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[Music]
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This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
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Welcome back to the forging table. The mission of Undaunted Life is equipping men to push back
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darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. At the forging
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table, you'll see a group of regular guys forging spiritual resilience by digging into God's word
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and we're welcoming all of you to come along on that journey with us. Howard, thanks again for
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being with us. And then we got a couple of OGs in the house. We got Matt and Ryan,
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but you two knuckleheads have not recorded together in a while. Are you going to be able to behave?
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Like that's kind of the main concern. That's been my concern all week because Ryan, you're having
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to step in because I made a little bit of a scheduling snap. So you're stepping in on short notice,
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but you did just teach on this in Sunday school like three days ago. But are we going to be okay?
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I mean, y'all are crossing each other. You can kind of feed off of each other's energy. Are you
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touching toes under the table? We don't have a camera now there. So we can't see yet. So my
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wife walked, watched me walk out of the house a second ago and she's like, I've never seen such
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a big smile on your face. And she's like, what are you excited about? I was like, I get to go
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on the forging table with the grass mire spent like over a year. She's like, I figured you were
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because you told me that twice. It's a thing. Yeah. I was like, man, it's my brother. I haven't
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been on the on the floor table. Define behave. Yeah. Well, see, y'all have like this language
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between the two of you. I feel like you got like this sense, like, which is weird because you and
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I have known each other about four times, five times as long as you and Ryan have it. We don't
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quite have that connection. So I'm just wondering, is it, is this election connection? Like what
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exactly is that? That's exactly what it is. It's an election connection. And I think that's a good
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election. That would be interesting to you that watch the last batch. We did find out that Jake
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Winkler is the biggest pro wrestling fan on the planet. And to this day, not like when he was a kid.
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And so his tag team, the him and his buddy were on as, I don't know if y'all know this yet,
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vicious and delicious were the two things. And then we had a couple of other names like I decided
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to be I think I was pernicious or superstitious or something like that. So we've got a bunch of
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other names. So bold dishes. That's incredible. But the cool thing about this, Ryan, is I think
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we can fit well, we'll get a vote, right? So you don't get to vote, right? But we'll take a vote
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between us three. Do we officially want to retire the giving Ryan crap for the cologne thing and
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then pick up the mantle of giving Winkler crap for the pro wrestling thing? Yeah, because the thing
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is is that's something that works whether Winkler is on the forging table or not on it. And so,
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but I, you know, what are what are our thoughts here? I think two things can be true at the same time.
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Okay. And it's not necessary to retire one to then proceed to the other.
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There's one argument. Howard. It's all about situations. Okay. When the situation comes,
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the phone comes for it. Okay. All right. Well, I think we'll get a good scent of it.
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No, sorry. You don't get a vote. I don't know. I'm not wanting to vote. I have a confession
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to make. Oh, what's your essence? Boy. I didn't put one on. I have no essence right now.
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Prove it. Wait. Come here. Wait. There. So hold on. It smells like a shirt, guys. You didn't.
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Yeah. You didn't gotta be residual. You didn't put cologne on. So there's no aroma to smell.
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Speaking of aroma, Rome is where we're headed today. That's the Grassmeyer connection.
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You haven't had to feel one of those in a while. What's that? Grassmeyer? No, I have to do the
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Grassmeyer connections now. It's the transition. Transition. Yeah. Grassmeyer is great at transition.
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He is. But yes, speaking of aroma, I don't have any essence. So we're going to have to listen to
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the essence of Paul. Well, but wait, no, we got to back up just a little bit. Why? I prematurely
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transitioned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Democrats would prefer that you do that. But like, no,
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seriously, like, so you do it for Sunday school. You do it for. I do have the going out to the
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grocery store, Colone. Yes. You don't have a forging table, Colone? No. I was at work and I
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got done with work. And I just went and put on the shirt real quick because I want to be too fancy.
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And I totally forgot to... Essence up. Yeah. But the thing is, now this is two batches of
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forging table recordings in a row. And no one has made mention of it. But I wanted there to be like
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an official scent of the studio. And so I got a diffuser and I got like some different essential
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oils and I bought like a pack of them, like a man packer, right? And so, you know, smell like
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seven or eight of them and all that. And so this sweet tobacco is officially the scent of the studio.
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But no, so that's... We're getting a little bit of essence from the little diffuser behind it.
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No, I didn't want to take away from the essence that you brought. Yeah, you don't want to add like
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double essence. But like... Well, I didn't want to be like, man, you smell better than that sweet
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tobacco I bought. Well, it's... That'd be hard to overpower the smell. This is pretty... Yeah, it's
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pretty thick. So for you being like a connoisseur of scents, what are your... Dude, I'm such a
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review. The better question is, is this a... Is this a cologne you'd wear? Oh, yeah. I mean,
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I think what's his name? So then Kyle Naylor is a sweet tobacco. No, it's a... I've been like a
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purveyor of scents. I don't know for how long... I used to have these things that you would put on
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your light bulb and then you would put oil in it. And it would like give you scents like before they
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had diffusers and all that stuff. Like, I wasn't like burning patchouli or anything like that,
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but there was... There was one scent that was pretty funny. It was that bed... Bed-bad? Bed-bad
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beyond. No, the bath and body works. It was an Elton John scent. It smelled really good.
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I was like, "Man, your house smells really good." I was like, "Yeah, it's Elton John."
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Are you setting me up to say a joke that'll give me cancer? No, dude, Elton John is a great
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artist. And that's... I'm going to leave it at that. Yeah. And he picks some pretty good scents.
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Man. So wait, how long have you been a purveyor of scents? Of colognes or scents?
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Dude, I got my first set of colognes. I was like six years old. Well, you got it for my birthday.
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Have you smelled that bad for that long? No, man, I think it's just a bit like a six year old colognes.
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That's a message. Yeah. Maybe I did. Maybe I smelled bad. I don't know.
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My seven year old smells bad, so I could see him needing some colognes at a time.
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You're my 10 year old. I'm like, "Did you put on deodorant?"
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Yeah. I'm like, "Nah, you're lying." You need to put more on. Man. You depraved center.
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Do you remember what it was? When you were six? I don't. I remember it was two of them. There
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was a yellow bottle and a pink bottle. I'm stetson. I'm stetson for women. No, it was probably like
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powdery or something. Who knows? I can't remember. But my dad was always in the colognes. Like,
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he had the cool water, which we smelled here. Yeah. Let's bring me back to like the 90s.
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Yeah. I also regret that entirely because I tried to spray it on myself because I found a little
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travel bottle of cool water that moved into this house with me and hadn't moved out of the drawer
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in my bathroom. Oh my goodness. And I sprayed it on me for one of the recordings and I got a headache
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so bad. Like, I had to change my shirt like after that recording. Yeah. That was ridiculous.
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Yeah. I thought it was a little too much. I mean, it just permeated the cool water.
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Wait, when is that from? Is that the 90s? Yeah, it had to be in the 90s. Okay.
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I haven't worn cologne in over a decade. It's been a very long, that forging table was probably
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the last time. I like cologne. Guys, it's just a weird thing. No, I like your purveyor of clones.
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And you know, just as Paul was a purveyor of the gospel. Yes. We should probably get into that.
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Let's do it. I think I want to just keep extending this out. You're going to have time.
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We went, we went on the wrestling thing for like 30 minutes. Like, because we had to get to
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worth it, get to bedrock here. But the last batch, we got two Romans, 116. So just a reminder to the
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folks in the audience, or I'll talk to you wherever you are, this camera, that camera, this camera,
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that camera. We're approaching Romans a little bit differently, or quite a bit differently. And so,
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the cadence of the forging table up to this point has been basically a chapter an hour. So,
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whether we're in Nehemiah or Matthew or Acts or whatever, we're basically doing a chapter an hour.
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But we just felt kind of the weight of Mount Everest is matching. They're called it the weight
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of this epistle. And so we all collectively agreed that we were going to go with Romans where it was
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like, we're just going to see how far we get in an hour. And we're just going to discuss what
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we discuss. We'll feel free to go down rabbit holes. If we find something funny to key in on,
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we can do that as well. And so in eight hours of recordings up to this point, we basically got
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two slash through Romans, 116. And so today we're going to start in 16 and 17. So we'll basically
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take those on together. And then we'll get in our discussion about that. So Howard, if you would,
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please read Romans 1 16 and 17 and let everybody know what version you read. I'm reading the ESV.
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All right. We're going to start in 16 for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of
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God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek for in it,
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the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous. The
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righteous shall live by faith. So the in there, the righteous shall live by faith. You know,
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righteous or just is another transition or translation of that. And so that's referring to Habakkuk 24,
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which is behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright with him, but the righteous shall live
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by his faith. And so as I mentioned, I believe I mentioned last week, when we talked about this,
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I mean, these were breakthrough verses, these two for Martin Luther, really enabled him to see
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grace through faith. And so for his money, these are the two verses that were the punchiest and
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the most impactful for him to, you know, become a Christian. And I've seen other people put it
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this way. I don't know if it was the ESV expository commentary through crossway. They said, if you
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had to have a central theme of the epistle, it's these two verses. This is the the central the
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essential theme and really the whole idea of being unashamed of the gospel and how it attaches to,
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you know, Jesus will be ashamed of us before God if we're ashamed of him before man. So we see that
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Mark eight in Luke nine. So guys, this is your first foray into Romans. We're digging deep. Ready
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to go. The word is shamed. You know, that that speaks a lot. I think the one of the first books I
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read by John MacArthur was called ashamed of the gospel. And it just kind of talked about, you know,
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how Paul is not ashamed of the gospel. And you if you if we go out right now, and we want to talk
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about the gospel, and we want to talk about Christ, it's not a very great subject all the time.
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But back during his time, it wasn't even any better. And so for him to stand out there and say,
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I am not ashamed of the gospel. I am not ashamed of this, that Christ died for my sins and rose from
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the dead so that I can stand righteous before a holy God. I mean, not a lot of people are going to
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be like, Oh, you know, like, you know, like, they think it's crazy. You just think a guy just
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resurrected. And then he talks about the power of it and the power that he uses do on us,
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which is where we get our word dynamite. And so the power of the gospel, he knows it.
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He's not ashamed of it. And he's willing to stand out on a on a corner and preach it. He's putting
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it in a letter. But it also made me think of things like now, like where churches feel like
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the gospel needs a publicist or a, you know, needs to be juiced up or churned up and everything.
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And like, does that go to show the shame that we have? Is the gospel not powerful enough in itself
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that we think we have to make it better or we can make it better than God's already made it?
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I think it does. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like we're seeing that now, you know,
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and I feel like that's the time when we have like some of us need to stand up in our church
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and be like, I'm not ashamed of what this message actually means. We don't need to sugar coat it
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and we don't need to make a new new, we don't need a gospel. We don't need to twist it. You know,
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like, you know, trying to solve for that. Yeah. You know, like you can't make it any better
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and quit trying to sugarcoat it. And I feel like that's what we're getting.
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I think part of that is it's like the gospel in a certain sense is a double edged sword.
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Like it is very for the nonbeliever. It is very cutting because in the gospel, there is this
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like the good news can only come if there's bad news. Yes. Yeah.
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So I think part of that is trying to like walk around the like condemnation that people fall
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under just naturally. So I think there's a little bit of that. The thing that stands out to me about
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that verse is there's a lot of weight that's there, right? Like I'm not ashamed of the gospel in that
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world saying that you weren't that you were putting your faith in a crucified deity.
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Like who, you know, like very shamefully died as a ride as a yeah as a thief. And to put that out
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there, he's like, I'm, I'm, I'm putting this. This is like my line in the sand. I'm putting this on
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paper. Like I don't care who sees it there. There's a lot of weight to that. And I think 2,000 years
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later, it's a lot, it's a lot different weight. But there still is a sense like Ryan was saying,
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like of people being ashamed of that message. But for Paul, it was like, yeah, yeah, you say
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that I worship a God who who died like a thief, but I'm okay with that.
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Well, we have to remember this is the same Paul that traveled to rebuke Peter to his face before
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the Jerusalem Council, right? Because Peter was saying, yeah, grace your faith. Plus, you know,
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the Judaizers, the circumcision party had influenced him to where it's like, yeah, yeah, but also
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keep all the Jewish laws and traditions and things like that. And we see by the time of the
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the first Jerusalem Council that Peter had kind of fallen in line. But as you were saying that,
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Ryan, I thought about, I think everybody at this table respects Vody Bockum to an extreme degree.
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One of one of the most sticky things that he's ever said, he was talking exactly about this point
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about not being ashamed of the gospel, but not trying to change it. So it's more acceptable.
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But the way that he said it is, and I'll probably get some of the details wrong,
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but the gist will be the same. He said there was a dad walking his son through a strawberry field,
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and the son had access to all the strawberries and he could just pick them right off the where
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they own vines or plants, strawberry plants, we pick some, takes a bite, picks them, takes the bite.
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It's just the freshest, most pure strawberry taste that this kid had ever experienced.
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But then the father started giving his son artificial strawberries, strawberry pop tarts,
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strawberry soda, strawberry candy, like these types of things. And he got so used to the
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artificial strawberry taste that when the son went back to the field and picked a strawberry
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and ate it, he didn't like the taste anymore. Like his taste buds had been changed and molded
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in a way to to be a fan more so of the counterfeit than the real thing. And so one of the things
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guys when, you know, pastors listening to this or people that go to churches where they try to
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change and adjust and sweeten or, you know, move the gospel in a certain direction,
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you might be selling people on a false gospel that may seem sweeter to them. But it's the same
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thing, like, what do you think these companies that make things like Doritos and Skittles and all
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that? They're engineers more than they're, you know, they're not farmers, right? They're trying to,
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you know, override your sensors, your senses to basically go to your pleasure receptors
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and get you to continue coming back to the bag until you finish it. And that's not exactly
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something that's going to go well for you in terms of your bodily health, but certainly not
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if you have it in a spiritual context as well. You bring up sweetness and sweetness is something
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that the gospel brings once you kind of realize it. But I think Luther said it best that if the
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gospel is preached accurately and passionately, it will bring conflict. You know, it's going to
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bring conflict. Why? Because when we go into the next part of 17, we're going to talk about righteousness.
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And when we have righteousness, that's going to bring conflict. It's not going to be,
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it's not going to be as sweet as we think it's going to be until we realize who we are.
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I was going to say one of the commentaries I was listening to or reading it talked about
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when we disintegrate the facts of the gospel, it loses its effectiveness, right? We actually
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lose the gospel. And so, you know, that's the piece for us that, you know, if it truly does hurt
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when we talk to people about it, then it's going to be effective. But if we're afraid to
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leave those edges on it, then it loses its power. And we kind of think in our society,
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like we've talked about with churches, like in our own conversations, are we willing to push the
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boundary with some people? I think we tend to think that we know better. And that goes back to the
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garden, right? Did God really say, and we want to put our own spin on it, or we want to, you know,
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we want to take a poll at the church. And I think I've said this before, like we want like,
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churches, and a lot of them are very commercialized, and they're very like focused groups. Yeah,
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focus groups. We want to serve the customer and who's the customer. And I heard a preacher say this
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one time, and I don't know who it is. So I don't know who to attribute this to, but the church has
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got it half right, but all wrong. Like we want to be consumer focused, but who's the consumer of
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church? Who is the consumer of our worship? And that's God. And we've turned that, and we'll talk
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about that later in Romans, is we've turned that back to the congregation. What does a congregation
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want to hear? And I think that's where a lot of that comes from, is where we twist the gospel,
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where we add to it, it's we want to make it sweeter and more digestible for our congregants, so they'll
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keep coming back. But well, and we don't want to let the Holy Spirit do its work. Well, man, I remember
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John MacArthur, who's wonderful study Bible, you have right there in front of you, where the notes
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take up four fists of the page and the actual scripture takes up the rest. But I remember him
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talking about I could give, I could not give a care less about what a nonbeliever wants in a worship
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service, because it's not for the nonbeliever, right? And so again, that's that's an indictment
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of the seeker sensitive model. And you know, we've, we've elucidated some of the problems of the
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seeker sensitive model at this table. And I've done so on my solo episodes as well, to where it's
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like, you know, what you win them with is what you'll have to keep them with. And so if you win them,
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with, you know, at the movies and giving away a PlayStation night and blah, blah, blah, like that
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kind of stuff, it's like, well, they're going to keep wanting bread and circuses. And that's going
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to be problematic. The more that you go. What's the what's what you win them to, or what you win
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them with is what you win them. So there's always expecting that, and it's got to be leveled up
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over and over. And at some point, you, there's no more lights and no more smoke machines. Like,
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it can't get any more extreme. So I was, I was thinking through this, and I'm going to read it
18:46
because I wrote this down. It was just kind of how I was thinking through all this. I said,
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how many times in faith, business, sports, or even relationships, have we seen a leader who has been
18:54
there, stop and share his confidence with others around them, spurring them on. It gives the others
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the encouragement and determination they need, or the faith that what they have in front of them
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can be achieved. Paul here is that leader, coach, pastor, he's fired up, and he's not fired up
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because of his abilities, but because of the confidence of the gospel. Right. And I think that's
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that piece that, you know, if we see that and, and leaders in our church and our small groups,
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it gives us that, that fire and that passion. And it's in, in the gospel, not in ourselves and
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our abilities, like Paul here. So it's like, what are we tethered to, right? Are we tethered to the
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truth of the gospel? Are we tethered to? So I've talked about this before, and don't lose your
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thought, john it down on my paper. But like, you know, when, when Kelsey and I, and we were not at a
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super mature place in our faith when we did this, but when we had decided that, you know, we maybe
19:46
needed to look for a new church, we had been a life church, Kregorshel's church for over a decade.
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And we just since that there was, you know, something that we needed, and we didn't really
19:55
want to do the church shopping thing because that didn't feel right either. But we did, we went and
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tried out probably half a dozen churches in our area. And then there was no clear decision,
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like, oh, this is the place where we felt like God was calling us to go. And so we just got on a
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whiteboard. And we just, you know, one to five, we would rate each church on preaching music,
20:15
location, kids program, like we had a bunch of different things. And we each gave our own scores,
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and then we averaged them up. And then it was a tie between live church and faith Bible.
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And then she basically was like, I trust you, you know, you were, you're going to make the right
20:29
call, the, you know, did whatever you think. And what ended up doing it for us, which is not my
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point is that the kids program at faith Bible was substantial and very biblically based,
20:40
whereas the kids program at live church was let's see just how much we can entertain them
20:44
and keep them entertained while the adults go to adult things. And so for us, there was a depth
20:50
there that we wanted that wasn't going to come through how much our ears were tickled and how
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entertained we felt when we left. And so I think there's a lot of people, even if you go back to
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the early church, the first century church, like there wasn't one person giving a message.
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There wasn't one person leading the worship. Like it was, it was more of a communal thing,
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right? And so we try to do that now with kind of like home groups or life groups or
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disciple groups or whatever you want to call them. And I'm pro all those things. But it's non participatory,
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which I think becomes problematic for people when they are in a consumeristic culture,
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where they are completely content with sitting on their hands. Now if that pastor that is, you know,
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if they're sitting in their church and they're non participatory, if that pastor is tethered to
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Romans one 16 and 17, that's a pretty good setup. But if they're tethered to some type of prosperity
21:42
gospel or a me centric theology that God is about me specifically and everything's about me glory
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and how I can be glorified because God's glorifying me. Like I'm David or something.
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Yeah, yeah, like if you're David in the story of David and Goliath, but yeah, I think that's a
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problematic thing. It's like where, like when guys ask me what kind of churches they should go to,
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it's like, man, are they expositing the word? Like are the men involved? You hear male voices,
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right? You know, that's again, one of my issues with with modern worship is when you keep singing
22:13
songs that don't have parts, like a man's voice typically isn't going to be represented because
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the key that most of the songs are sang in or a key that a lot of men can't reach. And so they
22:24
become non participatory. And so and again, if we're worship is like theology and motion,
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right? And you should be singing what you believe as a congregation, I think looking in on the
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worship worship is where a lot of people get their theology. It's been said that you sing your
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heresies before you believe them. And if your worship music isn't theologically based or based
22:46
in biblical truth, and it's all about feeling and a lot of worship is just I want to I want to
22:53
because like there's a there's a code, there's a template that you can you can get the goosebumps,
22:59
you can get the people feeling really good. And that's great. But if it's not if it's not based
23:04
in the Bible and it's not based in good theology, again, you will sing your heresies before you
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believe in it won't be long before you believe them. And then that's good. You start to question
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stuff. I like that. I like them. A cathart quote theology creates a doxology, right? And
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Sunday we were singing at church and it's like we're studying Romans and Mark talks about the gospel
23:22
and just some of the words that they're singing. I've been put a couple of them down in here where
23:26
it's just like, gosh, this is just this is theology right here. And it does it. It just makes you feel
23:33
there's always one song that they sing. I think it's a Cody card song that always got me. I think
23:39
it was Christ be magnified, but he says, I will not be formed by feelings. Yeah. And I'm like, man,
23:44
that is such a powerful statement in today's church society. Like how many churches are formed
23:50
by feelings? Oh, you know, I mean, like, I think you made a great observation in the fact that
23:55
you're like, Hey, I can take, you know, take my kids to live church and they'll be entertained.
23:59
But like how much of their real service was a lot like their kid service? It's just there to entertain.
24:04
Yeah, it's a derivative form of the same thing. And again, look, guys, there seem to be
24:10
roles for different kinds of churches. So if I were to steal man, the, you know, the life
24:16
church example, since I name name them specifically, like that is baby church, that starter church,
24:22
and I don't mean that derisively. That's like, if you desperately need milk, if you were a child
24:28
in your faith, my goodness, that's a great place to go. Absolutely. Not a great place to grow. That's
24:33
that's the difference. And you know, Craig has said publicly before that he's, you know, he'll
24:37
get into the deeper things of theology once everybody starts doing the simple things, right? That's
24:41
like, that's a crutch. Like that's not really like a bunch of new believers. And that's not your job,
24:46
right? Your job is not to do that. Your job is to lead the flock. And so the thing is, is a lot of
24:53
people have graduated. And you know, think of the church in your community, maybe the first church
24:57
you went to a lot of people have graduated to churches that have seemingly more reverence for
25:02
the word of God would prefer to go deeper in the word of God. They're not figuring out their life
25:07
lesson sermon series and then back into scripture, they're letting the scripture kind of drive the
25:12
train. And again, like, don't don't get what we're not saying because sometimes people are like,
25:17
Oh, you guys, you know, just you want to poo poo on different ministries that you don't understand
25:20
to be careful. You might be castigating people that God has ordained and all that. And yeah,
25:24
I think we should all be careful with that. I mean, I don't need you to be my lifeguard. So chill out
25:28
guy, write me random emails. But at the same time, like, I think it's important for us to point out
25:33
when something, if you have been going to milk church for 10 plus years, that's not good for your,
25:40
your faith development, it's not good for your sanctification process. It puts you kind of in a
25:44
place of arrested development to where it's like, I'll put it, I'll put it to you this way and don't
25:48
don't like and feel you chomping at the bit. I can, I can see it. I can see it. Hey, we have our own
25:53
nonverbal language too. Okay, it's not just you two. But like, so the way that we've approached Romans,
25:59
right, which was just an idea that I think the Holy Holy Spirit gave me the depth of study,
26:04
right? It's not just, Oh, look, I've filled up my notes page and how how cool am I? But
26:09
the depth of understanding of the word of God in three months worth of snails paced through Romans
26:16
is substantial. And so if you think about a sermon series where Romans is mentioned,
26:22
or if you think about like MacArthur or Piper, where they spend four, five, six, seven years
26:29
in the book of Romans, right, you buy RC sprulls, Romans in a year forces you to go slower. So good.
26:34
I mean, my goodness, like it's, it's so, it's so substantial. And it's like, that is where you get
26:39
the deep roots of faith. I think the difference between some of those churches. And I think, I mean,
26:44
I get, I get what you're saying, we don't want to, you know, poo poo on all these churches, but
26:49
it's not very loving to hope and pray that you're bringing people in to the family and hope that they
26:58
either, you know, get it here or they get it outside or they graduate to another church,
27:03
because that's, I don't think that's what pastors are called to do. They're, you're called to
27:07
disciple and just, just as the Bible, if you look at it kind of a 30,000 foot view, it is
27:14
God discipling the human race from infancy to adulthood. And there's a lot of growing up that
27:22
happens, but he's discipling us as a, as a big, you know, whole human race. He's discipling us
27:29
all throughout history. Sorry, I was, it was a say is, actually, I don't even remember what I was
27:35
going to say now. Dang it, Ryan. I know I did. It's all good. You make your point. Yeah, sure,
27:40
Ryan hop on in. I thought he was done. Ruin grass fires time at the table. Go for it.
27:44
No, I came here. So I keep grass bar quiet. Yeah. You've done terrible job so far. Yeah,
27:50
grass fires. A lot of good stuff comes from, it just made me think back at a church. Like,
27:54
you know, we're talking about, you know, we don't want to poo poo on churches. And I don't want to
27:58
either. It just comes out naturally. It's, it's that cage stage I was in, I guess.
28:04
No, but, um, it made me think back at a church that I was going to when I was a young believer.
28:09
I don't, I wouldn't even call myself a believer at that time. I was just going through the motions.
28:13
And, um, when I look at what Paul says right here that I'm not ashamed of the gospel for,
28:18
it's the power of God salvation to everyone who believes. That's a call to action.
28:22
And I remember the pastor got us all together and he's like, Hey, we need to bring in more
28:27
fathers on Father's Day. What's some ideas that you have? And like everybody's coming up with
28:32
ideas for giveaways that we were talking about or doing this. They ended up going with like a
28:36
20 minute service. And I'm like, I'm like, man, you know, your, your idea was to limit lower the
28:44
expectations for the men. And that's like, as, as I was growing past this church, I hate to put
28:52
it that way, but I feel like I was, I kind of noticed this is like, man, Father's Day is that
28:56
call to action. You know, the Father's Day is how you get the Father's end and you preach the gospel
29:00
and you preach what it is to be a godly man and to shepherd your family. And if you can't shepherd
29:06
your church, how are us men going to be able to shepherd in our families? And so that's one thing
29:12
that we have to look for is like, I'm not here for a TED talk on a Friday, like our pastor is a
29:17
wonderful pastor. And just watching how he shepherds the church and how our pastors shepherd our
29:22
church makes me want to shepherd my family better. But it also makes me not ashamed of what the gospel
29:28
is. Like as Paul said, like follow me as I follow Christ. That's what your pastor should be doing.
29:32
I remember I was going to say the guys like MacArthur who got it. And I was laid on the
29:38
MacArthur train. I, I, a good friend of mine, turned me on to John MacArthur back in 2020.
29:45
And that was a big theological, that was part of a big theological shift for me.
29:49
But guys like MacArthur understand that it's not about butts and seeds. It's about
29:57
what A.W. Tozer said in that the most important thing about you is what you think about God.
30:03
And the, the beauty of Romans is there's so much theological depth that you can teach through and
30:10
you can, you can go through and teach people about God and make sure that they have a right
30:18
understanding of his word and his, and his love for us. And like you look at a guy like MacArthur
30:26
and you go, man, that guy just, all he did was, he just oozed the gospel. He just oozed the word.
30:32
He wielded that sword and he didn't care who he was. If people were upset with that,
30:37
and you can agree or disagree with a lot of stuff, and I don't agree with everything that,
30:41
that MacArthur says. Yeah. But man, but he went, he was, his wagon was hitched to the right thing,
30:47
right? That's right. I knew where you were going.
30:49
I know he's hitched to both tests. One is the other thing. So, um, after he passed,
30:54
I knew him and RC Sproul had an interesting friendship and relationship, but I had never
30:58
really seen a bunch of clips of the two of them interacting, but for whatever reason,
31:02
the algorithm is just, you know, throwing them at me. And RC Sproul gave Johnny Mac
31:08
maybe the best possible compliment for a pastor. And so, because I had some significant theological
31:16
disagreements on very, very core doctrinal things, not self-vific doctrine, but very core
31:21
doctrinal things. And RC Sproul, this was later in RC's life. He's got an oxygen tube and all
31:27
those different things. And he said this in front of John MacArthur, because it was like a panel
31:31
discussion. Uh, y'all probably know what, what clip I'm referring to, but he said, the thing about
31:36
John is when he and I go to the mat and over some sort of a theological issue or whatever,
31:45
if I can prove to him using the text that his position is incorrect, he will immediately
31:53
change his position based on what the Bible says, not what prior things that he believed going
31:59
into the conversation. And what that speaks to, you know, he didn't say it, but what that speaks
32:04
to is humility, intellectual honesty, and being a slave to the text. Like, and so that's one of the
32:12
things that, you know, we've all talked about as we've gotten into Romans and, you know, we've had,
32:15
we were talking about Adam off air and some different things like our churches and Ephesians
32:19
right now, forging tables in Romans. And it's like, godly, there's just some stuff here that you
32:24
really have to reckon with where, yes, the text says what it says, but that's not good enough.
32:28
Does it mean, does, do I understand what it means? Right? And can I apply it? Go ahead.
32:34
That's a huge thing. I was talking to my dad about this, but like, okay, he's like,
32:37
there, and I was just telling him, like, there were so many of these passages I was reading through,
32:42
I'm like, it's just not crystal to me yet. Yeah. Right. And he's like, that's our responsibility
32:47
as brothers to, to, you know, flush that out, right? But so many people, so many times I just go like,
32:54
and I didn't really get that. And they go on down the road. But that's our responsibility
32:58
is men to flush that out, whether it's in the church, whether it's in our home, and to truly
33:02
understand it, not just, you know, it sounded good, but not 100% sure what it understood. I mean,
33:08
they're what it meant. So my sister was asking me about election, because we went over it in
33:12
Ephesians, and she's like, I heard about that. Can you tell me some more about it? So we talked
33:16
about it. She's like, I don't understand. I was like, you're not going to understand everything,
33:21
but we can try to discuss it via the text and see where the Holy Spirit leads you.
33:24
So I tried to do that with Kyle and Adam, but they always give me like,
33:29
like, what do you want to call it? Scenarios. Yeah. Like, hey, let's see how this plays out.
33:35
Yeah. Scenarios that would happen in the Marvel movies, you know.
33:38
Well, it's kind of the same thing. It's really, it's really, so you can say something like I got
33:44
into a debate here recently with somebody that said baptism is essential for salvation, right?
33:49
And so they showed me some verses where they kind of, where they get that, they normally
33:52
go to Acts two and some different places where it's like, believe and be baptized and like,
33:56
different things like that. And so they were looking at parts of the Bible without, you know,
34:00
the story of the, of the entire text of the Bible and, you know, grace through faith, not by work
34:05
so that no man may boast, then they have to try to find an argument for how baptism is not a work
34:10
and different things like that. But, you know, using scenarios, it's like, they were, what
34:15
I needed to do is I needed to change their frame of reference to understand what they're saying
34:21
and to also understand what I'm coming from. So I said, okay, scenario. I go to my next door
34:25
neighbor and I share the gospel with him. And however you believe he arrives at it, whether he
34:31
decides or whether the Holy Spirit, you know, forced him to do it, whatever, wherever you land
34:35
on the spectrum, he says, I'm a believer, I'm going to Pestuo in Christ. I'm like, that's great.
34:41
Like I'm a Christian now, like I've given my life to Jesus. And I say, great, we got to get you to
34:47
the water as quickly as possible. Let's find the nearest church of Christ, because obviously they
34:51
have the sweetest, most holy water. And we hop in the truck and on the way there, we get T-boned,
34:56
car accident, we both die. Does he go to hell and do I go to heaven? Because we didn't get to the
35:02
water in time. And this particular person stopped engaging with me at that exact moment. They showed
35:08
intellectual cowardice and decided that they were not going to engage with the scenario,
35:12
because they were very, very strict with like, no, you have to be baptized. And then that's when
35:18
you receive your salvation. And I was like, so in a scenario like that. And so they didn't,
35:23
they didn't start making arguments about the sovereignty of God. And God obviously would not
35:26
allow something like that to happen. And you know, going into election or anything, they just
35:30
disengaged entirely. And so I think that becomes problematic. I think you told me about that argument.
35:34
There was something that you said to them that I really liked about what you bring to your
35:38
salvation. What's that? What you said, the only thing that you bring to your salvation is what?
35:42
What is that? What did you say? Remember that conversation? I think your mic's going out.
35:47
Your volume is very consistent. I said, I'll say it. I'll say it. I don't mind saying it.
35:54
We bring our sin to to our salvation. That is all I bring. He said to them, all I bring is my sin
36:00
to salvation. And I was like, in my decision to repent. So I get a little bit of vision in there,
36:06
which is again, which means it's not really yours. Yeah, which, but I was like, that was really,
36:11
really, but I offer not the gift of this pen. He gets to either take it or not. You want this pen?
36:15
You want it? Oh, and then he took the pen. He'd made an action and he accepted that pen.
36:19
Oh, that's actually a pencil. This is a pretty good pencil, by the way.
36:23
But hey, to get back to the text, what that? There's nothing special about that pen. That's like
36:27
the least special pen possible. It's green. It's beautiful. Did you bring it? Because I'm Irish?
36:31
These things like, hey, I almost brought, I almost brought a red pen, but then I didn't
36:36
want it to match your hair too much anger. And I also, I'm still a fan of the fact that you
36:41
highlight almost every word, every text, which is every word. What, what percent? Now stop Matt,
36:46
what percentage of the text here has been highlighted? That's got to be 60 percent. Yeah, that's roughly
36:52
55, 60 percent there. So just don't highlight anything. And you know, maybe it's because he can't see.
36:57
There's certain things that's got good eyes. There's certain things that I like to point out.
37:01
That's why I'm trying to. So the entire text, you got to understand when I was doing this,
37:05
I was not only doing this for Romans, I was also doing this for our our ABF.
37:09
Don't blame Sunday school. If I'm not building Sunday school, what is that?
37:13
If Ryan said that at this table, that has been banned. I was in the band work list.
37:18
ABF, what does that even mean? Public? Anybody? No, no, no, no, does anybody that doesn't go to
37:23
one church in Edmond, Oklahoma have the foggiest idea what an ABS is? Probably not.
37:27
If Ryan, if Ryan was putting together a Bible, he'd be the, every word would be read because
37:34
it should be read. It's all, it's all Jesus. It's all Jesus. It's all. Hey, somebody tell Andy
37:38
say when you speak. Speaking of that, do you know there are people that like think that
37:43
red letter Bibles aren't, should not be read? You know, that's like a thing. What do you mean?
37:47
The Bible is where Jesus is where, well, but no, no, no, like these are people that are like,
37:52
if, if you have a red letter Bible, which means the words of Jesus are printed in red instead of
37:56
black ink, they say that that's like, no, no, like you shouldn't do that at all. For me,
38:00
it's helpful. Like if I'm just going to a text real quick and it's like, oh, blah, blah,
38:04
and I'm in the middle of like the sermon on the mount or whatever, like it's just helpful for me to
38:08
be like, oh, yeah, this is Jesus talking. I think it's because you have the red letter
38:13
Christians who are always like, oh, we only follow the red letters. And then you're like,
38:18
what about Paul and the rest of the New Testament? Well, that was written by another person. I was
38:21
like, Oh, who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wasn't Jesus, you know, like it wasn't Jesus
38:28
that wrote it all down. It was Jesus's words. Why do they think that? Like what's their argument
38:33
for? It's bad. It's not because we're to God. I think it's because showing partiality in the
38:39
text, but also therapy, it's, I think it's a response to the people that only believe in the
38:44
red letters. Anyway, that's like a thing. They're going a little over the top. It's just like the
38:48
people that don't watch the chosen. So are we going there? We made it half almost like a full
38:54
episode, but we don't need to talk about this. Why are you here? Why are you chosen? I'm like,
38:58
I'm not. I'm not a show. Watch one or two episodes. You got to get past the first three. I'm not.
39:04
I'm not a hater. He's like the, the chosen, I'm sure is a great show. And like,
39:10
you've just chosen. I've just chosen not to. But, but Paul was chosen by Christ to
39:16
I'm not letting you. Why do you hate to choose?
39:19
One question for Kyle. Oh, what's the show called again? Why are you looking at?
39:25
Why are you looking at? He's so. He's looking because Matt knows where I'm going. What's the
39:30
show called again? Oh, it's called. That was a series on the bike. It is a very great
39:35
show. Yeah. He chose. Yeah. He chose. Yeah. He chose. Yeah. He chose. Nobody would watch it.
39:41
They would have thought it was about Hillary Clinton. Oh, never got elected.
39:44
No, but so not, not a fan. No, it's not that I'm not a fan. I won. I've, I've not
39:51
just ever taken the time to watch. We don't watch a ton of TV. And if we are watching something,
39:56
it's typically like a family movie night. And so we did, you don't know how the cards and
40:01
you just know, it's probably not my little penny. Yeah. No, no, no, not my little money.
40:06
Like recently we watched the movie greater about football player.
40:11
What is his name? Bull's worth. I can't remember his first name. He's a great movie.
40:15
Yeah. That's like, that's the kind of stuff we're watching. I watch faith-based
40:18
underdog. Hey, they're making with my wife. You can watch chosen with your kids. Fair enough.
40:23
I'm hearing that I'm going to not be chosen to be on the forging table until I watch the
40:30
show. That's not what I said. But I will say that something that we talked about a lot during the
40:33
latter part of Genesis is that somebody really needs to do like a Joseph series or whatever.
40:38
They are doing it. Dallas is doing it. Dallas Jenkins and five and two studios or whatever.
40:42
They're doing a mini series about the life of Joe life of Joseph. I mean, dream work's already
40:47
made of Joseph movies. It was horrible. It's not even. Yeah. No, I watched out with the box was not
40:52
checked, Matt. Just so you know, I was a dead set against watching the chosen.
40:56
Why? I just because I then we talked about this in past episodes. I don't like
41:03
some of those things and the fact that most people would be like, I don't need to go to church and
41:07
we'll watch the chosen or they get there. Does anyone has anyone ever met that person?
41:11
I keep hearing about this person. Never met him. What is it? The person that's like, you know what,
41:16
I don't need to go to church anymore. I'm going to watch the chosen. I don't need to read my
41:19
body more. I'm going to watch the chosen. Well, they don't even read their Bible to begin with,
41:22
and then they just go watch the show. But anyone ever met this exact person? If that's your attitude,
41:26
you got bigger problems. I'd certainly. I was just saying like, that's just my thing
41:31
why I didn't want to like add to the hype. But then I watched it and it's actually really good.
41:36
Like, I think they've done a great job with it. I mean, there's again, they have to take some
41:40
liberties some places, but they don't really take liberties against the text. You know,
41:45
it's just kind of giving you idea of those barriers. Here's what I'll say. Like, I've not watched a
41:49
lot of the chosen, but it's not because I don't like I'm against the chosen. I follow plenty of
41:54
people who are very much don't watch the chosen. It is sacrilegious. It is blasphemy. You can't watch
41:59
it. I don't I don't fall in that camp. Here's what I'll say about it. As Christians, we are called
42:04
to do our work unto the Lord, and we are called to do our best in everything that we do.
42:10
And to that end, artists, movie producers, musicians, like Christian should have the best
42:18
of those. And we used to. We used to be the best builders, the best, the best hospitals. Yeah,
42:25
colleges were built. We used to be university scientists. Like we used to have the best of all
42:30
of that. So I think there's a lot of stuff that we can get mad about. The fact that this guy named
42:35
Dallas Jenkins has decided that his art form is like putting out the message of Christ, like we
42:42
shouldn't dog on that. And I think I think we need more people like Dallas Jenkins who are doing
42:48
their best art and their best work to try to bring more people. And I think he's been pretty clear.
42:54
Like I'm not this I'm not church. Like I want you to I want you to expose to the gospel. And I think
43:00
in every every there's a disclaimer for every show, like go read the basically go read the Bible. This
43:05
isn't like this isn't this shouldn't take the place of anything. But like this is an exposure
43:10
to people who may not may not know anything about Christ. They would never hear the gospel or never
43:15
have any exposure to what yeah what I've watched though throughout this series is that they're not
43:20
ashamed. Like everything that they put out there like the I don't want to give it away. But we know
43:25
when Jesus goes and turns the table. Wait he dies. Jesus dies. I really like that. I don't want to give
43:31
away. He came back. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Yeah. No but I'm talking about when Jesus goes
43:36
and turns the tables. It wasn't like this little like hey guys. I got to stop doing this. And it
43:42
was an arc like it was showed the preparation. Yeah. It was like I was like I looked over at my
43:48
wife and I was like they're not playing around. Dude it was they're not playing around. I just
43:52
remember when Dallas came on the show I think it was after season three or something like that.
43:56
I asked about that. I was like hey we're going to see Jesus turn over the tables and hurt. Are you
43:59
going to do justice and all that? That's a little smart. He's just like a little smirk. And he's
44:03
like I think he'll be satisfied. And I certainly was. Dallas we were satisfied. Yeah. Very good.
44:06
Very good. I do want to come back to some here real quick. You know as we're still hanging out
44:11
in 16 and 17 in but in 16 you know where it says if where it is the power of God for salvation to
44:20
everyone who believes I didn't write down the note of where I got it. I think this was from
44:24
the sprawl commentary. But this is the first statement of grace through faith. Right. So
44:29
chronologically within the epistle this is kind of that first statement of how we get the righteousness.
44:36
And so going in I know you want to hit on this but going into verse 17 for it is the righteousness
44:40
of God. You know we kind of need to talk about the righteousness piece because the word use here
44:46
it's a positional word where it's basically like there's no debt at all. There's no liabilities.
44:51
And then it's like okay so where did the righteousness come from? And it's an imputed righteousness.
44:56
And so and you know we'll open this up and you will we'll just kind of park here for the rest
45:02
of our time. But when it starts talking about the righteousness of God is revealed from faith
45:06
for faith. That's a very interesting clause that you know we don't really talk that way.
45:12
But from faith for faith means basically we don't get righteousness. It's imputed to like we don't
45:19
earn righteousness. It's imputed to us. And we also don't maintain it by future actions. Right.
45:25
So some people are like yeah yeah grace through faith. Grace is a gift. I didn't do anything to
45:29
accept it. But now they're on the hamster wheel of trying to keep their righteousness by doing
45:35
righteous activities and they're putting their faith in the activities and the outcome of the
45:38
activities and whether or not they're moral or immoral. And they're kind of losing the thread
45:43
as they go through their sanctification process. Well that's the thing the faith your faith in
45:48
Jesus is what makes you righteous. He's the one that's going to stand before God and put himself
45:52
out there and say I count this one righteous because he believes in me. So that's what he means by
45:57
righteousness shall live by faith. And righteousness of God is revealed from faith. So if I have my
46:04
faith in Christ because I know Christ is righteous and I know Christ is the one who walked this earth
46:09
with no sin took on my sin so that I can stand righteous before God that faith alone gives me
46:15
righteousness. But what it also shows me and when we'll get into through 18 all the way to 32
46:21
is what is unrighteousness. You know why do we need Christ is righteousness and what does that do
46:27
for us? But that faith right there is the righteousness that we have. Yeah and I think on this side of
46:33
eternity we live in the already but not yet and Luther and I'll probably butcher this Latin.
46:41
Luther put it in terms. He said, "Simon will juice this and peck a tour." And I'm sorry Joby.
46:47
That's the first one of the day. We're going one in a while. We are simultaneously
46:51
justified and sinners. We are still sinners on this side of glory. And we are imputed with
46:59
his righteousness so that God sees us clothed in the righteousness of Christ. But we are still
47:05
in our human bodily form. So we are still sinners. So we are still being sanctified. And like one
47:12
thing that was insanely helpful for me is that just like salvation is past, present and future.
47:20
We have been saved. We are being saved and we will be saved. And we were saved at the cross.
47:28
Jesus took our sins on the cross and saved us. We are saved. We are being saved now in our
47:33
sanctification. And on the last day of judgment when Christ returns to bring us all home we will
47:40
finally be saved. And I think that's a really good perspective to have is that it isn't already
47:47
but not yet. And it's not in that feeling of people that use their salvation or I'm saved by
47:57
grace. So I can do whatever I want. I got to get out of jail free card. God loves me for who I am.
48:03
And that is one of the scariest places that you can be is thinking that your
48:09
church attendance or the fact that you set a prayer when you were 10 means that you have
48:15
license to do whatever. And Paul is going to obliterate that in Romans. That's what obliterated
48:21
it for me because I actually lived that type of lifestyle to the point like we I think I talked
48:27
about this in our in our Sunday school. There it is. Boom. Nailed it. So I I actually was a part
48:36
of a church and we had a group that met at my house and we would meet on Thursdays and on Saturdays
48:44
we throw parties. I mean like we party we drank we got drunk. We probably partook in drugs.
48:51
You know I'm not going to lie I smoke some weed. But um but somebody who tried to call me out about
48:57
it and I'm like man this is just who I am. You know God loves me for who I am. You know and I don't
49:03
I have grace. So you know if this is how he created me then this is okay. And like I like I got
49:12
married thinking that I had my first child thinking that. And then finally someone points me to
49:19
the Bible. Roman's probably Roman. Yeah it was Romans. And I'm pretty sure they were MacArthur
49:26
right too. But uh but I read about unrighteousness. Yeah. And I'm like oh man. And so we look at
49:33
unrighteousness and we'll go over unrighteousness. But I used to think that my righteousness came
49:38
from Christ. So that means I could do whatever I want and be who I want to be. But that's just
49:43
showing that one I don't trust in God's true righteousness because I don't want to change.
49:47
I want to live the way that I want to live and think that it's okay. But the but this here the
49:54
gospel is a call to action. And that call to action is to repent and believe and to know that my old
50:00
life is dead and my new life is in him. And sadly it took me almost like eight years nine years probably
50:07
30 years of being a believer or saying that I was a believer to finally get to this place. I was
50:12
oh go ahead. I was listening to a message talk about that same thing. You know when the Romans
50:18
in Paul's time were you know there were many gods right. And so the idea of Jesus was fine to them
50:24
until the idea of he's a transcendent God. It's just God and God alone. And so for you know to
50:30
correlate with what you're saying it's like you were fine with having God but you weren't fine with
50:34
having God the Lord of your life and turning all of that over. And so I think that's you know for
50:40
most people do they think about their unrighteousness and truly how unworthy they are. You know in
50:48
comparison to him and I got it you hear about saying like he's a he was a good person. I just I
50:54
just think of like what I'm going back to the chosen when the Gentiles come and they want to
51:01
meet with Christ and they're they're meeting with Philip and I believe Andrew and how people would
51:06
come from far off places to one see Christ or to even see Paul and Peter and hear the gospel. Like
51:14
people were coming and looking for the gospel and how much we've watered it down. You know like
51:19
now we have people that were bringing in that could be searching for it but now we water it down.
51:25
And so I'm just that's just what happened to me. It was like man I didn't see the beauty like that
51:31
people come far and wide for until my eyes were opened by him. I was gonna read this. This is a
51:37
MacArthur one and I was listening to one of his messages talk about this and it just I really I
51:42
stopped and listened to this twice but it said God characterizes men in the Bible as so willfully
51:48
ignorant purposefully self-indulgent unwilling to forsake all deep and deep and false religion
51:55
covered and directed in all they do by Satan filled with wrong motives and self-deceived
52:00
trusting in their own good deeds which are filthy rags as loving the passing things of this world
52:06
as hating the truth as proud pleasure-seeking guilty lustful creatures as such they have no
52:14
right to enter the kingdom of God and I just read that I'm like gosh I mean I'm filthy yeah how
52:20
entitled I mean we live in an age of of extreme entitlement and I don't think that it's worse or
52:26
better I couldn't say I think men is man is always felt entitled I mean that goes back to the garden
52:31
but what a sense of entitlement it must be for people to look at that and go like or be mad that
52:39
you would tell them that you're by default not just going to heaven just because you
52:44
you know hung the moon or you think you hung the moon yeah well I think as well when especially
52:49
when you get into verse 17 again we're given righteousness as a gift but it's almost like people
52:57
treat it like oh we were just found not guilty it's like that's not the same thing like being
53:02
being righteous and and being not not guilty because if you're guilty but you're found not guilty
53:08
you're like I'm playing with house money right like you know like because you know there are
53:12
situations like that out there and how people respond to to being in that type of a situation
53:17
I think is important and again when we get into the narrative of chapter one and then
53:23
verses 18 through the end of the chapter it's like he's not leaving any room for us to hide
53:29
and say that that we've we've done anything right and I mean really there's it's just
53:34
blistering until about halfway through chapter three with where he's basically calling you out like
53:40
if you're participating in immorality if you're clapping along as other people are participating
53:46
in immorality like he's not leaving any argument for you there's no legs to stand on and that's
53:52
that's why I was never really appreciated about Ray Comfort until now oh yeah he's like he always
53:58
was like man he's like he just takes him he just goes through he just goes through the 10 command
54:02
mans or he goes through what unrighteousness is and like people are like yeah that's me he's
54:06
like well he does he's basically an ostrich he's not no he's from New Zealand thing he's in New
54:10
Zealand MacArthur like Street MacArthur we basically tells you how terrible you are but it's it's a
54:14
cool New Zealand accent yeah I don't feel as bad yeah and I think he's got Kurt Cameron with him so
54:19
that's good when it takes you know the accent like all kidding aside does take a little bit of the
54:23
sting out of it for for a lot of people because if you're screaming at people you know on the sidewalk
54:27
with the southern accent or something like that's a little bit different when you have a key we
54:30
doing it but the thing that's interesting about what he does is he helps people understand total
54:35
depravity without using any theological terms or any language around it to where it's like
54:40
because you know when I talk to Matt Chandler or any of these people especially bible belt
54:44
pastors that take their shepherding job seriously they're like it is so hard to do ministry
54:51
in Dallas in Oklahoma City because you're surrounded by people that think they're saved
54:56
or saved enough because because I've heard this from people that I know and love look I believe
55:01
in God I was baptized when I was a kid I don't need anything else okay so don't talk to me about
55:07
this and you don't know like you don't have some sort of special knowledge about what it takes to
55:11
be saved like and but the thing is is they can't back up what they're saying with anything they're
55:17
not appealing to any authority other than what they believe in that exact moment as they're saying
55:22
it and so it's a it's the country music theology that I talked about a lot to where it's like grandma
55:26
and grandpa went to church and you know you were baptized as a baby and you believe in God and
55:32
you listen to country music and you you know vote republican and God likes all those things so you
55:36
get to be in the club at the end of the day and it's like brother you are depraved blackhearted
55:40
sinner I always think about what uh lady horn talked about one time where there was a gal that
55:44
she was meeting with and trying to help disciple and she's a stay-at-home mom she she crushes it for
55:50
her kids she's a great cook she was one of those gals that sat in the front row in class never gotten
55:55
any trouble with her parents was always yes ma'am yes sir like all those types of things and so that
56:00
girl was having a hard time seeing herself as a depraved sinner and she if she does go to church
56:05
she probably goes to one that makes sure the moms float out of there on mother's day feeling like
56:09
they're not even sinners you know everybody needs a friend like ray comfort so at some point in your
56:14
life you understand that you're uh a thieving line adult research you know like that's right yeah
56:21
that's all and we are we are and i like that's the hard thing to come to grips with because
56:26
we now sit in church services that tell us how good we are yeah you know god is for you got it you
56:30
know it's like god it's for you god it's for you god it's for you to change god it's for you to repent
56:34
and believe in him yeah that's what he's for he's not for you sitting there right now being happy
56:38
with who you are because you're here for a reason and if you're not here to worship god and
56:44
beauty that he's given you and shown you yeah then you're here to find out who the true god is
56:48
so paul hates paul washer i love paul washer he just sounds like he's about to cry at all moments
56:53
do you think paul so paul washer came into light to see he has famously said that when i walk into
56:59
a church i can pretty reasonably expect that only 20 percent of the professing believers are actually
57:05
saved but one of the the sermons that put him on the map back in the early 2000s and this was part of
57:10
the the restless and reformed you know trend that you know kind of sparked and was you know ignited
57:15
in the early 2000s he did a youth he did a sermon at a youth conference and he was a
57:21
cute packed arena and he's talking about depravity and how unrighteous i mean basically giving like
57:28
a you know synopsis of roman how terrible roman's how terrible we are and the entire arena starts
57:35
clapping and he stops he steps back from the mic and he goes why are you clapping i'm talking about
57:41
you yeah and the whole arena just went dead but it's like you need preachers like that you need
57:48
preachers who aren't ashamed to say that because you're gonna you're gonna wield the sword god's
57:54
gonna god's gonna do the cutting god is gonna circumcise the heart because he's the surgeon
57:59
we're just we're just tasked with wielding that sword for him because we were being obedient
58:06
the one thing i was going to say about just to what you were talking about Kyle is
58:10
we want to always be in a comfortable position and so much so many times you've talked about it
58:15
until we you know you talked about the abortion topic most people can't argue that right so
58:21
how many people are required to talk about the gospel i mean do you if you don't teach in
58:28
your class if you don't have a a forging table of guys how often do you have to get out and
58:33
defend your faith talk about your faith talk about the gospel and and you don't grow in your
58:38
strength of that and your conviction of that if you're not talking about it you know we go to a
58:42
comfortable church we we go to a comfortable coffee group that we don't we don't get into the word
58:47
and and the depth of it and have to defend it and that faith isn't going to grow if it's not pushed
58:53
outside of that comfort zone and Howard if you want to get depressed anybody listening to this if
58:57
you want to get depressed i forget y'all might know which one but it was um it's an organization that
59:02
does these these polls about what evangelicals believe i forget what the name of the maybe we
59:08
can find it before next week but um where they look at what people that are self-described
59:13
evangelicals what they believe in these people believe barna is a barna or so that barn is one of
59:20
you might be able to find it you got a couple minutes but um where you have these self-prescribed
59:25
self-described evangelicals that are like yeah there's a there's multiple ways to god and
59:29
peer research yeah well no there there was there was a different one other than pew there was a
59:35
Christian one that that did one where they were looking specifically at evangelicals are they
59:39
not no pews just a use a secular one but and so but that's the thing is but like it's Howard goes
59:45
back to kind of what you're saying to where it's like it's almost i'll throw myself under the bus
59:50
so there were things that i thought i knew were in the text and then you go and study the text
59:55
you're like oh that's not in there or oh this is in there or this is what i thought
1:00:00
and then you know adam smith and i have talked about this and we we've talked about it because
1:00:04
our pastor is going very very deep into Ephesians and we're we're doing a you know a verse or two at
1:00:09
a time and you know as as mark hitchcock our pastor has described is he's like word for word pound
1:00:15
for pound this is probably the most theologically dense like of all of Paul's epistles is Ephesians
1:00:21
because it's quick you can read in 15 or 20 minutes in one sitting but you're going through it and
1:00:26
you're just like god lee like you're having to reckon with what the text says and what it means
1:00:32
again i don't think it's good enough to say the text just says what it says because if it just
1:00:34
says what it says then everybody would agree with it right but that's where we get all these
1:00:39
different views because it's not just it says what it says it doesn't mean what i think it means
1:00:43
right there there's a difference and if you don't have a pastor that is expositing
1:00:47
and exegeting the scripture so that we can understand it it becomes problematic but guys
1:00:53
anything else on 17 before we wrap up because we're we're right up against time
1:00:56
the man i wanted to say it's the beginning but like i didn't but it's so amazing to me how
1:01:06
trinitarian the gospel is like god paul starts his greeting to the Romans talking about the father
1:01:13
son and the holy spirit and how incredible it is to think that the god we serve is a triune god
1:01:23
who's been in a loving relationship since before time didn't need us didn't need anything from us
1:01:34
decided in his will for his glory he would he would do this for us and like that to me is
1:01:46
something that is hard to reconcile but i'll never get over that the fact that every other
1:01:51
religion the god that is worshiped needs our worship it's a loan it's a god who's alone
1:01:59
who needs to create man for to love him or to serve him so we need we need to not be alone
1:02:06
or we need slaves christianity is the only religion where the god where our god needed nothing
1:02:13
because the father has been in an eternally he's eternally been loving the son and the son has
1:02:18
been eternally loving the father but in his infinite love he he he he humbled himself and came down
1:02:28
to be our salvation and that that is just incredible you can't even put words to that
1:02:35
it's so cool to spend the rest of your don't ruin it Ryan you'll spend the rest of your
1:02:37
life trying to do that that's where we're gonna leave it Ryan have a sense of the moment and
1:02:42
understand that that was the crescendo that we needed no no usure but guys we're gonna have to
1:02:46
leave it there but before we let you go we are gonna do a quick resilience boost out on dawn to
1:02:50
life permissions equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual
1:02:53
mental and physical resilience so one to remind you guys crossway forging table starter set there
1:02:58
are five incredible books that you can get at a discount go to the show notes basically for any
1:03:02
forging table episode over last like year or two and you can get the instructions on how to get
1:03:05
that set also the logos bible software the most powerful bible software on the planet we have a
1:03:10
link in the show notes where you can get the bible software at a discount and we are a donation
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based ministry so make sure that you guys hop on board consider being a donor and come back here
1:03:18
next week where we will start our discussion with Romans 118 thank you for listening to this
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kyle tomsen remember keep pushing back darkness keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience
1:04:03
keep seeking the lion of juda
1:04:21
you