Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sa.
Code Red, Today's very special edition, we're calling it an intern episode. We've got two young men that have come on with aside our staff, and they're learning ministry, they're learning the ropes, everything from sermon prep to this technological side of what we do here in the studio. And so, guys, welcome to the Code Red studio today.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Thank you for having us.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: I'll tell you what, I'm going to let you both just kind of briefly introduce yourself, and I'm going to turn it over to you and. And let you ask the questions that are on your mind. Would you like to go first, Jackson? Yeah.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: I'm Jackson Pickett. I'm one of the interns at First Baptist here and just grateful to be here today.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Well, glad to have you.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: I'm Miller Murdaugh. I'm a student at Trinity College of Jacksonville, finishing up a pastoral theology degree this semester and was brought on with EPI first around the beginning of January. And I've just gotten to learn a lot of the little minor ins and outs and not understanding the bigger picture in ministry through the small things.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: It's been a fun thing.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: So what's on your minds today, guys?
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Do you want to go first or should I?
[00:01:37] Speaker C: I'll let you go first.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Cool.
So one question that's really kind of been ruminating in my mind and I've really been thinking about was it's a three pronged question, but it's one just big question of has the problems of the world and the things that we're currently dealing with, is it just been accelerated since what your time was? Is it that people have gotten slower in dealing with these problems, or had these problems always been just a critical component of life and we've just lost sight of the issue that's underlying?
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Okay, good question.
I would say biblically, from a Jewish perspective, so to speak, they view history as cyclical.
So there's a sense in which there's a trajectory that's predictable that happens over and over.
So you're going to see among the people of God in biblical revelation revolves around the epicenter of God's covenant people. So in the Old Testament, that's Israel. In the New Testament, it's the church.
And then at the end of all things, it will return to Israel once again.
So what you see is God's people.
When things are easy and things are going well, God's people have a tendency to relax morally and ethically and spiritually, and they tend to fall away over time. And then God steps In he brings about circumstances that will get their attention, that will reawaken them. Those are hard times.
And then if they respond rightly, then they tend to look toward God, return to him, return to their first love. And that's a time of revival.
And then right, living right, thinking right, believing produces good times, and the cycle starts over. So that tends to happen. But occasionally you will see God's people or the world go to new extremes.
So we read about this in the early parts of Romans where they stop worshiping the Creator who is blessed forever, and instead they worship created things. So you see the Sodom and Gomorrah trajectory where they become idolaters. God hands them over.
The first judgment is always being given over to the temptation.
And then when they fail to repent, eventually destruction comes.
So there are times when those cycles go to such a degree. The flood was another good example of that. The thoughts of man's heart were on evil continually. There was no evidence of a repentance or a return.
So we'll see it again at the end of all things.
So, you know, there's a sense in which you can look at. You can look at what's happening today with things like homosexual marriage and just extreme perversions at times that are not ordinary wickedness, but extraordinary wickedness.
And, you know, consider this. Even in Sodom and Gomorrah, they didn't marry each other. They were in these godless relationships, but they didn't seek to legitimize it.
Our culture has not only been given over to those sins, but they're seeking to legitimize it and make it perfectly normal. There's no evidence that, broadly speaking, that there's a turning back to God for forgiveness and deliverance. And so that's what we're going to see. I'm not saying this is the end of all things or is at hand, but I'm saying it really could be. And the wickedness is extraordinary. You know, in this generation, beyond, say, when I was your age, we started seeing a lot of it. I think we saw a lot of it under, like Clinton's administration with don't ask, don't tell, putting, putting homosexuality legitimized in the military service.
And then with each subsequent generation, there was never a turning back.
So that's why sometimes we can see someone like a Trump who's not an example of a godly man, broadly speaking. But when we see some policy changes that are positive or give the appearance of maybe turning back in the right direction, that gives people in My generation, a lot of hope, maybe too much hope times, but that's the reality of it.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Okay.
It's such a deep thing to think about and to talk about and especially with what you were saying of like cyclical, like if we don't learn from things, generally they repeat themselves. Like we see that throughout history.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Well, that's true. I would say for guys your age, there's a great advantage to recognizing cycles.
So if you think about like early man, from the garden forward, the first things they began to recognize that gave them an advantage is, oh, wow.
Remember there was a summer, there was fall, then it got really cold. In the winter, there was springtime and it started over again.
Recognizing that can allow you to respond properly and go, okay, so if winter seems to be ending, maybe spring's coming next, it may be a good time to plant.
And so for the first time, when they recognized that and they began looking at the stars and seeing that there's some predictable patterns, they knew seed time and harvest, they knew they don't have to be hunters and gatherers anymore.
They can be farmers and learn agriculture and have roots. So if you recognize those things, if you recognize them morally, economically, politically, then you will know what to do in the season that you're in.
And life has some of those seasons. Now. You guys are in a different season than I am.
My kids are your age.
So as a 50 year old man, I'm in a season where a time of retirement is 15, 20 years down the road. I've got to think about that, got to prepare for it. You guys are at a season of life and what you do in this season of life will set you up for what's coming next.
Preparing for it, you know, so it's, it's something we can't control, but we can react to and respond to properly.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Okay, I appreciate that, Jackson.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Maybe something you would have done, maybe different as a pastor starting out than you do now as a pastor.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Early on, in my early 20s, I came to Christ at 19, and for the first nine years I preached in a lot of different churches and I mastered, as far as I could master it, the art of communication.
I learned my style, I learned my voice.
And I took maybe five or six sermons and I internalized them. I preached them over and over again. I didn't preach a new sermon every time that I went out.
So I think that was a good thing. I think that was helpful.
But it caused people who heard me to think I was better than I was.
I've heard it compared to this may be a little dated for you guys, but it's the difference between Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. Okay, you know those guys, right?
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: So the Allman Brothers, you could throw any song at them. They could sit down first, try, kill it, Skynyrd. They were good. They were very good. They're very good at what they did, but they had to learn the music.
Okay. I was more like that early in my ministry. I could preach a few sermons really well.
So people heard me. They thought, man, he's as good as this other guy who was really more the genius, you know? And that might be that Allman Brothers approach to where I think earlier I would have tried to learn the depths of Scripture more thoroughly and read more broadly. I think when you take a regular teaching opportunity where you can't lean on old material, it forces you to do that.
I think early on I learned to spend a lot of time in study.
So if I'm working on Matthew 1 early on, that could take 15 hours of research and prep.
This year I preached, or last year I preached through Luke.
When I got to Luke 1, I'm spending more like eight hours.
Why? Because I've preached Matthew, Mark, John, and a lot of that material is also in Luke. So I don't have to rehash and relearn those things. I can lean on my previous work, but I'm grateful that I spent a lot of time early on and if I had it to do over, I would have probably read more broadly and believed. Because here's the thing. When I was your age, I would hear older guys say this. They would say, you know, you're not as smart as you think you are. They wouldn't say it to my face, but they would say it to our generation, right?
And I thought, yeah, I think I might be, honestly. And it takes a little bit of an ego to do what we do. You just got to believe in yourself a little bit at least. So I thought I knew a lot.
I didn't know as much. And now I realize it. I go back and read those old sermons. I go, those are horrible, man. The church was so kind to listen to me because it was a bad sermon. But, you know, that humility would have served me well, and I probably would have read broader and ran my sermons, maybe by some older guys.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: I appreciate you bringing up especially kind of the self confidence, like, call it ego.
I guess that probably is a pretty correct term for it. But the question that I have for it is when it Comes to getting in front of a pulpit and it comes to preaching.
The amount of yourself that comes through the sermon and the amount of just Holy Spirit inspiration, Holy Spirit just leading through the sermon. Where did you find that balance and how do you find that balance?
[00:12:16] Speaker A: That's a great question.
It's good to recognize, like, if you read the four Gospels, they're written by four different men from four different perspectives. They're telling the same general story, but they're going to hit on different emphasis.
They're writing to different audiences.
So learning your voice and believing that God chose your voice, he does not have any desire to recreate me or another pastor. He created a Miller and a Jackson.
So he chose your voice for a reason.
So having the confidence, not that you have a lot to offer, a lot to bring to the table, but God chose you. He knows something, I think, you know, so he chose you for a reason, believing that and being comfortable with that.
So I can bring in guys like Dr. Mohler. Dr. Mohler just is incredibly impressive to me, and the depth of his insight and learning is spectacular.
And I can compare myself to that and know that I could spend 20 more years. I'm not going to get where he's at, but neither can he get to where I'm at. You know, his voice will never be my voice.
I don't why you would want it to be, but you know what I mean, it's unique.
So the goal is to be yourself full of the Holy Spirit and to truly be yourself.
Not in a fleshly kind of way.
You know, God can't use my sin. My sin is the problem.
But my personality, my upbringing, my experiences need to bleed through my sense of humor.
And so early on, the first five to 10 years, I trained in preaching the way you might train in a gym.
So you may have an approach where a guy goes in and he's going to be a bodybuilder and he's working upper body, lower body. Right.
He's training, focusing on muscle groups. Then you have another person who's training, like CrossFit. They're doing whole body exercises.
Well, in preaching, I would intentionally try to preach different types of literature.
So a gospel is a gospel narrative. It preaches one way. It's very different preaching Ephesians than preaching Luke.
Then you have eschatological literature like Revelation or Ezekiel or Daniel, parts of Daniel.
It preaches very differently.
And then you have wisdom literature, you have narrative in the Old Testament.
So I would experiment with those different types of literature.
And I would say who preaches that well.
So, for example, you might have an epistle like Ephesians or Romans.
From my perspective, the great expositors, like a John MacArthur, handles those extremely well.
When you go to something like a gospel narrative, I love to hear some of the great.
Robert Smith, a great African American pastor, works really well with story, their illustrations, their delivery.
He has a book called Doctrine that Dances, and it really captures that narrative delivery well.
You get into things like eschatological literature. And sometimes I might want to lean on a totally different strength set, like a David Jeremiah, who's more of a conversational type of teacher.
So what I would do is I would experiment and build muscles in each one of those categories, and when it came time to approach the text, I would lean on those muscles more than others.
I wouldn't try to preach Luke the way I would preach Romans.
So, you know, if you guys are still in this community, if God hasn't called you somewhere else, I don't know when I'll get to Romans. But let's say, for example, when we finish Genesis, we go into Romans next, which we probably will.
You will feel like he's changed, he's different.
What is he doing differently? And it's just because I'm leaning on other muscles.
You're going to hear me quote the languages, more original languages, building doctrinal frameworks rather. And it'll preach totally different than Genesis does. There's a reason for that. You know, when it comes to the listener, they can appreciate that because it's, it's like a, you know, you don't want to go to the restaurant and get the same meal every time you go. You really, you know, over time you want them to mix it up. And it's better for your health to mix it up some.
So I approach teaching that way sometimes.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Okay,
[00:17:29] Speaker C: trying to think which one. I was going to ask you.
What, what the theologians.
If I said that right, theologians, Theologians, would you.
Would you recommend maybe like, falling for people our age?
[00:17:43] Speaker A: It's in. It's similar to the, to the previous question in that there are different guys that are better at different aspects of theology.
So I've always liked DA Carson for a lot of the. I like him Old Testament and New, but he's one of the premier theologians in the New Testament. I would lean heavily on what D.A. carson says about any text.
He has great insights.
I listen on just straight exposition.
I love MacArthur's teaching on straight. Like, if you get the MacArthur commentary, it's incredibly helpful.
There are other guys who are more philosophical.
So a Tim Keller, for example, will approach the text in a similar way to how C.S. lewis approaches the text. And it's a more philosophical approach, but that can be helpful.
Some guys are extremely practical.
And so there are certain pastors I always like Mark Driscoll as a practical. How does this connect to everyday life?
So just different guys who have different strengths.
And then there are certain guys who are strong at recognizing a gospel approach to the text.
So, for example, I've used the illustration before. Like, if you're preaching David and Goliath, one pastor will tend to preach that as you're David and there's Goliaths in the world that you've got to conquer. You need to trust God to slay the giant. Right.
But another may approach it like, no, no, no, you're actually one of the Israelites who are over on the sidelines. Christ is the true and better David, and Christ is going to slay the Goliath on our behalf. And then vicariously, we have the victory through Christ.
So both are helpful, both are accurate.
It's not that one is right, the other is wrong. But if you lean on one to the exclusion of the other, you get unbalanced.
If you look at every text like, where's Christ in the text? You end up like a fine Waldo type painting.
And it can get really bizarre where you find Jesus at in the text. But if you recognize that, yeah, there are practical, you know, the New Testament tells us the Old Testament was written for our benefit, so that, you know, the tests that we face, we will pass.
So looking for those practical applications and implications, always finding the answer back in the gospel, the work of Jesus Christ and learning to do both. Well, read theology broadly.
Learn metanarrative.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: So could you explain that term?
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So you've heard of, like, systematic theology.
A systematic theologian will take a concept like who is God?
And use the whole of the Bible to explain, well, God is. There's one God eternally existing in three persons. He presents himself or exist as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So systematic theology takes that, recognizes it, proves it from the text.
Biblical theology traces the concept through the whole of the canon of scripture.
And some guys are better at that. So looking at God, how he presents himself in Genesis, when we see God said, let us make man in our own image, well, that's a plural, our plural, there's a plurality to God.
Then we see that, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God. So we see oneness, we see plurality.
So he develops the theology through progressive revelation through the whole canon of Scripture.
And that can be very helpful as well.
Systematic theology can be unbalanced at times.
So if we're talking about top level issues, this is the things that all Christians are going to agree on, who God is, the Bible is, the word of God, the virgin birth, these top level issues, then systematic theology can be quite helpful when you get down to tertiary issues.
And this is helpful if you can learn this early.
Top level, what makes a person a Christian? Every Christian should believe these things.
Secondary issues would be more what makes a person a Baptist versus a Presbyterian. Okay, so I love my Presbyterian brothers. I believe they're saved.
I don't understand their approach to baptism, so God bless them. I'm not mad at them, but I can't get on board with that.
So.
But it's secondary third level issues. Good people disagree on it, People in the same church disagree on it. So a position on like spiritual gifts that I hold, a brother who can be a deacon in our church may hold a totally different position. That's okay. We agree on the top level and second level issues. We can allow for disagreement on the third.
Systematic theology. When it delves into those third level issues, it can get kind of quirky because we don't have a lot of revelation on that.
So that's where I tend to lean more on how has God revealed himself throughout the storyline of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, Biblical theology.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: So not necessarily, you know, doctrinal heresy or Christological heresy, but just issues that people have dealt with being a part of the church of Christ since the foundation of the church of Christ.
[00:23:39] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: And so there may be certain things that we, that we don't see a lot of prescriptive detail on. And spiritual gifts is a good example of that.
It's hard if you just limit yourself to the New Testament, how God reveals himself and works with mankind.
You can develop a theology on it. You can develop some guardrails that are very helpful.
But there are some unanswered questions at times and that makes it helpful to go, well, how did God work in the life of David or the prophets, Elijah, you know what, what do we see in these times that are helpful?
And that's where biblical theology can serve us.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Okay,
[00:24:24] Speaker C: maybe like a good approach to bringing people that seem to be pretty lost, like at our age, specifically, like in kind of a step by step way to guide them to the church.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Well, it's, I'm trying to think, Tim Keller said it. I'm trying to think the way that he Said it.
He said something to the effect of, you'll be about as good at evangelism as you are at friendship.
So there are apologetics and helpful paths and tools like the Romans road, or asking interrogative questions like if you die today and God said, why should I let you into heaven? Things that can't be yes or no answers, those things can be really helpful. But if you learn those things and you stink at being a friend, then you're going to undercut your own work.
So learn what makes a person approachable, what makes them a good friend, easy to talk to. That's why some people.
It will make those of us who've studied a great deal angry. Because you'll see some guys come to Christ and they're just great at winning people to Jesus. And it's not so much that there's a special anointing. There is at times, but sometimes it's just. They're just nice.
And we don't learn niceness through Sunday school or seminary necessarily.
Learn how to be approachable and don't be nice to the exclusion of being truthful.
Learn how to say hard things well.
And I think if there's anything in 30 plus years of doing this that I've tried to master, it's. It's that I take no joy in telling you that, you know, you're. You're off the path. You're really, you know, you're doing some things you really need to change.
I don't enjoy that. I enjoy telling you things that are going to encourage you.
But if I love you, I got to tell you, if you're off the path and you need to tell me as well. So learn how to do that in a way that allows people to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're doing this because it's what you're supposed to do, not because you get any pleasure out of, you know, attacking or being offensive, you know what I mean?
But work on being a really good friend, I think is the key to being good at evangelism.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Actually had kind of a follow up to that. Another question I've kind of been thinking on and just trying to conceptualize of why there's been so many people in this generation and just the younger generation, which it's not exclusive to the younger generation, but it's also, you know, happening in the older generation as well, why there's been such a push towards New age kind of witchcraft, Voodoo or not maybe not necessarily voodoo, but like just spiritual things that people have attached themselves to. And really grown to trust in.
And is it because they've just never experienced spiritual power before?
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's good to realize there is power in those things too.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Yes. And that's kind of like what the question was. Like, Jesus is the ultimate spiritual authority, point blank, period. And there's a lot of young people that don't know Jesus and they don't know the absolute power that Jesus has over the spiritual world.
And they're getting a taste of what, like, spiritual power feels like, what it's like to experience it, what it's like to live it out and to manifest it in some ways.
And is the attraction to these new age kind of spiritual ideals just stemming from that? From.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Well, I think that, you know, scripture says that eternity is set in the heart of man. We're spiritual creatures.
We're created to have one foot in this earth and one foot in eternity.
So it's very natural to believe that there's more to life than meets the eye. You can sometimes you can just observe and do everything.
And I may mean things like getting the job or whatever, do everything you should do. The door opens for somebody else. Or sometimes you'll be like, I did everything wrong and it worked out. So you'll observe that the universe doesn't operate just by logic and principle. Sometimes there's unseen factors that you just can't put your finger on, but you know it's there.
So there's a desire to identify that. What are we dealing with? Because there's something going on here, more than meets the eye.
When you go into the mission field and by the unreached people groups, you'll see it vividly. And here's what I mean.
In America, in our culture, we're good at what's called high theology.
That means there is a God, it's trinitarian in nature.
We have those things defined really well.
Then you have what's called just practical science. We're really good at that.
We can clone a pig.
We can do all of these things that are getting more and more advanced every single year.
But there's a middle theology that we're not very good at, and that's identifying the spiritual forces, good or bad, in the world.
And other cultures are extremely good at that, and we're not.
So you go over to. You look in history. You see them putting names on things like gnomes and fairies, angels, demons, all of these things they've got.
Every culture has its own words for what's going on there. You go to Cuba and in Cuba, I can introduce you to people who are deeply engaged in Santeria.
And here's what typically happens.
They're aware that something's there that meets the eye.
They're trying to figure out, what do you call this? What parameters are we do, how do you engage with it?
Someone comes along who has all those things defined.
We don't have it defined as Christians. Many times the scripture has it defined, but we don't know what it is. We don't know how to deal with it.
We don't know how to engage with spiritual reality. Someone else, like the priestess or priest from Santeria comes and says, I can tell you exactly what that is. I can show you how to leverage it for your benefit.
And it will work. That's the thing that people need to understand. It's not that it doesn't work.
It does work. And when they engage with it, they see things happening. What they don't understand is there are massive strings attached.
So, you know, I had a gentleman in Cuba that is now a pastor, but early in life, he engaged in Santeria, made his sacrifices, he made the deals with the devil, and he said money would just appear out of nowhere. It was unreal, but it would get darker and darker. What the payback would be, what it would cost him, until he was extremely suicidal.
In that point, he met Christ, was delivered from it, gained some biblical understanding on what's really happening here.
So I think there's a native spiritual curiosity that most people possess, and if they're not given biblical answers to those things, they're going to look for alternatives. And that might be somebody at a yoga class. It might be. I'm not saying they're all bad. I'm just saying they do have a spirituality that they present.
That could be somebody in a secret society. It could be someone in a alternative religion. It could be just a vague New Ageism. I think it's the most dangerous because they're not putting any names on it, they're not defining it. It's all more emotional than spiritual, and people are trusting in it just as much as we trust in Christ.
So Satan doesn't counterfeit something that's not valuable.
The truth is valuable, and he has a lot of counterfeits.
That's what I think is going on.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: Yeah, that's.
It's pretty wild. I mean, like, just to see all the stuff that's going on and the trickery that the devil's using is pretty rough.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: It is. And I don't think that's going to get less and less.
So if I had it do over at your age, I would try to educate myself on that.
Learn things like, you know, how the enemy works. Paul says we're not ignorant of his devices. He has devices, he has strongholds, he has schemes, he has plans.
Learn those things.
I remember reading Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart.
He would fly into a city and you would think, well, he goes directly to the Walmart. No, he went to Kmart. That was their big competition. And he would study the competition. He would ask questions about why do they do it this way? How could we do it better?
So sometimes it's helpful just to learn.
What's the difference between temptation and oppression? What's the difference between a stronghold and possession? What are these things?
Give some definitions.
I have a book I wrote called Our Fight that delves into some of that. On a basic level, it's a good place to start.
But get familiar with the terminology that scripture gives to it.
To be quite honest with you, there are some things that aren't easily defined.
Be honest about that and go, okay. Well, I can see there are times where believers seem to be demonized but not fully possessed.
Understand some of those things and look for biblical examples of it and recognize it when you see it, you know, because it's not going to get better and better. It's going to get worse and worse as we go toward the end.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: I guess it's just lack of biblical knowledge.
But I see a lot of people that are believers, but there are obviously very, very. Well, they say they're believers, but they're very comfortable in sin.
And I don't understand how. And they might even know this stuff, like what the Bible says, like about premarital sex and stuff like that, but they're still comfortable doing that. And I just don't know if they don't realize that not only are you doing what God tells you not to do, but also you're setting yourself up for failure, for one. But also there's a ton of spiritual warfare going on there with, with the devil obviously coming in your life and you open your. Yourself up for that as well as. I don't know how they expect to have God's blessing on their marriage or.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Or, you know, when you're antagonizing God.
[00:35:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: You know, so it's good to think of that in multiple categories. And here's what I would mean.
One, John tells us that the seed of God, meaning the Holy Spirit, is inside of a believer.
So they cannot go headlong without Repentance into sin.
God won't let you do it.
The scripture says there is sin unto death.
And I think that can be frightening.
But it can also be encouraging that God will not let us go too far.
Sometimes he says you're causing more damage than you are good. You're my son. But come on home.
You're not helping me down there.
That's a truth of scripture, that we believe that there is a sin. It's contending with the Holy Spirit when he's told us, made it clear this is not my will.
You know, you're vagrantly and clearly violating my truth.
The Holy Spirit's in you. I've paid a great price for you.
I've sent my son to shed his blood ruthlessly on the cross for your benefit.
I'm not going to let you continue this. Come on home. Okay, so that's a reality.
So let's say if you see somebody who makes the claim of being a Christian and they're living that way, then proceed with fear and trembling. Because if they are truly a believer, God won't tolerate it forever.
At the same time, he is remarkably merciful and gracious to us.
So a good second category to have is understanding that to whom much is given, much is expected.
And if someone hasn't received the proper teaching or admonishment or whatever it might be, then it's foolish to presume they're going to figure out how to get out of this stronghold.
So sometimes it's good people that really do believe, they get into these things, they don't know how to get out of it.
And I think you have to have that category as well. So I've always just thought of it this way.
If we took two samplings of oak trees, big massive oaks that are around here, imagine we had two pots that are both just samplings or three foot high. We plant them both in the ground.
But one, we tend to it. Well, we fertilize it. We water it, make sure that its roots can go deep, that it has plenty of sunlight.
Then it's going to get bigger than the other one. If the other one is just barely kept alive, it's given just enough water to survive, it will survive, but it will not flourish.
So if I see somebody, if there's somebody who's in our church week after week and they hear the truth or Trinity, or a church that's really trying to preach the Word and making truth available, and the person's living that way,
[00:38:43] Speaker C: that's scary because they might not have the Holy Spirit.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: They have the resources, they have the teaching. They can't claim ignorance, but they're persisting in sinful patterns, then, yeah, that's a frightening thing. That person wouldn't stand too close to them because you don't know.
So there's a category that says the believer could persist in sin. God's going to bring him home.
There's a time when there's a believer that doesn't have enough, you know, teaching and nutrients and biblical understanding. And then there's sometimes a person who has the name of a believer that's just not a believer. I think that's what you were alluding to. Yeah, yeah. There's. You know, Billy Graham used to say, if we read the parable of the Four Soils, only one of the four really bear fruit and replicated.
And he said that he tends to believe that if you take all of the people, like if you look at these surveys that say, man, there's, you know, 70% of the people in Florida are Christian. No, they're not. No, they're not. We wouldn't be dealing with the silly stuff we're dealing with if they were Christian.
Probably of that 70% that make a claim to being a Christian, probably 25% of them are legit, according to Dr. Graham. You know, so I don't know what that he doesn't know, and I don't know what the real numbers are, but they're not 100%.
And so it's just good to remember that. That if I'm living, if I don't know you and you say you're a Christian, if I just meet you out at the Walmart or something, person says for whatever reason, they communicate to me they're a Christian.
Well, that's in your best. You communicated that you were. So that's better than a lot of people would do.
But I'm not going to really make a.
I'm not going to buy stock, you know, because in the south especially, we get inoculated from the truth. We get so much around us that we feel like we've got it in us.
And so I've said it before, if somebody professes faith, let's say at vacation Bible school, I'm happy.
I'm happy that they say they want to trust Jesus.
We baptize them, we take them at their word.
But I'm hedging my heart.
I'm not believing it fully.
I need to see the evidence of it over time not to baptize them because they're giving us their Word, that they're following Christ.
And that's all we have at that point.
But in five years, let's say they've kind of fallen out of church. They don't attend anymore. They're starting to get into some bad habits.
I'm concerned by that point. There's something not right.
But if that same person, 15 years later, man, they're becoming an adult, they're dating people who are Christian, they're really wanting to raise their kids in the faith.
This looks like he got it.
But it just takes time. It takes time to observe that you have to leave those other possibilities open as well.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: And I think, you know, a big problem is a lot of people obviously, outside of church, leaning on their own understanding and. Or making comments like, oh, well, that, you know, the Bible was a long time ago and all this. And that's the kind of comments you'll hear. And they.
They basically are just saying that, you know, it's. They almost basically don't believe it's the word of God, basically. I mean, I don't know if they realize that this is like the word of God,
[00:42:31] Speaker A: but it's so convenient to be able to say, well, it's not all true, but I'll pick the ones
[00:42:35] Speaker C: I'll tell you are true exactly.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Well, those are always the ones that line up with how they want to live anyway.
And so I remember early, I was raised to believe those scriptures.
I didn't have any serious questions about is the Bible the word of God. I always really did just sincerely believe it, but I couldn't defend it if somebody came up and said, okay, wow, you're telling me that I'm supposed to be committed to one woman for the rest of my life?
Well, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, it said that you're supposed to not have different kinds of fabrics sewn together. Do you believe that? Just as much. I didn't know what to say to that.
So it was helpful to me around your age to begin to study the answers to those questions, because it's a fair question. But if you understand the Scriptures, you understand dispensations of grace, dispensations of truth. And there was a legal system in Israel that we're not subject to today.
So if I say you should, you know, marry and be committed to your wife, it's not only because it was in the Old Testament. You know, we have New Testament revelation, and there are certain things. I'll give you a good example.
There are certain things in the New Testament that were rescinded they're no longer bearing on us because they've been fulfilled in Christ.
So an example of that would be the Sabbath ordinances of the Old Testament. It was very clear that the Sabbath, one thing was on Saturday. No debate about that. It was very clear in the Old Testament that exactly what you could do and could not do on the Sabbath.
In the New Testament, we see the early church worshiping on Sunday, not Saturday.
They're worshiping on the Lord's day, the day that Christ was raised from the dead. Every significant event that happened in the New Testament happened on a Sunday. Every single one of them.
The ascension into heaven, Pentecost, the call, the sending of Paul and Barnabas, all of the significant events happen on a Sunday.
And then the question would be, do we take those laws out of the Old Testament and apply them to Sunday?
We don't, because the writer of the Hebrews tells us that Christ was the sum total of the Sabbath. He's the Lord of Sabbath, his rest.
When Jesus accomplished the work of redemption, sat down at the right hand of the Father and rested from his work, our Sabbath was perfectly fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
So there are principles.
I like to have one day off in seven. I think it's healthy, it's helpful, but there's not a legal requirement the way that it was then.
There are other aspects of the law, things like moral purity and the sanctity of marriage that are reiterated in the New Testament.
So as New Covenant believers, that's how we read the Old Testament. We see some things. It's not that it's not helpful, it's that it was fulfilled in Christ.
The shadow. If you look at the shadow that's on your mic right there, the shadow is one thing, the substance of the mic is another.
One's better than the other.
In quality, in type. The substance is better than the shadow.
Sabbath is the shadow. Christ is the substance.
Once the substance has come, the shadow is no longer necessary.
So understanding those things and glorying in the law, glorying in the prophets, it's all the word of God. Some of it's been fulfilled already and it's no longer binding on believers. Understanding that allows you to have defend those conversations that are good questions. If somebody says, well, why do you wear garments from two different fabrics? It's like, well, that one's been fulfilled.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Shrimp every day, right?
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Who do you think you are? You know, sorry, Gentile barbecue. Yeah. And you know, but, but, but those are really good.
The Lord had a conversation with Peter and explained it to him and said, What I declare clean, don't you call it unclean. And he had every type of animal and said, rise, kill, and eat.
Which I also say is a good reason why we could go hunting.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: But usually those questions, they may not come from the most sincere place, but they're fair questions that we should be able to answer.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Do you think some of those questions are almost trick questions?
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
We will go to great lengths to defend our sin.
And that's something else I would just say to know about yourself.
Be willing to say if there's something that doesn't line up with what you know to be true.
Be okay in saying, hey, I'm still struggling with that.
I'm not fully sanctified yet. But don't try to defend it, that it's okay.
We abhor hypocrites, we abhor it in ourself, we abhor it in others, but mostly in ourselves.
And so what people have a tendency to do is if they're living consistently in a way that doesn't line up with what Scripture says, they're going to either want to change themselves or the scripture.
Always, always be willing to change yourself if it doesn't line up.
Somebody approached me one time, they said, hey, how do you defend your attitude in this one situation that was not right?
How do you tell me that that's okay?
And my first instinct was to look for a thousand scriptures that would make it okay. And I had to look at him and go, it's not okay. I don't defend it.
I'm wrong there. And forgive me, pray I can change, but I'm not going to defend it.
That's always been a healthier place for me to be, and I've always had more freedom that way.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: Place of humility.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: Admit when you're wrong.
Be very comfortable doing that.
You don't have to defend you, you defend truth.
But it's okay if you're wrong.
And be perfectly comfortable if somebody looks at you and goes, dude, you were way off there. That's okay. I don't. I'm not. I'm not the goal.
Truth is the goal. I'll defend truth. I'll die for truth. I'm not gonna die for me, but for truth. Yes.
Has this helped you?
[00:49:40] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Definitely.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: This has been fun.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: Well, if it helps you, hopefully to help some other people as well. Thank you guys for coming in today and having this conversation with me.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: Thank you, sir.
[00:49:50] Speaker A: Let's do it again soon.
[00:49:50] Speaker C: Yes, sir.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: All right.
