The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Postmillennialism & Warfare In The Psalms with Shane Heilman

00:00:00.000 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel

00:00:04.060 Webin with Right Response Ministries. In this episode, we're going to be talking about the

00:00:08.960 Psalms. I have Shane Heilman. He is the leader and founder of the Psalms Project, taking all

00:00:14.680 of the 150 Psalms and putting them to music, keeping to the integrity of the structure,

00:00:21.980 of course, the lyrics, the words of each of these Psalms inspired by the Holy Spirit.

00:00:27.040 He's gotten through the first 46 psalms now, and by God's grace, he hopes to finish all 150.

00:00:33.860 So we talk about this project.

00:00:35.520 We talk about the importance of Christians singing not just hymns, not just good modern

00:00:41.160 day worship, but singing psalms.

00:00:43.860 Psalms shape us.

00:00:45.440 One of the reasons why a lot of Christians are offended with strong, seemingly harsh

00:00:50.340 preaching is because they don't know the psalms.

00:00:52.520 If they knew the Psalms, they would probably think that guys like John MacArthur and Votie

00:00:56.900 Bauckham, that their preaching was actually a little soft, maybe could use a little bit

00:01:01.940 more strength, a little bit more calling sin, calling it out fast and hard, blatantly as

00:01:09.300 it really is.

00:01:10.040 So all that being said, we talk about Psalms discipling us, shaping us.

00:01:14.540 We talk about imprecatory Psalms, crying out for God to bring vengeance on the enemies

00:01:20.880 of his people.

00:01:21.560 And we also talk, lastly, about how the Psalms shaped Shane personally in regards to his eschatology,

00:01:28.840 how the Psalms have just really just confirmed a post-millennial hopeful eschatology,

00:01:36.720 an eschatology of victory. All that and more. Stay tuned.

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00:04:57.000 This is Theology Applied.

00:05:03.280 Hi, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:05:06.120 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:05:09.080 And in this particular episode, I'm privileged to have as a special guest, Shane Heilman.

00:05:13.980 I think I'm pronouncing your last name right. Is that correct?

00:05:16.860 That is correct.

00:05:18.260 Great. Shane Heilman is the leader and founder of the Psalm Project.

00:05:23.720 Is that the name of your project?

00:05:25.460 The Psalms Project.

00:05:27.000 yeah this this one's plural there's a singular one out there so we don't want to confuse ourselves

00:05:31.600 with them so great and you've got a a youtube channel and what what are all the various

00:05:36.740 platforms where people can find what you're doing yeah people can really find us on pretty much any

00:05:42.180 platform online where you listen to music spotify apple music amazon music pretty much all of them

00:05:47.800 great all right well let's go ahead and just dive right into it i want to talk a little bit about

00:05:52.320 eschatology and how you've kind of adopted the post-mill take throughout your journey through

00:05:57.900 the Psalms. We can get there in a moment. But first, what made you want to start putting the

00:06:03.320 Psalms to music? And tell us a little bit about the project and what you're doing.

00:06:08.120 Sure. Yeah. Well, the idea came to me. I was on a mission trip somewhere in South Dakota. I live

00:06:15.260 in South Dakota, by the way, here in Rapid City. And I was on a mission trip on the Rosebud Indian

00:06:20.360 reservation back in like 2006. And I was a worship leader at the time, kind of more like a fill-in

00:06:26.300 worship leader at the church I was attending. So I would like, you know, lead worship now and then,

00:06:30.440 but had about 10 years experience worship leading at that point. And suddenly I was just spending

00:06:37.200 some time with the Lord, reading my Bible and reading Psalm 1, I think it was, and just suddenly

00:06:43.580 had this idea that you know what someone should put entire psalms to music to modern music in a

00:06:52.200 way that's you know modern and artistic and that really you know tells the entire story of the

00:06:58.660 entire psalm with music because you know of course i was aware that putting the psalms to music

00:07:04.460 wasn't in any way a new idea you know it's been done for centuries christians have been putting

00:07:08.620 the psalms to music and of course as most people know they used to be songs they were intended to

00:07:13.520 be songs. And I think I was at a point in my worship leading where I was starting to just

00:07:20.040 hunger for more of the word of God in worship. Because of course, I saw even back then in 2006,

00:07:26.740 just kind of some of the watered down nature of a lot of modern worship songs.

00:07:30.980 And every time I really saw some more just impact in the congregation, just felt the weight

00:07:37.220 of God's presence was when we read the word. I would just read Psalms out loud to the congregation.

00:07:44.480 People are like, wow, that was so deep. That was so good. I'm like, yeah, I'm just reading the

00:07:49.400 word of God. And to the point where I was like, you know what, what if we sang it? What if we

00:07:53.720 sang Psalms in worship? And I was thinking, well, of course, people have done lots of hymnals.

00:07:58.380 There's lots of hymnals that sing the Psalms, which I think are wonderful. I think as many

00:08:04.100 psalms hymns as we can, or as many psalm versions as hymns as we can have, we should have. I think

00:08:09.280 that's a really valuable resource, but I want to do something different. I really wanted to,

00:08:13.940 you know, kind of not contain the psalms just to a melody that repeats and repeats and repeats,

00:08:21.020 no matter what's happening in the psalm, but have the psalm, the song move into different

00:08:25.940 movements depending on what's happening in the psalm. You know, when David starts talking about,

00:08:29.640 you know this aspect well let's change the music here let's change the melody let's change the

00:08:34.300 mood let's use all the instruments that we have at our disposal and so that was kind of the idea

00:08:39.560 i got was what if we put entire psalms to modern music like and i i would call the style we do like

00:08:45.380 modern alt rock pop slash folk you know kind of like um that kind of style um what if we did that

00:08:52.220 so that one so it kind of sounds a lot like i hesitate to say this but it might sound something

00:08:58.540 like, you know, um, you know, a Hill song or a Chris Tomlin might do, but then you hear the

00:09:03.580 lyrics and it's like, wow, this is different. You know what I mean? This is, this hits a little

00:09:07.040 harder. This is a little saucier than what I was expecting to hear. So we want to do that modern

00:09:11.300 arrangement to have that modern appeal with the music, but again, just entire Psalms. So I didn't

00:09:16.760 want to censor the Psalms. I didn't want to edit the Psalms. I didn't want to water down the Psalms.

00:09:21.300 Let's just sing it and let the word of God speak. And let's put the aid of music behind it

00:09:26.180 almost as a teaching aid because music can be a powerful teaching tool to help us remember to

00:09:31.040 help us experience the text so this idea was forming my mind i thought this could be really

00:09:36.260 cool but then i realized really quick that this is going to be really really hard you know because

00:09:40.780 there's a reason why no one's probably done it this way because you know you run into hebrew

00:09:45.220 idioms and you run into cultural things and like how do i how do i depict this in a way you know

00:09:50.680 what translation do you use do you go word for word so i was kind of wrestling through these

00:09:54.960 things. But that was generally the idea is artistic arrangements, full arrangements,

00:10:00.880 you know, orchestral rock arrangements, beautiful piano arrangements, putting the Psalms to music

00:10:06.160 in a way that actually reflected what's going on in the text. So that was the original idea.

00:10:11.600 And so I just started writing them. And here I am 15 years later, this is what I do for a living

00:10:18.640 now. And by God's grace, we have tens of thousands of listeners. I'm not sure how many listeners

00:10:23.840 exactly, but probably in the hundreds of thousands of listeners worldwide.

00:10:28.340 Wow. So what are the main use of the Psalms? People who are listening, are they listening

00:10:32.800 just in their private pleasure, their private worship or quiet time, or are they being used

00:10:40.740 by churches and corporate worship? How are the Psalms being used?

00:10:45.180 Yeah, I'd say my vision in the beginning was mostly for people for just listening enjoyment,

00:10:49.960 You know, to listen casually while they were, you know, going about their day, you know, doing the dishes, you know, running, working out, just a way to just fill their lives with the word of God, you know, to listen to it, you know, while you're on the way and while you're doing this and while you're doing that.

00:11:05.520 Um, I also, uh, it also does, uh, some of the Psalms do get used in churches.

00:11:11.600 I do get, um, I do get checks from CCLI.

00:11:14.420 So someone out there is using them in worship.

00:11:16.600 Um, and again, when you're doing entire Psalms, I mean, some of them do get quite long, um,

00:11:21.460 and structurally they can become really interesting because if you're not trying to hold to a

00:11:26.320 strict, you know, verse chorus structure, or if you're not trying to hold to a strict,

00:11:30.420 you know, hymnal type structure where every verse is the same melody, regardless of what's

00:11:35.920 happening in the text, uh, then they aren't quite as congregationally friendly, but there

00:11:40.820 are quite a few that we've written and recorded that are congregationally friendly. Uh, so they

00:11:46.520 do get sung in quite a few churches around the country. Um, and I do get, I get emails all the

00:11:51.460 time. People saying, Hey, can we, can we play your lyric videos in our service? Cause we don't have

00:11:55.900 a band or can we play the songs in worship? And people ask, you know, for the chord sheets and

00:12:01.540 all those things all the time. So I know they're being played out there, but you know, we're not

00:12:05.420 as, we're not as big as, as Hillsong and Bethel yet. So. Right. We'll see. So talk a little bit

00:12:14.040 about the way that putting the Psalms to music has shaped you theologically. We can talk about

00:12:18.520 eschatology, but it doesn't only have to be eschatology. I think about just even precatory

00:12:23.480 Psalms. Have you gotten to any of those particular Psalms in terms of breaking the teeth of the

00:12:31.920 wicked, pulling out their fangs like young lions? Have you gotten to some of those?

00:12:37.940 Oh, yeah. I mean, you realize when you go through the Psalms, when you realize when you write a

00:12:42.480 song, when you put an entire Psalm to music and don't edit or censor it, I mean, it's in almost

00:12:49.520 all of them. There's a lot of Psalms where it has that imprecatory language. So it's something I had

00:12:54.820 to get comfortable with and kind of reconcile pretty quickly along with the Psalms. So I think,

00:13:02.580 yeah, I'll start with the imprecatory Psalms because you kind of touched on several things

00:13:06.340 there. And I could probably talk for an hour about how the Psalms have shaped my theology. But

00:13:10.680 starting with the imprecatory part, of course, you run to these passages over and over again.

00:13:15.580 And the first thing you have to think of is, well, is this, you know, is this really God's word or is this, you know, is this something that, okay, Jesus did away with this and we really don't think this way anymore.

00:13:27.360 And the more I studied, because I do study the Psalms intently, I am a, I don't know what you call it, a psalmophile, I don't know.

00:13:35.120 But I do study them in several commentaries before I put them to music because we want to make sure that I'm understanding, you know, the entire context.

00:13:42.240 You know, what David's talking about here, kind of where he's going throughout the psalm, also the background of the psalm, because I think it's 14 of the psalms actually tell us exactly what was happening in David's life when he wrote that psalm, which is very instructional for seeing how David responded to particular situations.

00:14:01.760 So as I was studying the Psalms, one thing I just ran into over and over again was that the imprecatory Psalms are, you know, they're obviously quoted in the New Testament.

00:14:13.660 Like you think of like the most, you know, the most, some of the most would be considered the most vicious of the imprecatory Psalms, like Psalm 109 or Psalm 69 or some of these that really are difficult.

00:14:26.100 I mean, quoted in the New Testament, first of all.

00:14:28.740 So second of all, one thing I also noticed is that in some of these imprecatory Psalms, like in Psalm 35 or in Psalm 109, David actually loves and prays for his enemies in the same Psalm.

00:14:42.300 So like, that's interesting, right?

00:14:43.840 Because in Psalm 35, he says, you know, I wept and fasted for him like I would grieve for my own mother.

00:14:51.060 You know, he's talking about his enemies, how he would love his enemies.

00:14:55.100 So I was starting to see that these really don't collide with Jesus' command to love our enemies.

00:15:00.680 We actually see that example in David in the Psalms at the same time he's asking for justice to come upon his enemies.

00:15:08.040 So the way I've thought it through is kind of like this, and maybe you can also answer and see if I'm on track with this.

00:15:14.020 But in David's time especially, there has to be a mechanism for justice, right?

00:15:20.000 There has to be a check in an evil society on evil or else the whole thing just turns black.

00:15:26.220 And, you know, in David's time, you know, he can't just he can't just call the cops.

00:15:29.540 You know, he can't just, you know, call upon, you know, some authorities to arrest these evil people.

00:15:35.920 I mean, David kind of is, you know, that authority, first of all.

00:15:39.900 And he really has no other recourse than to ask God to intervene in these situations.

00:15:44.540 So it's really, I see David calling for justice because we have that same sensibility, right? When we see evil happening, there's a deep desire in us as humans to see justice done, whether that's going to prison, whether that's the death penalty.

00:16:00.680 people want to see justice happen when they've been deeply wronged. I say it this way, everybody's

00:16:07.800 against the imprecatory Psalms until somebody shoots up a school. Then we're fine with justice

00:16:14.140 coming upon the shooter, right? So everyone agrees with them. I think we're just so insulated in our

00:16:19.320 Western society that we've never been in a situation like David's where the only recourse

00:16:24.620 keeping us alive is God's mortal judgment on an enemy. So think about it in those terms,

00:16:30.280 helped me realize this is not at all incompatible with the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament

00:16:35.000 quotes them. We see passages in the New Testament, like in Revelation, where the saints are calling

00:16:40.380 out for judgment upon their enemies and upon the people who have persecuted them. There's a straight

00:16:46.380 line through the Old and New Testament of this, we can love our enemies while still desiring justice

00:16:52.940 to be done on them at the same time. And I just realized there's no contradiction there. So,

00:16:58.280 But yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how far off track I am there.

00:17:02.240 No, no, no. That's great, Shane. That's really helpful.

00:17:04.240 I think understanding, well, just understanding the difference between vengeance and justice and, you know, man's vengeance versus God's justice or God's vengeance, you know, that vengeance is mine, says the Lord.

00:17:17.060 And so, yeah, when, you know, it's the same as, well, no, I was going to give an illustration of discipline in the home with children, but it's different than that.

00:17:25.520 Because a lot of what we're doing in the home is, you know, disciplining a child is not punitive, but it's to shape and form and instruct them, develop them.

00:17:37.560 But yeah, with a criminal, wanting a criminal to come to justice is not at odds with loving them.

00:17:45.740 And a lot of it has to do with our definition of love, you know, and I can't remember which theologian it was,

00:17:51.900 but somebody defined love, and I'll get close, this won't be verbatim, but they said that it was seeking the highest good of the person that you're loving in tangible, practical ways.

00:18:07.080 And so, you know, love that's like 1 John talks about, or James talks about, or Matthew, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, love that's tangible, it's physical,

00:18:15.740 It doesn't just say, you know, go and be well fed and warm and clothed, but it actually does those things.

00:18:22.360 Jesus says, you know, whatever you've done for the least of these, my brothers, you've done for me, visiting in prison, clothing the naked.

00:18:30.100 And, you know, the key phrase there is whatever you've done for the least of these, my brothers.

00:18:34.500 It's not just whoever society or culture deems as being marginalized at any given time.

00:18:40.740 But my brother's, you know, visiting someone in prison, what Jesus is getting at is visiting a Christian, a brother in Christ, who's been wrongfully imprisoned, namely because they've preached Christ and have come underneath persecution for that.

00:18:57.260 So visiting the brother in Christ who's wrongfully imprisoned and clothing the brother in Christ who's naked, not because he won't work, because Jesus doesn't contradict other portions of scripture.

00:19:08.160 you know so where paul says if a man's not willing to work let him not eat um so you know we're

00:19:14.800 talking about um we're talking about people who are persecuted someone who's naked somebody who's

00:19:19.920 thirsty someone who's hungry someone who's imprisoned um and all of this uh would be

00:19:25.080 through the language of oppression um that it would be they're unjustly naked and hungry and

00:19:32.040 those kinds of things not just because they're lazy so jesus isn't advocating for social welfare

00:19:38.020 he's not you know he's not a socialist he's not a communist but he's saying that we should love

00:19:43.960 our brothers in Christ fellow brothers in Christ who are being mistreated so all that being said

00:19:49.440 love is tangible love is physical love is practical it's not just well-wishing it's not

00:19:54.660 just theoretical spiritual saying kind things but it's a willingness to actually lay down our lives

00:20:00.860 and to take physical action for the welfare of that individual but then you know going back to

00:20:05.540 that definition of the theologian who's defining biblical love, he said, you know, it's tangible,

00:20:11.520 practical, physical, literal love, but it's all with the aim of seeking the highest good

00:20:18.460 of the individual. And so, you know, in that sense of highest good, we're talking about eternal good.

00:20:25.060 And in terms of eternal good, God's justice is good. It's good for those who have been wronged.

00:20:32.900 most of God's justice that we see in the Old Testament is forms of restitution. So if somebody

00:20:39.680 committed theft, it was ultimately justice was making the wronged person whole. So double

00:20:47.480 restitution, or it depends in degrees of theft and what particularly took place, but it's

00:20:52.700 making the person whole. Somebody lost something wrongfully, it's now being restored. In cases of

00:20:59.180 capital punishment, restitution is impossible in this life. Christ will make us whole in the life

00:21:06.400 to come. He'll wipe away every tear. But in this life, when a loved one is murdered, when a life

00:21:13.120 is taken, the reason why capital punishment is the biblical position that we see in the Noahic

00:21:19.240 covenant, Noah, you know, with Genesis chapter nine, and we see that multiple places throughout

00:21:25.700 scripture. But the reason why that's right is not because the criminal being executed actually

00:21:30.840 makes the bereaved family whole. There's no way to make them whole. You can't bring that person

00:21:37.180 back from death. But I think it was Gary North who said that in capital punishment, what you're

00:21:43.660 looking at is there are certain crimes where it's impossible in this life to make them whole.

00:21:48.560 Therefore, we need to, with a sense of urgency, transition the criminal to a higher court.

00:21:55.700 bow. Absolutely. We kill them and we send them to God, um, for his judgment. And so all that being

00:22:01.720 said, but my point is just to say that it's all for the highest good of, you know, so it's making,

00:22:06.000 uh, the oppressed family that has suffered injustice whole. Um, but it's also for the

00:22:11.900 good of the criminal. There, there have been many who have come to Christ by God's grace on death

00:22:16.800 row. There have been many, um, with, you know, uh, going to the gallows, you know, like many

00:22:22.380 throughout church history that um that justice god's justice is the the law is a tutor and so

00:22:29.380 when penalties are waived we think that oh this is kindness this is mercy this is love it gets

00:22:34.540 conflated um but but really what what we often are doing is uh when we get rid of when we're

00:22:41.760 antinomian and get rid of certain penalties in our culture um we are discipling people that the

00:22:48.160 government, Romans 13, they are God's agents, God's avengers. So they're bringing God's justice

00:22:56.860 and they're meant to do that. They're called God's deacon, his servant, avengers. They don't

00:23:03.160 bear the sword for no reason. And so they're bringing God's wrath upon the evildoer. And when

00:23:08.900 they don't, what it says to a society, the presence of good laws and just equal penalties,

00:23:15.500 weights and measures, proportional justice, swift justice, impartial, blind justice.

00:23:23.040 When that's done well, it disciples a culture, society, and it says, this is God's law,

00:23:30.180 and this is who God is. And it helps somebody have, it doesn't save someone, but what it does

00:23:37.140 is it helps someone feel a proper sense of guilt, which can then, with the work of the Holy Spirit,

00:23:43.080 drive them to a savior, drive them to Christ. But when laws are, when a culture is lawless,

00:23:50.160 when justice is perverted and ripped back, not only those victims who injustice is perpetrated

00:23:58.960 against, not only do they suffer, but even the criminal themselves is actually being perversely

00:24:05.420 discipled by the God's, what are supposed to be God's deacons, the civil magistrate.

00:24:11.280 they're now perversely discipling a culture in a society, telling them something that's a lie about

00:24:17.700 who God is. This is not a law because it's not God's law, because it's not who God is. And what

00:24:23.960 it does is it actually removes a sense of moral culpability and guilt and conviction, and therefore

00:24:31.000 it removes their sense of need for Christ. Spurgeon said a person cannot appreciate the beauty of

00:24:38.080 Christ unless they first come to see the necessity for Christ. When you remove law from society,

00:24:44.220 you're removing justice. And when you remove justice and law and penalties for crimes,

00:24:49.280 you are removing the necessity for Christ. And therefore you are obliterating any opportunity

00:24:55.200 to see the beauty of Christ. And so back to that definition of highest good, you're actually not,

00:25:01.520 not only is is that not at odds with love but to do anything otherwise uh otherwise other than

00:25:08.140 justice um is the antithesis of love if we're defining love in an eternal highest good sense

00:25:15.000 because we're ultimately um we're damning people so it's loving to the criminal it's loving to the

00:25:20.980 family that was wronged it's loving you know all across the board so we can love our enemies pray

00:25:25.920 for their salvation pray for conviction of the holy spirit pray that god would save them by the

00:25:30.780 power of the gospel, and pray that they, if they're at large, that they would be captured.

00:25:35.440 If it's a capital crime, that they would be executed. And none of those things are at odds.

00:25:42.480 Yeah, actually, what you're saying about the law, you know, being a teacher and God's judgment,

00:25:47.160 being a teacher to the rest of society, it's interesting. David says something very similar

00:25:51.240 to that in Psalm 59. That was the last Psalm I just wrote was Psalm 59. And there's a really

00:25:56.860 unique prayer in Psalm 59, where David actually says, okay, God, do not kill my enemies. Because

00:26:04.500 then people, he essentially says, then my people will forget the judgment. So he's basically

00:26:10.660 actually asking God to make the judgment more drawn out for an instructional purpose on the

00:26:16.620 people. So people will look at this and see, this is not the way to go. You know, this is not the

00:26:21.700 way to a prosperous society. So he actually asked for a certain kind of judgment that will be

00:26:26.920 instructive on the people. And that's another thing I love about Psalms.

00:26:31.520 But damning, what you're describing would be, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't have

00:26:36.040 Psalm 59 right in front of me, but what I'm assuming is that it would be that God is allowing

00:26:42.640 wicked people to do wicked, unjust things, because not a judgment to the wicked, but he's using the

00:26:49.040 wicked as his rod and a judgment towards the righteous that are currently in sin against him,

00:26:54.460 right? And so David's saying, as much as I want the wicked to come to justice, I recognize that

00:26:59.300 this is your discipline on your people corporately, collectively, in general. You're utilizing this

00:27:07.380 rod of the wicked, just like God would use the Assyrians to punish Israel, you know, or Egypt. 0.97

00:27:12.920 And on one hand, it's like God bring the Assyrians to justice. And eventually he did when the 0.90

00:27:17.360 fullness of their, their iniquity, you know, when, when their iniquity was full, uh, God brought his

00:27:22.500 wrath, um, upon those, those nations. Um, but in the meantime, it's like on the one hand, yes,

00:27:28.320 I want justice to come to the wicked, but I also see that in your providence, in your sovereign

00:27:34.320 will, um, not just your moral will, but in the sovereign will of God, uh, you are using, uh,

00:27:40.380 the wicked as your instrument, as your tool, uh, to judge the righteous who are currently in

00:27:46.220 apostasy currently uh being faithless and so so in that i feel that i'll just say this real quick

00:27:52.960 and then right back to you but i feel that as an american citizen i feel like on the one hand

00:27:57.620 um when i think of nancy pelosi and joe biden um chuck schumer break their teeth oh god i pray that

00:28:06.120 god would break their teeth or as other psalms say that he would take the heads of their babies

00:28:09.820 and bash them upon the rocks and that's scripture and i feel that and i pray that and in the same 0.60

00:28:16.040 breath, I also pray God do whatever it takes to bring our nation to repentance because I'm not

00:28:24.400 interested in a mere conservative political resurgence where we get back to the good old

00:28:29.960 days of the 1980s with more conservative economic policies and blah, blah. No, thank you. That's

00:28:37.420 what got us here. It'll just be a moment. That's just a slower walk to hell. I'm not interested

00:28:42.840 in the nation just walking a little bit slower to the pits of hell. I don't want a mere

00:28:48.920 conservative resurgence. I want a distinctly Christian reformation and revival. And one of

00:28:56.060 the ways that God may see fit to bring that about, God is at his disposal to use multiple different

00:29:01.580 providences and tools. But one of the ways that God may bring about revival in our nation, if he

00:29:07.840 chooses to bring it about at all, um, is through immense suffering and persecution and evil

00:29:14.900 actually getting worse before it gets better. And us coming to our senses, like the prodigal son,

00:29:20.380 I always think one of the, the, the worst things that could have happened to him when it says he

00:29:24.300 was in a far off distant land, a famine came to the land. He was starving. He was hungry. He got a,

00:29:29.480 a, you know, deadbeat job feeding pigs. Uh, and he was looking at the pods that were used to feed

00:29:35.840 the pigs and and the pods look pig food started looking good to him and the text goes on it says

00:29:41.480 and no one gave him anything and then the very next words in the text are and he came to his

00:29:48.080 senses one of the things that inhibits estranged apostatized sons of god who are are the righteous

00:29:57.620 in one category but currently apostatizing in another currently underneath god's fatherly

00:30:03.820 displeasure, um, that need, need to repent. One of the things that inhibits, um, repentance is,

00:30:11.560 uh, is handouts. Um, one of the things that inhibits repentance is sparing the rod. And

00:30:17.360 God says that even to human fathers, that he who spares the rod hates, hates his son. It's not

00:30:23.240 loving to spare the rod. It's actually hatred to spare the rod. So God in one breath, so we can

00:30:28.440 pray that I think, and none of this is contradicting. We can, we can pray that in God's moral will,

00:30:32.900 that he would bring justice and that it would be as swift as he sees as he sees fit justice to the

00:30:41.060 wicked and and then and break their teeth and and yet we can also pray in the same breath but God in

00:30:48.260 your sovereign will you do all things well you're infinitely wise we pray that you would bring

00:30:54.540 justice to the wicked in your moral will and yet not not in a way that would contradict your

00:31:01.020 sovereign will as you undoubtedly are using the wicked as an instrument in your providence

00:31:07.660 for bringing the righteous to their knees so that we so that we're not content with mere

00:31:14.680 conservative resurgences but we are forced to cry out for a Christian revival and to actually not

00:31:23.560 just turn back to republicanism but actually turn back to a person not just principles but a person

00:31:30.760 whose name is Jesus, and that we would call upon him by name. And persecution is one of the ways

00:31:36.500 that God produces that kind of repentance that leads towards a much deeper healing, right? Not

00:31:42.460 just the false prophets, you've healed the wounds of my people lightly, but saying peace, peace,

00:31:47.920 when there is no peace, but a deep, profound healing of our nation and a healing of the church.

00:31:54.200 And judgment begins with the house of God. So we have all this scripture and all that to be able

00:31:58.980 to say that both things are true. It's not one or the other. Both things are true. Bring justice to

00:32:05.460 the wicked. They really are wicked. They kill babies. They mutilate children, you know,

00:32:11.360 chemically castrating boys. I mean, they're wicked, wicked, wicked people. And yet in the 0.99

00:32:17.440 very same breath, we got here in large part because of the church's abdicating of its

00:32:23.540 responsibility it's prophetic role because of cowardice because of gluttony because of

00:32:29.260 complacency because of greed because of all that you know the the fear of man if nothing else and

00:32:36.560 and that and we need the the loving heart albeit but loving discipline of our father

00:32:44.100 to to bring us back to him and so yeah all those things can be true absolutely yeah and um yeah

00:32:51.820 I actually hadn't thought about that with Psalm 59, that it very well could be that David's asking for this specific kind of judgment on his enemies to be just that, to kind of, you know, let them hang around longer for the, perhaps the discipline of his people.

00:33:04.980 um in the text the way i the way i took it was that it was more so like let their let their

00:33:11.880 instead of just killing them right away let their decline be be more slow and dramatic

00:33:17.380 so that you know there's more of a so it's more of like an illustrative like look what happens

00:33:23.020 when you you cross the line um so that may absolutely be true of that particular song

00:33:28.920 everything i said in principle is true but it may not be true like i said of psalm 39 but but what

00:33:34.340 you're saying in principle is also true if not in psalm 59 which i would have to look at it's

00:33:38.720 certainly true of pharaoh right it says for this purpose i raised him up romans 9 commentating on

00:33:44.220 you know on the exodus but you think of pharaoh and it's like the typical guy i mean it's like

00:33:51.160 one two maybe three plagues and you're gonna tap right i'm gonna tap out that's like an arm bar

00:33:56.560 or rear naked choke you know like uh you know like three different you know submission moves

00:34:01.640 all at once. It's like your arm's broken, your face is pummeled. It's like, yeah, you tap.

00:34:06.680 It was a supernatural sovereign hardening of Pharaoh's heart that caused him to not submit.

00:34:14.220 And why? Paul says, like, I've raised him up so that my power might be displayed. Like God wanted

00:34:20.840 to show off to his people how he didn't want to just show his people that he was powerful enough

00:34:25.440 to do three plagues. He wanted to show him 10 plus the parting of the Red Sea. And, and God,

00:34:31.160 this is the funny thing when, when you're an infinitely powerful being and you want to show

00:34:35.860 off your infinite power to your people against your enemies, but you're infinitely powerful,

00:34:42.020 then you have to use some of your own infinite power to prop up your puny enemies just so you

00:34:47.580 can show them the right and the left. Cause otherwise they're just going to go down with

00:34:51.400 the right and you'll never get it to show off that left hook. So, so all that means that that

00:34:55.200 could absolutely be, you know, Psalm 59, but that's certainly a biblical principle that we

00:34:58.560 find elsewhere. If, if nowhere else, Egypt and Pharaoh, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And

00:35:03.640 yeah, that's one thing I didn't even mention about the imprecatory Psalms. And yeah, I feel like we

00:35:07.740 could talk like for four hours, just about the imprecatory Psalms, you know, and just how

00:35:11.340 interesting that theology is. But one thing I love about the Psalms is that David is not taking

00:35:18.760 justice into his own, you know, human, frail, imperfect hands. He is calling on God's perfect,

00:35:24.860 holy justice. And he's really relying on that. We see that the way he dealt with Saul, right?

00:35:30.580 He could have taken that into his own hands several times, but he leaves it to God. He leaves

00:35:34.200 it to God, which, you know, again, I would argue is a far more righteous ethic than what we see

00:35:40.940 typically from man, which is typically, you know, vindictiveness. And we see, you know, like I said,

00:35:46.420 petty revenge. So the Psalms don't show us a petty revenge. The Psalms show us a really profound

00:35:53.180 trust in the sovereignty of God in the face of evil that most of us probably haven't even

00:35:59.560 encountered face-to-face. Absolutely. Well, let's go ahead and continue now and let's talk a little

00:36:06.260 bit about what I mentioned earlier, your eschological development with the Psalms. I think

00:36:12.980 you told me offline as we were preparing a little bit for this interview that, um, that you've

00:36:18.400 embraced post-millennial eschatology and that the Psalms were a part of, of, um, of influencing you

00:36:25.960 in that direction. Can you share that with us? Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, for a long period of

00:36:31.860 my Christian journey, I probably would have called myself a pan-millennialist, uh, didn't

00:36:37.420 really study eschatology a whole lot until maybe about four or five years ago. It was kind of

00:36:42.240 always on my, it was kind of always on deck for me. Like, yeah, I'll get to eschatology someday.

00:36:46.880 You know what I mean? But, um, basically, you know, Jesus is coming back. We got to be ready.

00:36:51.000 Like who cares about the details was kind of my viewpoint. And I think that really changed. I was

00:36:56.860 actually, uh, mowing my lawn back in like, I don't know, 2018, 2017. Cause I was listening to a Jeff

00:37:02.440 Durbin sermon. I can't remember how I started to listen to Jeff Durbin, but, and he started talking

00:37:07.260 about the uh jesus coming in judgment and he started talking about how that was him coming

00:37:12.980 in judgment on jerusalem in 80 70 so he was talking about matthew 24 as being passed and i

00:37:19.260 was like what is he talking about like i've never heard anything like this before and i'd always

00:37:24.620 been troubled by that verse in matthew 24 matthew 24 34 um uh this generation shall not pass away

00:37:31.840 till all these things take place and you know c.s lewis calls it the most embarrassing verse in the

00:37:36.740 bible and i had never heard a good explanation for it ever whenever i came across that verse

00:37:41.580 you know i would look at a commentary and i actually actually realized i had a schofield

00:37:46.300 bible i actually bought one at some point not really knowing what it eschatologically meant

00:37:50.080 but you know i'd look at that it would say you know what's talking about the jewish race or

00:37:53.840 whatever and just all of these explanations just they just did not work they did not work

00:37:58.540 and so when i heard that it kind of sent me into this like research uh mode where i was like okay

00:38:03.980 Hey, I got to investigate this view because I don't think Jeff Durbin's a heretic, but maybe he is.

00:38:09.100 So let's investigate this and see where it goes.

00:38:11.500 And that led to me listening to, you know, Ken Gentry and started listening to Gary DeMar.

00:38:17.540 And then I read his book, Last Day's Madness.

00:38:21.300 I'm not sure what to think of the current Gary DeMar situation, so I just won't comment on that.

00:38:25.720 But I read Last Day's Madness, and that was the book that really helped me to see that, actually,

00:38:32.480 I think this is the most eschatologically sound or the most exegetically, I should say,

00:38:37.800 sound position I've ever read. Because as I've gone through my Christian life, I was raised

00:38:42.760 Catholic and then became a Christian at 17 and kind of started my journey there, just learning

00:38:49.680 almost from scratch, I guess I could say. And so whenever I came across an issue like baptism or

00:38:55.460 eschatology, what I would discover, or Calvinism even, what I would discover is, okay, here's

00:39:01.980 these two positions and what i kind of tended to see and of course you know some people get mad at

00:39:07.340 me for this but it always seemed like one position was very exegetically precise or exegetically um

00:39:15.440 i guess exegetically grounded you know i guess and the other one always seemed to have a lot of

00:39:19.540 emotion involved like for example the calvinist arminian thing i could not win an argument against

00:39:25.020 the calvinists i just couldn't um exegetically i couldn't i couldn't get around it and i watched

00:39:31.320 the armenians argue and it was it was honestly it was a lot more you know emotion and philosophy

00:39:37.320 than it was exegesis so that kind of rang off my alarm bells and i was like okay this is probably

00:39:42.960 the one and so whenever i come across these issues i always say okay which one which debater argues

00:39:48.220 exegetically and which one argues you know with a lot more you know emotion and a lot more you know

00:39:54.420 of that kind of thing and even the same thing in baptism i'm going to make presbyterians mad here

00:39:58.280 But I actually went to a – I watched a course on covenant theology with Ligon Duncan, started getting to covenant theology.

00:40:06.020 And then he got to the point where he was going to teach on infant baptism.

00:40:10.180 And at that point, I was kind of open to it.

00:40:12.040 I was like, okay, convince me.

00:40:13.260 If that's the position, I'll listen.

00:40:15.740 And then I heard the lesson, and I was like, ah, it's not convincing.

00:40:19.780 So then I watched debates with James White and Greg Strawbridge.

00:40:24.500 And I watched the debate with Sproul.

00:40:27.260 And I also watched his James White's debate with the other gentleman.

00:40:30.660 I can't remember his name right now.

00:40:32.080 And then Sproul and MacArthur. 0.69

00:40:33.880 And watching all three, I was like, the Baptists seem to be really clinging to exegesis here. 0.74

00:40:39.740 And a lot of what I heard from the infant baptism argument was, you know, like, well, how can you call your kids Christians?

00:40:46.180 And how can they say Jesus loves you?

00:40:48.000 And it was a lot more like kind of like almost like kind of almost emotional argumentation.

00:40:53.440 So I was kind of like, yeah, I'm kind of sticking with the Baptist side.

00:40:56.400 Sorry, guys.

00:40:57.260 That kind of came up also a little bit with, I don't know if you saw, but on the Canon app,

00:41:02.340 which is a fantastic product for anybody who doesn't have it, the Canon Plus app,

00:41:07.000 lots of material, $7.99 a month. It's a good deal. It's better than Netflix. It's not just,

00:41:13.220 oh, they do good work, they're Christians, and so it's worthy of support. It actually,

00:41:17.240 the value, not only are you supporting something that's Christian and a ministry, but

00:41:21.480 the value is better than just about any streaming device that I've come across.

00:41:26.660 So anyways, that's my plug for them. They don't pay me, but it's true. So I'll, I'll give them the credit that they deserve on that app. There was a debate on pedo baptism, which, you know, it was, you can't debate pedo baptism, you know, or I'm sorry, pedo communionism. And you can't debate that without pedo baptism. So, you know, the two things both got addressed, but it was an informal charitable, you know, kind of debate between Wilson and James White.

00:41:53.980 But even Wilson, who I love and who I think handles the scripture very, very well, one of his strongest arguments was, you know, it was not exegesis, but it was a story, you know, of his grandson and feeling included when he first got to take the Lord's Supper and tapping his head, you know, and tapping his, you know, his family members' heads and saying, we're all part of the same community.

00:42:16.300 And James, you know, his personality, he just, Dr. White just wouldn't, you know, as sweet

00:42:21.160 of a story as it is.

00:42:22.180 And you could like tell like the audience was like, yeah, this is awesome.

00:42:25.940 And, you know, James White is outnumbered because he's in Moscow doing this.

00:42:29.820 And, but he just wouldn't, he wouldn't give an inch.

00:42:33.580 He was like, yeah, sorry, sweet story.

00:42:37.760 You know, and then he just begins to dismantle it.

00:42:40.620 So I, I understand.

00:42:42.620 I understand what you're saying.

00:42:43.420 Go ahead.

00:42:43.960 And so eschatology was largely the same thing. When I read Gary DeMar's book, I was thinking like, that's pretty good exegesis. Like that's, those are good arguments, you know? And when he says, you know, interpreting a passage, Jesus says here, he goes to the Old Testament and shows you four examples that mean exactly what Gary DeMar says they would mean. And you're like, okay, like this is starting to check out.

00:43:06.980 And then when I would start to finally have conversations with folks about it, yeah, I mean, exegetically, I felt really solid and confident.

00:43:16.720 And I found that a lot of the other arguments were, you know, just kind of emotional or just came from a lack of understanding of the post-millennial position.

00:43:26.180 So, like, I'm always going to side where I feel like I would win the exegetical argument.

00:43:31.500 That's just kind of how I feel.

00:43:32.760 And so, because I'm not going to take a position if I'm going to lose, you know, if I'm going to, if I'm going to argue it and lose, why would I take that position? Because you're probably right if I'm going to lose. So that's kind of what was, I just, as the more I researched it, the more it just seemed to check out. And then it's kind of like, once you see something, you can't unsee it. Once I saw God's sovereignty, once I saw Calvinism, once I saw post-millennialism, and now you're studying the Psalms.

00:43:59.620 I mean, come on. I mean, God's sovereignty is all over the Psalms. You could not unsee it.

00:44:05.540 And then post-millennialism is all over the Psalms. You cannot unsee it once you kind of

00:44:11.180 have that biblical perspective. And so, yeah, then it's just started to reinforce everything

00:44:16.520 I was learning because I'd read these Psalms and the Psalms do not at all, to my knowledge,

00:44:23.360 not even ever. I mean, they do not at all have this idea that we lose down here. That is just

00:44:29.000 not the Psalms at all. The typical Psalm pattern is David is in some really, you know, stressful

00:44:36.240 or dangerous situation. He calls out to God. He lays out his complaint before God in detail. He

00:44:43.260 says what's going on, which I think is really helpful in our prayers to, you know, articulate

00:44:47.240 to God what's happening. It helps us process the situation. And after doing that, it's almost like

00:44:51.960 David realizes, wait a second, this isn't much of a threat because you're God over this. You're

00:44:56.240 God over that. God is my helper. Here's your covenant promises. He kind of goes to the

00:44:59.980 section of confidence where he's saying, no, this is the truth. So first David kind of lays

00:45:04.960 out his request. Then he lays out his complaint and the situation. And after that, he goes into

00:45:10.060 theology. He says, no, you're God over this. You're God over that. I know this is true. I know that's

00:45:13.900 true. You promised this, you promised that. And then by the end of the Psalm, David is practically

00:45:18.700 celebrating the outcome before it happens. He's saying, okay, when you deliver me, I'm going to

00:45:24.920 here's what i'm gonna do after you deliver me you know he's he's he's basically praising god

00:45:30.280 for the deliverance god is going to bring like not four thousand years from now like right here

00:45:36.300 and now in my life um and the psalms don't at all treat the wicked like they're going to prosper

00:45:42.500 i mean david's complaint is often like god uh these guys are doing this you said that this

00:45:49.340 wouldn't prosper and you said that i would prosper for following your ways so what gives like fix

00:45:54.800 this. And then near the end of the Psalm, he realizes that's exactly what's going to happen.

00:45:59.520 God's going to bring judgment on the wicked here and now. He's going to give David victory

00:46:03.720 here and now. And David celebrates and worships according to the deliverance that is certainly

00:46:09.680 coming very, very, very soon. So David definitely had this eschatology of victory in the here and

00:46:16.280 now. He totally expected that because that was the covenant that God made with Israel. He said,

00:46:21.820 you know if you walk in my ways like david did for most of his life then i'm going to be with

00:46:27.820 you i'm going to deliver you the enemies are going to flee from you and the enemies aren't

00:46:32.040 going to prosper and so david just trusted that walked in that and he saw the fruits of it so

00:46:36.580 there's this eschatology of victory all over the psalms that could go through so many passages

00:46:41.780 that where it talks about god not only is the god of israel but he's the god of all the nations

00:46:46.800 right right no that's good i want to pick up on something you said just for a moment you said you

00:46:52.860 know david recognizes that um that he's in a covenant and i think you know to just for a

00:46:58.820 moment to play the devil's advocate some people would you know maybe push back and say well yeah

00:47:02.860 david expected victory because he was a king and he was a type of christ the king um and you know

00:47:10.040 he yeah he was in a covenant but it's not the covenant that we're in you know the davidic

00:47:14.320 covenant was different than the new covenant covenant and i i think you know again that just

00:47:19.180 kind of gets into people's ignorance where they need to brush up a little bit more on their covenant

00:47:23.680 theology not understanding the covenant of redemption the oldest chronologically oldest

00:47:29.080 covenant that was made in the councils of eternity and eternity passed between father and son by the

00:47:34.680 holy spirit um where you know the father promises um to to provide for the son a pure and spotless

00:47:41.960 bride and, and, uh, who's dressed and adorned, who's radiant. Uh, she's not scrawny. She's not

00:47:47.860 beaten. She's not bruised. Um, and she's not also adulterous. Um, she's not weak. She's not, um,

00:47:54.160 small, um, but, but she's, she's full and, uh, beautiful and verdant. And, you know, and so, 0.96

00:48:01.780 and the son also promises to, um, to hand back to his father a people, um, purchased, um, by his

00:48:08.960 blood for the Father's eternal glory, to the praise of his glorious grace, all these things.

00:48:15.020 And so anyways, with the covenant of redemption and the new covenant, both as 1689 Federalists

00:48:22.220 believing that those are synonymous, the covenant of redemption made in eternity past and then

00:48:27.840 actualized in the new covenant that saves retroactively saints in the Old Testament and

00:48:32.100 all those going forward. Again, it is a kingly covenant. Christ is king and he's the head of 0.65

00:48:40.420 the church, which is his body. And Christ is not losing. He died to die no more. He died once

00:48:48.960 for sin. He is not forever. He is not dying again and again and again and again. We focus so much

00:48:59.440 on the crucifixion of Jesus, but we sometimes minimize the resurrection, that there is a

00:49:07.540 resurrection, and not only a resurrection, but an ascension in glory to the right hand of the

00:49:12.900 Father, that the mustard seed is growing into a great tree, that Daniel 2, stone cut by no human

00:49:18.940 hands, is shattering the kingdoms of this world, and it is progressively, it's not just happening

00:49:23.980 in a moment. That's the other thing that really sold me, was the language that we find in the

00:49:28.860 old testament and in the new it's not it's not sudden and cataclysmic um instead it's it's

00:49:35.340 gradual yes um and and um and intentional it's uh precise and deliberate and planned and gradual

00:49:45.300 it's progressive and so you know shattering the kingdoms of this world uh this stone cut by no

00:49:51.180 human hands but then slowly it grows um into a mountain that fills the whole earth you know or

00:49:57.800 the mustard seed works, works through, there's a process, but progressively it, you know, um,

00:50:03.500 it eventually grows into a, a great tree that's branches cover the whole face of the earth. The

00:50:08.700 beasts of the earth find shade, you know, the birds, uh, of the air find rest in its branches.

00:50:13.460 And, and then the leaven eventually leavens the whole batch of dough. All of these things are,

00:50:19.300 um, progressive and they, and they take time. And so, um, all that being said, this idea of Jesus,

00:50:25.540 sealing his victory through his earthly ministry, death, resurrection, ascension. But then him

00:50:35.560 actually applying his victory, his victory sealed, but then his victory being realized

00:50:42.380 progressively in the same way that David was anointed king. But then he progressively

00:50:47.720 took over the king, you know, came into the kingship. Then, you know, there's a division

00:50:52.500 within the nation between David and Saul. He gets, you know, his house in order and then begins to

00:50:57.900 push back the territories of all his enemies and gains triumph. And there are battles that are

00:51:03.760 lost, but the war ultimately is, is a win. It's a victory. And so the moments of loss, but it's,

00:51:10.980 you know, it's one step forward, it's two steps or one step backward, two steps forward, and maybe

00:51:15.200 10 steps backward in a moment, you know, for multiple generations can, you know, consecutive,

00:51:19.980 but then it's 20 steps forward. And, and, you know, you, you look at that and, you know,

00:51:24.920 everyone's, you know, the world is getting worse and worse. And it goes back to the emotive

00:51:28.300 argumentation that you talked about at the newspaper exegesis, instead of biblical exegesis.

00:51:33.640 And it's like, what do you mean the world's getting worse and worse? I am willing to concede

00:51:38.700 that our particular corner of the world, namely Western civilization has been getting worse for 1.00

00:51:45.940 the last 50 years, very visibly, uh, three years, COVID and black lives matter and all that very 0.98

00:51:52.640 visibly 50 years, very visibly, uh, you can argue 130 to 170 years. And you could argue even all 0.99

00:52:00.300 the way to maybe three, 300 years, um, you know, 350 years to the enlightenment. Um, okay. So yeah,

00:52:08.020 we're, we're, um, we're, we're in a bad spell right now. We've lost a few battles, but again,

00:52:14.280 that's, uh, that's part of the world, not the whole world. And that's part of history. We've

00:52:18.900 got 2000 years of history since that seed, Jesus talks about seed must first die before it can be

00:52:24.860 and be planted in the ground before Jesus died. And he was planted in the belly of the earth,

00:52:29.600 in the tomb, he was buried like a seed. Um, and, and in the last 2000 years, even if you count the

00:52:35.660 last 350 years as, as, um, some pruning and branches, you know, dying and falling off and

00:52:42.220 those still that's 350 out of 2000 i like would you rather be alive today or 2000 years ago is

00:52:49.040 the world better today lifespans are longer uh poverty has gone down globally across across the

00:52:55.720 planet in every nation there's um that you know the um the quality of life is higher medicine

00:53:01.300 um is is better um less people die in infancy less women die die in childbirth um well there's

00:53:08.700 wars and rumors of wars. Yeah, there's always wars and rumors of wars. But in terms of actual

00:53:13.580 wars being fought, yeah, that's going on. But there were times where every nation on the planet

00:53:19.720 in the known world was all fighting at the same time endlessly. The fact that we actually have

00:53:25.760 long periods, decades of peace in large swaths of the globe, all these things are remarkable.

00:53:33.300 And it's the result of the Christian faith. 0.90

00:53:36.400 And as Christendom is currently on a decline because of apostasy and rejection of Christ, we're seeing things get worse. 0.85

00:53:45.780 But to pretend, I think people pretend as though it's just been this downward spiral for 2,000 years.

00:53:51.240 If it was a downward spiral from first century Palestine as the starting place, and then

00:53:56.820 a 2,000 year downward spiral from there, then we'd be living in hell right now.

00:54:04.860 The fact that things are as good as they are, that we have full bellies, and many of us

00:54:09.840 have healthy children, and the things that we live in, air-conditioned homes, and health

00:54:14.960 insurance, that's because from the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, we had

00:54:20.160 a massive upspike of victory for 1700 years and yeah we're we're we're taking a couple steps back

00:54:29.540 right now but that is not the headline of the story and i think we just we get so focused on

00:54:35.320 our little corner of earth and our little lifetime you know instead of looking at the

00:54:40.500 whole planet what god's been doing over the whole of human history and especially church history

00:54:45.680 last 2000 years. And we, um, our footnote, um, is, is placed as, as God's headline,

00:54:52.460 but it's not, it's not God's headline. So. Yeah, absolutely. I've had many similar

00:54:58.000 conversations with friends over the past couple of years. Cause that is, uh, again,

00:55:01.400 the emotional argument is, you know, look how, look how bad things are or, you know,

00:55:06.960 drag queen story hour or, you know, um, or whatever, you know, and you said it very well.

00:55:12.540 I actually, my argument sounds almost exactly like yours. You know, if you think things are bad now, read the Old Testament. I mean, read what kind of things that people had to deal with, the kind of brutality and the way that, you know, just the imminent threat that was there at all moments of time that David had to deal with.

00:55:32.880 I mean, you read the Psalms, and I think that's one reason why we struggle to understand the imprecatory Psalms is we haven't had to deal with what David dealt with because things are way better now.

00:55:43.020 And I actually remember thinking about this actually just before COVID happened, because I think, honestly, I think COVID has almost helped a lot.

00:55:51.260 It hasn't almost.

00:55:51.940 I think it has helped a lot of Christians understand the imprecatory Psalms a little more because it was kind of a taste of, you know what?

00:55:59.880 Like things could get things could get bad.

00:56:01.880 we are on the verge of, you know, civilization, as we know, it kind of hangs much more tenuously

00:56:07.460 than we think it does. Because I remember thinking before COVID, just about what an anomaly in

00:56:12.680 history it's been, the comfort and the peace we've enjoyed in the West. And just, I had this weird

00:56:18.800 feeling, I'm not saying it was a, you know, prophecy or premonition or anything like that.

00:56:22.520 But I remember having this thought of like, how long can this last? You know, how long can this,

00:56:27.440 this, this, this, this, this piece and the security last because I live with such security

00:56:33.380 compared to everybody else throughout history. And then COVID came, it was kind of like, yeah,

00:56:37.760 I mean, it can, it can end fast. And of course there was enough pushback with COVID, but

00:56:42.640 when you saw things break down, actually, I have a Christian friend of mine. I won't mention his

00:56:48.080 name, but he was very anti-death penalty before COVID, you know, and, and now I was just talking

00:56:56.500 to him a few weeks ago and he's he's very upset about the whole thing as as as christians should

00:57:01.840 be and uh he i said so are you still against the death penalty he's like no not at all um in fact

00:57:09.860 um in fact not only would i like to see him hang i'd like to see him squirm i was like whoa you

00:57:15.400 know but i mean i i understand where he's coming from because after a fair trial of course but

00:57:20.620 After a failed trial, of course.

00:57:22.300 Yeah, a failed trial.

00:57:23.840 But then, yeah, and that's good for society.

00:57:27.420 Justice should be public.

00:57:28.880 And so, yeah, society should be able to watch those who have put us through hell.

00:57:35.320 People lost their businesses, their livelihood.

00:57:38.400 People lost, I mean, their parents died in nursing homes,

00:57:41.600 and they were looking at them through glass windows

00:57:43.500 and couldn't even give them a hug goodbye.

00:57:46.360 Yeah, people.

00:57:46.780 Well, Black Lives Matter, right, and outside, yeah.

00:57:49.120 That's right.

00:57:49.460 I mean, my blood's starting to boil just thinking about it, Joel.

00:57:52.260 Oh, totally. 0.99

00:57:52.780 Yeah, people should hang and we should be able to see the white leave their eyes. 0.97

00:57:57.540 And, you know, and we should be able to watch that and praise God for his glorious justice. 0.95

00:58:04.040 And it should just be done justly with a fair trial.

00:58:06.620 But yeah, 100%.

00:58:07.820 And yeah, it's an uncomfortable thing to talk about and to think about.

00:58:12.380 But then this is another thing I've been wrestling with, with the Psalms, reading through the Psalms.

00:58:16.420 Because, you know, you read a passage and you're like, oh, that's that's a tough pill to swallow.

00:58:20.320 But then I have to stop and think, why does this make me uncomfortable?

00:58:25.960 Why does this passage is this passage make me uncomfortable because it contradicts scripture? 0.53

00:58:30.680 Or does this passage make me uncomfortable because of just the assumed Christian ish culture that I grew up in?

00:58:39.220 You know what I mean?

00:58:39.780 Like, where do these, where do these ideas come from that make me uncomfortable with,

00:58:44.920 you know, a Psalm 58, by the way, Psalm 58 is all about unjust rulers.

00:58:50.020 So that was a fascinating, fascinating Psalm to study and write through because, uh, David

00:58:55.720 basically taunts the rulers at the beginning.

00:58:57.960 Uh, do you really speak what's just you rulers?

00:59:00.460 No, um, you know, you deal out violence.

00:59:02.880 Uh, you know, this is what you do.

00:59:04.580 And then David prays this prayer against them that they'd be removed.

00:59:08.080 Um, and there's some really strong language in there, but it's basically a Psalm that's basically prayed against wicked rulers. Like God remove them, take them down, take them off their throne, remove wicked rulers because they are, it'd be, it'd be loving to our neighbors to pray for these rulers to be removed.

00:59:25.540 right um but anyway um the whole point being i think covid kind of gave us a taste of

00:59:32.400 just how bad things could get if if you know if if the government really had no check and things

00:59:38.580 got out of hand and also um sorry i lost the train of thought i was gonna say but um yeah anyway uh

00:59:46.300 you can probably just realizing like how how long can this um this season of peace security and

00:59:52.380 prosperity last. And then just realizing that, um, yeah, it really is, uh, the foundation is

00:59:57.900 Christ. And it's, it's kind of like what the apostle Paul says in Romans 11, like, do not be

01:00:02.580 arrogant. You do not support the root. The root supports you. Um, and so just recognizing that

01:00:08.000 these are the blessings of God, the blessings of Liberty, um, are the blessings of God's law.

01:00:12.600 James says that God's law is, um, we think of this as an irony, as a contradiction. Um, but

01:00:18.500 in the mind of God, uh, one dot, there's a straight line to the next. Uh, God's law is the

01:00:24.260 law of Liberty. And as we, uh, become antinomian and, um, and hate and spurn God's law, uh, we,

01:00:33.480 we don't get cast off constraints, you know, like Psalm chapter two, the rules of this world, 0.85

01:00:38.740 they seek to break the bonds apart rather than gaining freedom and casting off religious

01:00:44.440 constraint uh what we actually do is we uh we quickly erode and and evaporate liberties and

01:00:52.320 apart from those liberties and the opportunities provided from them um there there goes prosperity

01:00:58.640 and um stability and security and uh yeah you know the the old adage is you know at any point

01:01:07.020 we're only i think it's uh nine meals away from anarchy you know it's it doesn't take much

01:01:12.220 for for all of a sudden a prosperous place to to become hell on earth and all of a sudden the

01:01:19.980 imprecatory psalms made perfect sense um and i was remembering what i was about to say i think

01:01:24.840 i was even sharing this with some unbelievers recently uh i was actually somehow i got into

01:01:30.060 a conversation about the imprecatory psalms well because i put them to music so you know that was

01:01:34.780 one thing that came up uh was someone actually asked me why is the god of the old testament so

01:01:39.500 different from the new. And of course I kind of walked him through, well, he really isn't, you

01:01:43.640 know, here's, here's where he shows his love in the old Testament. Here's where he shows his wrath

01:01:47.920 in the new. I was talking to the unbelievers and I was trying to say, yeah, there are some tough 0.66

01:01:52.220 passages to swallow in the Psalms. There are some things in there where people literally pray for

01:01:56.900 other people to die. Like that's the kind of music I do. What kind of music do you guys do?

01:02:00.960 And, um, I said, you know, everybody has those things that really make their blood boil.

01:02:06.020 right i think sometimes that can be different for all of us you know like for some for me it's

01:02:10.400 government tyranny like government tyranny just absolutely makes my blood boil it's just like i'm

01:02:14.800 like no mercy go get them you know and almost gets to like almost an ungodly place of anger you know

01:02:21.420 like that's what makes my blood boil and some people will say like it's you know child abuse

01:02:25.840 that really oh man like i just you know fry them you know what i mean so like everybody has those

01:02:31.740 things that make their blood boil so everybody understands the imprecatory psalms no one should

01:02:38.040 sit in judgment of them because when we feel our blood boil that i think i think that's rooted in

01:02:42.680 this desire to see justice done when something really wrong takes place so i think everybody

01:02:48.040 does it and when i said that they were like oh yeah that makes sense i have things that make my

01:02:52.180 blood boil so it would make sense that i would you know pray for judgment upon those people

01:02:56.020 because i kind of do you know right yeah no you're absolutely right and i think one of the

01:03:02.200 reasons why evangelical american christians um have had no category for imprecatory psalms

01:03:09.380 is uh because for a long time i think we've kind of uh a lot of things haven't made our blood boil

01:03:19.000 because we've been complacent, you know, like what makes David's blood boil is the wicked. 1.00

01:03:28.540 I think the closest that you can think of for a lot of the big Eva types, 0.99

01:03:32.700 Beth Moore, Russell Moore, Tim Keller, Rick Warren, 0.85

01:03:37.180 the closest that you could think of of these individuals getting angry,

01:03:41.760 like what sets them off, what's their pet peeve, what makes their blood boil. 0.99

01:03:46.140 The biggest thing that makes their blood boil is Bible-believing Christians, actually. 0.95

01:03:51.980 There's no better way to make Beth more upset than to quote Scripture. 0.90

01:03:56.700 There's no better way to anger Russell more than to love Scripture and teach Scripture.

01:04:04.460 So I think evangelicals for a long time haven't understood imprecatory Psalms,

01:04:09.260 at least imprecatory Psalms targeting the wicked according to God's standards

01:04:14.460 of righteousness and wickedness because we haven't loved righteousness and we haven't hated

01:04:21.160 sin. If anything, we hate anybody who talks about sin because we think it's legalism.

01:04:28.500 I guess what I'm saying is I think anger at wickedness, anger at evil, the first prerequisite

01:04:35.860 is that you actually have to have a standard for deciphering between good and evil.

01:04:42.100 And that's the law of God. And so I think for as long as American evangelicalism has been antinomian and has rejected the law of God for at least that long, likewise, we have consequently, we have not understood imprecatory psalms.

01:05:01.000 We don't understand proper anger because we don't understand properly what we should be angry about and who we should be angry towards because we've gotten rid of the standard.

01:05:12.440 And so evangelicalism has been anti-law for decades, for decades.

01:05:19.300 Don't preach at me.

01:05:20.660 That's legalism.

01:05:22.360 That's the law of God.

01:05:23.940 That was fulfilled by Christ.

01:05:25.620 not understanding God's moral law, not understanding its application, not understanding

01:05:30.140 any of those things. And so the third use of the law, that the law is not just a mirror

01:05:36.940 that reveals to me the holiness of God and by way of consequence my sinfulness and therefore drives

01:05:42.460 me to Christ, shows me my need for a savior. But the third use of the law that David delights in

01:05:48.560 is that the law is a lamp unto my feet. It's a light unto my path, not showing me the way

01:05:53.360 to salvation. We're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But the law shows

01:06:00.500 us the way from salvation into further sanctification. It's not a way to be saved.

01:06:06.520 No man will be saved by works as done unto the law. But for the one who has been saved by free

01:06:11.880 grace in Christ through faith alone, then our response is not trying to merit God's love,

01:06:20.220 but having freely received it, we're now responding in gratitude with love for him.

01:06:25.600 1 John 4, 19, we love because he first loved us.

01:06:28.380 Well, if God loves us in Christ through the free gospel of grace and opens our eyes to

01:06:33.380 it and gives us new hearts to receive his salvific love in Christ through faith, then

01:06:38.260 we now, as a response, irresistible grace, we now love him back.

01:06:42.140 But then the very next question is, how do I show you my love for you, God?

01:06:46.940 Jesus answers the question.

01:06:48.440 if you love me you will obey obey what commands there are there are commands and and so it's not

01:06:57.080 just here's a law of god so that you'll know that you're a sinner and that you need him

01:07:00.360 but it's also that that's true that's the first use of god's law drives us to christ but having

01:07:05.780 received christ now freely by grace through faith we now love god as a response not loving him trying

01:07:12.300 to merit his love for us but loving him as a response of gratitude because he already loves us

01:07:17.620 freely in Christ. But if we love him, it goes back to that definition of highest love, highest good

01:07:23.400 and practical, tangible ways. Well, if we love Christ, that's going to be demonstrated

01:07:30.440 through our obedience. Does he have any commandments? Love the Lord your God with

01:07:35.100 all your heart, your soul and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, how do I love the

01:07:38.720 Lord my God? Get a little bit more specific. What does that look like? Have no other gods before me.

01:07:43.480 Do not make any graven images. Do not take the Lord's name in vain. How do I love my neighbor?

01:07:47.380 Well, don't murder him. You can start with that. You can also honor your father and mother, your first neighbors when you come into the world. Don't steal from your neighbor. Don't commit adultery. Don't bear false witness against your neighbor. Lie about your neighbor and don't covet what your neighbor has. Envy, which is the root of all kinds of social justice.

01:08:04.780 And so all that being said, when the evangelical church rids itself of God's law and because they think that somehow the law is, that it's either grace or the law and that you have to choose one or the other.

01:08:21.540 And they have a misunderstanding of grace.

01:08:24.740 It's cheap grace.

01:08:25.660 And they have the misunderstanding of law and what it looks like for Jesus to fulfill

01:08:30.220 all the law, but to abrogate ceremonial law while not abrogating, not one jot or tittle

01:08:36.200 of the law, of all the law will pass away.

01:08:38.640 So really, you could even say in a sense that the ceremonial law, I would argue as Rush

01:08:42.240 Dooney and others have, that the ceremonial law even endures forever, but Christ has fulfilled

01:08:46.680 the ceremonial law so uniquely that it never has to be done.

01:08:50.200 We still need sacrifices.

01:08:52.320 The reason why we don't bring bulls and goats and lambs to church on Sunday to cut them open on the altar and let their blood roll down is not because God changed his mind.

01:09:02.820 Behold, I am the Lord.

01:09:03.720 I change it not so that you, the sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

01:09:06.440 He's the same yesterday, today and forever.

01:09:09.020 There is, Hebrews says, there is no atonement. 0.93

01:09:11.480 There is no forgiveness of sins apart from blood.

01:09:13.860 So we still need sacrifices.

01:09:16.040 We still need blood.

01:09:16.980 but jesus fulfilled the ceremonial aspects of the law so fully um that there's no more sacrifices

01:09:27.220 needed he was the lamb of god who took away the sins of the world was the perfect so we still

01:09:31.480 need blood but his is sufficient uh we still need hand washing and certain cleansing rituals and

01:09:38.000 things that but jesus has washed us so thoroughly that that you know we don't have to do those

01:09:42.800 kinds of things anymore. So, and all these kinds of ways. But the way that he's fulfilled the moral

01:09:48.500 law of God, if we do use those categories, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, don't murder,

01:09:52.520 don't steal. Jesus has fulfilled that too. Otherwise we'd still be dead in our sins and

01:09:56.700 all going to hell. So Jesus, by not just his passive obedience, dying in our place as a

01:10:03.340 substitute, but his act of obedience, living in our place. He didn't just die in our place,

01:10:07.660 but he lived in our place, fulfilling, not just avoiding all sin and maintaining innocence,

01:10:12.440 but fulfilling all righteousness. So he perfectly obeyed the moral law of God on our behalf.

01:10:18.040 So Jesus fulfilled this and that's integral to our salvation. But the Christian response to

01:10:27.540 Christ's fulfillment of the moral law is that we too want to obey the moral law as a response of

01:10:33.480 gratitude and a display of our love for him. Whereas if we tried to fulfill the ceremonial

01:10:38.940 law, that would actually demonstrate a lack of love and a lack of faith, more particularly

01:10:43.980 in the sufficiency of that he is the one and only lamb of God.

01:10:49.460 And how do we know this?

01:10:50.300 Because scripture tells us, Hebrews says there's no forgiveness of sins apart from blood. 0.77

01:10:54.700 But then it also says the blood of bulls and goats.

01:10:57.360 So blood is the only way sin's forgiven, but the particular blood of bulls and goats can

01:11:01.860 never take away sin.

01:11:03.200 So sin is taken away by blood, but it's the blood of Christ.

01:11:06.220 and we know that hebrews tells it but hebrews does not have a verse that says oh and also uh now now

01:11:11.400 murder's on the table oh and you know theft is like no the moral law is spoken in very different

01:11:16.320 very different ways but all this you know doctrine of the law it's a i think a big part of it is we've

01:11:22.440 lost confessionally reformed theology um we've we've we we uh it's like we've just i don't know

01:11:30.820 maybe rise of liberalism and all these kinds of things what you know it's what happens is is you're

01:11:35.840 like, we're under attack, there's no way we can win, we're outnumbered, and so let's all, you know,

01:11:40.580 let's fall back, fall back from the outer wall, you know, and there's only, you know, 12 of us

01:11:45.600 left, and let's link arms and defend, you know, and when you feel like you're outnumbered, it's

01:11:50.360 like, okay, you know, like if your house is on fire, you grab the kids, and maybe you grab, you

01:11:54.980 know, one priceless possession, you know, but you can't save it all, time is of the essence, you

01:12:00.620 just, you know, you have to prioritize and triage, and we can only defend a few things, and I think

01:12:05.600 the church doctrine is like well primate is it a gospel issue brother is it a gospel issue is it

01:12:10.740 and ironically a lot of these actually were gospel issues but in and so you defend well the incarnation

01:12:15.940 you know and and you defend uh bodily resurrection you defend in and it's like uh you know but 85

01:12:22.560 pages of the 1689 you know or the westminster well can't defend all that you know and and then you

01:12:28.880 just stop you stop defending it and if you stop defending it you stop preaching it you stop teaching

01:12:33.580 it. People stop learning it. And then all of a sudden we're just theologically ignorant. We're

01:12:40.540 just theologically ignorant about these kinds of law things. And if you don't understand all the 0.86

01:12:45.540 way back to the original point, if you don't understand the standard, the moral standard of

01:12:49.480 God's transcendent universal law, then you don't know what's good and you don't know what's evil,

01:12:54.320 which means you don't know what to be angry at. You don't know what to be angry at. And so then

01:13:00.320 an imprecatory psalm um being sung about true evil the true wicked uh when when you actually

01:13:07.660 think those are the good guys and and the truest evil person is you know doug wilson voldemort in

01:13:13.180 the flesh you know or who you know whoever so john mccarthur that's evil you know and and you know 0.52

01:13:18.320 that trans person who shot up a school you know that they're actually just a victim you know we 0.85

01:13:22.620 should love them and and you just it's so backwards so when when a church prays one of the imprecatory 0.91

01:13:28.300 Psalms over, um, a transgender person who shoots up a school. You're like, you're being harsh. 1.00

01:13:33.580 You're being, and it's cause you just, you just, you're so undiscipled, so biblically illiterate, 1.00

01:13:39.600 so foolish, so ignorant, um, that it would, it would take days. I mean, I would literally have 1.00

01:13:46.840 to talk to you 24 hours for a week straight from the word of God, just, just for you to have just

01:13:52.420 the, just the, the, um, the handles, just, just the, the categories to even begin to understand

01:13:58.440 what's going on. You're just, we're just so dumb. The evangelical church is just so 1.00

01:14:03.540 dumb. Uh, it's, it's, it's overwhelming. Yeah. That you kind of touched on a couple of things 1.00

01:14:09.980 that are a huge part of my journey with the Psalms. Uh, number one is, you know, over and

01:14:14.680 over again, again, as you are, I am not censoring the Psalms. I'm not, you know, trying to make

01:14:20.920 them palatable for modern evangelicalism, you run across things. We were like, I really going to

01:14:26.340 sing this, you know? And what I've had to come to grips with is, you know, the first instinct you

01:14:32.560 have, I mean, the first instinct I had when I came across these passages is, well, you know,

01:14:38.220 I'm sitting in judgment of them. I'm going to decide which ones I'm going to. And that's what

01:14:41.800 a lot of Christian artists do actually with the Psalms is let's see what in this Psalm is acceptable 0.83

01:14:46.880 to sing and let's take out the rest. I mean, that happens a lot, um, with the Psalms. And so I came

01:14:53.580 to this point where I was like, I don't judge the Psalms. I don't sit in judgment of God's word.

01:14:59.360 God's word sits in judgment of me. So if God's word says things that don't align with, you know,

01:15:06.380 my cultural sensibilities or where I come from, then I need to see how my cultural sensibilities

01:15:13.260 and my evangelicalism is out of line with God's word. Why is that the case? So that's been a

01:15:19.560 powerful thing to just submit to that and say, you know what, maybe my idea of what mean is and

01:15:25.780 what my idea of loving is, maybe I haven't been taught that exactly correctly. And maybe the word

01:15:31.220 of God actually teaches that correctly. Like C.S. Lewis says, love is something much more severe

01:15:36.040 than kindness. You know, we tend to equate love with kindness. No, love is something much more

01:15:40.780 severe than that and something much more intense and meaningful than that kindness can actually be

01:15:46.340 mean as c.s lewis says you know um and then also just writing these songs they sound so different

01:15:55.440 than modern worship songs i mean the difference is so stark you would hear it i mean you would

01:16:00.320 hear one of these songs uh that we do and within a few seconds you would recognize this is not a

01:16:07.800 worship song. This will never be on Christian radio. And this is from the scripture. It just

01:16:13.700 has a different tone to it. It has a different power to it. It's the word of God, obviously.

01:16:19.320 So that being said, you can't help when I'm composing these Psalms and these glorious

01:16:26.780 arrangements that my musicians come up with, and you're listening to this music, you're like, wow,

01:16:30.540 it's hard not to think what happened why why is our worship music so uh so so uh devoid of this

01:16:41.560 where'd it go what happened and i think it speaks a lot of what to what you said we are ashamed of

01:16:47.080 the law uh we're ashamed of you know uh we're ashamed of god's word essentially uh we've decided

01:16:55.340 that what Jesus said about these issues, we're only going to focus on these passages out of

01:17:00.160 context and we're going to throw out everything else. And so some of the Psalms don't align with

01:17:04.960 that. So they've got to go. We're not going to read them. We're not going to sing them. We're

01:17:08.120 not going to touch them. I mean, I didn't hear a sermon on an imprecatory Psalm till I was 33 years

01:17:13.860 old, maybe, where a pastor finally taught on Psalm 139. And I was like, thank you for actually

01:17:20.100 teaching on Psalm 139, right? I didn't think anyone had the guts to even touch that. But the

01:17:25.600 point being, I think we have sat in judgment of the scriptures in evangelicalism. We've decided

01:17:31.440 this is what is acceptable and this is what's not. And we have not let it judge and examine us,

01:17:41.060 which is what it's for. And it has really changed my view of what love is, what kindness is,

01:17:46.860 what winsomeness is you know what i mean um and because you see david he's not very winsome in

01:17:52.720 psalm 58 towards these rulers they are causing real damage and they need severe discipline

01:17:57.580 and um also what happened to us where did this stuff go and why is it not in our worship music

01:18:04.720 i found that very very interesting as to why you know modern worship songs will take they'll take

01:18:11.980 little snippets of the Psalm, but I mean, there's so much in the Psalms that is not in our music

01:18:19.500 or not in the music of, I should say, modern evangelicalism. And it's that it's, it's a

01:18:24.940 tragedy. Yeah. Amen. Well, Shane, let's go ahead and wrap it up here again. How can people follow

01:18:31.920 you? What's the name of the project exactly? How do they look it up? Yeah. So we are the Psalms

01:18:38.100 Project. So probably the best thing to do is to go to our website, which is the psalmsproject.com.

01:18:43.920 So it's pretty simple to remember. And there you can listen to our music. You can join our

01:18:49.220 Psalms Project community, which is essentially our email list, which is a great way to stay

01:18:54.440 caught up on all our new releases and all our new music. We're releasing new lyric videos all the

01:18:59.620 time. And at the website, you can also go and listen to us on any platform, Spotify, Apple

01:19:05.260 music. However you listen to music, we do sell CDs. People still listen to CDs. Would you believe

01:19:09.920 that? We ship CDs out of our house every day. It's crazy. People still buy downloads. So we

01:19:14.500 sell downloads. Right now, we have set the first 46 psalms to music in their entirety. That took

01:19:20.700 10 years because it's quite a recording process. And I actually have a different lead singer on

01:19:25.800 every psalm. We wanted to give each psalm its own voice. So we have a variety of vocalists.

01:19:31.360 We want to do things excellently.

01:19:33.520 So I wanted the very best vocalists, the very best musicians, the very best sound engineers, the very best producers on this project.

01:19:39.740 So we've worked with over 80 different musicians on this project so far, including Phil Keggy.

01:19:45.560 He actually made an appearance.

01:19:46.580 You might know who Phil Keggy is on a couple of tracks.

01:19:49.960 And so you can listen on Spotify.

01:19:54.040 Look us up as The Psalms Project.

01:19:55.800 That's the artist's name on Spotify, Apple Music.

01:19:59.140 We're on YouTube.

01:20:00.480 So, yeah, any way you listen to music, you can find that in our website.

01:20:03.120 But please sign up for our email list.

01:20:05.400 And the very best thing to do would be to go to our Patreon page.

01:20:09.240 It's the patreon.thesalmsprojectmusic.

01:20:12.920 So patreon.thesalmsprojectmusic.

01:20:15.320 And that's a great way to support our work because I do do this full time.

01:20:20.160 And we do not have a major label behind us, obviously.

01:20:23.480 We don't have a marketing machine behind us.

01:20:27.420 I am the marketing department.

01:20:28.960 I'm everything.

01:20:29.840 So we are totally listener supported by people who love God's word and who want who believe in this project, who believe that this is something Christendom needs right now is beautiful music, artistic music composed to the pure word of God.

01:20:46.440 And so that's we're supported by right now, hundreds of people around the world.

01:20:50.420 But we can always use more supporters because it's a very taxing and expensive.

01:20:55.680 And as you can imagine, very epic project, putting entire Psalms to music.

01:21:00.280 Our longest so far is Psalm 18, 50 verses.

01:21:02.980 It was a fun one.

01:21:04.580 But it's just fun to see all the things that that Psalm cycles through because you get to see all of it.

01:21:09.560 It's so glorious.

01:21:10.660 And then Psalm 37 is also quite long at 40 verses.

01:21:13.560 but two of my favorites for sure. Psalm 18 and Psalm 37, but I have a lot of favorites from

01:21:20.280 those first 46. We've also put Psalm 91 and Psalm 121 to music in addition to those first 46.

01:21:27.280 But right now we are recording what's for us volume six, which is Psalms 47 through 55.

01:21:33.660 And we just, I'm happy to report by God's grace, we just successfully completed a successful

01:21:38.940 crowdfunding campaign to fund that album but we can always use more listeners more fans and more

01:21:44.360 supporters sharing this because christians are looking for good artful biblical music to listen

01:21:50.620 to and i want everyone to know that we're here we're out there yep that's great well thanks so

01:21:56.080 much for coming on the show and i hope that uh some of our listeners take you up on that it's

01:22:00.160 a worthy project and i pray that god would continue to give you strength to uh to complete

01:22:05.380 that project in your lifetime if it took you 10 years to get through 46 psalms especially when

01:22:10.460 you got psalm 110 psalm 118 psalm 119 uh some of those coming up then uh it you know 46 psalms is

01:22:18.100 about a third of the way but some of them in terms of their length you could argue that maybe you're

01:22:22.520 only a quarter of the way and so uh so you may have 30 years left to go so you need uh you need

01:22:28.620 some dedicated supporters to to stand with you for another two three decades yeah that's well

01:22:34.660 that's well said joel yep i about 10 more years we should be finished with the right support but

01:22:38.720 yes thank you for there you go yes well that's perfect all right thanks for coming on the show

01:22:42.740 god bless thanks joel see you later whoa whoa whoa you're gonna want to hear this our next two

01:22:49.200 conferences are coming up quick we've got first our fall conference this is november 11th and 12th

01:22:56.020 that's a full day saturday and a holdover for the lord's day november 12th uh who's speaking at this

01:23:02.480 conference? Well, we've got Jared Longshore and Chris Wiley and yours truly, Pastor Joel Webin.

01:23:08.900 What's the title? The title is The Household and the War for the Cosmos. Now, I know you're

01:23:14.300 thinking, wait a second, you can't use that title, Joel. That's the title for Chris Wiley's book.

01:23:18.980 Well, I can use it because he's going to be there speaking and he gave me his permission. We're

01:23:23.740 going to be talking about the household as the basic building block for pushing back the kingdom

01:23:29.300 of darkness in this world. We're going to be talking about biblical patriarchy. We're going

01:23:33.980 to be talking about marriage and parenting, how to keep your kids, how to shape and form them like

01:23:39.740 straight arrows, like sharp arrows that do damage to the kingdom of darkness. Training our children

01:23:46.280 in the fear and ammunition of the Lord. A full day on Saturday, November 11th, and then holding

01:23:51.880 Jared Longshore over for the Lord's Day, November 12th, to preach at my church, Covenant Bible

01:23:57.500 church in central texas you can register at the early bird rate which will not last long but you

01:24:04.340 can register at the early bird rate today by going to right response conference.com again that's

01:24:11.040 right response conference.com now our second conference is our spring conference this is

01:24:16.760 friday saturday and sunday march 1st 2nd and 3rd the title for this conference blueprints for

01:24:24.840 chrysidom 2.0 blueprints for chrysidom 2.0 we don't want to revert back to chrysidom 1.0 although

01:24:33.080 it would certainly be a whole lot better than the clown world that we're currently living in

01:24:38.020 but we recognize despite the phenomenal features of a prior chrysidom there were certain bugs that

01:24:44.880 we'd like to see worked out so we're not going back we are pushing forward to chrysidom 2.0 we

01:24:51.500 believe that the blueprints are seven doctrines for ruling the world righteously what are these

01:24:58.180 seven doctrines well it's reformed confessionalism it's covenant theology it's biblical patriarchy

01:25:05.140 it's presuppositionalism and kyperianism and general equity theonomy and hopeful eschatology

01:25:13.120 post-millennialism who's going to be teaching us on these doctrines voldemort he who must not be

01:25:19.800 named Pastor Douglas Wilson himself. You also got Mr. Brighthearth, Mr. Kingshall, Mr. Haunted

01:25:26.500 Cosmos, Pastor Brian Sauve. And we also have Dr. Joseph Boot, and of course, yours truly,

01:25:34.420 Pastor Joel Webin. We'll be doing seven primary lectures, as well as two 90-minute panels with

01:25:40.980 all the speakers together, and we'll likely add a couple more speakers along the way. Again,

01:25:46.780 that's march 1st 2nd and 3rd friday saturday and sunday it's blueprints for chrysidom 2.0

01:25:55.960 we've got the early bird rate going right now but it will run out quickly so go to

01:26:01.180 rightresponseconference.com rightresponseconference.com to register today

The NXR Podcast - June 06, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Postmillennialism & Warfare In The Psalms with Shane Heilman

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