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0:48
This is Undaunted Life A Man's Podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:55
Welcome back to The Forging Table, the mission of Undaunted Life is equipping men to push
0:58
back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:02
So at The Forging Table, you'll see a group of regular guys forging spiritual resilience
1:06
by digging into God's word and we're welcoming all of you to come along on that journey with
1:10
us.
1:11
That's Ryan.
1:12
Ryan, welcome back to The Forging Table.
1:13
You took a little bit of a break.
1:14
Good to see you again.
1:15
But we're on this side of the table.
1:16
And when I look across the table, I don't really see guys that I recognize.
1:19
Like what happened?
1:20
Did you let these guys in here?
1:21
Yeah, I did.
1:22
Okay, well, I'm going to evaluate you directly if this goes incredibly poorly.
1:26
We have the Russell Moore here, but I've got to say, we're going to introduce these guys
1:30
one by one.
1:31
One of the guys names is Russell Moore, but not that Russell Moore.
1:34
That is like a dream of mine to have him.
1:36
I want Russell Moore and Beth Moore across this table at some point and it is going to
1:39
be yes, and it will be a bloodbath.
1:42
And then we've got Zach Foster.
1:43
So you guys, you're new to The Forging Table, but you're both fans of the show.
1:47
You've liked this.
1:48
You've kind of been in our inner circle of friends for a while.
1:50
So I'm very excited to have you all in here, but I do want to get the audience used to
1:53
you guys and kind of give them an idea of who you guys are.
1:56
So Russell will start with you.
1:57
Do you like being called Russ?
1:58
Let's start there.
1:59
Is it bother you?
2:00
Because I know some Russell's that only want to be called Russ and you know, the same the
2:05
other way.
2:06
So you're good with either.
2:07
No preference.
2:08
Okay.
2:09
So no preference.
2:10
So this is what we're going to do.
2:11
You have two minutes to answer these three questions.
2:12
Okay.
2:13
How did you become a Christian?
2:14
Oh crap.
2:15
I forgot my own questions.
2:16
How do you become a Christian?
2:17
How do you like to study the Bible and how does your brain work?
2:20
So dig into those and we'll go on to Zach from there.
2:23
Yeah.
2:24
So I grew up in kind of a moral home, good home traveled around a lot, but not really
2:28
a Christian home.
2:29
So I didn't really grow up going to church.
2:31
But summer before eighth grade moved to kind of a small hometown where my grandparents
2:36
were from and church was an important part of their life.
2:41
And really from that, that kind of led me to understand that I needed to save your my
2:45
life.
2:46
I wasn't perfect.
2:47
And that really kind of led me to accepting Christ as my savior.
2:51
It's really more of a fire insurance policy at that time.
2:53
I mean, I mean, you're 13, 14 years old.
2:56
So I kind of understood that I wasn't perfect and I needed, I wanted to be have eternal
3:01
life.
3:02
But really was in college through ministry through campus crusade or crew now.
3:06
That really, I started to mature my faith.
3:08
So I'd say that my spiritual journey is the last 15 years.
3:10
It's really not since I was a kid.
3:12
So it's kind of how I became a Christian.
3:14
Okay.
3:15
I like to study the Bible.
3:18
For me, I really like to kind of just read it, kind of read it for what it is kind of
3:23
literally usually just a chapter at a time or two chapters at a time and try to figure
3:27
out how do I practically apply this to my life.
3:29
So I really, really try to make studying the Bible not an academic exercise because I
3:37
mean, the Bible is God's word.
3:39
It's the Holy Spirit speaking to you.
3:41
And while there is context and there's history and there's lots of things that are really
3:45
important to understand, to really understand God's word, I really try to look at how can
3:50
I apply this to my life.
3:52
So that's really what I'm focused on.
3:53
And there's some pretty cool questions like, Hey, is there a sin to avoid in this text?
3:56
Is there, I'm a promise to claim in this text, you know, is there, you know, something new
4:00
about God in this text?
4:02
So you like have those in mind as you read through your passage.
4:04
Yeah.
4:05
And actually through like a little quiet time journal I have, it's called Every Man of
4:09
War.
4:10
There was a little Bible study that kind of laid out these questions.
4:12
Kind of like the two seven, so there's a Colossians two seven series that kind of ask these questions.
4:17
Okay, when you have a quiet time, here's some good questions to ask.
4:20
And so those are some of them that kind of generally try to ask myself when I'm studying
4:23
the Bible.
4:24
I'm just on a daily basis.
4:26
That looks a lot different when I am trying to sit around and talk to a chapter.
4:29
Yeah.
4:30
It may look a little different.
4:31
So, and then how does your brain work?
4:32
So I'm like a lot of men.
4:34
I'm pretty visual.
4:36
So if I can visualize the context and kind of what I'm seeing, I think I can really, it
4:41
really hits home for me.
4:42
I'm not an auditory guy.
4:43
Okay.
4:44
I'm much more visual.
4:45
So if, if I can put it in a slideshow or if somebody can kind of act it out for me or
4:49
whatever, I'm, I'm a whole lot better.
4:51
But when it comes to reading the Bible, I have to then put word pictures and, and things
4:54
like that together, which I just want to love Paul's letter or Jesus's teachings or others
4:58
because they're just so graphic, right?
5:00
And some of these Psalms are very graphic and they really hit home for me.
5:03
Okay.
5:04
Very good.
5:05
Makes sense.
5:06
Well, some more.
5:07
You are officially part of the forging table.
5:08
Congratulations.
5:09
You nailed it.
5:10
So Zach, that's what you have to live up to.
5:11
Paul, he answered all those questions from the very beginning.
5:13
So how'd you become a Christian?
5:14
I literally forgot it again.
5:16
How'd you become a Christian?
5:17
How do you like to say the Bible and how's your brain work?
5:20
Yep.
5:21
I had to become a Christian.
5:22
I was raised in a household that was not religious at all, not spiritual.
5:29
Very moral.
5:30
I would say that my mom raised us in a moral way, but I didn't know Christ.
5:35
Really, until I was 33, now I'm 36, so about three years, three and a half years now.
5:43
And a friend had challenged me and we were talking about God and I was probably denying
5:51
what they were having to say and they just asked me, "Where's your prayer game matter?
5:57
Who do you call Jesus Christ?"
5:58
And I'm like, "Oh crap, those aren't questions I've ever really thought about."
6:03
So that night, December 23rd, 2019, I just started talking to the roof of the vehicle
6:09
I was in and just asking God, "If you're real, show me," and he just kind of put it
6:14
in me, that if you believe that all the relationships you've had and the bond that you and your
6:23
mom share are real and deep, and that's the most profound thing that you can understand,
6:27
then at the time, that was the most profound thing to me.
6:30
So he just made it very obvious to me that he was a creator, created the universe, created
6:36
love, and I just broke down and just realized that God was real and I was just radically
6:41
changed.
6:42
Gotcha.
6:43
And so, how do you like when you say the Bible normally, which is interesting because I'm
6:47
sure in the first three years of really studying it, seriously, you're going to go through
6:50
a lot of changes.
6:51
So where you're at today, how do you like to study the Bible?
6:54
Practical application.
6:55
I mean, I just tried to, a lot of what Russell was just saying, but more for me, I will
7:02
be reading in whatever chapter and whatever verse and trying to compare how my life looks
7:11
to that verse or to that chapter.
7:13
So I'm trying to see if Zach Foster is becoming more Christ-like every day.
7:18
Am I building?
7:19
Am I becoming better?
7:21
And what I'm reading?
7:23
How does that apply to life?
7:25
Okay.
7:26
Now, how does your brain work?
7:27
I'm lucky if it just starts working, everybody.
7:30
Glad to be awake.
7:31
Got to grease it up every morning, like, let's go.
7:33
Definitely got to grease it up every morning.
7:35
I'm a repetition guy.
7:39
I would say whether I'm reading or visualizing, whatever it is, I need it five times, four.
7:45
I can really get it.
7:46
Yeah.
7:47
I feel like that's interesting because we always have a grouping at this table where
7:50
there's people that are like kind of slow cookers.
7:52
They really need some time.
7:53
There are people that are repetitive.
7:54
There are people that are like, okay, yep, got it or I got whatever percentage I needed
7:58
of this.
7:59
And then now I can kind of move on from there.
8:01
And it's also kind of interesting because we have varying levels of experience within
8:05
Christianity and distance.
8:07
So another Zach that sat there, you know, a few months back, Zach Todd, he's kind of
8:11
the same, like came to Christ in his 30s and, you know, has a family and trying to figure
8:16
out and traverse kind of what all that looks like for his wife and kids and everything
8:19
like that.
8:20
And so it's very, very interesting to get into that.
8:22
Now, today we're going to be keeping the momentum going with the Psalms.
8:25
We're going to be getting into Psalm two.
8:27
And that is actually Matt Grassmeyer's favorite Psalm.
8:29
And so like, I think we're, we're hitting a thousand right now for guys that aren't actually
8:32
in the room for like their favorite Psalm or whatever, just because that's the way the
8:35
cookie crumbled with how we did it.
8:37
But I did get Matt to send me a text as to why Psalm two is his favorite Psalm and then
8:40
we'll go ahead and dig into it from there.
8:41
So I'll read this from him.
8:43
Psalm two, why is it my favorite?
8:44
The Psalm of the reign of God's anointed knee put an exclamation point in there.
8:47
So I didn't do him very much justice.
8:49
I didn't read it very well.
8:50
Sorry, Matt, we can look to Christ on high even when the nations rage and rebel against
8:54
God's order.
8:55
This is the Christ who put the entire world under his feet.
8:58
There's no one that escapes the judgment and wrath.
9:01
Wowed to those who think that Jesus is a hippie who couldn't hurt a fly.
9:05
And then he has a quote here, ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and
9:09
the ends of the earth, your possession.
9:11
You shall break them with the rod of iron and dash them in pieces like the potter's
9:15
vessel.
9:16
That's from Psalm two, the triumphant son of God will break them with the rod of iron.
9:20
Be fooled by thinking that Jesus forgot to ask.
9:23
There are but to pass, kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his
9:27
wrath is quickly kindled.
9:30
Justice will prevail, but in Christ, thanks be to God that the end of the psalm gives
9:33
us the invitation, quote, blessed are those who take refuge in him, unquote, crisis our
9:38
refuge and hope.
9:39
And even though the world seems hopeless, Christ is victorious and we can assuredly rest
9:44
in that.
9:45
So Matt, thank you very much for sending that our way.
9:47
I know that'll be helpful for guys as we dig in here.
9:49
Now, this is one that's an, it's an interesting psalm that it is basically ascribed to David,
9:54
but it's not like elucidated here from like the title that it's from David, but if you
9:59
go to acts for 25, that's where it basically gives credit to David for the psalm.
10:04
And there's a lot of different places that will break up the psalm in different ways.
10:08
There was one place and I'd love to give them credit.
10:10
I can't remember which, which commentary I looked at, but they looked at different scenes
10:14
of the psalm.
10:15
And so the first scene was human rebellion.
10:16
That's versus one through three.
10:18
The second scene was divine reaction, which is versus four through six.
10:22
And then the third scene is divine rule.
10:25
That's seven through nine.
10:26
And then the last one is human responsibility, which is 10 through 12.
10:29
So that's a nice, like kind of breaking up of what that looks like.
10:32
But the thing that, that really gets me from the very beginning here is it's talking about
10:37
political leaders, okay?
10:40
Because I can go and read this and we may not read all the psalms or whatever, but this
10:43
one's short enough for us to maybe read the whole thing and I'll be reading from the ESV.
10:46
Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain?
10:50
The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the
10:54
Lord and against his anointed and the word used there for anointed is Messiah that, you
10:58
know, it's kind of foreshadowing Jesus saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away
11:02
the cords from us.
11:05
And so when it's talking about the kings here, guys, those are political leaders.
11:08
And so I guess I'm struck here from the beginning and maybe this is a little bit too much culture
11:13
talk from the very beginning here.
11:15
But we have a lot of people, you know, the kind of go along to get along people that
11:18
I want to be known for what I'm for, not when I'm against people, they always look at the
11:22
political leaders of the day and they're like, well, they're just being divisive for political
11:26
purposes.
11:27
And that's not the way it was in biblical times and all that.
11:30
And it's like, you read something like Psalm two, it's like, no, the stuff we're dealing
11:33
with today, it's I heard a pastor say something recently, it's like, it's the same spirit.
11:39
It's just manifesting in a different way.
11:41
They're wearing different clothes and wearing different makeup and they have different positions.
11:44
But I thought that this was a very, very political place to start, which, which I thought was
11:49
interesting for the time that we're in.
11:52
And this is the part new guys where I stopped talking and then like anybody at the table,
11:56
yeah, you're giggling.
11:57
You've been here, Ryan, you have no excuses, but typically I'm just going to let you all
12:00
know how this goes.
12:01
So I stopped talking and then like dead airs, the worst thing possible.
12:05
So even if it's just a joke, you just kind of launch in, you just you go in with a joke.
12:09
So I'll take that as an L for me that I did the worst set up and right from the beginning
12:14
here.
12:15
But now I'm done talking in three, two, one.
12:17
It was a good setup.
12:18
There we are.
12:19
You see how smooth that was?
12:21
It was just like butter from one guy to the next.
12:23
It was a very good setup.
12:24
And I like to say that you probably got a lot of that scene stuff from MacArthur's commentary.
12:28
Okay.
12:29
Yeah.
12:30
That's right.
12:31
That makes the exact one.
12:32
Okay.
12:33
So I think you're right.
12:34
When you look at it, you're looking at the culture then in the culture now, not much is
12:37
going to change.
12:39
We're still going to have leaders that are divisive.
12:41
We're still going to have leaders that are want power, we're still going to have parties
12:45
that want power.
12:47
But where does that power coming from?
12:48
Is it coming from man or is it coming from from God?
12:52
And I think that's something that we have to look through and we have to look at is,
12:55
you know, is this what God wants is to look like or is this what I wanted to look like?
13:01
So I can see that, you know, me being the guy that I am, I read that verse and I think
13:06
about politicians and I think about, you know, what's going on nowadays, but also kind of
13:09
look at myself, you know, how do I plot in vain?
13:13
How do I rage?
13:14
And one of the notes that I took down is we plot against God with our own idols.
13:18
We anoint them over him.
13:20
And that's one thing that I looked at, you know, what is my idol?
13:23
Is my idol him or is my idol what I want something to be?
13:26
And that's what we look at when we look at our politicians, you know, if I'm looking
13:29
at my political party or I'm looking at the person I'm going to vote for, what is their
13:33
idol?
13:34
Is their idol going to be what God wants or is their idol going to be what they think
13:36
is right?
13:37
And so for you guys, like, I don't really see, you know, wrestlers act.
13:40
I don't really see all is like deeply political people.
13:42
Like I don't know that I would ever expect to be driving through town and seeing you guys
13:45
holding up a political sign or something like that.
13:48
But a lot of these, these problems do manifest in the political realm.
13:52
And so people talk about how, oh, you know, you can't legislate morality.
13:55
It's like, that's what everybody does.
13:57
Every single politician is legislating their version of morality, but sometimes their version
14:01
of it doesn't seem too terribly moral to, you know, people of the book.
14:05
But I mean, for you guys, like, how does, how does something like reading even the first
14:09
part of that affect how you would operate because this gets into the conversation of
14:14
sphere sovereignty and do we need to be a theocracy, right?
14:17
Where it's like Christianity is ruling the United States of America.
14:20
Like, where do you guys kind of land on that?
14:23
Man, when I read this, it's even goes a step further.
14:28
I think, I think it really points to the fact that and actually was listening to a message
14:33
from Tim Keller kind of about this, and this was 26 years ago or 27 years ago when he,
14:39
this message.
14:40
So put it in context.
14:41
You know, now you're, you know, 27, 20 years ago is a lot different then.
14:45
But I was listening to that message and his point I thought was really poignant was really,
14:49
we all want, we all, we don't, I guess we don't say it this way, but we're all looking for
14:55
a savior.
14:56
We're all looking for a king, right?
14:57
And so we're idolizing something, we're worshiping something.
15:00
And then he went on to quote someone and basically said that democracy is really the medicine.
15:04
It's not the solution.
15:05
And I thought that was really interesting.
15:07
And I never really, I mean, I kind of, as an American, kind of considered democracy as
15:11
like the, the highest of highs, it's the thing to become, but really, it's really, we really
15:17
just need that perfect king.
15:18
And there's only one perfect king in that Jesus Christ.
15:21
And I think that that's really was what I was kind of struck by is that we're all kind
15:25
of calling for this.
15:26
And he pointed out, hey, look at fairy tales, look at, you know, King Arthur, when the good
15:30
king's away, right, look at Robin Hood, right, when good king Richard is away or whatever.
15:34
Yeah.
15:35
And you know, we have all these fairy tales about what the good king is, but there's never
15:37
really been that good king, right, except for Jesus Christ.
15:41
And that's what we're all looking towards.
15:43
And so in the meantime, until he comes again, it's like, how do we, how do we, you know,
15:48
live in today's world, right?
15:50
When there's kind of Satan ruling this world and it's a little bit tricky, but I just thought
15:54
that was really interesting.
15:55
This concept of, you know, that's really what we're all doing.
15:58
We're all looking for a king, for a savior.
16:00
Right.
16:01
And so how do you, how does that plan the political environment?
16:03
I don't, I don't really know because I struggle with it, mainly.
16:06
Let me ask you this.
16:07
So I know that there are people and everyone kind of has their own opinion of this, but
16:10
like there are people that will go to their local city council and regardless of the thing
16:14
that they're complaining about, you know, critical rates theory in the schools or a stop sign
16:16
they want in their neighborhood, like there are some people that they will start quoting
16:20
scripture at their civil magistrates, their local magistrates that are the ones that are
16:24
kind of lording over them, and that strikes people as odd, even Christians as odd, because
16:31
it's like this is, this is not a biblical issue.
16:34
Like I understand that, you know, God puts these, these rulers in our lives technically
16:38
and like those types of things.
16:40
But it's like not everyone's going to ascribe to that particular point of view.
16:45
And also I think that we're, we kind of lull ourselves to sleep a little bit being in America
16:48
and having this free speech that we do is it's like you don't really have like school board
16:52
meetings in, you know, sub's here in Africa, and it's like does, does the scripture apply
16:57
more here because it's easier to preach or less there because it's harder and you may,
17:02
you know, lose your top not in the whole process, does that make sense?
17:05
I think it just comes down to what's the issue, you know, if the issue where, you know, United
17:10
States is built on Judeo Christian values.
17:13
So if we're, we're looking at a morality issue, we're going to look at it through this lens.
17:18
And I think most people when they, when they're voting or they're, they're talking to a magistrate
17:23
or a politician, they're going to see what type of lens they're viewing morality yet.
17:27
And if you're viewing morality in a different lens than I do, I'm going to be suspect of
17:31
that whether I agree with it or not.
17:34
But I think reading versus out unless it has to deal with the subject, it doesn't make
17:38
any sense.
17:39
Right.
17:40
So since the beginning of time, you know, all the rulers, kings of the world have been
17:44
trying to rebel against God, kind of like the socialism, you know, type of government
17:53
that, you know, people are trying to preach these days.
17:55
So it's every time people are getting further away from God, they're getting, they're just,
18:02
they're losing how it was created, you know, started with God's word and that was the law.
18:09
And now everybody is misspeaking and thinking that they can change the law and change it
18:14
to socialism.
18:15
And this is a new kind of law and it'll work.
18:16
But the further you move away from God, all throughout, since the beginning of time, it
18:21
just never seems to work.
18:23
I do go ahead, Ryan.
18:24
I think there's something I wanted to bring up in regards to Russell talking about for
18:27
shadowing.
18:28
I really see in verse two, the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take
18:33
counsel together against the Lord and against the anointed or his anointed.
18:38
There's a fish for shadowing of revelation there and the fact that Christ is going to
18:42
come back, you know, and we want to talk about those guys who I want to be known for what
18:46
I'm for, not what I'm against, and they want to build this utopia.
18:50
They're not going to build it.
18:51
They're depraved human beings, just like you and I, the only person that's going to be
18:55
able to rebuild it is Christ himself.
18:57
And when we think that our, our politicians and our judges and our magistrates are going
19:02
to do it, we're just as blind as anybody else because we got to understand that, yeah,
19:07
we may have this look in life, but we can't put our faith in these people because they
19:11
laugh just as much in front of the anointed as the other people.
19:14
So that reminds me when you were saying that, when I did that debate with Shane Clayborn
19:19
on the unbelievable podcast, we were debating the Second Amendment and self defense and
19:23
guns and all that kind of stuff.
19:24
And this is a guy that goes around the country convincing law abiding citizens to turn their
19:29
guns in and be destroyed in front of them because guns in and of themselves are evil.
19:32
And he bases his entire worldview and his entire ministry on parts of Isaiah two where
19:37
it talks about turning your swords into plow, shares and your spears and the pruning hooks
19:41
and that type of thing.
19:43
And if you just like with any scripture, if you just plucked that out of Isaiah two, it
19:47
sounds good.
19:48
It's like, yeah, yeah, we're, we should just turn in all our weapons into garden tools.
19:51
Like that makes a great, great, you know, idea.
19:54
But Isaiah two, basically what it's talking about is like, these are things that are going
19:57
to happen in this broken world and it can only be fixed by Christ coming back and fixing
20:02
it.
20:03
Right.
20:04
Isaiah nine, it's like, okay, you're going to have these major problems all the way up
20:09
until Christ returns.
20:10
Okay.
20:11
That doesn't mean don't push back darkness.
20:12
That doesn't mean fight against it.
20:13
But at the same time, it's like, let me just kind of keep you up to speed here.
20:17
Like this is going to be a major problem.
20:19
But also it's talking about, you know, foundations of worldviews.
20:22
And so exactly we're talking about, you know, socialism, communism, all the popular isms
20:26
of this day, those are ideologies that have their feet planted firmly in midair because
20:30
you will have morons that will say things like, Oh, well, you know, Stalin just didn't
20:34
do communism.
20:35
Right.
20:36
It's like, no, Stalin did it exactly to the tea almost in tens of millions of people
20:41
died.
20:42
That's what that worldview leads to.
20:44
There's no, there's no world where, because communism has been tried in enormous countries
20:49
with a lot of GDP and tiny countries with tiny GDP and they've all messed it up, right?
20:54
Or contrastingly, they didn't mess up anything.
20:56
They did the dictates of the ideology and the ideology just came from the pits of hell
20:59
and it doesn't lead to human flourishing.
21:01
But I do want to kind of divert out of the world of political philosophical a little bit.
21:05
And I mean, this is a complete left turn.
21:07
I want to talk about verse four real quick.
21:10
He who sits in the heavens, laughs, the Lord holds them in derision.
21:15
Laughs is the word there that I want to really tie into.
21:18
And I wrote in my margins here, gives God personality.
21:21
So I'm guilty of this.
21:23
And I get the sense that a lot of people are guilty of this is that when we read scripture
21:27
and we read about God, the father or God, the son, and I guess you could say God, the
21:30
Holy Spirit, we give those three entities or we give them and their totality in the Trinity.
21:35
No personality whatsoever, right?
21:38
And there are a lot of people that I'm finding that hate the chosen.
21:42
They think the show is demonic because it's not 100% biblical, like, because there wasn't
21:48
a transcript in the Bible of all these conversations.
21:50
And so by definition, it is a biblical, right?
21:54
But one thing that you can do whenever you're reading or watching something like the chosen
21:58
is you realize, oh, Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jewish, like, construction worker surrounded
22:04
by a bunch of other blue collar guys.
22:06
And they probably weren't walking around talking like this.
22:09
And then I went over here and got two loaves and a fish.
22:12
And then we came back and Jesus blessed them and we fed all of the people like, but I read
22:17
it that way though.
22:18
And I have to like catch myself and be like, no, wait a minute.
22:21
That's true.
22:22
I have personalities, but God doesn't that, but, but Jesus didn't have a personality like
22:27
we're made in his image, we're made in God's image.
22:29
And we think that God just doesn't have a personality.
22:31
So that kind of smacked me in the face.
22:33
It's a random thing that I guess you can easily pass by, but I guess that did that catch any
22:37
of you guys up because it's like, Oh, God was out there laughing like you morons.
22:40
What are y'all doing down there?
22:41
Yeah.
22:42
Well, first off, let's address the chosen.
22:43
I mean, whoever doesn't like the chosen, okay, but you see these people, right?
22:48
Like, because I know like you watched it before I did, favorite show I've ever seen.
22:53
Let's talk.
22:54
It's great.
22:55
Okay.
22:56
So I mean, of all biblical shows, whatever, what other show are you going to watch that
22:59
is more morally based?
23:02
So so this is what the argument is.
23:05
So Russell, have you seen people complain about the chosen?
23:06
I mean, obviously, I think they're, I've seen individuals who are like, Hey, it's not word
23:11
for word literal.
23:12
And so, you know, now you're adding context to, you know, scripture, right?
23:16
And you need to be careful, but again, my comments are, it's a fictional thing that's
23:22
providing visual for a guy like me.
23:24
Yeah.
23:25
To context.
23:26
Like, I don't know what Middle Eastern, you know, first century, I mean, Jerusalem looked
23:34
like, it gives me really good context and helps me.
23:36
But I also, I do have the tinge of like, man, it's hard to not think of Jesus like that
23:44
guy.
23:45
Yeah.
23:46
John, the room with you, it's, it's hard for me not to think of him that way.
23:48
And so I can see how there is a little bit of challenge there.
23:51
But again, I'm, I'm in the camp of, I like the chosen and I think it's provided a lot
23:55
of value for a lot of people.
23:56
Well, and the weird thing about it is I know people that, you know, I love and respect
24:00
their opinion.
24:01
I, if you don't like chosen, great.
24:02
It's a TV show.
24:03
Like you're not going to like every single TV show, regardless of its popularity.
24:05
But I know people that have never watched a minute of the show, they're like, no, it's
24:10
inappropriate.
24:11
It's wrong.
24:12
It's whatever.
24:13
It's like God and film, you like you can't do any of those different things.
24:17
But to go to your point about like, you know, when I'm reading the, the gospel accounts,
24:21
now I do have Jonathan Rumi out there walking around and the guy who plays Peter and the
24:25
guy who plays John and I have that going on.
24:28
But I think that there's a right ordering of that because for how many decades of people
24:32
seen Jim Caviezel in their brain, the guy who played, you know, in the passion of the
24:36
Christ.
24:37
And it's like, well, that's a blue eyed white guy from America pretending to be a Middle
24:42
Eastern Jewish, you know, construction worker.
24:44
And part of the reason that I liked the chosen so much from the very beginning is I was like,
24:48
these look like first century Jews, right, or in my mind, what people like that would
24:52
look like.
24:53
And so it's like, it's a better representation.
24:55
But for me, I'll say it helps me as I'm reading the gospels, right?
24:59
Because it's like, it's showing me like, okay, this is probably what it was like.
25:03
And they're, oh, look, there's animals right there.
25:04
So here's maybe some smells that were happening in that area and it's like, it's literally
25:08
bringing the scripture to light, like right under my nose, right?
25:12
And there will be several times in each episode, I mean, we're through season three now.
25:17
So it's like, you know, 24 episodes, maybe I would say at least once in an episode, there
25:21
will be a situation like the very first episode, spoiler alert, you know, when he calls Mary
25:26
and says, you are mine from behind, I'm just thinking like, that's exactly that's me.
25:32
If I was a girl, I'd be married right now, he just called me and I just, I'll tell you
25:36
the first time I watched the first season, I was breaking down in tears.
25:39
Just from every episode, just going through and realizing that what they're trying to
25:44
get across and, you know, it seems almost completely biblical.
25:50
But there might be a couple of lines in there, they just have to make good TV out of it.
25:54
I mean, we can agree that it's probably the best available of what's on TV right now
25:58
for a Christian TV show.
26:00
But yeah, I just, I think that, that, that wild factor of, you know, everybody can really
26:09
relate to at least one powerful scene in each episode really struck me.
26:15
I own the first season of The Chosen, so I'm not a chosen hater.
26:21
Here's what I don't like about The Chosen, is a lot of people are taking The Chosen, they're
26:25
taking it as the Bible, they're not getting into the Word.
26:29
And, and it just reminds me of Christian radio stations.
26:33
You know, people aren't going to church, they're listening to the Christian radio station and
26:38
getting their worship that way rather than worshiping as a community.
26:41
So I think when it comes to The Chosen, I think it's great writing.
26:48
Dallas Jenkins, I believe that's his name did a great job of bringing, I think, the Bible
26:52
to life to a point in coming from a Hollywood background.
26:58
But I really feel like if the, if the people of The Chosen really cared so much about getting
27:04
the story out, there would be a push more of like, hey, watch this show, but let dive
27:08
into this, this week, you know, dive into this chapter of the Bible.
27:12
We're going over this chapter, you know, this, this is, these are the chapters we're covering
27:17
in this episode, I just think it's a great, uh, springboard to what people should actually
27:23
be doing, which is opening.
27:24
Well, and to be fair, they, they do have devotionals, they have Bibles that that people
27:28
are buying.
27:29
And the thing that I think that some people that get their hackles up about The Chosen,
27:33
they forget is like genres, you, you have to understand that there are different genres.
27:39
So even as you're reading the Bible, you can't read Song of Solomon the same way that you
27:42
read Isaiah, the same way that you read Revelation, the same way that you read Luke because they're
27:46
different genres.
27:47
They're not meant to be read the same, right?
27:50
And then there are certain things here that the genre of that is not biblical historical
27:55
documentary, because if that's it and you have someone reading through the gospel accounts
28:00
and then all of a sudden they throw in their own words or something like that, it's like,
28:04
okay, yeah, that, that's a major problem.
28:06
But it's like when you're bringing something to light, you can't use just what's described
28:10
in scripture because there will be holes all over the place.
28:13
And also kind of coming back to Psalm 2, for giving personality, I remember something in
28:18
season one where they were the disciples, the apostles of Jesus were going to be staying
28:23
somewhere.
28:24
And the guy who like owned the house is like, oh, you know, that, you know, that room back
28:28
there is haunted and Jesus goes, Oh, I want that one.
28:30
And it's so funny.
28:32
And the thing is, is like, did Jesus say that probably not, right?
28:35
Does that change the salvific nature of the life in the ministry that he did on this earth?
28:40
No.
28:41
Like it's entertainment.
28:43
It's meant to entertain you now.
28:45
It's what they take liberties with that we need to pay attention to because if they start
28:49
taking liberty with some of the miracles and injecting stuff that's not there, I see that
28:54
is deeply problematic.
28:55
And then obviously we're a few seasons away from, you know, the crucifixion resurrection.
29:00
If they take liberties with that, right, obviously there would be a massive, massive uproar.
29:06
But anyway, I'm glad we kind of took that detour because I think the chosen is important.
29:10
So you're right, Ryan, and people do need to understand like, okay, this should make
29:14
you interested in the word more.
29:16
This should like feed your hunger for the word.
29:19
And I think you may say the word entertain.
29:21
It's the same thing that people do at church.
29:23
So they go to church, you know, a couple of times a month and they go there to be entertained.
29:26
They want to hear good music.
29:28
They want to sing along a little bit here or there.
29:30
They want the passer to make them laugh and make them think a little bit not to convict
29:33
them in any way, shape or form, because the 11th commandment is to be as nice as possible
29:36
and to not make people uncomfortable.
29:38
But like, that's what they want out of church.
29:40
And so it's kind of the same thing there.
29:43
But go ahead.
29:44
He sits and laughs at those services.
29:46
Oh, does he sits and laughs at those certain, the seeker sensitive services?
29:50
But like the thing about it that I probably the first time for me that this change guys
29:54
was when I read a beautiful outlaw by John Eldred.
29:57
And so there's a, obviously he wrote Wild at Heart, the seminal men's mystery book out
30:01
there.
30:02
Some of his other books, people have been critical of it.
30:04
It's like, oh, it's a little bit too poetic for me and I don't really understand it.
30:07
But that book was the first time I realized like, because that book, you know, chapter
30:10
by chapter, it breaks down the personality of Jesus, essentially using biblical stories
30:14
from the gospels.
30:16
And that was the first time I was like, Oh, Jesus was a guy, like he was a normal guy.
30:20
He got angry, righteously.
30:22
He was sad.
30:23
He was tired, like those types of things.
30:26
And so I don't know when that time like came for you guys, but that was like, I was in
30:29
my twenties and I had new kind of the Bible stories, but I never really thought of Jesus
30:33
as a dude with a personality.
30:34
Yeah, I would say that it kind of just brings it to life and gives impersonality, whether
30:40
it's the chosen or whatever you're watching.
30:43
But it's the fact that it's always been two dimensional, you know, and since I've become
30:48
a Christian, it's always been reading out of the Bible, your, it's audio.
30:52
You know, there's nothing visual to how Jesus would have reacted or, you know, how he spoke
30:56
to people, but all throughout the gospels, it's, it's preaching fellowship and brotherly
31:03
love and kindness and creating relationships.
31:09
And you need to see that Jesus was a real person.
31:12
He created relationships.
31:14
You know, I don't have any buddies that we just sit around and we'll just read a book
31:18
monotone to each other and then part ways and go home.
31:22
That's just not how it works.
31:23
You have to build rapport.
31:24
You have to have jokes.
31:25
You have to have everything.
31:26
You got to break down and cry.
31:27
You know, you got to have all these different aspects of a relationship to be in fellowship
31:33
with somebody.
31:34
And I think that that's kind of something that maybe the show is getting across.
31:38
So you said something earlier, whenever you were talking about your, your upbringing,
31:44
you know, moral upbringing, but not really spiritual in any way.
31:46
And I would say the exact same for me.
31:47
It's like, Oh, we're, we're Christians because we were born in Oklahoma.
31:50
Like that was our theology and our household growing up.
31:52
Every Bible had an inch of dust on the top of it.
31:55
But like, if you can go back to that time period, because obviously I just told you it wasn't
32:00
until like 20s where I even like thought about Jesus having a personality, did it ever occur
32:03
to you that Jesus was like an actual person, not just a character in a story that we're
32:07
supposed to take really seriously?
32:08
And no, not when I was not anytime young at my life.
32:11
I mean, I was, you know, I was in my 20s, similar to you, you know, probably in college.
32:17
When that became real to me, and it was really just through reading the gospels, right?
32:21
I mean, you know, Jesus answer questions right with questions and, you know, one of my favorite
32:25
stories in the Bible and all of the Bible is just when, you know, Jesus asks, Hey, do
32:29
we need to pay to mass?
32:30
Do we need to pay taxes too?
32:31
He's like, go show me a coin.
32:33
Let me see.
32:34
That's Caesar's face, right?
32:35
Like, okay, give to Caesar.
32:36
What's Caesar give to God?
32:37
What's God, right?
32:38
I mean, just, I love that because, you know, he was practical.
32:41
He understood that, you know, hey, I need to be focused on what I need to be focused
32:45
on and bring my kingdom here.
32:47
But there's also a world here that I have to like live in, right?
32:50
He was still a man.
32:51
And so he's still operated and you're, Hey, you need to pay your taxes.
32:54
Oh, go get this fish.
32:55
Hey, in that fish is enough for me and you, right?
32:58
Go pay our taxes.
32:59
So that stuff just really stuck out to me and you mentioned this.
33:04
It's funny.
33:05
One of the commentaries mentions that giving God, you know, humanistic characteristics
33:08
is anthropomorphism anthropomorphism, right?
33:11
It's a big word.
33:12
So I didn't know that.
33:13
But yeah, I mean, I think that's, I think you have to.
33:15
I mean, obviously Jesus Christ because he wasn't man, but even God and even I'm the Holy
33:19
Spirit, understanding that we were creating his image and understanding that they, there
33:24
were those characteristics, right?
33:26
I mean, we see God get angry.
33:28
We see God get sad.
33:29
We see God get jealous.
33:30
We see God laugh.
33:31
We see, I mean, all these things that we understand in our own amago day, right, is, is really
33:38
who God is.
33:39
Well, and so you say, you know, so when you anthropomorphize something, guys, even if
33:44
you don't know the word, you know exactly what it looks like.
33:47
That's why Simba and Timon and Pumba are having such a good time because you're giving human
33:52
characteristics to things that are not human.
33:54
So when you, you'll notice this when you're watching, like kids cartoons or something
33:57
like that, the eyes, nose and mouth of animals are going to be drawn differently because humans
34:02
are very expressive with their eyes, but like an alligator is not expressive with their
34:06
eyes.
34:07
But when that's an alligator in a cartoon, super expressive eyes, that's anthropomorphizing
34:10
like you're giving that now we can get into trouble.
34:13
So like when people treat their dogs like children and they give their dogs like, so
34:17
your dog is not sitting around thinking, Oh man, I just don't really know about my place
34:20
in the world.
34:21
And like, gosh, I've just been sitting here all day and I, I, I ate that food that was
34:26
on the floor again.
34:27
I can't believe I did that.
34:28
They're not doing that, but we will look at them and be like, Oh, look at how sad they
34:31
are.
34:32
Look at how this and that's like, no, no, no, that is a dog.
34:34
They don't have consciousness, which I don't want to go on this thing.
34:36
But just some food for thought for people.
34:38
There was somebody that was trying to explain like when an animal is being eaten alive, they
34:42
don't even understand they're being eaten alive because they don't understand that there's
34:45
a them that they're, that they're experiencing that because they have no idea what self consciousness
34:52
is.
34:53
They have no awareness of where they are in the world.
34:56
They're driven completely by instincts, which is exactly what atheists would say about us
35:00
is, you know, we're just dancing to our DNA.
35:02
We're just highly evolved chimps that we're, you know, pants and talk to one another.
35:05
So I definitely don't want to get into that route, but you were, you were going to say
35:07
something about that.
35:08
Yeah.
35:09
Well, no, I was going to say something about personalities.
35:10
When we ascribe personalities to God and to, to Christ is, I think there's one thing that
35:15
we, we kind of miss sometimes, or at least I missed in the past, like I could tell a joke,
35:19
could be a crude joke.
35:20
And I'm like, you know what?
35:21
God's got a sense of humor.
35:22
But here's the thing.
35:24
God's holy.
35:25
Jesus is holy.
35:26
And that's one thing we have to remember is that they're going to have these aspects of,
35:31
of how we're made to love, to laugh to whatever cheesy thing you can find at the Hobby Lobby.
35:37
We're going to be able to do that.
35:39
Like God's.
35:40
We should get some of those signs and put them on the wall right here.
35:42
All the ones from Hobby Lobby.
35:43
Go ahead.
35:44
I don't want to.
35:45
Right in the antagonist.
35:46
Sorry.
35:47
Sorry.
35:48
I'm pretty sure my brother long buys those, by the way.
35:50
But does he listen to us?
35:51
No, he doesn't.
35:52
But he works for Hobby Lobby.
35:53
Okay.
35:54
This is getting worse.
35:55
The more you, you keep talking about it.
35:56
But no, but what I'm talking about is, you know, we're, we're made in, in God's image,
36:01
you know, we're made in Christ's image.
36:03
But we have to remember that their image is holy.
36:05
So their love is totally different than our love.
36:08
They understand love on a different basis than we understand love.
36:11
They understand justice on a different basis than we understand justice.
36:15
And so I think it's good that we provide a personality for Christ and for God that we
36:20
know that they're in this image, but we have to be reverent of that.
36:23
Because in the past, I was irreverent in that, you know, when that doesn't give us, I think
36:28
the thing is that doesn't give us license.
36:29
So I love talking about when Jesus cleared the temple, we actually did that twice.
36:33
Once right, you know, shortly after his first miracle, once after he, you know, came back
36:36
in triumphantly and to Jerusalem, cleared it out twice.
36:40
And then some guys will be like, all right, I'm going to go into, you know, Sunday school,
36:44
and I'm just going to start driving people out because Jesus did it's like.
36:47
But that again, I always talk about univariate analysis.
36:49
If you do a univariate analysis, you will take a whip into church or you'll take a whip
36:52
into the bar, you'll take a whip into work and you will do work that way.
36:56
But when you start peeling away the layers and be like, is my anger in this moment righteous?
37:02
Because Jesus did it, does that mean that I do it in the exact same way?
37:06
Or is that, you know, a lesson that's going to teach me something in a certain way?
37:09
Now, some people go way far over to the other side and they were like, Jesus is the only
37:14
one allowed to do any of these types of things, right?
37:16
So he didn't allow his disciples or apostles to do those things.
37:20
So we're not supposed to do it either.
37:21
It's like, no, actually you're a coward and you just don't want to like push and you just
37:25
want to say, Oh, Jesus is going to take care of it.
37:27
But yeah, we just don't have license to perform those things in that way.
37:30
We do need to dig more into the context of what's going on in that story and what we're
37:34
supposed to be gleaning from that as, you know, image bearers of God.
37:38
One thing I did want to kind of say, and I don't know if you guys want to talk too much
37:41
about it, but verse seven is really, really interesting just because of how dense it is
37:45
and how many times it refers to stuff in the New Testament.
37:47
Maybe this will just be something for you guys to go and look at on your own.
37:50
But I'll read verse seven here.
37:51
I will tell the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son.
37:55
Today I have be gotten you.
37:58
So verse seven of Psalm two, that is referred to in Matthew three, 17 and Matthew 17, five
38:05
acts 13, 33 Hebrews, one five and Hebrews five five.
38:10
And so that is described a whole lot.
38:12
And there was another commentary.
38:13
I got to start writing down like what commentary I'm getting these things from because it's
38:16
like if it's smart, it definitely didn't come from me.
38:18
But that quote where it says you are my son, this is the only place in the entire Old Testament.
38:24
I believe this is true, the only place in the entire Old Testament where there's a reference
38:29
to the father, son relationship inside the Trinity, which is an enormous deal because
38:36
when you talk to people that are not Trinitarian, you know, and you talk to, you know, Muslim
38:39
scholars and all that and like the just the word Trinity never appears in the Bible.
38:43
So no, there's no father, son and Holy Spirit.
38:45
There's no God in three persons three and one, like that doesn't matter.
38:48
But this is just one of those times where it's a foreshadowing to the sons coming.
38:53
But who he is in reference to the Godhead, right?
38:57
Like he brings with him and God sends the Holy Spirit and leaves the Holy Spirit after
39:02
he goes back up to heaven and things like that.
39:05
But I thought that that was like, I had never read that before where that was the only reference
39:10
to the father, son, dichotomy, which also gets into people that believe that, you know, Jesus
39:15
is, you know, somehow non binary that Jesus like there is, you know, God isn't a male,
39:21
like we shouldn't refer to him as such, you know, God is just she as well.
39:24
God is a they them.
39:25
Like this kind of goes against that language as well because you're talking about father
39:29
son.
39:30
And when Jesus talks about God, he uses masculine pronouns and he talks to his father in those
39:36
types.
39:37
But did you guys like, did you all know that?
39:39
Cause I didn't know that before I started really digging into the song.
39:42
I didn't.
39:43
I had something different that I can go into later.
39:45
You can go in and out.
39:47
Well, I thought it was pretty cool when I was reading about it.
39:50
It was talking about you are my son.
39:53
So the foreshadowing was that somebody was going to come as a man rather than God raising
39:59
somebody from the dead to be the Messiah.
40:01
Okay.
40:02
So that's what makes it messianic.
40:04
Yeah.
40:05
Yeah.
40:06
I thought that was a, it was just a really, really interesting point, which I guess, and
40:10
I don't know if this is just a meat problem.
40:11
I don't know if it's different for you guys, but I, I really struggle with reading like
40:15
I've, I've always been bad at it, like, you know, when you take all those tests for, you
40:18
know, AP English or whatever and it's like, okay, read this passage and then now answer
40:21
these questions.
40:22
I will read the passage and go to the questions and be like, I wonder if I'm on the wrong
40:25
page because these don't refer to anything I just read and then I go back to paragraphs
40:29
like, Oh, I'm, I'm just stupid.
40:30
Great.
40:31
And so like I've always kind of been that way, but I don't pick up these little details.
40:35
Like they just don't hit my brain.
40:37
I don't know.
40:38
Like y'all may have like more brain, you know, horsepower than I do, but as I'm reading
40:42
like, I don't know that I ever would have just noticed that.
40:44
You know what I mean?
40:45
Is it different for you guys?
40:46
Yeah, I feel like most time when I'm reading, it's just very direct and I'm trying to understand
40:50
what this means, you know, just directly how God is presenting it.
40:54
But to see those underlying factors, you know, God presented or put a set of son on
41:01
Zion, set him on the hill and you know, that is prophecy of Christ coming and where he'll
41:08
have his millennial kingdom is on Zion and it's just kind of, I didn't see that underlying
41:14
factor. You know, the first time I read through it and you're going through Psalm 2, you get
41:18
to verse 7 and you feel like he's talking about David as his son, you know, and just
41:25
kind of it took me a second to read it two or three times like we talked about earlier.
41:29
I need to read it several times to understand that.
41:32
Wait a minute.
41:33
Wait a minute.
41:34
It just occurred to me that you've been a Christian for like three years and you just
41:36
said millennial kingdom.
41:37
You're like a big deal, man.
41:39
Like you're sitting over there like, oh, I'm not that smart and all that.
41:41
You're just throwing out the illogical words and all that kind of stuff like that's pretty
41:45
big.
41:46
Good for you.
41:47
Listening.
41:48
Yeah.
41:49
He's got three listings.
41:50
Sorry.
41:51
Go ahead.
41:52
No, I think it's great with what Zach said.
41:53
You know, I read that and you can see how God's talking to David and David is his son in
41:58
the fact that Jesus comes from the line of David.
42:01
So, you know, the first shadowing in that is great.
42:05
So I think it's a good way that you looked at that one back and read it and just kind
42:10
of have the Holy Spirit just kind of open that up to you.
42:13
Right.
42:14
Cause he put David, you know, in a physical time, you know, whenever it was it when was
42:21
David King 1000 years before Christ.
42:25
Yeah.
42:26
Yeah.
42:27
So, you know, he said David on the throne, he made him king for a time until Christ would
42:31
come.
42:32
Yeah.
42:33
So just like how it kind of foreshadowed and said, you know, for the coming Messiah.
42:37
Go ahead.
42:38
Obviously to your point about those little details, though, I think that speaks to like,
42:43
you know, for all listeners and for all of us individually is to like read the totality
42:48
of the Bible, right?
42:50
It's like read it and read it again and read it again and read it again and read it again
42:54
for the rest of our life.
42:55
And we'll continue to see those threads kind of like, Oh, wow, this is an axe and this
42:59
is in Hebrew and Hebrews and now this is here.
43:03
And that's why I know I'm guilty of this, like it's so much easier to kind of read things
43:07
that are maybe a little bit of a new Testament in particular.
43:09
It's just easier and flows better and it's where Jesus is, that's where those red letters
43:13
are, right?
43:14
You know, it's a red letters.
43:15
Everybody loves the red letters.
43:16
But, but I mean, you know, going back and I know that last year, you know, I've read
43:21
through, you know, a lot of the Old Testament and like Leviticus and numbers and man, those
43:25
can be really challenging, but just understanding the process of sacrifice and all those things
43:31
like man, understanding what this meant in light of what the New Testament brings, right?
43:36
So just, just, you know, really spending time on things that maybe didn't and so my point
43:41
there is, I think those little details really show up one from the Holy Spirit and two from
43:46
time and God's work.
43:47
When I guess proof texting is a dangerous thing that that guys will do, they'll have
43:51
an idea.
43:52
It's like a scientist knowing how they want the experiment to go and then they build the
43:55
experiment out, hoping to get that in.
43:57
That's not what you're supposed to do.
43:58
But I would say, in my opinion, that it would be appropriate to read any part of the Bible
44:04
and the Gospels are not as if it's talking about Jesus somehow, because I think it's
44:08
like 66 books are telling the same exact story.
44:13
And so that's been helpful for me as I'm reading because now, like, and we'll get into this
44:17
in some of our later Psalms that we'll be talking about in the weeks to come to where
44:21
it's like this, like, when they wrote this down, they didn't know exactly how this was
44:25
going to manifest, but we do because we've got all of these, you know, transcripts, all
44:30
these, you know, ancient transcripts together and it's bound in a book and we got a digitally
44:33
in all these other different ways.
44:34
I think that's really important.
44:35
But another thing that kind of came up, Zach, as you were talking, the other Zach, we'll
44:39
just call him the other Zach from now on, so he's not here to defend himself, but Zach
44:42
Todd.
44:43
So he's been a Christian for only a few years as well in his 30s.
44:47
He reads the Bible the same way that you do and y'all's brains work very differently
44:50
and your personalities are very different.
44:52
But it's so refreshing, like, when a younger new Christian is just like, man, well, the
44:57
Bible just says it.
44:58
So I guess I have to do that, whereas, like, if you've been a Christian for decades, it's
45:02
like, well, I wonder what the nuance of this particular passage is and how it connects
45:07
to blah, blah, blah, such and such.
45:09
And then when you talk to Christians that are like sub Saharan Africa, or, you know,
45:12
the global south, as it were, these people that are coming to Christ in Iran or in China
45:17
or in, you know, Korea, North Korea, things like that, they're just looking at the words
45:21
and going, I guess that's what we're supposed to do.
45:24
They're not worried about translations.
45:25
They're not worried about, you know, how they're going to do their worship service and whether
45:29
or not that's going to allow them to keep getting people to come in.
45:32
Like, it's just a big deal for them to be able to even have these words.
45:35
And so they cherish them.
45:37
Whereas we're kind of like cynical because we're Americans and we're Westernized and
45:40
it's like, well, does it really mean that?
45:43
Did he really say?
45:44
Well, everybody wants to make it their own and make it more comfortable for them.
45:47
And that's where we're at in life, you know, in this day, but being a new Christian for
45:52
three years, it's like, you know, I started reading the Bible.
45:55
They told me right off the bat, go through the gospel, read the gospels over and over
46:00
and over and over and you'll start to get it, read John and Matthew again.
46:05
And what I started to understand was here's the 10 commandments.
46:10
These are the rules.
46:11
I've told God that I believe in him and that he's a creator of the universe and I believe
46:18
that in my heart and I've been changed and I'm reborn and he's given me a new heart like
46:22
Ezekiel says and so why wouldn't I follow the rules?
46:27
You know, I tell God that I want to submit and I want to be his servant and he owns me
46:31
and I know that why wouldn't I follow the rules?
46:34
Right.
46:35
Well, so let's talk about submit.
46:36
So we'll go to the end of Psalm two here.
46:37
We're going to start in verse 10.
46:38
I'll just read through the end.
46:39
Now therefore, O Kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with
46:44
fear and rejoice with trembling, kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you perish in the way
46:50
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
46:53
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
46:55
So at the beginning of verse 12, kiss the sun.
46:57
That is an act of submission, okay?
46:59
So you are submitting to him and his rule.
47:02
And when I first read verses 10 and 11, I wrote down in my margin here, it's essentially
47:07
modern rulers don't do this at all.
47:09
So it doesn't matter what country you're in.
47:13
Rulers don't think about how they can honor God and the things that they're doing.
47:15
I say that there was a new story that that popped up a while back about the Ugandan government
47:22
passing a law that made homosexuality illegal.
47:25
And they also did a bunch of other things.
47:26
They have the death penalty for rape, which is like, yes, absolutely.
47:29
If you're going to rape somebody, if you're going to hold them down and violate them sexually,
47:33
sorry, you lose your life.
47:35
But that and I can't make a biblical argument for that necessarily because we basically
47:40
kill people that kill people.
47:41
But anyway, we'll diverge from that.
47:43
But God, when you're reading this, it's like, oh my gosh, God's so mean and so angry.
47:48
He's like telling them to be wise and repent and all that.
47:51
But God gives them ample time to do this.
47:54
It wasn't like, all right, y'all are acting bad and stop it right now in the context of
47:59
this passage.
48:00
He gives them very, very ample time to be able to repent.
48:05
But then when you start getting into verse 12, it's like, look, his wrath is quickly
48:10
kindled, like he can do what he wants to do on his own timeline and in his tremendous
48:15
and abundance grace.
48:16
He's given you a shot at this.
48:18
But even in America, even Christian politicians in America, whether they're in your local
48:23
community or, you know, in the Capitol building in DC, does anybody consider what the scriptures
48:29
say before they go in and vote before they're you before you go into the booth?
48:34
Like are you taking into account what is going to be glorified or destroyed via this
48:39
piece of legislation or what this politician is going to do?
48:42
And I feel like that's where, you know, it's kind of where we started this whole discussion,
48:45
but everything's so unbelievably out of whack that we don't really know where to go.
48:49
So we just go with our own understanding, which I'll know about you guys.
48:52
But typically when I lean on my own understanding 100% of the time, I'm not bad in a thousand,
48:57
but that's just me.
48:58
Yeah, I mean, when I go and in vote, I look at the policy and I want to see which policy
49:03
kind of fits my narrative, hopefully a biblical narrative when I'm voting, depending on more
49:08
my mind's at, but yeah, you would hope somebody would see that.
49:14
I like the part of submission of bringing this up and we got to submit to God's will.
49:21
We got to submit to what what we know is right and what we know is wrong and what he views
49:26
as holy and try to do our best to do that.
49:30
Right.
49:31
I don't think when you're going to the voting booth and we hear this from the pulpit at
49:35
our church, and it's not a suggestion on how to vote, but it is just a reminder that we
49:39
hear before every voting cycle is to vote what's biblical, you know, read scripture,
49:44
understand what is at stake and vote what is biblical and then getting back to submitting
49:51
to Christ.
49:52
Can I actually hop in there?
49:53
So please don't lose your point about the submission, but that's actually something
49:56
that I've leveled as a criticism of our church.
49:59
When our pastor who we we all we all deeply respect and you know, obviously very, very
50:03
smart with we're so thankful that we have an expository preacher like that in our basically
50:07
in our neighborhood that we can go to before an election.
50:10
I think it would have been in 2022.
50:12
He said, remember on Tuesday, vote biblical values and then he just left it there, but
50:17
it's like, bro, you're talking to a bunch of sheep, like a bunch of dummies, like pretend
50:22
that we're sheep.
50:23
Okay.
50:24
So we're the dumbest animal on the planet.
50:25
And you just say this this bumper sticker slogan like vote biblical values.
50:29
It's like, can you be more specific?
50:31
Can you be more precise?
50:33
Now I don't think that he should put up on the screen, you know, a sample of the ballot
50:37
and say, this is what I've done.
50:38
And if you don't do it, you know, if you want to go to hell, that's on you, like I don't
50:42
think they should necessarily do that.
50:43
But at the same time, there are people that think they're doing something biblical by
50:48
allowing the genital mutilation of children because they don't want kids to be to feel
50:54
bad.
50:55
And if a kid truly feels like they're the opposite gender, well, are Christians supposed to love?
50:59
And they, you don't get that from a deep reading of scripture.
51:03
But that for me, I was like, no, that's problematic because people again do univariate analysis.
51:07
And they're going to say, well, God is a God of love.
51:09
And if people want to love, even if it's someone of the same gender, who am I to judge?
51:13
It's like, come on, like, what are you talking about?
51:16
So does that make sense?
51:17
Like I, I was like, we need to be a little bit more explicit than that.
51:20
Yeah, it could be a little bit more explicit in, and just maybe pointing out which parts
51:27
of the election or what part of the ballots are biblical in his views or what, you know,
51:33
from a biblical standpoint, what would be the biblical vote?
51:38
But if you've gone to our church for any amount of time, you understand where the values are
51:42
and what he's saying, the underlying factors of when he says, vote, vote, biblical, you
51:47
know what he's saying.
51:48
I agree.
51:49
I mean, we all go to the same church.
51:52
I know what he's talking about.
51:53
I see Kyle's point in that some, there are some people who don't know what he's talking
51:57
about.
51:58
But I mean, where we live now, I mean, he can't go over the ballot.
52:02
I mean, you just lose your 501(c)(3) status to do that, you know, but what he can do is
52:07
he can point out, you know, hey, murder is murder, mutilation is mutilation.
52:14
He could point those things out.
52:15
I can see where it's coming from.
52:17
But also we could set up something like it was in it, you know, to kind of go over, you
52:21
know, what voting, biblical values would be like.
52:24
Yeah.
52:25
But what I hear what you're saying.
52:26
I have brought that up to our pastor before when he was going to start having a Q&A like
52:29
John MacArthur.
52:30
He just kind of looked at me like, man, if you knew how busy I was, you wouldn't ask.
52:35
But thank you.
52:36
I'll put a seed in his ear so maybe we'll, we'll see that one day.
52:39
Or we could say, Russ?
52:40
Oh, I was just going to say, I mean, so I don't disagree that, you know, there are probably,
52:44
you know, just sheep, just, you know, people in the pulpit that may not know, and that's
52:48
on us.
52:49
It's on us as men to educate ourselves, to educate our families, educate those around
52:54
us.
52:55
I mean, I don't disagree that, you know, maybe someone with the influence that our pastor
53:01
or any pastor could have is, Hey, here are, you know, these three items on the ballot.
53:07
Please go home and dig into these.
53:09
You know, he could maybe point, maybe point us in a direction, but but not, not necessarily
53:13
say how to vote or what to vote or whatever, because I don't.
53:16
It's like a scavenger hunt, but it's like, I mean, sure, but, but again, that's on us.
53:21
I mean, I think we have to take that responsibility as men as, I mean, because, you know, church
53:29
is, you know, and I think I've heard Ryan says, I mean, I really do, and I would agree
53:32
with Ryan's context and this, if this he was the one that said this is that, you know,
53:37
we're supposed to get like fed in, in those, I mean, the pastor's feeding sheep there, right?
53:42
And those of us who are, you know, who have been in, you know, in the body for some period
53:49
of time should take the next step and be, you know, disciples and laborers.
53:54
We're not supposed to just be those commerce.
53:57
We're not supposed to be just seeking the milk, right?
53:58
We need to be like seeking food.
54:00
I'm there on Sundays, like I love our pastor's teaching, but I'm not really there just to
54:05
get his teaching.
54:06
I'm there to serve my small group.
54:08
I'm there to serve the other people around me.
54:10
I'm there to teach my children, I'm there to, you know, and so that's on us, right?
54:14
And but to your point, there are a lot of people in that body who are ignorant.
54:20
Right.
54:21
And so what's the balance?
54:22
Well, so your point on personal responsibility is well taken because ultimately it's, it's
54:26
up to you.
54:27
I mean, Ryan, it's three, four years ago now you bought me that Vodie Bock and book Family
54:31
Shepherds where it's like, okay, like it's not the church's responsibility to categorize
54:34
your family.
54:35
Like it's not the church's responsibility to be the spiritual, you know, thermostat of
54:39
your household, like, you know, get your crap together.
54:41
On this particular thing though, the pastor is also responsible for equipping the saints.
54:47
And in that way, if you are leaving it so gray to where the saints might vote for something
54:53
that actively hurts and harms image bearers of Christ and they're doing so unknowingly
54:59
because they're ignorant and I don't use that to be derisive, but they're just ignorant
55:02
about what this person will do once in office or what that person will do or something like
55:06
that.
55:07
It's like, okay, it can be explicit and I would actually disagree, Ryan.
55:10
I think in terms of the ballot, like having the ballot up there, you're not going to lose
55:14
your 501c three status as a church.
55:16
If you come up and say, when you vote for a person that is a representative of the modern
55:21
democratic party, you cannot do that and vote biblical values because the DNC says that abortion
55:28
should be legal up to the day of birth for for any reason whatsoever and paid for by the
55:34
American taxpayer and you cannot be a Christian and vote in that way.
55:39
It doesn't come down to tax policy.
55:41
It doesn't come down to the immigration doesn't come down to the border doesn't come down
55:44
any of that.
55:45
That's where I would say something like that.
55:47
It is appropriate.
55:48
It's like, does they need to be hosting rallies for politicians?
55:51
Not in their pulpit, but I hear you're coming with that and I don't know if it's a state
55:56
law or something like that, but you cannot, you cannot put out information about a candidate
56:01
or put out their signs or something like that at your church.
56:04
It's an IRS statute.
56:05
It's an IRS statute.
56:06
Well, I mean, you go to churches here, I've seen churches where actually people running
56:10
as Democrats.
56:11
Oh, they, they hope they go to the church and like they have like a whole, you know, you
56:15
saw an FEC Dallas and not even a Dallas.
56:18
It's a Sunday morning when you should be expository or getting into the scriptures and expositing
56:23
scripture and they've got some political candidate up there talking about, you know, why you
56:27
should vote for them.
56:28
I've seen it on the left and the right.
56:31
I agree.
56:32
I think, I think we should pull up, you know, this is what the Republicans believe.
56:35
This is what the Democrats believe and we should put that into a, you know, kind of a thing
56:40
to look at just to show, you know, hey, these are, these are biblical values.
56:44
These are not biblical values and let the person judge from there.
56:49
You know what might be interesting because most churches have, I just forgot the phrase,
56:52
but it's like the church's beliefs and doctrines or stuff that they, yeah, bylaws.
56:58
So wouldn't it be a valuable tool to throw up a QR code or print some off?
57:03
You know, you know, if you're above the age of, if you're born in the 1900s, you may not
57:06
know what a QR code is, but like where you say like, Hey, based on our bylaws and how
57:11
we, uh, the things that we believe about scripture and things that we hold, here's how that applies
57:16
to what's on the ballot this time around, right?
57:19
Here's how these values apply to what is currently happening in our community.
57:23
And this should inform you as you go into the booth on Tuesday, it's not saying, Hey, check
57:27
the box for this candidate over that candidate.
57:30
But it's like this person is saying these particular things and let's put that through
57:35
the lens of scripture or we'll put that through the matrix or a filter of scripture to kind
57:39
of see what comes out on the other end.
57:41
That would probably be something that would be a value that where you have a PDF to where
57:44
it applies in your community.
57:46
Because again, we should be voting for the most amount of human flourishing possible.
57:50
And that's not always on the ballot in the most perfect way shape or form, but it would
57:54
at least be a little bit helpful.
57:55
But guys, that was a great discussion about Psalm two, two newbies and here we are.
57:59
We just knocked out an hour and it just flew by.
58:01
So nicely done on your first try here, but we're going to have to leave Psalm 22 there.
58:05
But make sure you come back next week or sorry, that was Psalm two and that was already foreshadowing
58:09
next week.
58:10
We're going to be getting into Psalm 22.
58:12
So guys, do your homework, go and read Psalm 22 this week and be ready to go for next week.
58:17
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
58:20
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