1.00

00:44:11.640 She also shouldn't be loud in her dress. 1.00

00:44:14.000 Look at me, look at me, a loud woman. 1.00

00:44:15.840 Proverbs has a lot of bad things to say about the loud woman. 1.00

00:44:19.240 But that doesn't mean that she shouldn't be beautiful. 1.00

00:44:21.980 So I would say the woman.

00:44:23.020 So my whole point is to say, we got verses for that.

00:44:25.400 So the person is like, so the Bible tells us,

00:44:28.120 the Bible actually does, all of Christ for all of life, right?

00:44:30.820 Like the Bible actually does speak to a lot of stuff,

00:44:33.800 including what you wear to church on Sunday.

00:44:36.500 And it doesn't say anything about a mask.

00:44:38.600 And honestly, if we were gonna get really technical,

00:44:40.580 i feel like it's a little bit of a stretch exegetically but i don't think it's that much

00:44:45.160 of a stretch if anything the bible actually says we who worship with unveiled faces sure you know

00:44:50.540 so it's just like so i yeah yeah well i mean it's not that much of a stretch because think about it

00:44:56.540 this way like you know there are there is a major religion who has people veil their faces as they

00:45:05.000 worship so it's like it's not that much of a stretch at all and it's like well but this is

00:45:09.360 a science though it's a science like this is the thing like like like you know i just i talked to

00:45:15.100 i'm a recruiter right and i talked to this like really annoying uh engineer and he's leaving his

00:45:20.940 company because they're not doing a vaccine and he's like he was like i would hate to meet that

00:45:27.140 guy he would hate me right yeah he was like it's not that hard you just follow the science and it's

00:45:31.580 like the way he the way he said it it was like you know it's like it's a religion it is a religion

00:45:36.940 so it's like yeah it's the science yeah sure um but you're treating the science as if it was a

00:45:42.280 deity right right you know what i mean so it's like it's it's actually not that far-fetched at

00:45:47.080 all in my opinion okay well that's that's helpful i appreciate that i know that that's other guys

00:45:51.560 that i respect and trust that's their view and i i feel like you know i feel like it's pretty good

00:45:56.900 i just i you know i haven't taken it so literally but you're right what you said about islam like

00:46:02.560 that there's an entire false religion

00:46:04.600 that worships a false God that covers their faith.

00:46:07.580 Even that just makes me think. 0.98

00:46:08.540 And there's a new one, it's the Branch Covidians. 1.00

00:46:10.660 Say that again. 1.00

00:46:11.960 Say that again. 1.00

00:46:12.680 The Branch Covidians.

00:46:13.940 Oh yeah, the Branch Covidians, that's really good.

00:46:17.040 Yeah, I'm close to Waco out here, man.

00:46:18.780 I'm only like an hour away. 1.00

00:46:20.000 So the Davidians, now the Covidians.

00:46:22.600 Now you got the Covidians.

00:46:23.780 Yeah, but yeah, it's not science.

00:46:26.680 We know that.

00:46:27.900 If anything, it's like, okay, so it's more contagious.

00:46:32.560 but from all the data that we can see it's it's more mild and it's symptoms right now there's not

00:46:38.180 globally globally in terms of data as of today that we're recording this so i when this airs i

00:46:43.820 don't know if it'll be the case but today it's uh december 7th as i'm recording this there's not

00:46:48.780 one case globally of somebody being hospitalized or or death due to the omicron yep i don't care

00:46:56.920 anything about this at all but but imagine if it if it's all true what you just said it's it's more

00:47:01.300 contagious and it's and it's less uh serious wouldn't that be the best case scenario like

00:47:06.280 for a variant that's my point so it's like everyone's going to get this so it's going to

00:47:10.880 push out everything it's going to push out delta it's going to push out alpha so every so more

00:47:16.140 people are going to get or they would if we if we weren't all you know if we weren't all vaxxed

00:47:21.620 but uh more people would get this it would become the dominant strain which is also the happens to

00:47:28.160 be the most mild strain. It's almost like God knows how to preserve people, his creation,

00:47:35.880 his image bearing creatures, like even built into the framework of a virus. Like that's what viruses

00:47:40.220 do. They, you know, they, they become more contagious, but they become also more mild in

00:47:44.360 terms of their symptoms. And then they become endemic. It's just something that we live with.

00:47:48.000 And it's, you know, Spanish flu all of a sudden becomes, you know, a hundred years later, it's a

00:47:51.840 cold and, you know, or there's a flu season that we have every year. And sometimes it's a bad flu

00:47:55.880 season. And sometimes it's not about like, that's, we know that we're going to live with COVID.

00:47:59.720 We're shutting down the virus. Joe Biden's not God. The state is not God. So we deify science,

00:48:05.000 we deify the virus and we deify the state, you know, and, and all these things are false. And,

00:48:10.660 but yeah, so we know that tyranny with the state is wrong. That the state doesn't have that kind

00:48:16.960 of authority to do these things. But then, but then I think we think pastors do. And we would,

00:48:22.460 And what's frustrating for me is that I feel like Christians will kick at the goads when it comes to a pastor exercising authority that he actually does have, like preaching God's word boldly.

00:48:35.700 That's right.

00:48:36.420 You know, they're like, you can't talk like that, you know, or you're being harsh or you don't have that authority.

00:48:41.040 And those things, and they may be right, but those are more difficult things to discern, right?

00:48:46.560 Like where is gentleness and what actually constitutes an elder being quarrelsome?

00:48:52.460 In that regard, I like the King James, like a brawler.

00:48:56.760 Is he punching people?

00:48:58.660 If not, leave him alone.

00:49:00.780 He's okay.

00:49:02.180 But that's something that is more subjective.

00:49:05.660 It's harder to discern.

00:49:06.580 It's not subjective, but it's harder to discern.

00:49:09.120 Whereas a pastor, does he have the authority to cancel church?

00:49:12.420 Yes or no?

00:49:12.960 That's super easy.

00:49:14.500 That's super clear.

00:49:15.940 And so pastors cancel church, clear breach of their authority.

00:49:19.640 That's a good guy.

00:49:20.580 And then a pastor preaches God's word boldly, and like Paul, who addresses Hymenaeus and Alexander, names people, this pastor names false teachers, and so, yeah.

00:49:32.560 It's the King David syndrome when he was having Bathsheba.

00:49:36.740 It's like he had this huge, ridiculous sin in his life, apparent, and he didn't care at all. 0.75

00:49:45.500 So he overreacts when he hears the story about the lamb.

00:49:49.540 it's just a lamb and he overreacts and he kind of just goes in it's like it's like and we just

00:49:55.980 talked about this with the weaker brother you know like imagine if they just gave god's prescription

00:50:00.240 it always downplays god's prescription get married that's the prescription you don't need covenant

00:50:04.960 eyes get married it's like it always works out that way when you make up your own stuff and you

00:50:11.180 pass it off as god's law you end up downplaying god's actual all the pharisees were doing this

00:50:15.980 with the corbin thing they made up their own law and what do they do when what by doing that they

00:50:20.580 overturned a big glaring law to honor their father and mother right you know what i mean

00:50:25.160 right it's it never it never leaves god's law alone it's not like they're they're coming out

00:50:30.320 with this nonsense wear a mask and it doesn't affect anything else in their teaching it definitely

00:50:35.540 does yeah you're absolutely right so this is one of my last questions this is the big one that'll

00:50:40.760 be the most relevant for our listeners um at what point do pastors who messed up on this right i'm

00:50:48.260 talking about the pastor who yeah you know like not not just you know cancel their church for

00:50:53.560 you know three weeks or something like but like cancel church for months you know and and then

00:50:58.460 when they did come back um would not let the congregation sing um not just mask optional but

00:51:05.160 but prescribed mass, you know, or, or didn't serve the Lord's supper for a year, you know,

00:51:11.260 I'm just naming examples. Literally as I'm naming, I'm like, that's ridiculous. Nobody did that. And 0.91

00:51:16.480 then I have to keep reminding myself, no, like, like thousands of pastors did that. They did that.

00:51:20.680 So, all right. So let's say that, that pastor now is their church's meeting on Sunday,

00:51:26.800 mass are optional. They serve the Lord's supper, maybe with some gloves or whatever,

00:51:31.740 but they're serving the Lord's Supper, you know, and, and they're singing as softly and as

00:51:37.480 effeminally as possible, but they are singing. I went, he's changed his actions, but should he be

00:51:47.100 trusted? What, like, so some of these guys, it's the same with the social justice thing, right?

00:51:51.880 So like, let's say, let's say it's David Platt. All of a sudden, let's say David Platt starts

00:51:56.960 preaching biblical justice no partiality your eye shall not pity the poor or the rich you know

00:52:02.440 two or three witnesses the evidence has to be weighed uh you know those kind of things like

00:52:07.080 when when do you you know i saw one of your videos recently where you you commended

00:52:12.160 jonathan lehman who you've you know who you've taken to the mat several times

00:52:15.680 sure but you still said like but i don't know yet like when do we yeah when do we

00:52:20.100 because forgiveness and trust are not the same thing i would say i would say i can forgive my

00:52:24.600 pastor, even if he never changes his actions. I can forgive that guy because I've been freely

00:52:29.160 forgiven in Christ. So I see forgiveness is free because I've been freely forgiven. But trust I see

00:52:33.440 is something that's earned, right? There are qualifications for an elder for a reason. You

00:52:37.280 have to be qualified. You have to be credible in order to be worthy of being trusted in that

00:52:42.660 position. And so for me, I'm like, I know lots of guys, I mean, close friends, close friends who

00:52:48.740 are now taking the right actions. They're now taking, like their church is meeting,

00:52:53.360 you know they're serving the lord's supper they're even saying something you know like yeah this is

00:52:57.940 ridiculous but i'm like yeah but yeah but dude you you were on the wrong side of this for a long time

00:53:05.460 and adamantly on the wrong side adamantly on the wrong side i don't trust you yeah i get it man

00:53:11.520 no that this is the big question right because i did say that that's the first place my mind went

00:53:16.040 the jonathan leeman video i did which i don't know i mean i don't trust him yet i mean i don't know

00:53:20.240 what it would take for me to trust him. I don't know, but, but you're a hundred percent right.

00:53:23.740 Like you got to earn that. Right. So let's just say, God willing, David Platt starts teaching

00:53:28.040 rightly on this. And what I don't want to do is give them the list. Cause sometimes what I'll see

00:53:32.660 is somebody repents and then they're given a list by everyone on social media, what they have to do

00:53:37.760 in order to really repent. You know what I mean? And I want to do that. Yeah. I don't want to do

00:53:42.340 that. But what I do want to understand is the reality that, you know, you, you know, your trust

00:53:48.320 has to be earned and it's earned over time. And it's, and it's not something that anyone can just

00:53:52.340 kind of turn on. You know what I mean? It's just, I don't, it's not that it's not like it's a

00:53:57.380 mystical thing, but it just, you, you, you build trust over time. You can lose it really quick

00:54:02.000 and maybe never get it back, you know? So the thing with it, so let's make this as practical

00:54:07.360 as possible. Like, what would you do if you're in a church like this, where they're basically

00:54:10.680 doing the right things now, but it took them a long time. And, you know, you don't know what

00:54:14.660 to do? Should I leave my church? What should I do? I think that you need to have hard conversations

00:54:20.040 about, and it's got to be like back room. Like how did this go down? What happened? You know,

00:54:26.540 what were you thinking? How did the conversations go? Like, was there like, like, was it just easy

00:54:33.580 for you to believe CNN or like, did you wrestle? Like you want to know the play by play, right?

00:54:38.880 let's talk, let's talk, let's talk, you know, you know, how this all went down. And I think

00:54:44.580 those conversations, you'll kind of get to see sort of where they were at and where they're at

00:54:49.120 now, the differences. My pastor, you know, I think he probably, so when he called me and said

00:54:54.320 they were closing down, like I said, I got this wrong in the beginning. I was like, okay, I

00:54:57.780 understand, you know, I support you. And I should have said that I should have said that I don't

00:55:02.880 support you and you shouldn't do it. I think honestly, when he called me, he was kind of

00:55:06.520 fishing for that now that i've talked to him but he's kind of sensed this right so he he came to

00:55:10.620 his senses fairly early on you know probably longer than he should have should have but when

00:55:15.460 he decided when when when they decided to do nothing no no more restrictions nothing he called

00:55:20.540 me he was very excited and he took the time to take me through the whole process what had happened

00:55:25.660 you know what the conversations were like what they're thinking now what the future holds as

00:55:30.920 well that's key and emphatic this will never happen again that's yeah that's i don't care

00:55:37.000 what else happens i'm opening that church yeah that's really and if you have a pastor who's

00:55:42.180 willing to look you in the eye and shake your hand and say look i've learned my lesson and here's

00:55:46.200 what we're doing in the future that means a lot man yeah but if you get the wishy-washy well you 0.91

00:55:51.940 know we got it maybe you know homicron you know it might be a little scary you kind of know what 1.00

00:55:55.860 you're dealing with right then and there they haven't learned any lesson they just came out 0.92

00:55:59.440 when the cover was enough that they felt like they could get away with it.

00:56:02.700 Right.

00:56:02.980 So I think you just put your finger on it.

00:56:05.080 You were specific and, you know, the pastor lets you in on how do we arrive at this decision

00:56:09.780 and blah, blah, blah.

00:56:10.600 And he assures the sheep that I wrongfully, I was tyrannical.

00:56:16.440 I barred you from Christ.

00:56:17.740 I put myself as a wedge between you and Christ instead of as an under shepherd who's meant

00:56:25.200 to bring you to Christ.

00:56:26.360 and I promise that I'll never do that again,

00:56:29.540 which implies in everything that you've said,

00:56:32.400 it seems like the glaring implication

00:56:34.580 is the pastor says, I was wrong.

00:56:38.100 I think that's my big thing.

00:56:40.340 So like, we don't wanna make a list, right?

00:56:41.740 Because that's the whole thing

00:56:42.440 we were just talking about, right?

00:56:43.440 It'd be so hypocritical if at the end of this podcast,

00:56:45.760 we literally, you know what I mean?

00:56:46.840 Like, we're like, so he needs to get covenantized,

00:56:48.880 you know, but the equivalent of it,

00:56:50.320 like he needs to write letters against the CDC,

00:56:54.340 Because that would be literally the same.

00:56:56.380 So what we can say is he's got to do the right thing.

00:56:59.560 How he gets there, what the Lord uses as the method of his...

00:57:03.520 Because I think that's what penance is.

00:57:09.700 I've had people do that to me.

00:57:11.660 I don't want to be too specific because I don't want to throw people under the bus.

00:57:14.580 But where they prescribe three years of penance.

00:57:17.720 right like yep like um you need to you need to read these exact books um this exact amount

00:57:24.240 um six days a week you can take off the sabbath for three years do a writing assignment you know

00:57:29.600 i've seen this so many times yeah in order to prove in order to prove that and you know and

00:57:35.060 they'll use like acts like doing good works and keeping with repentance but the thing is like

00:57:39.740 with doing good works and keeping with repentance the holy spirit decides what those good works are

00:57:43.740 man doesn't prescribe them. The Holy Spirit grants repentance, right? Repentance is a gift that is

00:57:51.000 granted and the fruit, the good works, they're good fruits of the Holy Spirit that begin to

00:57:56.680 become more evident and are increasing as the person is walking in repentance, which is a gift

00:58:03.220 granted by God and therefore being formed more into the image of Christ. And the fruit of that

00:58:07.480 may be increased study habits because of a greater desire for God and His holiness that

00:58:13.600 comes with the knowledge of the Lord, or it may be this, or it may be that. But when we start

00:58:17.620 prescribing penance, and we can call it doing good works and keeping with repentance, and that's

00:58:25.280 using biblical language, but I don't think that that's honest. I think it's penance. It's penance.

00:58:30.300 And my point is, in saying all that, is just to say that I think that one of the things that I

00:58:37.060 can put on the list, right? So we don't want to be hypocrites and do everything that we

00:58:40.600 just said not to do. But one thing that I would put on the list is this. In order to trust a

00:58:46.040 pastor again, I feel like he has to repent. I feel like that's a fair thing to put on the list.

00:58:51.840 And with repentance, yeah, you can get subjected. Well, what does it mean to repent? What does it

00:58:55.660 look like? How do you outwardly observe somebody else's repentance? Well, the good works that are

00:59:03.480 keeping with repentance, those might be different. The Holy Spirit is going to sovereignly ordain

00:59:07.920 those things. But these are two good works. And I want to hear your thoughts. Two good works that

00:59:12.160 I think are always going to be evident, going to be evidenced when someone repents.

00:59:19.580 A change, repentance is to change, a change in their action and an acknowledgement of failure

00:59:26.000 or sin in their word. Meaning that if I'm repenting, that means I'm changing. So I'm

00:59:32.520 going to stop doing the thing that I'm repenting of. I'm going to stop sinning. And I think that

00:59:39.680 repentance has to be in word and in deed. So I'm also going to, with everyone that I sinned against,

00:59:47.200 I'm going to say, I'm sorry. I'm going to acknowledge. I'm actually going to acknowledge

00:59:53.220 that I sinned. And one of the things that just drives me at the wall with pastors is pastors

00:59:59.260 will change their position when they realize they were wrong and never, ever, ever admit it.

01:00:07.380 And the problem is, it's like, well, you know, why does he have to admit it publicly? Because

01:00:10.700 I'm talking about when a pastor sins publicly, if you shut down your church, you send, not just

01:00:16.660 your sin was a public action, but it's also not just a public context that you send, but you send

01:00:24.180 against the church so you you send against every member of that church by barring them from the

01:00:30.560 lord jesus christ so you owe in my opinion every single member in that church an apology from

01:00:36.440 robbing christ from them and disobeying god's word which means you can't just change your position

01:00:42.480 in your actions and pretend like you never did that i don't know about you but i just feel like

01:00:49.040 that's so common that i'm seeing guys they're coming around now and my the reason why i'm

01:00:53.700 said about this is now that you and Harris and sovereign nations and founders and all these guys

01:00:59.120 and Wilson are like, God is using this grassroots thing to blow off the lid, not just with COVID,

01:01:04.280 but with the social justice thing. I'm worried, AD. I'm worried, brother, that we're going to win

01:01:09.960 because Christ is going to win. But the moment we actually start winning, these guys are going to,

01:01:16.460 they're just going to stop using that language, that critical race theory language. And they're

01:01:20.900 going to and they're even going to start preaching different messages but they're and they're going

01:01:24.700 to pretend like they were always on our side right like albert moeller's going to run out in front of

01:01:29.160 the you know the conservative parade and act like he engineered it you know and yep and they're you

01:01:33.980 know some of them are ideologues but some of them are opportunists and and with those guys um i feel

01:01:38.920 like one of the requirements that i want to hold is um does he ever with his mouth say i was wrong

01:01:48.240 yeah yeah that's right that's right well the thing about that is i understand that i i totally do i

01:01:54.560 mean you know republicans have been getting away with this kind of thing for a long time in fact

01:01:58.680 your governor i think today got away with something like this where you know he all of a sudden is

01:02:03.100 no vaccine mandates after it's totally safe and everyone and the judges have all ruled you know

01:02:08.200 he comes and rides those coattails really well anyway he just copies um de santis after he sees

01:02:16.080 desantis take the risk and it pay off after it's worked yeah it's taking the risk and it's worked

01:02:20.720 then he'll come on that's right but anyway um but yeah this is this is this is something but i think

01:02:25.600 that the internet though is and the the the ease of information sharing that we have right now

01:02:32.520 is gonna not it's gonna make it so that they can't get away with that anymore i mean they can change

01:02:37.900 their messages all day but it's still it's like okay so let's talk about all this do you still

01:02:44.600 believe all this because you could change your wording all day long, but we're not going to play

01:02:49.000 that game anymore. We've, we've seen too much now. The genie's out of that bottle, you know,

01:02:53.380 you can't unscramble that egg. So yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I think that the, you know,

01:02:57.800 the requirement of admitting that you were wrong, I honestly don't even, I don't even hold that as

01:03:03.080 a requirement. It's just basic repentance. It's like, you know, I was wrong. Like I didn't,

01:03:08.540 I didn't do what I was supposed to do, or I did do something I wasn't supposed to do like that.

01:03:12.380 It's got to start there, because if you're not even willing to say that and just you're going to pretend like it never happened, that's actually not repentance.

01:03:18.880 Right. You know what I mean? That's not repentance. Exactly.

01:03:21.660 Yeah. I don't feel like that's doing good works and keeping with repentance. Admitting that you're wrong is repentance.

01:03:26.320 How do you repent without saying like you said, it was a sin that was very public against people.

01:03:32.600 Like it wasn't like, you know, OK, well, I, you know, I cheated on my taxes, you know, you know, 10 years ago.

01:03:38.300 and so like who do i repent to you know you're not going to call up uncle sam

01:03:41.920 you know what i mean like they don't care they don't even they don't even know how to get their

01:03:45.560 computers are from the 70s they probably don't even go back 10 years so it's like so it's like

01:03:49.380 what do you do then well okay so then you don't cheat on your taxes anymore and just keep it to

01:03:53.040 yourself i can understand someone that would want to do that right but when you're actually like

01:03:57.620 there's people here that you borrowed from the table like you need to you need to admit that

01:04:02.980 and i think so and here's another thing too just to add one more wrinkle you know just i know we're

01:04:07.560 wrapping this conversation up. But, you know, if your pastor did this and closed for way too long

01:04:13.200 and you talk to him and, you know, he's not convincing you, right? Like, in other words,

01:04:18.380 you don't know that he's repented. Yes, he's doing the right thing now, but like, there's

01:04:22.820 no indication that he understands what was wrong about it. Like, as a father, you know,

01:04:29.220 you're actually completely within your, this is not tyranny to say, I don't trust this man. And

01:04:34.600 And so I'm going to go find a church where I can trust the pastor because my

01:04:38.600 family has a right to that table. You know what I mean?

01:04:42.240 My family has the right to work, you know,

01:04:44.280 even if you're Baptist and they're not baptized yet,

01:04:46.160 like they have the right to worship with their friends and,

01:04:49.580 and see the, the, the sacraments distributed rightly and,

01:04:53.740 and things like that. Like they have that right. So as a father, you're,

01:04:57.040 this is not about, you know, you know, you know, you're, you're,

01:05:00.300 um, tyrannizing your pastor. No, no, you, you, you have responsibility for your family.

01:05:05.220 That's right. That's right. No, I completely agree. And I just, yeah, I completely agree.

01:05:10.160 And I, you know, I'm thinking back, remember, you know, when, when we closed our doors,

01:05:14.020 I was in California at the time. So there was an added pressure and being a part of, you know,

01:05:17.300 the Soviet state of California. And so, but I, you know, I put out, I remember so, so etched in

01:05:22.720 my mind, I put out, cause I was like, I got to say something, you know, I got to announce that

01:05:26.520 church is closed this sunday and i gotta say why and so i put out a 10 minute video and where i

01:05:32.740 exegeted horrifically romans 13 i said this is why and i talked about how um you know people in

01:05:41.940 america and uh and even christians uh we have a propensity towards being rebellious and so we

01:05:49.480 want to be rebellious against the state you know and it was just i look back now and i'm ashamed

01:05:54.520 of what i said and when we when i realized it took me about two weeks to realize that was wrong

01:05:59.900 took me another two or three weeks to convince a majority of my elders i was never able to

01:06:04.680 convince one of them but a majority of the elders to outvote the the tyrant and then you know and

01:06:10.500 then we started having church again and that like the first sermon that i preached no it was the

01:06:15.680 second sermon actually the second sermon that i preached to the church included a public apology

01:06:22.060 and an explanation of why my previous exegesis of Romans 13 was unbiblical and then providing

01:06:31.080 a new exegesis of Romans 13 and what it actually means with an apology for leading the church

01:06:39.420 astray, for teaching falsely, teaching something that was wrong, and then allowing the fruit of

01:06:46.320 that teaching in my own life to bar them from christ and to cancel the church you know and

01:06:52.360 and my and my point is that i'm just like you say like these guys aren't going to get away with it 0.96

01:07:00.420 but i'm like i don't know man i'm just like i i don't know yeah people are dumb you know like

01:07:07.660 or if people just want you know because i'm like when you know oh man i gotta be careful i've got

01:07:14.900 a lot of optimism here because no yeah yeah you can just go ahead and stop right there no um no

01:07:20.400 i get what you're saying though no i get what you're saying and i have a lot of optimism though

01:07:24.340 because i think that you know as as you know and and this is not i'm not trying to be you know

01:07:29.960 against you know the older generations and stuff like that i i have nothing but respect for the

01:07:34.620 older generations but the thing is that the younger generations are are more into sort of like

01:07:40.480 you know weirdos on youtube like me and you and stuff like that and so they're more willing to

01:07:47.560 hear the non you know big conference speakers than i think some of the older generations are

01:07:52.000 they're more comfortable with that um so i have a lot of optimism in the sense that like like god's

01:07:57.360 going to use you know the internet in a way that's going to be very very powerful and it's going to

01:08:01.780 be very hard to get away with these lies i think a lot of lies are being exposed for what they are

01:08:06.600 these days you know i think you know i think back to the election and like there's some shenanigans

01:08:10.780 going on there whatever you think about how legitimate the shenanigans are there's something

01:08:14.820 going on that no question about it i think they've been doing this for decades but they've been just

01:08:19.780 no one no one had any way to know but now it's like it's just exposed it's just it's hard to

01:08:25.360 hide this stuff now so i have a lot of optimism in that way but i i understand your fear i get it

01:08:29.960 it's, it's, it's not, uh, it's not easy, right. It's not easy to do. Um, but, um, there was

01:08:36.440 something that you said that I wanted to comment on. Oh, um, what you said, by the way, about

01:08:42.180 people in America, you know, having a tendency to rebel, that might be true. That might not be

01:08:47.020 wrong, but, but the, but the truth is though, that in that moment, and I think we all kind of

01:08:51.320 realized this, you know, maybe a month in, you said a couple of weeks, you know, a lot of us

01:08:54.980 about a month in, we're like, there is some rebellion here, but it's not the rebellion we

01:08:59.300 said was going on that's it's actually rebellion against god is what it is that's right that's

01:09:04.340 right yeah no you're right absolutely right so yeah so i guess i don't know in summation i would

01:09:09.360 say that you know if you're if your pastor if your pastor you know shut down for a couple weeks

01:09:15.420 and what that's one thing but if you've had if your pastor shut down his church i'll say it like

01:09:19.860 this if he's shut down his church more than once like reopened and then shut down again oh man yeah

01:09:24.960 Big red flag.

01:09:26.500 If he's shut down for months at a time, not weeks, but months at a time, even in the very beginning, if he has mandated mass, if he is prohibited, even if it's two services, but in one service he's prohibited singing, those are huge red flags.

01:09:44.580 And so my question is, if he's not doing that now, okay, that means he's repented indeed.

01:09:51.260 He's changed his actions.

01:09:52.540 Has he repented in word?

01:09:54.020 Has he ever said to the people he sinned against,

01:09:57.080 namely you, Christian, who is a member in his church,

01:10:00.020 you're the one he sinned against.

01:10:01.420 Has he said to you and your family

01:10:02.960 and the other families in that church that he was wrong?

01:10:06.360 Or did he just change his actions 1.00

01:10:07.840 and count on you being so stupid that you wouldn't notice? 1.00

01:10:12.660 That what he's doing now is different than that. 1.00

01:10:15.380 I know you wanted the last word.

01:10:16.520 Can I jump in one more time?

01:10:17.380 Yeah, of course.

01:10:17.880 Okay, so this is something

01:10:19.660 that you need to watch out for as well.

01:10:20.880 because you what what you're basically saying is and I think what I was saying is that you need to

01:10:26.880 start having some hard conversations with your pastors about all this and what they've done

01:10:34.080 they've preempted this knowing this is coming and they started to write these poor me it's hard to 0.98

01:10:39.400 be a pastor I'm so discouraged articles like a bunch of whining little sissies about how COVID

01:10:45.360 it's just so stressful and like now I gotta deal with this the Atlantic article that I did a six 0.92

01:10:50.660 part series on was just a big whining article. Eric Raymond for the gospel coalition is famous

01:10:55.680 for these kinds of poor me. It's hard to be a pastor articles. And he wrote another one recently.

01:11:00.240 We're so discouraged. And all of that is trying to bind your conscience that you're going to

01:11:05.680 make your pastor's life difficult by asking him these hard and necessary questions.

01:11:10.900 Don't fall for that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure their lives are difficult. Every pastor's life is

01:11:15.860 difficult. Guess what? It's hard. You know, living as a Christian, it's not always easy,

01:11:19.620 Right. We get that. So you don't want to like purposely seek to give your pastor grief, but don't let them trick you in saying you can't ask any questions because otherwise I'm going to be so discouraged.

01:11:32.340 Right. Tough luck. It's hard to be a pastor. And you know what? If you did something that was sinful in this way, like like a lot of us did and not saying you're alone, you're going to have to deal with it.

01:11:41.980 That's part of your job description.

01:11:43.860 And so I want you to watch out for that

01:11:45.860 because a lot of these guys are writing these

01:11:47.400 poor me, it's hard to be a pastor articles.

01:11:50.160 I think trying to avoid the tsunami of conversations

01:11:54.580 that they're facing about,

01:11:55.880 why did you be shut down, by the way?

01:11:57.820 Right.

01:11:58.800 No, you're right.

01:11:59.460 So be nice, but do it.

01:12:01.360 No, you're absolutely right.

01:12:02.760 So Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ.

01:12:05.660 I think the pastor should be the stronger brother,

01:12:08.180 that his conscience is not so puny

01:12:10.040 amen that he can't do anything to the glory of god and and it doesn't just limit him but then he

01:12:15.660 makes that then his conscience his puny conscience he makes that the law of the land and tyrannizes

01:12:21.720 the rest of the church and says nobody else can do anything um and he does it with covid or he

01:12:25.820 does it with alcohol there's a million different ways that the pastor can exercise authority of

01:12:29.260 command when he should be giving counsel um or or not saying anything at all because his conscience

01:12:35.280 is actually just misinformed or you know it's not informed in light of the law of god but rather

01:12:39.760 the traditions of man and all those kinds of things and so if you're a part of a church where

01:12:43.660 you've got a a puny pastor with a puny conscience um but a really a really big mouth right puny

01:12:50.520 conscience but but he but he shouts tyranny and says the church can't do this and the church

01:12:55.640 has to do that and all those kind of things and all in the name of love it'll always be in the

01:12:59.740 name of love loving neighbors and protecting people don't want them to be sick and then like

01:13:03.160 what ad said and then he and then he covers his you know he hedges his bets by saying it's really

01:13:08.160 hard to be a pastor right now. And I really don't know what to do either. If you don't know what to

01:13:12.560 do, then why are you making a decision, a command decision? Canceling your church is a massive

01:13:18.680 decision. I just don't know what to do. So I'm going to bar 150 people from the Lord's table

01:13:24.760 for five months. It sounds like you know exactly what to do. That kind of decision assumes an

01:13:32.180 incredible degree of certainty. You must have a direct line to God. So anyways, that's what we're

01:13:37.540 trying to talk about. And if your pastor is the weaker brother, and that's a biblical phrase,

01:13:41.900 these are biblical terms. If he's the weaker brother, according to Romans chapter 14,

01:13:47.000 and in his weakness of conscience, he is making those commands for everyone else,

01:13:53.040 that constitutes ecclesiastical tyranny. And if you're in a tyrannical church because you are

01:13:59.540 pastored by a weaker brother who is completely comfortable commanding what should be counseled

01:14:05.540 of what isn't even true at all, then yeah, I think like what AD is saying, it's not like your first

01:14:10.840 step is never to show up again, but you need to have some serious conversations. I get emails all

01:14:14.520 the time saying, Joel, this is exactly what I'm going through. And I'll coach them. I'm like,

01:14:19.460 this is how you should reach out to your pastor. And this is how you should do it humbly. Because

01:14:22.460 I am a pastor. And this is how you can be humble. This is how you can ask. And every single person

01:14:27.600 that I've coached through this, and it's been about a dozen, they always email me a few days

01:14:32.440 later saying i had the meeting with the elders um they did not listen to me at all gave gave me

01:14:38.460 no no credence no no hearing they like they you know they heard what i said and immediately

01:14:44.360 pointed the gun on me that i was being harsh or i was being overbearing i was being i was the

01:14:50.820 tyrant that's essentially what it comes out they said i'm a tyrant for being overly dogmatic

01:14:55.420 overly certain right overly this over that and i just want to encourage the christian who's going

01:15:00.420 through that right now, who feels like, you know, that you're living in the upside down world and

01:15:03.720 you're being gaslighted, you're not crazy. Your pastor is wrong. You're not the crazy one. Your

01:15:08.800 pastor is wrong. You go into your pastor and requiring a high degree of proof, right? It's

01:15:16.460 like, who is the burden of proof on? The burden of proof is on the person who's going to shut the

01:15:20.540 doors of the church. That's where the burden of proof is on. The guy who's saying, maybe we should

01:15:25.140 keep them open. The burden of proof is not on you because we have clear biblical commands to gather

01:15:29.260 on the Lord's day. So your pastor is making you think you're crazy. This episode of nothing else 0.94

01:15:35.980 is to help everyone who feels crazy realize you're not crazy. So I feel like AD says that every

01:15:41.480 episode. So it's my turn. I get to say, you're not crazy, right? Don't you end up like every

01:15:44.880 episode? I regularly do. That's right. All right, man. You want to give a last word? Any other

01:15:50.560 thoughts? No, Joel, this is, this has been really good and actually really helpful to me to kind of

01:15:55.520 think through. So I love talking to people because it helps me think through sort of things as well.

01:16:00.260 And I'm glad we ended up on an encouraging note because that's what's so necessary right

01:16:05.340 now.

01:16:06.100 You know, men of God out there, you have your families, you need to take care of your families.

01:16:10.660 God has commanded you to do that.

01:16:12.020 And so just like you don't want your pastor outsourcing his decision-making to CNN, don't

01:16:18.260 necessarily outsource your decision-making to a pastor who's shown himself willing to

01:16:23.340 just disregard the commands of God.

01:16:25.380 I wouldn't do that.

01:16:26.220 And I don't think that anybody should do that.

01:16:28.640 Amen.

01:16:29.260 Thanks, A.D.

01:16:30.800 As a special thank you for your gift of any amount,

01:16:33.440 we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.

01:16:36.660 To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.com slash offer.

01:16:41.500 We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?

01:16:45.140 If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God,

01:16:48.920 this would be a great resource.

01:16:50.900 As a reminder, to get this offer, go to rightresponseministries.com slash offer.

01:16:55.220 And thank you for your generous support.

01:16:59.260 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - January 05, 2022

THEOLOGY APPLIED - An Epidemic Of “Weaker-Brother” Pastors!

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