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1:18
This is Undaunted Life, a Man's Podcast.
1:22
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:24
Let's get into it.
1:26
Joe B. Martin, you're back.
1:27
I would give you a normal intro, but you're on here all the time.
1:30
You're taking up residence on my podcast and in my brain at all times.
1:35
But as you well know, you've not been feeling well these days.
1:38
I feel like Satan's all over you.
1:40
I feel like we should have a cough meter.
1:42
Maybe we don't want to do a drinking game because there are Baptists listening to this,
1:46
but maybe every time you cough, somebody drinks water, what's been going on with you?
1:49
I'm not surprised to see you alive.
1:52
I am recovering from the Flumonia.
1:55
I preached our student camp a couple of weeks ago, and one of those dirt bags gave me the
2:00
flu about kill me.
2:01
So it's pretty bad.
2:02
I was in the hospital for a couple of days, and so I feel, I feel fine now.
2:06
I just have a nagging cough.
2:09
Now what did you learn from this experience, Joe B?
2:12
Uh, I don't know, nothing.
2:16
Don't invest in the leaders of tomorrow.
2:18
Let them figure it out.
2:20
Like they'll be fine.
2:21
And that's what you pay youth pastors for.
2:23
Man, I'm pro camp.
2:26
It was, it was probably the best camp I've ever been a part of my whole life.
2:29
I'm so proud of our team.
2:31
We had, we had a bunch of kids, man.
2:33
My daughter was there.
2:34
She feels called the ministry.
2:35
It was, it was worth the, uh, visit to the doorstep of the devil's hideaway.
2:42
That's where I was.
2:43
Okay.
2:44
Well, everybody's glad that you're no longer worse for where this is coming out later.
2:48
But it'll be good to have you back in the pulpit after a couple of weeks out.
2:52
Now we got to get into the new book here in just a second.
2:54
And I normally get most of my generic questions out of the way every month on our ask a pastor
2:59
series, but before we get to the new book, our fans just need an update, you know, fans
3:04
of ask a pastor.
3:06
Are you still letting baby Hitler live?
3:08
Oh man.
3:09
Yeah.
3:10
I've thought about it, man.
3:12
You can't excuse them.
3:14
What?
3:15
What do you mean to your killing them?
3:18
I can't, not for potential bad.
3:20
I could, there's a couple of responses.
3:22
I could kill him in if it was in my dominion, if I had domain over it, like he was attacking
3:27
my house, if I was saving a family, yada, yada, yada, but in your scenario that you set up,
3:34
he hasn't actually done anything bad yet.
3:37
So I've got to do what's right, no matter the cost, no matter the circumstance.
3:41
So I cannot choose to willfully sin just because I can justify it some other way later.
3:49
Yeah, that's all nonsense.
3:50
But I will say that I got a great comment from somebody.
3:53
I think it was after our last guy's a pastor because we were talking about who we would
3:57
want at dinner.
3:58
Like if we were doing like a dinner of Bible people and a dinner of like other people
4:01
or whatever.
4:02
And this guy sent me a great email.
4:03
I wish I remembered his name so I would be able to give him credit.
4:06
He's like, I thought you were going to say you wanted baby Hitler at dinner so you could
4:09
kill him like before you did the appetizer.
4:12
I was like, you know, that would be an interesting way to kick off a dinner.
4:15
But don't worry.
4:16
We don't have to do that.
4:17
But we are here today and we're not doing an ask a pastor even though I'm going to be
4:20
asking a pastor a lot of stuff because you got a new book out.
4:23
Guys if you're listening to this on time, it is out today.
4:26
So you can go into the show notes and you can buy your own copy today.
4:29
It's called run over by the grace train, how the unstoppable love of God transforms everything.
4:34
But Joby, look at this that I got in the mail for those of you on YouTube.
4:38
You're seeing this, I haven't opened this yet, but it looks like there's stuff coming
4:42
out of it.
4:43
You're getting my stuff, you know, my office all dirty here.
4:46
So I'm going to open this for the first time.
4:47
I've already cut the tape but I did not open it for the very first time.
4:51
See what we got.
4:52
Oh, look at there.
4:55
Oh, I will say I don't like the generic friend thing.
4:58
You could have at least put my name on there, Joby.
5:00
So we'll work on that.
5:01
But there it is guys and all of its glory.
5:03
We'll try not to make the world's biggest mess.
5:05
Boom.
5:06
Here it is.
5:08
Run over by the grace train.
5:09
You know, I'm going to leave all that in there.
5:10
It looks like it's got dreadlocks, but I want to read a quick quote from the prologue and
5:14
then we're going to dig into the book.
5:15
Here's a quote.
5:16
For 30 years, I've been a preacher of the Bible and one thing that was true when I started
5:21
is still true.
5:22
Now is this.
5:23
I just can't get over the gospel.
5:25
So Joby, why this book?
5:27
Why now?
5:28
Why you?
5:29
Man, I think our world needs grace.
5:32
And I think grace is a misunderstood concept in ideology in the church.
5:37
It's an often used term that people don't really get grace.
5:41
And it is by grace that we are saved through faith.
5:45
But this is, this is like my anti cheap grace book, the grace that doesn't change you doesn't
5:51
save you.
5:52
And so if you were to get hit by a freight train, it would change your whole life.
5:55
And if you had a true encounter with the grace of Jesus Christ, it will change your entire
6:00
life.
6:01
And so not only are we talking about what grace does the first time you ever taste of
6:06
it and experience it, but how grace changes you, how grace calls us to forgive, how grace
6:12
calls us to throw down the stones like grace changes everything.
6:18
So I will say right from the beginning, because we're going to be digging into basically every
6:21
chapter of this book, you know, it's, it's not like spoiler alerts, because it's not
6:25
a fiction book, but not since the explicit gospel, which was Matt Chandler's first book
6:31
that he wrote, maybe, I don't know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, have I come away from a
6:35
book like, and just been like, man, this entire book is about the gospel.
6:40
Like every story, every point, everything led back to the same well.
6:46
And I guess you could say a lot of Christian books.
6:48
Maybe I'm selling them short a little bit, but it was so gospel saturated.
6:52
It reminded me of when I was like sitting in Phil Robertson's living room, and he just
6:56
telling stories and thumbing through the Bible and everything just came back to the gospel.
7:00
So that's what it felt like.
7:01
So nicely done, but I want to dig into the dedication real quick.
7:06
So here's your dedication in the book to all the preachers who have come before me on whose
7:10
shoulders I stand, who have preached the life changing gospel to all the preachers today
7:15
who labor to do the same.
7:16
And lastly, to the ones to come, may they carry the torch with faithfulness by grace.
7:21
Now, Joby, don't pastors already get all the cool stuff and accolades, they get their
7:25
own parking spaces, they get their own podcasts.
7:28
And now you're going to dedicate this entire book to these guys.
7:31
They already get enough.
7:32
Joby, come on.
7:33
Yeah, man.
7:34
I think, you know, preachers have been under attack for a long time.
7:38
And so, you know, if we don't preach the word, then how will people hear and understand the
7:43
good news of the gospel of Jesus?
7:44
So I'm for a man.
7:46
I hope this is helpful for folks and I'm very, very thankful for the men's shoulders on
7:51
whom I stand who that went before me.
7:54
All right, very good.
7:56
So let's go ahead and dig into the book and we're going to go ahead and get this out of
7:59
the way right here in the prologue.
8:01
I got some problems right out of the gate and it starts in the prologue and you could,
8:05
you could probably smell it through the screen.
8:07
You knew this was coming, okay?
8:09
So to set it up, you talk about that mosquito flying towards an oncoming train.
8:14
That's the scene that you set for the reader.
8:16
So let me read the quote here.
8:18
Having been run over by the grace train, the mosquito quickly realizes a few things.
8:22
One, it is powerless to resist.
8:25
What can it do against the train?
8:27
Nothing.
8:28
Two, it didn't get itself on the train, can't get itself off the train and cannot alter
8:33
the destination.
8:34
The train is going where the train is going, unstoppable and undeterred, but, but, but
8:39
Joby, just a mere two pages later, you say this, when the grace train runs you over, it
8:45
doesn't kill you.
8:46
It saves you by grace.
8:47
You have been saved.
8:48
Ephesians two, five, the flip side is also true.
8:51
If you don't receive and accept the grace in this life, then you get run over by the
8:55
judgment of God at the end of your life, grace or judgment, your call and not to get too
9:02
far ahead, but in chapter four, you bring up the story about George Wilson.
9:06
He was pardoned for a crime.
9:07
He rejected the initial part and then years later, he got a second pardon and he accepted
9:12
it.
9:13
So that's all I'm going to say about the story.
9:14
It's a great story.
9:15
You should get the book and check it out.
9:16
And so I've even said before, what if I got this beautiful custom knife made and I got
9:20
it as a gift for you?
9:22
Don't you at least have to accept it?
9:23
Like that's your role.
9:24
So Joby, are we powerless to resist the grace of God or is it our call?
9:32
What is it?
9:34
We are powerless to resist the grace of God.
9:38
And the reason that we have the ability to respond is because the fate that we have is
9:42
a gift from God.
9:45
You continuously and on the forging table, try to make that an either or and the Bible
9:50
doesn't make it.
9:51
It feels like it feels like an either or Joby.
9:54
I know it does to you, but that's why salvation isn't us to you.
9:58
Salvation is the Lord's not just to me.
10:00
I'm going to start forwarding you.
10:02
All the messages I get of people struggling with the same thing and let you deal with
10:06
it.
10:07
Cool.
10:08
And I'll just forward you chapters of the battle.
10:12
But honestly, in all honesty, that is the tension that I still don't don't get.
10:15
I was I was sitting with one of the Robertsons, I'll leave nameless because I didn't get
10:18
permission to tell the story.
10:20
And we were talking about this exact thing, that tension between, are we powerless to accept
10:25
it?
10:26
Because if we're powerless, that means we had, we had nothing to do with it that it was just
10:30
going to happen regardless.
10:31
Does that make sense?
10:32
That's where I think people get bogged down to where they're like, am I just a robot?
10:36
Am I just dancing to my DNA as it were?
10:40
Instead of powerless, why don't we just talk about who is the initiating force in your
10:45
salvation?
10:46
Okay.
10:47
That's very clearly.
10:48
Yeah, go ahead.
10:50
My crew thinks it's gone.
10:52
The Armenians think it's you.
10:54
And so that's where we fundamentally differ.
10:58
And then if you're going to be Armenian, if you're going to say, well, I figured it
11:01
out and I chose him and I received, you know, like it was, it was initiated.
11:06
That's the only thing.
11:07
We all everybody believes that God saves and everybody believes that you have to respond.
11:12
The question is just how are you able to?
11:15
Is the essence of how you were able to have faith in God was that faith?
11:20
Did it come from you or did it come from him?
11:23
If he just to says it comes from him.
11:26
So that's it.
11:27
I just told try to, I just use, try to use the words that the Bible uses when it comes
11:32
to salvation.
11:33
And it says, we're saved by grace through faith, not by our own works.
11:39
And even the faith that we have is a gift from God.
11:42
So the reason that you have the ability to receive, which you do have to receive.
11:48
And the real, the, the reason that you can trust him is because he made that possible
11:54
for you.
11:56
Is there a team somewhere in between?
11:58
Is there like, okay, Armenians, I'm not really with that.
12:00
And like these, these Calvinists, I'm not really there.
12:02
Is there like a team in between there that, that we can all get on board with that team?
12:07
Yeah, almost every pastor that you talk crap about every week of your show, they just
12:11
decide to plant their feet firmly in the air.
12:14
And they don't actually do the Bible studies though.
12:18
Yeah.
12:19
I have no idea what you're talking about.
12:20
I talk so infrequently about other pastors and their ministries.
12:23
Come on now.
12:24
I wouldn't dare do such a thing.
12:25
Now, okay, let's go ahead and get off that because we always argue about that.
12:28
It's always fun.
12:29
There's another.
12:30
Let's keep going.
12:31
Let's go one more time.
12:32
Okay.
12:33
Let's go.
12:34
Let's go.
12:35
I get it.
12:36
So the reason it's problematic for you, I totally understand it's where I stopped and said
12:41
the reason that you can receive is because God gave you the gift of faith.
12:45
When you just put a period at the end of that, that's great.
12:48
Everybody loves that.
12:49
Who doesn't love that?
12:50
The problem is, is then if you add one more sentence, well, does that mean?
12:54
And then you say some other things.
12:56
And the reason it bothers you rightly is because we are also very concerned about the character
13:05
and nature of God.
13:07
And we, we don't ever want to misrepresent the character and nature of God.
13:13
And we have a hard time reconciling.
13:16
Well, if he gives me faith that I could believe him, why didn't he give that guy faith?
13:21
And if he doesn't give that guy faith, does that say something less than perfect about
13:26
the holy God that we love?
13:29
So the angst that you have is legitimate because it's about the character and nature of God.
13:34
But the Bible seems to say is that God is all loving.
13:37
He is all good.
13:38
Everything is for his glory and faith is a gift from him and everybody who doesn't have
13:43
faith.
13:44
It doesn't necessarily tie all those things up in a tight bow.
13:48
Well, I like tight bows.
13:50
Those are like my favorite types of bows because that means that what is inside of that bow
13:53
is secure, Joby.
13:55
But honestly, the angst that you mentioned, honestly, most of that angst now is with my
14:00
sons and that angst of, oh, it really doesn't matter what I do with them.
14:06
If I raise him in a Christian household or read the Bible to worship with them or take
14:10
it, but none of those things are true.
14:12
No, you're making up stuff.
14:14
The Bible says, yeah, yes, you are.
14:17
See, you got to just read Bible verses.
14:19
The Bible says that you should raise your kids in the abonation of the Lord.
14:23
You know what I mean?
14:24
That you should talk about him.
14:25
Yeah.
14:26
All that.
14:27
Yeah.
14:28
So when they're awake and when they're asleep, when they're walking around and sitting down.
14:32
And so again, don't let your, your perceived implications of the sovereignty of God take
14:39
you away from just what the Bible says to do.
14:43
That is the problem.
14:44
That's when people paint reform theology with too broad of a brush and they create a straw
14:49
man.
14:50
And I know you like to create steel men.
14:51
And so the steel man is that God is not just sovereign over the end, but he's also sovereign
14:56
over the means to the end.
14:58
So the reason that we evangelize is because that's how he set it up.
15:02
And he is sovereign over the salvation.
15:04
So we don't get to just say, well, we don't have to do missions because God saves like
15:08
you dummy.
15:09
Jesus literally, his last word was therefore go.
15:12
So of course we have to be obedient.
15:14
Romans 10 says, how they're going to preach, how they're going to believe if they don't
15:17
hear.
15:18
So you got to go preach.
15:20
So the Bible doesn't try to disconnect those two things.
15:24
But I guess it's the should part.
15:27
So should we raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?
15:31
Yes.
15:33
Will his will still be done even if I don't?
15:36
Also yes.
15:37
And so that's the tension of that's where people are like, why would a Calvinist go on
15:42
a mission trip?
15:43
Because if the answer is just because we're supposed to, well, we do plenty of stuff all
15:47
the time that we're not supposed to.
15:49
And so it's like, if he's going to get done, what he's going to get done anyway, he's going
15:52
to get it done regardless of what I do, that's, those are the conversations I have with people
15:56
where both of us get stuck to where it's like, well, yeah, what if I just choose not to,
16:00
though?
16:01
Okay.
16:02
Well, then God will sovereignly figure it out or not figure it out, but he will have
16:04
it done his way another way.
16:06
If that makes sense.
16:07
Yeah.
16:08
No matter.
16:09
I've said this to you about 10 times.
16:12
If you have this discussion long enough, you're just going to end up in Romans nine.
16:15
So, so you and your friend talking about what Calvinist don't go on mission trips.
16:20
And you're going to end up in Romans nine, which leads to Romans 10, which says, go on
16:23
mission trips.
16:25
So I'm telling you, this is why you need to read this.
16:29
I mean, a whole chapter on Ephesians two and a whole chapter on the Romans three, which
16:33
is about God's role and man's role in salvation.
16:37
Don't worry.
16:38
This entire episode's about people reading your book.
16:39
Okay.
16:40
So we're, we're, we're definitely going to make sure people read the book and and and just
16:43
between me and you, Joby, we may or may not be hidden Romans here pretty soon on the forging
16:48
table.
16:49
We may or may not be doing that.
16:50
I wouldn't dare say that to the wider audience though, but so just like so keep your pants
16:54
on at least for now.
16:55
But I do want to keep going through because there's a lot of good things that you bring
16:58
up in this book that it's at least good for a podcast or I don't know about the reader.
17:01
They should read it anyway.
17:03
But in the prologue, you have this quote here.
17:05
Now, no, now don't miss this.
17:08
The grace train of the gospel of Jesus Christ is infinitely more powerful than a freight
17:12
train.
17:13
And anyone who encounters God's grace is changed totally and eternally.
17:18
So my honest question is what about the people that only seem changed a little bit?
17:22
Just give them enough time.
17:24
It's just the time, time will cure that because if you receive God's grace, you will be glorified.
17:32
I'm not, I don't want to try to purport that or, or say that if you don't check the sanctification
17:41
boxes in the correct order, then you need to question your salvation, not whatsoever.
17:47
But I'm, I'm really preaching against is that cheap grace, cheap law, nothing changes in
17:54
my life.
17:55
I still do everything I want to do.
17:56
And yet somehow I can believe in Jesus for my salvation.
18:00
If that's the kind of cheap gospel you're talking about, that's some made up gospel.
18:07
That's not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
18:08
Now, I will say that, um, again, I think, I think Spurgeon said it, the grace that doesn't
18:14
change you doesn't save you.
18:16
So some things got to change that the spirit of God has been planted and you sin has been
18:20
wiped away.
18:23
Some development of the fruit of the spirit over time begins to happen.
18:27
And again, it may not happen as fast as we would like and it may not happen in the order
18:30
that our wives would appreciate, but amen, but the gospel changes us.
18:37
I'm not saying amen to that.
18:39
You're not going to trick me, but I guess that's one thing when we talked about this before.
18:43
So we won't belabor it.
18:44
But like no one is less assured of their salvation than a Christian that listens to John MacArthur
18:49
talk about assurance of salvation.
18:51
It's zero.
18:52
There's a zero percent chance that you will feel any less saved than after that moment.
18:56
He's got an entire book that's called save beyond a doubt.
19:00
There's no doubt that at the end of that book that you're going to doubt that you're saved
19:04
or not.
19:05
And so I think that's okay.
19:07
But when we start looking at other people's fruit, right, and I mean that not awkwardly,
19:13
but when you're looking at the fruit and other people's life of their Christian walk,
19:17
and their fruit doesn't seem sweet enough, right?
19:19
If their fruit's a little pungent, then it becomes a little bit problematic and that
19:24
it scares, it scares the person that's even doing the judgment if you were to say it that
19:28
way.
19:29
Yeah.
19:30
And I don't know that we're supposed to sit in judgment over one another salvation.
19:33
I mean, you know, if we're thoughts over others, we definitely should be mutually holding one
19:38
another accountable, those are two different things.
19:43
But then sometimes it's just obvious.
19:45
I was listening.
19:46
I mean, I guess people listen to the show, no, I listen, I think I listen to every episode.
19:51
But I guess it was a recent, oh yeah, it was acts nine and you said, hey, share conversion
19:58
stories.
19:59
And somebody said, how about false conversion stories, which was funny because they brought
20:05
up Kanye West, which I, you don't have to be a farmer to look at a rotten tomato.
20:11
You know what I'm saying?
20:12
Like currently, from my very limited point of view, it does not look like Kanye is living
20:20
a life surrendered to Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
20:25
Then one of the things I really appreciated that you guys did on that is let's take some
20:29
other famous people, Russell Brand, is he going to say some dumb stuff?
20:33
Dude, he's been dumb forever, of course.
20:36
But I'm rooting.
20:37
I mean, he's, he's actually, he's brilliant.
20:39
He's really smart and all that.
20:41
But I'm, it seems to me that this is an authentic, like he's trying to follow Jesus and right
20:46
all he knows how to do is put his mug on a video and say stuff and he's saying all the
20:51
Jesus stuff he knows and our people are going to misstep and stuff.
20:55
They are or that, that one person that got saved and wanted to read what mere Christianity,
21:00
maybe it was him.
21:01
And all the dummies that just were bashing.
21:04
Yeah.
21:05
What a great point you made.
21:06
You were like, great, why don't, why don't the church just come alongside that brother
21:10
and go, great idea.
21:11
Let's read it together.
21:12
You know, well done, bro.
21:14
Smart guy way smarter than you and me.
21:16
So, but, but grace changes us.
21:20
Um, see, and a part of, part of where I'm coming from was a really bad theology growing
21:27
up.
21:28
So, Southern Baptist with nothing wrong with Southern Baptist, I'm a recovering Baptist
21:32
now.
21:33
And, and I got saved at camp on the last night of camp, it was very emotional.
21:38
I meant every word of it and I promise and I asked Jesus in my heart and he came in and
21:45
I cried and I promise I was going to quit sinning and I did for many days in a row afterwards.
21:53
And then as soon as I started sinning again, I thought, well, dang it, maybe it didn't
21:58
take.
21:59
And then I thought, well, so what I'll do is I'll just store up my sin all year long.
22:04
Cause there's also, there's like another lane at Southern Baptist camp and you can get in
22:08
the read education line.
22:09
That's right.
22:10
And then I'll just start over again next, you know, and so do I did about three years
22:14
of, of that was kind of the cycle of my, my growing process.
22:20
And I don't want people to doubt their salvation, but I also don't want people that aren't
22:24
saved to think just because they felt away one day that they've surrendered their life
22:29
to Christ.
22:30
Yep.
22:31
That's where we rail on emotionalism and that's why I'm, I'm not big on, you know, setting
22:36
the mood for, for those types of things, even though I'm not anti-music, but that's not
22:40
what we're going to get into.
22:41
Cause we actually need to get into chapter one, believe it or not.
22:43
We're not even a chapter one yet.
22:44
Chapter one is called grace saves.
22:46
In this chapter, you talk about, I thought this was poignant that we're not bad.
22:51
We're dead.
22:52
You actually have a point here says, he doesn't say you were bad.
22:56
Sin doesn't make you bad.
22:57
Sin makes you dead.
22:58
And so I think that's a great thing for people to look at.
23:00
It's like, there's not bad people and good people.
23:02
There's bad people and bad people.
23:04
And then in those groups of bad people, there's either saved people or unsaved people.
23:09
And that, that's really it.
23:11
And you know, you also talk about in that chapter, sending against the lion of Judah.
23:16
And I think, I think we've turned the lion of Judah into a pussy cat.
23:20
And we don't want to talk about the grandeur of God and the mightiness of God.
23:25
And really how David describes God in a lot of the Psalms, cause it, of course, makes
23:29
him scary and icky and he's not as, you know, approachable seemingly in that way.
23:34
But I think if we saw God rightly, if we saw Jesus rightly as lamb of God and lion of Judah,
23:41
then we wouldn't look at ourselves as, Oh, bad.
23:43
It's like, no, we're dead in our sins have made us dead in the eyes of this holy, just
23:48
amazing, awesome God.
23:50
So flow in that a little bit.
23:51
Yeah.
23:52
Think about it in the book of Revelation, John, who is, you know, the disciple Jesus loved
23:58
according to John, Jesus is fish and buddy.
24:00
He rest his head against Jesus, his shoulder at the last supper.
24:05
But when he sees the glorified Christ, he falls down in his face and he's like, Oh my God,
24:09
I'm going to die.
24:10
Don't kill me.
24:12
That is the right response to the Holy God.
24:16
He came as a suffering servant once.
24:18
He is never coming again that way.
24:21
The next time we see him, um, I heard a preacher say this, he shows up to a fight in white.
24:29
The only reason you wear white to a fight is you know, it ain't going to take long and
24:32
you ain't getting dirty.
24:33
Like, I like that, man.
24:35
That's good.
24:36
So, so when we talk about grace, that shouldn't belittle sin at the picture of how atrocious
24:45
sin is is the cross of Jesus.
24:49
Like your sin and my sin is so egregious against the Holy God that God had to kill his
24:55
own son to do something about it.
24:58
Like this is, I don't think we can take our sin seriously enough.
25:05
These aren't and you know, today Christians don't even sin.
25:08
They just struggle.
25:09
You ever notice that?
25:10
People are like, well, I'm just struggling.
25:11
Like, no, dude, that's called a sin.
25:12
All right.
25:13
Right.
25:14
Looking at porn is a sin.
25:15
That's not a struggle.
25:16
That's a sin.
25:17
Right.
25:18
It's not a mistake.
25:19
It's not a whoopsie.
25:20
It's a really, really, really big deal.
25:22
The scandalous nature of the gospel though, is that there's more grace in Jesus than sin
25:28
in you.
25:29
That's the thing that make your head explode.
25:32
Say that one more time for the people in the back.
25:35
The scandalous nature of the gospel is that there's more grace in Jesus than sin in you.
25:42
So to the man listening right now, it's like, yeah, I get it.
25:44
I get it.
25:45
But I listen to undaunted just because I like to hear the political commentary or, you know,
25:49
beat up on some helpless preacher, but God couldn't save me because you don't know what
25:54
I've done.
25:55
Well, if I was with you, bro, I'd put my finger in your chest and go, who the freak do you
25:59
think you are?
26:00
Look, I'm just telling you, you are JV compared to what Christ did on the cross.
26:07
You can't out send him.
26:08
Now, that's not, that's not licensed to go crazy as this warm invitation that even you
26:13
and I can be forgiven.
26:15
No matter what.
26:16
Yeah.
26:17
Amen to that.
26:18
And I just got to tell you, I don't think those pastors are, are you really worried about
26:21
me and they're bulletproof, Bentley's.
26:23
So I think they'll be okay.
26:25
But let's move on to chapter one.
26:26
We have a great quote about your role as a pastor because your role as a pastor is to
26:31
make, make the flock not see themselves as mistakeers, but as sinners.
26:36
And this center, this sin doesn't make you bad and makes you dead.
26:38
So here's a quote Paul wants us to know this reality.
26:41
You are a sinner.
26:42
Again, I know some of you will be offended by that.
26:45
That's okay.
26:46
That's part of my job.
26:47
My job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
26:51
Now I've been reliably informed, Joby that pastors aren't supposed to make us feel bad.
26:56
You were supposed to make us feel good.
26:57
You're supposed to make us feel entertained.
26:59
You're supposed to amuse us.
27:00
And I'm supposed to go skipping out of the congregation every single day, feeling really
27:04
good about the rock concert and the tech talk that I just saw.
27:07
How dare you say that your job is to afflict the comfortable?
27:10
What's wrong with you?
27:11
I mean, you know, that's one way to do it.
27:14
The way we do it here, honestly, man, I get it.
27:18
You know, the guys that are trying to kind of bait and switch people with a good time.
27:22
There's just no power in it.
27:24
There's no power.
27:25
You can draw a crowd.
27:26
You just can't make disciples that way.
27:28
And I'm not trying to beat up on people, man.
27:30
Preach is hard.
27:31
It really is.
27:32
It's hard coming up with a message every week to any preachers that might be listening.
27:36
I would just implore you.
27:38
The power is in the gospel.
27:40
That's what Romans says that I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the
27:45
power and the salvation.
27:46
And so, you know, five ways to be a better version of you and all that, it's just make
27:55
sure that you're preaching gospel sermons because it's the gospel that saves.
28:00
And gospel just means good news and good news enters the bad places, man.
28:04
And a doctor that doesn't diagnose you because he doesn't want to hurt your feelings, that's
28:09
not a good doctor and a preacher that's not willing to diagnose the problem of sin.
28:14
That's not a good preacher.
28:16
And beyond that, you don't have to complicate the gospel.
28:19
I just got back from a trip to West Monroe, Louisiana.
28:22
And I went to Phil Robertson Sunday school class and people travel from all over to come
28:27
to his Sunday school class and his gospel presentation is this.
28:33
So you can't, you can't really see that.
28:34
It may be a little fuzzy.
28:35
All right.
28:36
So it's a downward air.
28:37
Yeah.
28:38
It's a downward arrow, which says that God came down and became became flesh and dwelt
28:42
among us.
28:43
There's a cross.
28:44
He died on that cross for our sins.
28:46
Then there's a half circle, which represents the tomb, which is that he was buried.
28:50
Then there's an upward arrow that says he came back to life and then he eventually ascended
28:55
to the right hand of the father.
28:56
And then there's a downward arrow and that's what we're waiting on and that's for him to
28:59
come back and make all things new.
29:02
That's the good news of the gospel and five things that you can ride on a sticky note.
29:07
And I feel like some pastors are like, well, if this doesn't have a whole bunch of fancy,
29:11
you know, theological language attached to it, then my flock will be stupid.
29:15
It's like, Hey, the flock is full of sheep.
29:17
They are stupid.
29:19
So stop trying to overcomplicate it.
29:21
Yeah.
29:22
And, you know, there's a place for really heady preaching that, you know, it's all kind of
29:26
different preachers for all kinds of different folks.
29:29
But yeah, the gospel is not doesn't have to be highly complicated.
29:33
Although it is a well so deep that you never get to the bottom of it either, you know,
29:36
it's a really incredible supernatural reality that God came to save us.
29:42
There's like 250 pages is in this dreadlocked book that basically is all the same thing.
29:47
And I don't think you actually got to the bottom of it either, but it was a good foray
29:50
into that.
29:51
Now, here's something that I think you and I will kind of align with and yes, guys, we're
29:55
still in chapter one.
29:56
Don't worry.
29:57
It's this quote here, Jesus says out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
30:02
That means this.
30:03
You don't have a potty mouth.
30:04
You have a potty heart.
30:06
Now I've talked about this in Jess and I've talked about the somewhat tongue and cheek.
30:10
And I think you and I are very similar in this way.
30:13
I have some anger built up inside of this tense ginger body, this felt ginger body.
30:18
If I may say so myself, that's the word you used to describe it anyway.
30:22
But I've got some real bad internal dialogue, right?
30:25
People think they know what's going on in my head.
30:27
Whoa.
30:28
They really don't.
30:29
They really don't.
30:30
Nobody could possibly be more critical of me than me.
30:34
Nobody could think worse of me than me.
30:36
I'm pretty much guaranteed on that, but that does worry me because when I'm tired or angry
30:43
or sleepy or hungry, tired and sleepy, same thing.
30:47
But if I'm hungry or if I'm, you know, frustrated, then some of that bubbles to the surface.
30:53
And sometimes it spills out all over my wife, spills out all over my kids, spills out a
30:56
jiu-jitsu, spills out over my foxhole brothers and all that.
31:00
And then it gets kind of kind of icky, it's not, it's not a whole lot of fun.
31:04
There are a lot of guys in this audience that feel like their entire life is about shoving
31:07
that down because that's what scotch Irish German people do.
31:12
We just shove it down and not deal with it until our top explodes.
31:16
What would be your message to us guys that it's like, Hey man, you don't have a potty
31:19
mouth.
31:20
You have a potty heart and you need to deal with it.
31:22
Yeah, I think one of your problem, my problem too is that you spend too much time listening
31:25
to yourself and you got to start talking to yourself and you got a, I mean, this is some
31:29
Romans 12, one stuff.
31:31
Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world.
31:32
You'll be transformed by the renewal of your mind and there are some unhealthy lies that
31:37
you are agreeing with the accuser of the brethren also known as Satan against yourself.
31:42
And that is a pattern of, of condemnation that he likes to use.
31:46
But the good news of the gospel is therefore now there is no condemnation for those who
31:50
are in Christ Jesus.
31:51
And so these things, you got to bring them to the Lord and bring them to the Lord and
31:55
bring them to the Lord and my own personal journey has been when the enemy accuses me,
32:02
which he does often.
32:03
I've actually found it more helpful to agree with him to be like, yeah, dude, you ride.
32:09
I am the worst.
32:10
I am a loser.
32:11
It's worse than you think because you've only got game film on me.
32:14
You don't know.
32:15
You're not omniscient.
32:16
You don't know what I'm thinking.
32:17
And yet the good news of the gospel is that even though I suck, not anymore.
32:22
Now I'm more than a conqueror.
32:23
Jesus chose me, paid for me, redeemed me, put his spirit inside of me.
32:28
So your problem is that, I mean, you keep trying to define me by my scars.
32:31
And Jesus says I get to be defined by his scars.
32:34
And so that little process, it really brings me out of some negative self-talk.
32:41
I mean, like we mentioned, man, I was in the hospital and couldn't talk and breathe.
32:45
And so I missed two weeks of preaching, bro, the enemy runs numbers in my brain on like
32:52
what my value is or, you know, what if I can't ever talking about coughing and I have to like
32:59
lean into that and then do a full gospel lap around it to defang him and to know that
33:06
according to Colossians, we've already won and he is defang.
33:09
So tell them to shut up.
33:10
Yeah.
33:11
I'm working on that.
33:13
It seems like all roads lead back to Romans.
33:15
We'll talk more about that off air.
33:16
So that's all good stuff.
33:17
And amazingly, I got one more question on chapter one before we could even get into chapter
33:22
two.
33:23
And it's because, Joby, this is wrapped up in a compliment.
33:26
But if you listen to your sermons and if you follow your podcast or listen to it via church
33:31
online or something like that, you would already know this.
33:35
But there are people that don't know this, but I've been trying to tell people, Joby,
33:37
that on any given Sunday and you don't have to accept this compliment, you can just sit
33:41
there and blush.
33:42
But on any given Sunday, you're the best pastor preacher in America and because of your presentation,
33:47
what you're going into the series you're in right now, the worst part about having to
33:51
take a two week break is because you were literally on fire there for a second.
33:55
And then you've been gone for a while.
33:57
But I need you to teach our audience a word, a cool word called Scooby-Lawn.
34:02
And I need you to tell my audience what that word means and how it applies to us.
34:08
Scooby-Lawn is in the book of Philippians.
34:10
It gets translated as rubbish in most English translations, which is a terrible translation.
34:18
It is Greek and it stands for a slang term for animal dung.
34:25
And when Paul compares all that he has accomplished in the flesh religiously and by his own power
34:34
and pedigree, he compares all of it, Scooby-Lawn, as compared to knowing Christ.
34:41
A literal translation today would be BS, bowl, Scooby-Lawn.
34:46
So technically the way we use that, like if you brought a weak argument to me and I was
34:53
like, that's bull crap.
34:54
That's literally how the word was used, slang for animal dung.
34:59
And I think he was, he was being very particular about that word to ruffle some feathers so
35:06
that people would know how worthless our own works are in regards to earning our salvation.
35:14
Okay, I don't want to get too far, too far out in the weeds, but we talked about this
35:18
a little bit off air because I've had some guys come to me and they're like Kyle, I'm
35:24
Christian now, I'm trying to get my life together, you've encouraged me to start working out
35:29
and I'm down 40 pounds and I'm doing Jiu Jitsu and I'm reading my Bible and I'm following
35:32
you guys on 40 table and all that, but dude, my mouth, I can't seem to get my mouth under
35:37
control and I feel like it's hurting my witness and they're trying to figure out what that
35:41
looks like.
35:42
So they're asking me, basically Kyle, what's the list of wordy nerds that were not allowed
35:47
to use in any context ever?
35:50
And if you tell them it really depends on the context and it's got to be language that
35:54
lifts up and it can't really go down.
35:56
Well, can I lift someone up by being like, man, that's effing awesome.
35:59
Or should I just never like let any of that talk come out?
36:03
So is there kind of like in a nice type bow, a way that you could help guys that are really
36:08
worried about how they're presenting themselves verbally when they're in public?
36:13
Well, I think for the guy that's got like the sailor mouth, you know, the T total approach
36:19
is probably the way to try to go just to submit and surrender to Christ.
36:24
And as you grow in him, hopefully that fruit of self control, which is one of the, it's
36:30
a fruit of the spirit comes out.
36:33
It can only benefit you to expand your vocabulary instead of going to the lowest common denominator
36:38
you know, context does matter.
36:41
But if you want to have a contextless kind of thing, yeah, man, I don't see how you could
36:47
go wrong in your walk with Christ, not using foul language, like it's only going to serve
36:54
you well.
36:55
You know what I mean?
36:56
And then particular, I mean, it's not going to help you in business.
36:59
I ain't going to help you at home.
37:00
You shouldn't be talking to your kids that way.
37:02
It could just be a thing that not maybe not every person's called to use the exact same
37:07
dictionary or vocabulary list.
37:10
But for you, you're saying, Hey, I'm going to surrender this unto the Lord and give it
37:14
all to him.
37:15
So, um, and, and it would probably help you to expand your vocabulary a little bit instead
37:21
of going to those kind of, you know, foul words.
37:25
When you talk about the T total approach, again, I keep coming up with all these, uh,
37:28
Robertson stories, but they had a guy get saved on the set of duck dynasty because these
37:33
guys, the sound guy was following them around for months.
37:37
And finally one of the sound guys comes up to fill and says, Hey, can I talk to you after
37:41
the show?
37:42
And after we filmed it, and he's like, yeah, he's like, look, I'm the sound guy.
37:44
I've got sound on you guys all the time, whether we're rolling or not.
37:47
And he's like, I have not heard a single cuss word come out of anyone's mouth.
37:52
Any of these people that I've been miked up, he's like, what is that about?
37:56
And it led to a gospel discussion with sled to this guy accepting Christ.
38:00
And so it's like, it's not, it's not a nothing burger for some of you guys are like, ah,
38:05
European Christians, they drink all the time and they cuss all the time.
38:07
It's like, okay, maybe, but it's like for you and the people that are around you, you
38:12
do have to kind of reckon with how you're presenting yourself to the group there.
38:15
So Joby, we've made it through chapter one.
38:18
Aren't you so excited?
38:19
Don't worry.
38:20
We're not going to camp out on all the other chapters because I don't want to ruin the
38:21
entire book for everybody.
38:23
But in chapter two, you do address something chapter two is called grace can't be lost
38:27
and neither can you so I want to read this quote here.
38:31
You can't lose your salvation.
38:33
People often ask, can I lose my salvation?
38:35
The answer is no, you can't, but that's the wrong question.
38:38
The right question is, can Jesus lose me?
38:40
And he gave his answer in John 17, spoiler alert, he lost no one man.
38:46
I've talked to a lot of guys since I since I've been a teenager that kind of feel like
38:51
did I just have an emotional experience at church camp and do I need to get in the rededication
38:56
line? Oh, crap, I'm not a baptist anymore.
38:58
There's not a rededication line at this new church that I'm at.
39:00
What do I do?
39:02
Like did was I saved, but now I'm icky again and it's a real struggle, man.
39:07
And even people will read this chapter, Joby and they're still going to be like, yeah,
39:11
but, but what if he's wrong?
39:13
You know what I mean?
39:14
It's a real point of consternation for folks.
39:16
Yeah.
39:17
I mean, just look at what the scripture says over and over and over.
39:20
It says that, you know, we can't be plucked out of his hand that since grace is a gift,
39:26
it's not a thing that we earned and we can't unearn it over and over and over, which actually
39:30
goes back to our previous initial question about who saves when you asked the question
39:36
of the assurance of your salvation.
39:40
Most people are focused on the wrong part of the equation because they're focused on
39:44
themselves.
39:46
When you get your eyes on the one that saves you, that's where your assurance has found
39:52
that he saved me, even while I was dead in my trespasses, God demonstrated his love for
39:56
me in this that Christ died for me.
39:59
So it's the subtitle of the, of the chapter that grace is not anti-effort.
40:04
It's just anti-earning.
40:06
And when you begin to understand that your salvation is a gift that you have received
40:10
from Christ, then then you can get to work on acting like it.
40:15
Now, I will say, you know, Martin Luther's, his first of the 95 thesis was that the life
40:21
of the Christian is that of daily repentance.
40:25
So you should rededicate your life to Jesus every single day and take up your cross daily
40:31
and follow after him.
40:33
We all have sin to confess and habits to repent from and continuously follow in him, but we
40:40
don't have to be.
40:41
I mean, it's the enemy that wants us to think that salvation didn't help for us.
40:46
Hey, guys, real quick.
40:48
If you're anything like me, you are constantly on the lookout for high quality products that
40:51
are actually made here in America by American hands.
40:55
The problem is that a lot of American companies have outsourced their labor overseas.
40:59
So it's an American company, but it's supporting people that don't live here.
41:03
So I've always went to partner with an American company that prioritizes America, American
41:07
workers and making all of their materials here in this country.
41:11
That's why I want to remind you that we are partnered with origin.
41:14
Origin is an apparel company based in Maine and they are focused on getting as much manufacturing
41:19
back to the United States as they can possibly do.
41:22
What do they make?
41:23
They make the best jujitsu geese on the planet.
41:25
And these are the only jujitsu geese that are made completely in America.
41:29
They also make jeans.
41:30
Yes, they're stretching and awesome.
41:32
They also make amazing hunting gear.
41:33
And I know you guys love your kuyu and your sikka, but those companies use overseas labor
41:38
and they don't do that to help you guys out.
41:40
They do that to increase their profit margins.
41:43
Origin also makes boots and work boots.
41:44
And yes, that does include still toe boots.
41:46
And in the fall of last year, they launched a line of everyday clothing, their Versa pants
41:50
are their everyday pants and they are just especially phenomenal.
41:53
They also make other outdoor clothes and workout clothes and they're launching new apparel
41:57
stuff all the time.
41:58
If you haven't already, you need to check them out and support a company that supports
42:02
America and America's workers.
42:05
Try origin out today by going to www.originusa.com.
42:10
Use the promo code undaunted to get 10% off of your order.
42:15
Again, that's originusa.com promo code undaunted to get 10% off of your order.
42:22
Very good.
42:23
I think that's a great way to think about it.
42:25
Part of it is like getting out of your own way.
42:27
Like the more you focus on yourself and your role in it, you're, you're not really understanding
42:31
the totality of the situation, which actually does dovetail pretty nicely and something
42:35
I want to ask you about chapter three.
42:37
So now here we are.
42:38
We're just blazing through the book.
42:39
Already on chapter three, chapter three is grace sanctifies both the rebel and the religious.
42:44
So in this chapter, you set up this quote by talking about how Jesus shared three parables
42:50
in a row, the parable, the lost sheep, the parable, the lost coin.
42:53
And now I want to get into the quote here.
42:55
And in the last parable, he tells of a lost son.
42:58
We call it the prodigal son, but that's a bad name because there are two lost sons.
43:03
One is lost in his rebellion and one in his religion.
43:07
Really, the parable is about two lost sons and one lavish father.
43:12
Now Joby earlier this year, you and I had this discussion because it just occurred to
43:17
me this year that the prodigal son was not just talking about the deadbeat guy covered
43:22
in, you know, pig scuba lawn.
43:24
Okay.
43:25
This was a guy like I just for my entire life, it was like that dirt bag son and I always
43:30
felt for the older brother.
43:31
I was like, God, you did all the right things.
43:33
And this little, this little turd bucket, like he's going to get the fat and calf and
43:38
the robe and all this stuff.
43:39
This is stupid.
43:40
I hate this story.
43:41
This story's dumb.
43:42
And then shout out to Jay Reisner.
43:44
He preached at our church.
43:45
He's the executive pastor at our church, but he preaches four or five times a year.
43:49
He preached and it finally occurred to me, Oh crap, the older son's lost too.
43:53
Oh my gosh, I missed it this entire time.
43:56
But then Joby, I read your book and I'm like, I feel like I'm ready to go.
44:00
I'm ready to read this chapter.
44:01
I know all this stuff.
44:02
There are two lost sons and then you have this quotes like, crap, I missed it again.
44:06
There's the turd son that was lost.
44:08
There's the older son that was lost.
44:11
And we forget about the father in this entire story, which is the entire point of the story.
44:16
So fill in those gaps for us, Joby, so that nobody is dumb like me.
44:21
Well, a part of the key to understanding Luke 15 is to see who the audience is.
44:27
And the first two verses to Luke 15 is both the Pharisees, Sadducees, the religious
44:32
people and the sinners and tax collectors have all gathered around.
44:37
And it's in that context that he tells the story.
44:41
So he's aiming this thing at the Pharisees because the sinners and tax collectors are
44:46
being received.
44:48
And the reality is, you know, a lot of theologians and commentators say that the story of the
44:53
prodigal son was a common first century story.
44:56
And then Jesus began it and everybody's like, Oh, we know how this ends, but the way that
45:00
the actual first century story went is that the rebellious son comes home and gets stoned.
45:05
And then Jesus does like a Quentin Tarantino ending and changes everything and scandalizes
45:11
it to the honor of killing people.
45:15
There also some commentators that talk about the reality that part of the reason that the
45:19
dad ran is because he didn't live like on his own ranch.
45:23
There would have been a city gate there with elders at it.
45:26
And if the sun would have been met by the elders before the dad gets there, like the
45:32
dad has to outrun the judgment of the elders or his son's going to die, which is a pretty
45:37
incredible picture, you know, of what Christ did for us.
45:40
Right.
45:41
He like outruns the judgment of God to us.
45:46
The most overwhelming thing for me about this as a pastor of a church is the part when
45:54
the dad comes out of the party and the Bible says he entreats the older son.
46:02
So he's he humiliated himself and going after the younger son, hiking up the robe and, you
46:06
know, kissing him and all that.
46:08
Now he's going to humiliate himself to go after the church kid.
46:11
That's what he's going to do.
46:13
He's going to humiliate himself to go after the person that sits in the church for you
46:17
every week and thinks they're going to a good place with a good God because they're a good
46:21
church person and as a pastor, look, man, the person that's ruined their life, that's
46:28
literally eating pig food, they are typically receptive of the gospel.
46:32
You know who the person that's not receptive of the gospel?
46:35
Church people.
46:36
Yep.
46:37
I mean, you, you, you look at modern like Pew research polls and all of that.
46:42
And over 50% of self-proclaimed Christians will say that their good works play a key
46:48
role in them attaining heaven and you're like, what in the heck?
46:53
Do you not read the Bible?
46:54
I mean, it's what the whole thing is about.
46:56
It's about the grace of Jesus Christ.
46:57
And so man, when I preach this and when I talk about it, that's what that's what breaks
47:03
my heart is the big brother that thinks he deserves it.
47:07
Well, like I said, all of us kind of aligned with that.
47:12
Like there are some people that are eff ups of people that don't really realize it, but
47:16
usually something happens in their life, some circumstance where they're just like, oh gosh,
47:20
I'm an idiot.
47:21
But the people that don't smell their own farts, like the older brother, it's just like, yeah,
47:26
that, that you can really get in your own way, especially Joby, if you're well behaved,
47:30
if you're highly conscientious, if you make good grades, if you always do well at work
47:34
and all that, you can really convince yourself, it kind of goes back to what you were talking
47:39
about earlier in the book to where it's like, I'm just a mistake or I'm just a whoopsy dazier.
47:44
Like I'm not actually a sinner that's dead and our evidence for that is not the blood
47:49
of Christ, but it's all the things that we do to be a good person and and I don't really
47:54
want to get into an East West breaking down of culture, but we're checking boxes in a
47:59
Western American culture, which we do things that are not valued, perhaps in a sub Saharan
48:04
African culture or in an East Asian culture or something like that.
48:07
So we are giving ourselves plaudits that technically we didn't earn because we didn't make ourselves
48:13
conscientious, right? That was to a degree put inside of us, but at the same time, we're
48:19
we're mixing up check checking boxes with righteousness and it just it's like it's
48:23
all over us and it's just stinky and it's very isolating. Like if you'll notice the brother
48:29
the older brother, he goes to the servant, he doesn't go to the father. Think about that.
48:33
He goes, what is this? What's his party? He has all access to the father. He's actually
48:38
acting like the slave, but he is a son. He he he declares himself righteous. He says, all
48:46
these things, all your rules, I have obeyed all my life. Yeah, right. You know, he's saying
48:51
that he's never done anything wrong. He's full of entitlement. You never even gave me
48:55
a young goat. Like this guy has access to a 24 seven party with the father and he can't
49:04
enjoy it and live in it because he's trying to earn it. And how many how many church people
49:09
do you know that are the worst? I mean, they're just the worst or they're miserable because
49:15
I think they're better than everybody else. I mean, it's bad. Well, it can be bad and
49:20
especially depending on the community that you're in, if you're in a highly church environment,
49:24
like me being in Oklahoma, it's kind of easy to do that and trick yourself. Let's go on
49:29
to chapter four. Grace does not condemn. So in this chapter, Joby, you bring up a woman
49:34
named Chantal or Chantel rather. She was an out and open lesbian that started attending
49:40
church of 11 22 and even started attending with her girlfriend at one point. You talk
49:45
about how she eventually put her faith in Jesus. She not only did that, she surrendered
49:49
her life to the lordship of Jesus, which, you know, led to her breaking it off with her
49:53
girlfriend. Now you say in that chapter that because of that, the LGBT TQ community really
50:00
came after you guys really hard. Let me read this quote from the chapter though. Now this
50:05
next one is really unpopular today, but here my heart here, according to the scriptures,
50:09
same sex romantic practice is in the sexual immorality category, no more or less than
50:14
any other category. There will probably be a day when this statement is categorized as
50:18
hate speech. But listen, just because you hate it doesn't make it hate speech. Even if you
50:23
don't agree with me, just know that it comes from a place of love. I love you enough to
50:27
not buy into everything the world is telling you. I love you enough to bring you the very
50:33
word of God because freedom is only found in one place, the word of God. And the word
50:37
of God is the will of God. His word is perfect in every way. It is a light to our path. It
50:43
revives the soul. So tell us a little bit about what happened, you know, this LGBTQ community,
50:50
like what did they do when they, you know, came after you hard? And I guess for the pastors
50:55
listening to this or for people that maybe have the ear of their pastor, give us some
50:59
encouragement as to why we should not capitulate in the culture specifically on this issue.
51:06
Yeah, man, we, you know, I'm a Bible guy. So the word says what it says for 2000 years
51:14
Christians, I believe the word to say what it says that God created us male and female.
51:20
You don't get to switch themes that same sex, uh, act sexual activity is sin that sex is
51:28
for married people and marriage according to the Bible is to be one man and one woman
51:32
for one lifetime. Okay. Now I, I think the church has mishandled that pretty bad over
51:39
the years for sure. Beaten up people who have same sex attractions. And so we want to be
51:44
a welcoming place to any person, but not for you to just come as you are. We want you
51:49
to come and surrender your life to Jesus and be run over by the grace, train and change
51:52
forever. So I don't know how I can rightly share the gospel with somebody without just
51:57
rightly sharing the word of God. So Chantel came and long story short and she actually
52:02
wanted me to, uh, do the wedding of her and her girlfriend. I was like, well, all right,
52:06
let's talk about that. And so she came to Christ. She, they, she broke up with her girlfriend.
52:12
She actually was a missionary for a couple of years in Africa. Now she lives in, uh, in
52:16
Ashwood, North Carolina and runs a coffee truck and, and she's had highs and lows and
52:21
all the things that you would expect with an authentic follower of Jesus. But it would
52:27
be, it would be malpractice on my part to not share the good news of the gospel with her.
52:36
And that the gospel requires all of our life from all of us who would follow Jesus period.
52:44
And for some of us, that's, that's going to seem in our own personal experience, like
52:48
harder things to give up than other thing. But the key is, is he the one thing that drives
52:53
everything. Now the LGBT community came after us hard articles in the paper, picketing,
52:59
uh, radio spots against us. And this was, this was, um, they were early too. So this
53:04
was maybe like 2016, 17 somewhere in there. Um, said that we used, uh, inhumane brainwashing
53:12
techniques and, you know, just all the kind of the kind of things that you hear all over
53:18
the place today. Uh, here's what's interesting. We never shy away from it. We never back away
53:24
from it. I'm not trying to pick on any group of centers, but I'm trying to, you know, rightly
53:30
call out all of us, the number of people that struggle with same sex attraction and even
53:37
the number of gay couples that attend our church to me is mind blowing because they feel
53:43
loved and they, I guess they just put up with the part of the Bible when I say, Hey, what
53:49
y'all are doing is a sinful relationship. And you know, because I don't back away at
53:54
all. Um, and I don't do the thing like Vodie talks about and make 10,000 excuses before
54:00
I say it. I do think I do think it requires a little more language around it than just,
54:07
you know, anything else, but, um, here's the decision I just decided along, you know, you
54:15
talk about this a lot. We talk about this together. You just got to pre decide a bunch
54:18
of stuff for your life, right? I'm making decisions that make decisions. I'm not going
54:22
to decide in the pulpit. If I'm teaching on Romans one, am I talking about it or not?
54:26
Okay. So when I stand before the Lord and give an account, I'm just going to say, I just
54:33
tried to do my best to teach your word with a, with grace and truth, you know, I'm not
54:40
trying to beat people up, but I'm not trying to pat people on their head either while they,
54:46
they worship that their own self idolatry and say it's okay. I will not do that. And if
54:53
that puts me in jail one day, I, then I'm going to jail man. I mean, what do you want
54:58
me to do? I definitely won't be the first men and women have burned at the stake for
55:03
a long time. So I think it'll take a long time, but there's no doubt that in our lifetime,
55:10
we could see just Bible truths of old, be categorized as hate speech. Well, Joby, you
55:18
bring a pre decision. There's a lot of pastors right now that need to have a gut check and
55:22
say, am I willing to go to prison for the word of God and for the spread of his gospel? And
55:29
I think a lot of pastors we saw in 2020, they weren't even willing to keep the doors of
55:34
their church open long term. And you've, you've kind of talked about the own mea copa that
55:38
you guys did, because everybody gets a pass on those first few months of the pandemic,
55:42
because no one knew what was happening. We didn't know if it was going to kill kids at
55:45
a high rate. We had no idea if it was like being shot through the, the, you know, the
55:50
air like a laser beam, like we had no idea what it was doing, but too many pastors were
55:55
willing to capitulate to daddy government. And so if you're going to capitulate on something
55:59
like that, which is just opening your doors and not even concerned yourself with what
56:03
you're saying from your face hole when you're behind your pulpit, I think that becomes problematic.
56:08
And we could talk a more there, but there, there's quite a bit more in the book that
56:11
I want to get to. So let me say one thing on this though. Yeah. One more thing. I'm sorry
56:16
to interrupt.
56:17
Here's what I would say. If I was talking to some like cup gay couple in our church or
56:20
somebody thought homosexuality was not a sin and I was just whatever. Okay. I would say,
56:25
here's what I would always say. Listen, bro, you know, you can find like a hundred churches
56:29
in Jacksonville that will tell you what you're doing is fine. Like it's easy to find. But
56:34
here's the thing. Every single church that has said, I don't care what the word says
56:40
about that. This is what it actually means. Every single one of them also gets the gospel
56:46
wrong. They don't think that Jesus is the way the truth in life and no one comes to
56:50
the Father but by him. Every single one, it's a one to one relationship. Now, let's just
56:55
say for sake of argument, I'm wrong on this one and you're not you, but the people I'm
57:00
talking to are right. Okay. That's fine. Whatever. But dude, you get the Jesus thing wrong and
57:05
we're talking about heaven or hell. And so that that's a part of something you got to
57:11
pay attention to. There's man, it's been really shameful what some of the very famous pastors
57:16
have done in the recent years in regards to this issue. The moment you begin to treat,
57:21
if you think the Bible is is a stumbling block to your evangelism, you're in trouble, bro.
57:31
You're in trouble. The power is in the word of God, not in your appealing to people. So
57:36
yeah, and I guess part of the thing is I even think back to Galatians two whenever Paul
57:43
opposed Peter to Peter had strayed from the sweetness of the gospel. He he had been convinced
57:49
by the the Judaizers, a circumcision party on in kind of a racist fashion that there had
57:53
to be more to it. It couldn't just be this. And we see by the time we get to the Jerusalem
57:57
Council and acts that Peter had accepted the rebuke and he kind of got back in line. But
58:02
my goodness, if Peter, the guy that went out on the water to Jesus, if he can stray to
58:07
some of you pastors, I think you're smarter than those people, like you didn't walk with
58:11
the risen Jesus, like you weren't taught under his tutelage before he ascended to the right
58:15
hand of the father like so. Who do you think you are? Now this next section in chapter
58:19
four has probably my favorite one liner of the entire book. So you talk about the woman
58:26
that's caught in adultery and you talk about the showdown between Jesus and the religious
58:30
elites over this woman that they caught in adultery, which is kind of weird. How did they
58:34
catch her? Were they waiting for like it? It's a strange story. But here's the one liner.
58:39
Think about this. I wonder if she heard the rocks fall, bro. I paused and stopped what
58:45
I was doing, crossed my arms and went, huh, I wonder, I wonder if she did. It's such a
58:52
powerful one line. So I don't know if that was your idea or Charles's idea, but it was
58:56
a Martin idea. And my goodness, that line is incredible. But even in that chapter, you
59:02
talk about that this woman was called an adulterer, adulterer, adulterer, but Jesus is like, no,
59:07
she is daughter. It took me all the way back to that story that the chosen, you know, help
59:12
me understand the woman with the problem of blood for all these years. And she's completely
59:16
cast out a society out of her familial connections. And Jesus calls her daughter and woof. I can
59:22
barely describe that story without getting weepy. And so talk to me a little bit about
59:27
that because like this woman is very, very likely, cowering, covering her head, ready
59:34
to experience excruciating pain until her skull is finally caved in by that one stone. Right?
59:41
And then everyone drops their stones and leaves. What a line. Take me through it. Yeah, part
59:47
of what I try to do, man, um, you know, people that are going to read discipleship looks like
59:52
this can have a tendency to the moment they get to john eight, they're like, all right,
59:56
I already know what this is. And they'll even call it the story of the woman caught in the
1:00:00
act of adultery. And it's not a story. It's an actual event. And I'm trying to with words,
1:00:09
get your mind, maybe your spirit infused imagination to smell the dirt, to see the men's faces,
1:00:17
to see her brace getting ready to get hit by the rock. But instead she gets slammed by
1:00:21
grace to, to put yourself in her shoes. Or maybe she's somebody that you love dearly.
1:00:29
And the son of God calls her daughter instead of a daughter. And like this is real man.
1:00:34
That lady went home that evening and laid in her bed and cried and thought, I cannot
1:00:40
believe I have received this kind of grace, you know, everything changed. And so I don't
1:00:45
want us to get so familiar with it that we miss the humanity and reality of what the
1:00:51
Bible describes as historical fact.
1:00:56
And I think that that's helpful for us to pause. And that's what I say all the time because
1:01:00
I've talked to people that are Bible in a year people. And I know several people that
1:01:03
do Bible in the year every year. And I'm not anti Bible in a year. But the one time I did
1:01:08
Bible in a year, I feel like I didn't learn anything. I felt like I flew over the Bible
1:01:12
like at 50,000 feet and I could kind of see Bible, ask things if I squinted my eyes right.
1:01:18
But man, we didn't really dig in. And so, you know, you and I are working on some things
1:01:22
that will help kind of guys dig in a little bit more like slow down the noise of the world
1:01:27
just a little bit to just really focus on this one nugget. And I just got to tell you,
1:01:31
I don't know that I'll ever, you know, read that story the same. So let's go and get into
1:01:35
chapter five grace cleanses. So shout out to Jeff cop. That's a that's my boy. That's
1:01:41
your boy. That's your neighbor. He has this quote that he uses called, you know, the most
1:01:45
dangerous thing a guy can say is I got this. And there's, you know, probably the best challenge
1:01:50
quote of the book. So we go from the best one liner to the best challenge quote, which
1:01:53
is, do you have some Nathan's in your life? And Joby, at this point, I've tried to talk
1:01:59
about this every way I know how I've called it a foxhole. I've called it a three AM friend.
1:02:04
I've called it an I'm on my way friend. I've called it a who's car we going to take friend.
1:02:08
I've called it a find some dudes that I hope you bury your dog friend. I don't know another
1:02:13
way to say it. But the reality is, is we don't have groups of guys around us that we give
1:02:18
permission to help make us better. And that includes when they throw some relational chips
1:02:23
in the center of the table and risk offending us for our betterment. So talk to us a little
1:02:27
bit about that.
1:02:28
Yeah, the key is to try to be that friend. You know, if you're having a hard time finding
1:02:35
those kinds of friends, then just establish, Hey, I'm going to be this kind of friend in
1:02:41
your life. I don't, I mean, the place to make this happen is in the local church. This is
1:02:45
why being plugged into a local church with a disciple group or a Sunday school or you
1:02:50
serval some kind of team. That is going to be the pond in which you fish for these kind
1:02:55
of men in your life. And you know, Jeff cops, one of my guys, one of my mat carriers. And
1:03:01
I think I think it was actually Pete Carroll. So Jeff played in the NFL and he played at
1:03:05
USC Southern California before that. I think Pete Carroll was his football coach then and
1:03:09
he was telling the football team. The most dangerous thing you can say is I got this.
1:03:14
Think about how silly that is for a game. Well, men live that way in this isolated way. And
1:03:21
even if you think about when Peter's talks about the enemy prowls around like a roaring
1:03:26
lion seeking someone to devour, he the lion always takes out that isolated impala or deer.
1:03:33
And so we need a herd of brothers around us. And I'm telling you, you'll never know how
1:03:39
to be free until you learn how to be honest. And you're going to have to be honest with
1:03:43
some of these brothers. One of the things our crew does is we make a list. If I was the
1:03:49
enemy, here's how it would take me out. And we hand it to our foxhole brothers. Hey, man,
1:03:54
here's some things you should ask me about me. Because I'm not going to want to be honest
1:03:58
about these things. You know, most of mine are about pride and and arrogance and things
1:04:04
like that right now in my life. But it could be pornography or I drink too much or you know,
1:04:09
if I was the enemy, this is how I would how I would attack me. Why don't I'm asking you
1:04:14
to ask me about those things. And man, this is the warning I always get to guys or give
1:04:21
to guys. If you invite criticism or accountability in your life, and the moment it comes to you,
1:04:28
you you stiff arm it and reject it. It's like, brother, I can't tell you how stupid that
1:04:32
is because here's the thing. Most guys can be decently patient with their brothers. Like
1:04:36
if this is a real true brother to you, they could be pretty patient. But that's like some
1:04:42
some next level like, man, that's you can't do that. And I've I've been on both sides
1:04:46
of that issue where I've responded poorly and I've responded well. And it's it's in those
1:04:52
times where I responded well to where it's like this, this isn't criticism coming out
1:04:55
of left field. They're right. Like at the end of the day, they're right. But I'm currently
1:05:00
not in a place to accept how right they are that even goes back to early in our relationship
1:05:04
whenever I've talked about it a lot before where you called me out for my language around
1:05:08
big churches. And I and you help me realize, man, I'm not being as precise of my language
1:05:12
as I thought I was. And I'm just glad I was in a good mood that day. And I was willing
1:05:16
to be a little playful and willing to receive that because a lot of guys were just default
1:05:20
aggressive. And of course, the moment someone that we love that we thought we trusted, we
1:05:25
almost feel like they're violating us by pointing out the thing that we told them to point out
1:05:29
to us if we if they saw it, you know what I mean?
1:05:31
Yeah, that's such a good word because the brother that is, that is loving you enough
1:05:37
to try to point out the speck in your eye, dude, he don't, it's not like he signed up
1:05:42
for it. It's not like he wants to. It's not like he's like, yeah, sweet. I get to go talk
1:05:46
to Kyle about what an a hole he can be in public, you know? So the moment you get resistance,
1:05:52
you're gonna be like, dude, I didn't want to do this to begin with. I was doing this
1:05:55
because we had an agreement. So I'm out. That is such a good word to not be defensive when
1:06:03
the brothers just doing what you ask him to do. So good man. And here's the thing, Joby,
1:06:09
they might actually be wrong. They might be wrong. Just tell them thank you and deal
1:06:15
with the fact that they're wrong later in the moment. Just accept it. I mean, cause hey,
1:06:21
you might hear from somebody else, I heard from somebody else, something about that brother
1:06:25
and you go to that brother with it and somebody along the chain kind of got the thing, the
1:06:29
message wrong because they were playing telephone and they got their wires crossed. That's okay.
1:06:34
Now is not your time to defend. You say, thank you brother for bringing that to my attention.
1:06:38
Let me chew on that for a little bit. I'd like to get back to you and let's talk about it
1:06:41
again. That's it. That's as easy as it can be. You can maintain your pride in that moment
1:06:45
and you can lay it down later, but you got to lay it down at some point. All right, let's
1:06:49
get into chapter six. This is called grace for the outcast. Okay. So again, you talk about
1:06:53
this in your sermons and this is like a really good way for us to frame and view how Satan's
1:07:01
going to try to take us out. And so here's the short quote, this world only offers three
1:07:05
wells, the pride of life, less of the flesh and less of the eyes. And so for guys, I feel
1:07:12
like if you haven't checked all three of those boxes in your life yet, you're gonna, you're
1:07:17
gonna, but there's typically one of those that's fairly dominant and the other two are applicable
1:07:21
and they can pop up at any time. And so maybe you're just got a promotion. So whoa, pride
1:07:25
of life is all over you right now. Or maybe you got passed over for the promotion. And
1:07:30
now it's the lust of the eyes you're looking at what someone else has and you're like
1:07:36
coveting what they have and what they got or the lust of the flesh. You're trying to like
1:07:39
turn yourself over to some of your base or level needs. Why are those the three things?
1:07:44
And this isn't just for guys, but this is mainly male audience. Why are those three things
1:07:48
so easy for us to trip and fall into? Well, first John says that's all that the world
1:07:55
has to offer. And it's interesting. Part of the reason the enemy is beatable is because
1:08:01
he's predictable. If you go all the way back to Genesis chapter three and you look at
1:08:05
how he tempted Adam and Eve, it was the same three things that she saw that the fruit was
1:08:12
good to eat. That's less of the flesh. She looks at it with her eyes. That's less of
1:08:16
the eyes and that it would make her wise and it's the pride of life. If you go to the three
1:08:21
temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, it's the same thing. Hey, man, you hungry? Turn
1:08:26
these rocks into food. That's the lust of the flesh. You deserve to feel a certain way
1:08:32
and you should take it into your own hands to make you feel how you want to feel and justify
1:08:36
why it's okay. That's that's less of the flesh. And then he takes them up on the mountain and
1:08:42
shows them everything. He's like, Hey, you want all this? That's the lust of the eyes.
1:08:46
And then he says, if you'll just bow down and worship me, then I'll give you the kingdom.
1:08:51
That's the pride of life. It was crazy is every temptation that the enemy has falls into one
1:08:58
of those categories. Here's why this matters. I live in Florida. We bass fish a lot and a
1:09:03
good bass fisherman. He throws a lure. Every lure is alluring. That's the thing bro. Temptation
1:09:10
is tempting. And if it's not working, you clip it off and you put a different lure on
1:09:15
there, right? So you might throw a hula top water plug out there, then you clip it off
1:09:19
and you throw a spinner bait, then you clip it off, then you throw the worm. Well, the
1:09:22
first two didn't do it, but then the bass sees the worm is like, I got to have this and he
1:09:27
thinks I got it, but it got him. That's what sin is. According to James, man, there is
1:09:33
a progression that goes from temptation to death. Somewhere in there, it becomes sin.
1:09:39
So if you were the enemy, how would you take you out? You know, and realize he's trying
1:09:44
to kill, steal and destroy you with these lures. So that girl that worked that you're
1:09:51
talking to, that's not your wife, bro, she don't like you. Literally, she's a tool in
1:09:57
the hand of the devil trying to ruin your children's lives. And when we can begin to
1:10:02
see it that way, then we can begin to fight back with the right way.
1:10:07
And guys, you've got to, you've got to write the playbook on yourself. I think that's a
1:10:11
way to look at it. Like if I were Satan, how would I try to take me out? Bro, read a screw
1:10:16
tape letters and be like, how would wormwood try to take me out right now? Because I'll
1:10:21
tell you right now, for me, it would be, you know, because I have kind of a more of a
1:10:26
lustful personality. I don't, I'm not, I don't get myself over to chemical addiction. So
1:10:30
I'm not worried about alcohol. I'm not worried about any illicit drugs. I've never had any
1:10:33
illicit drugs. But for me, it would be like that one conversation leading to more conversations,
1:10:39
leading to more intimate conversations. And all of a sudden you look up and you've tripped
1:10:43
and fallen into some other woman's private area. And then you're like, Oh my gosh, how
1:10:47
did I get here? And it's like, this is how you got here. Slowly, slowly, slowly, and
1:10:52
then all at once. That's how you got here. And so you've got to identify. So for me,
1:10:57
I don't have girls that are friends of mine, right, that I talk to that are outside of
1:11:02
a normal friend group setting. Like the women that I talk to are in my Sunday school and
1:11:06
I'm usually talking to them in front of their husbands, right? And so that's one of those
1:11:09
things for me, not because I'm scared and terrified that I would do something like that.
1:11:14
But I'm knowing that if I was in my worst moment in my weakest moment, outside of accountability,
1:11:20
outside of the will of God, that would be where Satan would try to knock you out. And
1:11:24
guys, you got to again, pre decision, you've got to put yourself in the craziest scenario.
1:11:29
So I've told you this privately, maybe I'll regret telling this later on the show. But
1:11:33
since I travel for speaking engagements and you know how this goes, when you're the speaker
1:11:37
and you're the guy on stage with the microphone on your face, people think you're cooler than
1:11:41
you actually are. They think you're more attractive than you actually are. They think you're funnier
1:11:44
than you actually are because you've got a cool job. And so I've literally, Joe be put
1:11:49
myself in the scenario. I'm on the road. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm, I'm angry. I'm disappointed.
1:11:57
And I'm sitting at the hotel bar of myself in a model level woman, a 10 out of 10 woman
1:12:03
comes up, doesn't say a word to slides her room key over in front of me and says, we'll
1:12:08
see you soon. And then takes off. I've already put myself in that scenario. And I already
1:12:13
know what I would do. I would pull cash off my wallet. I would set it on the bar to pay
1:12:18
for my meal. And I would get the hell out of the hotel. I wouldn't even go back for
1:12:22
my bags until the next morning until I knew the coast was clear, right? I'll go stay
1:12:26
in another hotel room and I'll stop at Walgreens first to buy a toothbrush. And so guys don't
1:12:32
even think through the scenario of I'm already at the bar. I've already had one whiskey and
1:12:37
now I want 17 more. And so again, that gets into the whole level. And I know I'm flown
1:12:42
on this for a while, but I'm so terrified for men because they tell me these stories
1:12:45
of what they've done. And I'm like, dude, you could have nipped this in the bud so many
1:12:48
times. What are you doing?
1:12:50
Yeah, the Bible says that if you are attacked by the devil, you should stand firm against
1:12:58
the enemy and his evil schemes, like armor up and fight the devil. But in your scenario
1:13:05
with the chick at the bar, it says flee sexual immorality. Yep. So you should literally face
1:13:11
all for the devil. And if there's some honey coming after you, you should run for us run.
1:13:17
Now some people may look at your the way I live my life and be like, well, that's toxic
1:13:22
and old school. Like no, darling, that's just wisdom. I just I'm just not going to be along
1:13:26
with the women. Yeah. And you can think whatever you want, but guess who loves it? My wife and
1:13:31
children. They think it's a great idea. And my church thinks it's a great idea that I've
1:13:36
got, I've got guardrails in my life. A bunch of people in my position have been taken out
1:13:40
by monies and honeys. So I've got some serious guardrails in my life in regards to those two
1:13:46
things because I get it, man. The enemy could throw that lure of the less of the flesh or
1:13:50
less of the eyes in my way and get me. And the devil is, you know, is prowling around
1:13:58
like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He wants to steal, kill and destroy
1:14:02
you. And guys, if you were to flee from a lion, you would not casually walk away. You would
1:14:07
take off running like, like your hair was on fire. Like Eric Burns back in the day for
1:14:11
the Oakland A's, you would just take off as fast as you possibly could. So let's keep
1:14:15
this role in this train moving. I should have been saying that the whole time, let's keep
1:14:18
this train moving. We're on chapter seven. Let's talk about grace forgives. This is probably
1:14:24
the best chapter of the book. Overall, I think from soup to nuts from beginning to end. And
1:14:28
it's because there's a lot of nuggets that if you just read over, you're going to miss
1:14:33
it. And so I want to just kind of point out the nuggets and kind of let you talk about
1:14:38
it in, in the way that you want to, because you talk about how forgiveness is not a feeling.
1:14:43
It's a decision. But I think most of us default to the fact that we think we have to feel
1:14:47
like forgiving someone and we have to continuously feel like we still have forgiven them as opposed
1:14:53
to the decision. You also talk about if someone has wronged you, you need to reckon with the
1:14:58
factor of a Christian or not, because you can't be reconciled to someone that you were not
1:15:03
consiled with to begin with. So this maybe isn't a you wrong me and this is how we're
1:15:08
going to get over a conversation. This might be a gospel presentation. Also, you talk about
1:15:12
how forgiven forget that is a really dumb way of operating, but it's forgiven. Remember,
1:15:19
you forgive and remember why you forgave them because Christ forgave you. You also talk
1:15:24
about a debt ledger, which is a very practical thing where you can write down what somebody
1:15:29
has taken from you, what you feel like they owe you. And then you take that debt ledger,
1:15:34
and that's how you know you've forgiven them as you destroy that and you get it away from
1:15:39
you. So there's a lot of ways you could describe this chapter on forgiveness. But I think this
1:15:43
is really helpful for a lot of men in this audience that are maybe dealing with some angst
1:15:47
over some people that have wronged them. So let's talk forgiveness.
1:15:51
Um, you know, the church talks a lot about what we're supposed to do when we mess up.
1:15:57
The church talks very little about when other people have screwed us over or sinned against
1:16:03
us. Forgiveness is a really, really misunderstood idea biblically. And in Matthew 18, Jesus just
1:16:13
lays out exactly what it is. Kyle, I would say the content of this chapter, I send out
1:16:19
to more people than any other thing, um, when people are walking through hard times because
1:16:27
the enemy has so twisted what forgiveness is. Like you said, people associate forgiveness
1:16:32
with feelings and think about this. Here's what the enemy wants you to do. See, forgiveness
1:16:37
is unilateral. Reconciliation is not reconciliation. It requires forgiveness, but forgiveness does
1:16:44
not necessarily lead to reconciliation. Reconciliation requires repentance too and confession. And
1:16:50
so, but regardless of what people have done against us, we are called to forgive them
1:16:55
because of all that Christ has forgiven us. And then what the enemy wants to do is the
1:17:00
enemy will get in there and bring up some feelings that you still have against other
1:17:05
people. And of course you're going to have these kinds of feelings and he's going to
1:17:08
want you to put your faith not in the forgiveness of Christ, but he wants you to put your faith
1:17:13
in your current feelings. And here's why I think he does because he'll say to you, the
1:17:18
enemy will say, see, forgiveness doesn't work. You're not actually able to forgive her because
1:17:23
you still are [inaudible] every time you see her. See, it didn't work. And if he can get you
1:17:28
to doubt forgiveness on the horizontal level, then surely he can get you to doubt forgiveness
1:17:34
on the vertical level. Well, if you couldn't forgive her, surely God couldn't forgive you.
1:17:40
And then you'll just be trapped for the rest of your life. And so in one of the most practical
1:17:46
teachings that Jesus ever gives, he breaks down what forgiveness is. And he actually
1:17:53
gives a step by step process of the things that you do to facilitate canceling somebody's
1:18:02
debt in your life. And then the reality is you're the one that will be free at the end
1:18:06
of it. And I just kind of say for people that I know that have gone through that process
1:18:12
and you elucidate a few of the stories in the book, like, yes, it's cathartic. Yes,
1:18:18
it's helpful to you to help you process your way through those emotions. But it's bigger
1:18:23
than that. Because if if you haven't had to forgive somebody for something egregious,
1:18:29
you don't really understand where it talks about the prayer of like, forgive those that
1:18:34
have trespassed against you. If the worst thing that's happened is somebody like, you
1:18:38
know, snuck a pencil out of your bag in elementary school and didn't give it back. It's like,
1:18:43
okay, it's hard for you to understand. It's the same way when we talk about total depravity.
1:18:48
Those that have lived very depraved, very like varsity sinful lives, they understand
1:18:54
depravity and the weight of sin more so than somebody that, you know, was more like the
1:18:59
older brother and just operated well their entire life, you know, and so I think that
1:19:03
that is helpful when you actually work your way through that process. So let's go to chapter
1:19:08
eight, which is called grace is slow to anger. This was the most convicting chapter for me
1:19:13
personally. So I thought I might have skipped it, but here we are dealing with all there
1:19:18
right now. So let me read this short quote. This was like this quote was like a kick in
1:19:22
the nuts. One of the things we thought about is how will our kids ever understand the love
1:19:27
of God? If all they ever see from their earthly dad is anger and I was like, oh boy, oh boy,
1:19:35
oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, because the boys definitely see fun. They see excitement.
1:19:40
They see happiness, but those boys have seen anger and they've seen snap anger and they've
1:19:45
seen sustained anger and it has affected the Thompson boys to my dismay and to my shame.
1:19:51
But in this chapter, Joby, you're very upfront and you tell everyone that you still suck at
1:19:56
this. So here you are. You're, you know, about a dozen years further along in this whole
1:20:02
life game and you still seem to suck at the thing that I suck out. So should I take any
1:20:07
happiness and joy in the fact that I'm probably going to suck just as bad once I get to that
1:20:12
age? I mean, I don't know. We all get sanctified in different, you know, speeds, but yeah, this
1:20:21
is an area that I really struggle with, man, because for a number of reasons, one, a lot
1:20:27
of it has to do with control, you know, I, I really like things to go my way. The thing
1:20:32
about my kids, it scares me, you know, like we just move my son in to college this weekend.
1:20:40
And dude, I'm telling you, when we pull up the moving truck, if everybody will just do
1:20:43
everything I say, it would go so smooth. You know what I mean? And, and I just want to
1:20:51
make sure that when my children hear their name come out of my mouth, it is a positive
1:20:59
experience most of the time and not a negative experience. And so, because think about it,
1:21:04
if you read all these verses about how God like speaks over us and dances over us and
1:21:10
dodes over us and like when he calls our name, it's a really positive thing. Like the way
1:21:15
God says Kyle, he's not like Kyle, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. That's not how he says your name
1:21:21
all the time, bro. He loves you. And, and he's a good dad. And I think the real, the real
1:21:29
root of our anger issues are oftentimes, we're trying to play a role that we can't play like
1:21:38
that. We're trying to be in control of things and we're never going to be in control of
1:21:40
things. Or fundamentally just something we wanted and we didn't get it. So we got mad.
1:21:46
And the good news is though, the Bible doesn't say there's supposed to be no anger. There's
1:21:52
the right way to be angry. And we should be angry at a lot of things in our world right
1:21:57
now. But oftentimes, man, we talk about this a lot with your show is when to be lying and
1:22:04
when to be lamb. And a lot of times we are tough with our families. And what we need
1:22:11
to be is tough for our families and tender with our families. And so I think this will
1:22:16
be a really helpful chapter to a lot of people. And again, I don't write it as a, as an expert.
1:22:23
Like I've got this one figured out. It's more like, let's just dive into the scriptures
1:22:27
because we all need a lot of help on this one.
1:22:29
Yeah, I would say for a lot of guys, even for some of the more docile guys, like there
1:22:33
are guys that frankly have, you know, confided to me and said, Kyle got an anger issue. I'm
1:22:38
like you, you're, you're like the most chill, like even killed person I know. And they're
1:22:44
like, boy, if you only understand, or if you only understood or saw things from my perspective.
1:22:49
And that's just the thing guys is what you see, even in Sunday school, what you see on
1:22:53
Instagram, what you see on Facebook, that doesn't necessarily reflect real life. And
1:22:58
so it's kind of easy whenever you're up on the pulpit every Sunday, uh, preaching and
1:23:02
you can kind of, you know, kind of like dig on yourself a little bit. Same thing with
1:23:07
me on this podcast, 600 some odd episodes in, I don't think anybody, uh, is misunderstanding
1:23:11
any of my foibles. Cause a lot of them come out, even if I don't explicitly explain them
1:23:15
that way, but that's just another thing in this book. This is a book that's all about
1:23:20
the gospel, but just think about what we've gone over over the last 80 minutes or slow.
1:23:24
Like all these different subject matters that all kind of lead to the same place. And that's
1:23:28
where we get into chapter nine. Again, guys, we barely scratched the surface on this book,
1:23:32
even though it seems like we went super deep. We didn't, there's so much more in the book
1:23:35
that we couldn't even get to, but chapter nine is grace again and again and again. That's
1:23:40
the name of the chapter. And it's the same quote that I made you say twice earlier. We're
1:23:44
going to come back to it. It's there is more grace in Jesus than sin and you. And so Joby,
1:23:50
you've got a captive audience. There are a lot of Christians in this audience. And there
1:23:53
are some that are perhaps going to be hearing a true, full-throated gospel for the first
1:23:58
time. So give it to us. Well, here's the thing, man. God loves you. He created you as an image
1:24:05
bearer of himself to be in a right relationship with him. The reason that this world is lacking,
1:24:11
the reason that there's something off if you don't know him is because you were created
1:24:16
for him. But sin broke that, broke it in half. And sin makes again, makes us dead, not bad.
1:24:24
God being rich and mercy would love you and love me so much that he sends his son, gets
1:24:29
up off of his throne, dresses himself in humanity, walks around this earth for 30 years, lives
1:24:34
a perfect life, dies on a cross, not just for us, but instead of us. And when he was
1:24:42
on that cross, he pushes up on his nail pierced feet and he says, it is finished. And what
1:24:47
was finished was the full payment for your sin debt and my sin debt. And what was finished
1:24:53
was the bridge was built so that image bearers like me and you, broken by sin, could be reconciled
1:24:59
to a holy God. If you would just simply believe that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, somehow
1:25:07
that counted for me. The Bible says, for all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
1:25:14
And so I'm hoping and praying that you will hear God call your name and in turn you would
1:25:18
call on the name of the Lord. And for those of you that are believers and have screwed
1:25:23
up like all of us, all of chapter nine, is about what are you doing? You screw up because
1:25:27
Peter screws up again and again and again. And again, there's more grace in Jesus than
1:25:33
sin and Peter. And so Jesus graciously reinstates Peter and basically says, Hey man, why don't
1:25:42
we just start over with a clean slate? But what Peter needs is not another chance Peter
1:25:47
needs another life. He needs somebody to do for him what he couldn't do for himself,
1:25:52
which is what Christ does through his life, death and resurrection. And for anybody he
1:25:57
would believe we would receive the right to be called children of God. Cause that is what
1:26:02
we are a man and a man. Guys, that is run over by the grace train. To be honest with you,
1:26:08
when I first heard the name of the book, I thought y'all may have gotten the verb tense
1:26:11
wrong wrong. I was like, is it run over by the grace train? Is it ran over by the grace
1:26:15
train? So I'm going to assume the people, the editors at your place do know, uh, you
1:26:19
know, APA style or whatever better than me. So it is run over by the grace train. But
1:26:23
Joby, before we let you go, again, no one's listening to this right now. Can you go and
1:26:27
tell us what book number four is going to be? Cause we got, you know, if the tomb is empty,
1:26:30
anything is possible, we've got run over by the grace train, but we know that this train
1:26:34
isn't stopping. We know it's going somewhere else. So what's the next book? Just go ahead
1:26:37
and tell us, don't be don't be cagey about it. Don't be weird. Just tell us. The next
1:26:42
book is going to be how to be a godly man. We're going to talk about manhood. Boy, right
1:26:47
up your alley. What, what's the name of it? You got to tell us. I don't know yet. Currently
1:26:53
how to be a godly man, but I don't know. Well, I'll, I'll figure it out. Okay. Maybe you
1:26:58
could call it, you know, get the scooby lawn or something. I will, we'll figure it out.
1:27:03
It actually might be like stand firm, you know, this current series we're in and like
1:27:08
a call to action for men to stand up and act like men. So we'll see. We've got a bunch
1:27:13
of guys with, we've got a bunch of guys with pudding and their spines and not metal or
1:27:17
steel. And so I think that that could be a good thing. Stand firm could be good. But
1:27:20
Joby, you know the drill. That's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off
1:27:23
the chest?
1:27:24
No, man. Appreciate you. Thanks. Thanks for doing this. All right. We'll talk to you
1:27:28
next time. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this,
1:27:32
please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want me to come speak
1:27:36
live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email to info at undonton.life. That's
1:27:40
I N F O at undonton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our
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1:27:48
your way. Just go to www dot undonton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy
1:27:53
Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is
1:27:57
our song Perpetua, which is off their self titled debut album on face down records. The
1:28:01
links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back
1:28:06
darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion
1:28:13
of Judah.
1:28:31
. .