Podcasts about Matthew Henry

In episode 503 of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb conclude their deep dive into Luke 10:25–37 — the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Far from a simple morality tale about helping strangers, this episode unpacks the parable's confrontational legal context, its reversal of expectation, and its profound Christological undertones. Tony and Jesse examine why the lawyer's question about self-justification was always destined to be unanswerable on his own terms, how the priest and Levite serve as a damning mirror for religious professionals, and why the Samaritan's lavish, costly mercy points beyond mere ethics to the gospel itself. The episode also explores the Mary and Martha account that immediately follows, arguing it cannot be read in isolation. Closing with Matthew Henry, the hosts land the discussion squarely on gratitude for Christ, the supreme Good Neighbor. Key Takeaways The parable is fundamentally about self-justification, not mercy ministry. The lawyer's question — "Who is my neighbor?" — is a legal maneuver, and Jesus' answer exposes the impossibility of fulfilling the law through self-effort rather than merely defining the scope of neighborly obligation. Jesus reverses the expected identification of "the neighbor." The listener naturally assumes the beaten man is the neighbor to be loved, but the punchline identifies the Samaritan — the one who showed mercy — as the neighbor, redirecting the question from who must I love to what does love actually look like. The Samaritan's mercy is deliberately, impossibly lavish. His actions — binding wounds, providing transport, paying an open-ended debt for a stranger and likely an enemy — exceed anything a reasonable person would do, pointing to a mercy that transcends mere human virtue. The priest and Levite indict religious professionalism. Their failure is not incidental; it demonstrates that meticulous law observance and ceremonial religiosity can actually obstruct the very love the law commands, hollowing out its spirit while preserving its form. The parable functions under all three uses of the law. For the unregenerate, it terrifies and condemns. For the regenerate, it is a third-use call to Spirit-empowered, grateful obedience. As civil law, it commends a society of compassion over indifference. Christ is the typological Good Neighbor. The Samaritan's actions — pouring oil and wine, bearing the cost, promising to return and settle all debts — carry genuine Christological resonance without requiring a full allegorical reading of every detail. The immediately following Mary and Martha account is thematically inseparable. Luke's editorial placement of that narrative directly after the parable creates a deliberate counterpoint: the one thing necessary is not anxious service but sitting at the feet of Jesus. Key Concepts The Lawyer's Question Was Never Going to Work The lawyer who approaches Jesus in Luke 10 is not a neutral inquirer — he is, as Luke tells us, seeking to justify himself. Tony and Jesse explore what this means with precision: the desire to be justified is not inherently wrong, but the mechanism the lawyer employs — the law — is catastrophically insufficient for the task. When Jesus responds with the parable, he does not sidestep the legal framework; he weaponizes it. The Samaritan's mercy is so extravagant, so far beyond ordinary moral expectation, that it functions not as an achievable standard but as a devastating exposure of how far short every human attempt at law-keeping falls. The command "go and do likewise" is not an encouraging send-off — it is, for the self-justifying lawyer, a door slamming shut. The Samaritan's Mercy Is Intentionally Beyond Reach One of the most important contributions this episode makes is resisting the domestication of the Samaritan's actions into a feel-good story about helping those in need. Tony reframes the scenario in contemporary terms: finding a gravely injured stranger from a hostile ethnic group, providing emergency first aid, transporting them to care, and writing a blank check for all future medical expenses — with no personal obligation to do so. No reasonable person would do this, and that is exactly the point. The mercy described is not aspirationally difficult; it is humanly inconceivable at scale. This is what Christ-like love looks like, and it is precisely what the law demands. The gap between the demand and human capacity is the gospel's entry point. The Mary and Martha Account Cannot Be Separated from the Parable Tony raises a hermeneutical observation that deserves more attention than it typically receives: Luke chose to place the Mary and Martha account immediately after the Good Samaritan parable, and that editorial decision is not accidental. Martha — busy with hospitality and service — looks, on the surface, like the practical application of everything the Samaritan modeled. Yet she is gently rebuked, and Mary, who sits at Jesus' feet, is commended for choosing "the one thing necessary." This creates a stunning theological counterweight: the parable exposes the impossibility of self-justifying law-keeping, and the very next story shows that even well-intentioned merciful activity, when it crowds out receiving from Christ, misses the point. The one thing necessary is always Christ himself. Memorable Quotes If you think you're the good Samaritan, if you think you're the one that's gonna come and rescue people — you're much more likely to see this as a sort of law beat-down. Where those of us who are regenerated and in Christ, this is third-use law. This is us seeing what it means to be holy, and going and doing likewise, trying in our power, recognizing that we can't, and trusting the Lord to accept our feeble attempts. - Tony Arsenal This text is not really to be preached or applied as some kind of bare moral exhortation. It's not 'try harder to be like the Samaritan.' That's totally disconnected from the gospel. It should be preached in a manner that exposes the impossibility of self-justification... and then of course it does point us to Christ as the one whose perfect, costly, self-giving mercy alone satisfies the law's demand on our behalf. - Jesse Schwamb If this parable and our conversation about it does nothing except stirring you to gratitude for the fact that our supreme good neighbor threw us on his donkey and carried us to the public house, and bound up our wounds, and paid for our debt — if it does nothing but drive you to gratitude and thankfulness and wonder, then we've succeeded in our task and we've left you with the Gospel. - Tony Arsenal Full Transcript Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 503 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony, and this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey, brother.  Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother. Well, at this point, there's one thing that we know for certain, and that is if you're gonna come at the law giver, the one who's composed and written the law, with a legal question to try to entrap the one who has given you the law, you better not miss. And it turns out, in Luke 10 where we've been hanging out, the lawyer who poses Jesus with the question of, "Who is my neighbor?" is a big swing and a miss. Yeah. And we're finally gonna get to all the characters that are part of this amazing parable in this conversation. But of course, there's something we gotta do first. Affirmations And Denials Jesse Schwamb: It, it's everybody's, what I'm led to believe everybody's favorite segment of this entire show. I mean, the crowds out there say, "Why even have a full podcast? Just do affirmations and denials for the entire time." And we, we hear you, because we're borrowing from that beautiful confessional format of the dead reformers to settle all the much not confessional [00:02:00] disputes. So in the great tradition of the Westminster Divines, who of course cannot just simply say, "We like grace," without also clarifying 17 things that grace is not- ... we're now again going to bring you our own binding, authoritative, and entirely unneeded but very official statement of affirmations and denials. It's affirming the things we love and denying things we don't. So Tony, as is our own custom, are you affirming with something or are you denying against something on this episode?  Tony Arsenal: Um, I'm denying something. Uh, it's a sort of a weird situation that has cropped up, uh, online. And I, I try not to use this segment too often to sort of wade into, um, I don't know, the, like, latest social controversy in the Reformed world. But every once in a while I come across something that I feel like you just need to sort of talk about. And, um, many of our listeners are probably already [00:03:00] aware of the situation that I'm gonna talk about, and it's very well-publicized and, and very public. Um, but I'm denying the sort of weirdness that has happened with the G3 Conference. Um, I'm not sure how familiar with G3 you are, Jesse, but for the, the listener who may not be, G3 is a conference, um, primarily run by Baptists, and is, in my understanding, is primarily attended by sort of Reformed-ish Baptists. And I don't, I don't say Reformed-ish to be pejorative necessarily. Um, but it, it's sort of like predominantly, um Non-confessional but not anti-confessional Calvinistic Baptists, sort of think more like covenant framework MacArthur-style Baptists maybe is, is a way to look at it. Um, and a few years ago, one of their main figures, I don't remember exactly what position he held, but it was a relatively high position in, in [00:04:00] the conference. Uh, his name was Josh Boyce. He, uh, w- was caught/confessed to maintaining, like, multiple anonymous or pseudonymous, uh, Twitter accounts and publishing several s- like pseudonym-based Substacks, um, that he used to basically attack the character of not only anyone online that seemed to cross him, but, like, people that he shared an office with. Like, anyone and everyone was targeted by him. And at the time it was a big hullabaloo. He, uh, he resigned. As far as I can tell, he's faded into obscurity and has not sought to come back, although that's always, you know, yet to be seen. But at the time there was very firm statements by the r- remaining sort of board members, leadership of G3, at how inappropriate this was, and how acting anonymously requi- you know, sort of evacuates accountability and, [00:05:00]and all these different things. And it's come out recently, um, just over the last week, that four of the members of the G3 board, um, who are all elders at the same church, had assembled a sort of anonymous dossier of accusations against, um, a- another pastor, uh, that he had been sort of serially plagiarizing sermons. Um, and when nothing really happened when they sent their anonymous dossier, they started distributing this to other, other, like, platforms and other church and m- parachurch ministries, kind of encouraging people to do their own investigation. Um, one such, uh, outlet was ... It's a, it's a, I don't know, sort of a news discernment blogger kind of a thing, um, has done some pretty decent reporting work I think in, in the recent past, although it has sort of a s- storied beginning, um, called Protestia They did just [00:06:00] that. They did an investigation, and in the course of their investigation, they identified who these anonymous, uh, the anonymous reporters were, and it was the same, the very same people who a few years ago, uh, pontificated, uh, at, at length about the importance of accountability and how anonymity has, uh, taken that away. Uh, people that accepted Josh Boyce's resi- resignation for acting anonymously have now done the same thing. They have since, uh, resigned from their church eldership, um, which is gonna be awkward because they haven't resigned from the board of G3, which, uh, the offices of G3 are in the same building as the church that they've now resigned at. Uh, and I guess where, where my denial comes in and the reason that I feel like it, it might be worthwhile for us just to Even reflect on it a little bit is there is an element in the Reformed world that seeks a platform and seeks an audience and seeks notoriety, and I, I was musing [00:07:00] today a little bit on my own Twitter that th- there was a time in my life where that was very much what I wanted. I wanted to be a, a very public, well-known theological voice, and, um, a- and I just have sort of like drifted away from that. And the, the reason I think it's worth mentioning on our show is that we do have an audience. We have a, a modest audience. It's not huge. It's not nothing. Um, but th- there is a real temptation to seek fame and notoriety that is absolutely destructive and really antithetical to, uh, to Christian principles of what it means to serve those around you, to serve with humility, to r- you know, redound any glory that might come to you for your actions to, to the fact that it is Christ who empowers all things and brings all good blessings. So I don't know that I have much more commentary on it. It's just a weird... It's a very weird situation, but it, it seems like it very much has come from a [00:08:00] place of feeling as though minor slights by people you associate with warrant sort of a, a nuclear option like this because, uh... and I don't wanna read too much into motives, but, but it seems like because your reputation and your notoriety is so great that any offense to it needs to be responded to in kind, and that's just not, that's just not the Christian way. So again, I don't know that I have any more commentary or thoughts on it. It just was a weird situation that I'm, I'm like, "Why do we gotta do this to each other, folks?" Like, why are we, why are we biting at each other all the time? Why are we doing these things except from a place of sinful pride? So I'm denying that. I'm denying sinful pride. I'm denying my own tendencies to seek glory in a spotlight. Um, I'm very thankful that God did not, uh, see fit to grant me that desire 'cause it probably would've been even more destructive for me than it has been for these guys. So I'm very happy to live in obscurity, [00:09:00] to serve the local church, to share our voices in this very modest, tiny platform that we have, and perhaps the Lord will see fit to change that one direction or the other, and I'll, I'll be happy to serve at His, uh, at His will. But I'm glad for now that, uh, the, the temptation of international fame has not been something that I even have the opportunity to lay hold of. Um, I'm very thankful for that, that, uh, grace from the Lord.  Jesse Schwamb: I had that light, sarcastic, some might say somewhat humorous opening and affirmations and denials, and you, you just brought the heaviness, which is okay. Sometimes that's, sometimes that's what happens.  Lament Devotional Spotlight Jesse Schwamb: And- Yeah ... I- fortunately, I have an affirmation, but it's, uh, of, like, a weird, heavy kind now that I think about it. So, um, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get everybody on the cusp of good books that I think are coming out. And so here's another one where it's not even gonna be released until September 30th, and so you have plenty of time to go out and find this thing. So P&R Publishing, many may be [00:10:00] familiar, does this whole series, topical series, which are called 31-Day Devotionals for Life, and there's a new one being released by Christine Chappell. It's called Lament: Crying Out in Faith. So I'm affirming with this piece because I've had the joy of been working through some of this stuff, and I think this is some of the best treatment I've ever read, been able to practice, been coached into for lamenting. We've talked before at length about how Christians, especially in the West, often because we just have great lives, we aren't familiar with lament. We don't practice it well. We hardly sing any songs of lament. We're unfamiliar with it. It's like a foreign land to us. And then sometimes when we're, we get convicted we should lament, we kind of interpret that as, "Well, yeah, I, I know I can blow up at God. I can get angry with him and, and that's okay." David does it too, and it's okay to express all your feelings with God. What I like about this work is it cultivates more of a prayer language. It gives voice to pain and grief so that there can be a real healing. It's not just a complaining. It's not just [00:11:00] throwing your voice out into the ether to, you know, wildly pontificate or self-aggrandize about how hurt or upset you are. It enables us to cry out to God in such a way that it promotes emotional authenticity, but at the same time maintains reverence. I think that is, uh, at least what I need. The beauty of this book is somebody you know or yourself need to lament something. Actually, I think we all have something to lament, even as it's getting older or things changing in our lives. So I highly, highly, highly affirm with this book. It's Lament: Crying Out in Faith. P&R does a lot of great publishing in this way. It's just the year of the devotionals, Tony. I don't know why. Yeah. I mean, I even hate to use devotional. It's the year of good resources for daily praise and worship- Yeah ... and lament should be part of our praise and worship. Yeah. So, but doing it in the right way is something I'm learning. I had mixed understanding of it. So this will clarify, encourage, edify in all the ways that I think we need.  Tony Arsenal: That sounds great. I, I do agree with you. I think, um- [00:12:00] Although I think it may be a little bit less so in, in the sort of confessional Reformed tradition just because the Psalms in general play such a prominent role in Reformed worship. Um, I do agree with you that broadly, like, we, we in the Western evangelical w- world don't, we don't know how to do laments. Um, I'm not one of those people that would say im- imprecatory prayers are inappropriate. I know there are some even within the Reformed world that would say im- imprecatory prayers are not appropriate for God's people in, in the new covenant. Um, I don't know that I agree with that, but, but that's another example of, like, that's in the prayer and hymnbook of our people- Right ... and we don't really know how to do it. Yes. So, and, and imprecation and lament are very closely related to each other. They're, they're very similar, um, ways of thinking and they're, they're both kind of modes of prayer that, uh, we don't, we don't really engage in. And so when we do have- when the occasion arises, we're, like, out of practice. So that's a great, uh, a great [00:13:00]affirmation and yeah, a little, a little weirdly heavy. Maybe this is gonna be a, a weirdly heavy episode. Who knows?  Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, it very well could be.  Good Samaritan Deep Dive Jesse Schwamb: I mean, listen, it was no doubt heavy for the lawyer who stood up- True who was  Tony Arsenal: like- Nicely done ...  Jesse Schwamb: I'd like to justify myself, so Jesus, let me ask you, we took our question, "Who is my neighbor?" I do all these things. I'm down with the law. Yeah. I know all this stuff. And I think we had some really great conversation last time. I'm biased, but I think we had some really fantastic unpacking of the first part of this, and if you haven't heard that yet, you should go back and listen to episode 502. But in this episode, we're really getting into all of these wonderful and somewhat colorful characters. So I'm gonna pick us back up in Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 25. So I'm going back a little bit just to set that proper context for this amazing parable that Jesus tells us. So he says, "And behold, a scholar of the law stood up and was putting him," that is Jesus, "to the test, saying, 'Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?' And he said to him, 'What is written in the law? How do you [00:14:00] read it?' And he answered and said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.' And he said to him, 'You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live.' But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?' And Jesus replied and said, 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. And a priest happened to be going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him, and when he saw him, he felt compassion.'" And he came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them, and he put them on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And on the [00:15:00] next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, "Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you." Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands? And he said, "The one who showed mercy toward him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same."  Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those parables we, we mentioned, uh, I guess we've invented a new classification of parables called the Big Daddy parables. That's right. Um, uh, this is one of those parables that is so ubiquitous and well-known, uh, that word there, choice there was a little hat tip to my Lutheran friends. Um, so ubiquitous and well-known that I think we actually can, can rush into a common understanding and not, not be right at all about it. And I think the, the way this, uh, uh, the way I've seen this commonly done in, in circles I've run in in the past is this [00:16:00] becomes a parable about mercy ministry. Um, and, and the primary point is about how we serve our neighbors. And I think there certainly is, um, there certainly is an element of that that we can glean from this, that Christ is making a commentary on the fact that, um, the, the, the right way to not only serve your neighbor but to even identify your neighbor, uh, and it's funny because I think this is, this is where I think people go wrong. The, the Samar- or the, um, the, the lawyer is asking, "Who is my neighbor?" Right. And I think we commonly read this, and we read it to say, well, the Samaritan, uh, or the, the guy who got beat up is the neighbor. Right. And so we have to serve our neighbor like the Samaritan did. But the, the, the punchline, whatever, of the story is that the Samaritan is the g- is the neighbor, right? We, we call this the Parable of the Good Samaritan, but we might wanna call it the [00:17:00] Parable of the Good Neighbor. And so it says more about what it means to be a good neighbor than it does to, um, to say about who, who our neighbor necessarily is, right? The, the s- uh, the lawyer was asking, "Who's my neighbor?" And the answer was the one who shows mercy. And there's kind of a weird, there's kind of a weird paradox there, and this is something Jesus commonly does, where, like, He doesn't really answer the question. Um, the, the lawyer is like, "Well, who is it that I have to love," right? "The, I have to love my neighbor as myself, and who is it that I have to love?" And Jesus' answer basically is like, "Well, the good neighbor is the one who showed mercy." Well, that doesn't answer- Right ... His question. So I think we have to be careful when we, uh, we work through this not to just sort of default and jump to what might be called, like, the lowest common denominator interpretation, right? These are things that, yes, um, there is something to say about, uh, mercy ministry and how important it is to serve the, [00:18:00] serve those around us who are in need, right? That's, that's the command that comes out of this or the outcome that comes out of this is Christ is commanding this, um, this lawyer to go and be merciful to others. Um- But if we, if we move too quickly to that, we miss a lot of what this has to say about the nature of justification- Right ... the nature of Christ as, as the capital T good neighbor, right? The, the good neighbor who, who takes care of our sin and pays the debt for us to be restored, right? I don't, like I said last week, I don't think that that is too on the nose. Um, I think we miss the fact that the question, uh, the question is coming from a place, and we talked about this a little bit last week, but and maybe we'll get into it a little more. The question is coming from a place, um, whether you view this negatively, like I think most do, and there's warrant for that, or whether you view it a, a little bit more neutrally or maybe even positively, which is where I land, the desire to justify or to be [00:19:00] justified is not a bad desire. And the, the text doesn't seem to offer a lot of commentary on the fact that the, the, um, lawyer is desiring to justify himself, other than the implied commentary o- of what the parable says about salvation in that someone else needs to save you, so you can't do it yourself in the first place. So I'm excited to get through this. Um, I, I think we're probably gonna be here, we're gonna camp out here for at least another week after this, 'cause there's just so much to this parable. Who knows? Maybe we'll fly through it and it'll be a quick conversation, but I, I don't... That's not really our jam. Um- That's not really what we do But yeah, it, it's, it's a big daddy parable. There's a lot here to unpack.  Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. You're right about that. Interestingly, as always, Jesus flips the law, but here the law flipping, like, ends up smacking you in the face because it does start with this inquiry about just identify for me who my neighbors are. If you give me these discrete instructions like the law has given me to do all these things, which by the way, I mean, even that when we have this lawyer saying, [00:20:00] "I've done all these things. I've identified just for instance that the law includes loving the Lord God with everything, every part of who I am." He says like, "Yeah, I've done all these things." This is, I've already accomplished that. So now let me get, become self-justified in confirming I've done all these things. If you just tell me who the neighbors are, I'll be able to say to you, "Yep, I've already done that." Instead, what happens is Christ says, "Here's what neighborly love looks like. And what it's gonna look like is so dramatic and so shocking that you ought to take pity and have concern and show compassion for those not just who are unlike you, but are, like, abhorrent, those who you would even never identify with in the parable of the story I'm about to tell you." So I think there's all of that, like you said, to move away from just kind of categorizing this as a nice homily about how we ought to behave. However, there might be, like, some kind of moralistic theme in this that directs us toward actions of love and generosity, which by the way, could just be common grace. Those exist outside of strict belief and adherence to the gospel, and certainly can be far afield from actually loving Christ. [00:21:00] The other thing that I think sometimes happens with this, and I'm gonna be unpopular on this one, I'm afraid, but is that I think there is often a lot of allegorical excess. And certainly there are people more intelligent than I who really embrace that. So I'm looking at you, Patristic Fathers. Like, you know, if you wanna read some interesting stuff, everybody can go look up Origen or Augustine on this. Yeah. And they allegorize this parable in New England what we would call wicked fine detail. I mean, down, down to everything. So the oil and the- Yeah ... wine, the soil, each of the persons here representing something that in itself, like, everything. And I think that that is okay. What I struggle with on that is, and this is where I'm unpopular, I think, is that- There are a lot of other exegetes, I don't think I'm alone, that would look at this and say, "Yes, there is something about this that draws us into, like, just general typological resonance. I'm not gonna reject that." There are these, like, broader canonical themes of, like, helpless [00:22:00] humanity, like you said, and undeserved mercy. Those all legitimately, I think, echo the gospel truths. But I'm kind of resisting, or I'm prone to resist, treating every narrative detail in this as some kind of, like, independent cipher. Yeah. And so I think I want to come a little bit in criticizing, like, the allegorical method here, that instead what happens when we do that is we're, we're... I think we're obscuring a little bit Christ's actual didactic purpose, which is fundamentally ethical and legal, 'cause that's the question he's answering. He's trying to answer this question, "Who's my neighbor?" And he's gonna do it- Right ... with this definition-shattering example. And so I think, like, the most responsible hermeneutic here affirms that, like we said before, a parable should have a single main point, and it's determined in this context by that punchline, like you said. Um, at the same time, I think we can legitimately, like, permit some restrained theological reflection on, like, that broader resonance with the gospel. I'm not denying that. But without multiplying, like, allegorical [00:23:00] correspondences like the text itself doesn't even make. Even, even coming down to, like, who we see as Christ in the story, while that can be useful and helpful, it's not the same identification that we've seen in other parables. Yeah. So that's what makes this, like you're right, Tony, like, really unique and very interesting because we can draw lots and lots of parallels, and perhaps we should. But at the same time, it's always good to remember what is it that Jesus is on about here? What is it that the hearers were really being prone to understand and mull over and meditate on? And that's, like, this first principle of neighborly love, like you already called out.  Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, and I, I agree with you, too, is I, I think, um- We can sort of fall into a trap or a pit of assuming that all of the parables are meant to explain the same thing. Sure. And I think, like, within Matthew maybe that's a little bit more, uh, accurate because m- I think all, if not [00:24:00] most of, of the Matthean parables, you know, the Kingdom of God is like, the Kingdom of God is like. So th- like, that repeated f- refrain of, like, the Kingdom of God is... In, in Matthew, Christ is using parables to teach about the mysterious hidden reality of the kingdom in a way that people can understand. Um, this is different, right? This is not a Kingdom of God is like. There is no, um, clear this is like that, uh, introduction to this parable. Right. I, I've actually even read some commentaries that would question the assignment of the title parable to this, because they want to restrict what a parable is to those sort of kingdom, like, explicit simile- Good point ... things. Yeah. So- Right ... but I, I do think, um, w- we, we have to be careful not to run down that road, because this parable is not really... Again, like, it's not explaining what the Kingdom of God is like. This is trying to, um, not trying to, Christ is [00:25:00]articulating a reality that is baked into the law, um, and he's flipping the question on its head, and this is what I think is so, um, so wrong about the allegorical approach, right? Is that the allegorical approach seeks to find symbolism in every discrete character or element of the, of the parable, or of the, the allegory if you wanna, we wanna distinguish it. This really is, is trying to just get at that one point. And what- Mm-hmm ... I think is so, what must have been really just infuriating for this lawyer, um, regardless of what happened after this, right? We don't, we don't get commentary like we do with the rich, young ruler, and the stories are in many ways are very much the same. Like, it's the same basic setup. But we don't get commentary that, like, he went away sad, like we do with the rich, young ruler. We don't know what happened with this guy. We don't know what his reaction... But I, I'm sitting there putting myself in his place, and I'm, I'm thinking through this, and this is one of those things that it's actually hard even to mentally get yourself there. The, [00:26:00] the, each character that is introduced here, um, is a candidate for the neighbor. Right. But the most obvious candidate based on, um, the way we commonly interpret this, is that the dude who gets beat up and left stripped naked is, is the neighbor that we're supposed to love Right? So the lawyer, as he's hearing this parable, as it's being told, and the, the people who are there listening, right, the, the other people that are around, there's this character introduced, "Who is my neighbor? Well, a man was going down to Jerusalem. He fell among roggers, Roger, robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead." Like, the obvious answer is that Christ is introducing this poor, destitute, beat-up, naked dude, uh, as the neighbor that needs to be loved. And so he goes through the whole parable, and you're like, oh, well, like, the, you know, the, the priest and the Levite, they didn't love this guy. Uh, the Samaritan, you know, I think an audience of Jews probably would've been thinking like, "Well, the Samaritan can't be..." You know, the Samaritan [00:27:00] is just a dude. Like, none of these people are loving the, the, the beat-up dude like a neighbor should. Right. And then all of a sudden, Christ flips the script, and the neighbor is not the dude who's laying there naked, half dead, who's been rescued and, and, you know, restored and is being healed. It's actually the Samaritan. And so there's this... We have to... Part of the reason, I think, I mean, I, I, I guess I don't know for sure, but part of the reason I think s- that parables have this, like, reversal of expectation baked into many of them is that it is there to challenge our assumptions, and th- that sort of whiplash effect when you get to the end of it, you're like, "Whoa, that was like he was talking about totally, something totally different than what it seemed like he was talking about." I think that's actually a teaching tool here as well. Right. That the, the whole time you're thinking like, "Oh, this dude is the neighbor, and I've gotta figure out how to love him best," and that's what plays into these mercy ministry interpretations, is thinking that the, the point of the parable is to show us how to take [00:28:00] care of the, the people who need help, when really the point of the parable is the good neighbor. And, uh, we might butt heads a little bit on this, 'cause I think I take probably more of a Christological, uh, topological, typological interpretation than you do. I, I think that the point of the parable is that you can't justify yourself, and the only one who can justify you is the one who's kept the law perfectly. And what does it mean to keep the law perfectly? Well, love the Lord your God, but also love your neighbor as yourself. Well, who's the only person in the story who's loved the neighbor as himself? The one who s- rescues and heals and pays for this poor man who's been, you know, waylaid by robbers. He's the good neighbor who fulfills the law. He's the one who's justified himself. Now, yes, "Go do likewise," there's some echoes there of, of the go and sin no more language that we see in other places, too. So I, I think this parable is more, is more about- A, and this is where it shares some affinity with the rich young ruler, [00:29:00] right? The rich young ruler is told to go and to, to sell everything he has and donate it to the poor and to come and follow Christ. And he says, you know, he, he can't do that. He walks away sad. In this instance, it's the same kind of situation. It's an, a question about how do I fulfill the law? What do I need to do to be saved, to inherit eternal life, to obtain eternal life, whatever the phrasing is. And the answer is, "Obey the law perfectly." And the guy goes, "Well, hey, I did that." And he said, "Well, let me show you how much you didn't do that." And the reality is the only one who did that is Christ, the good teacher, right? I mean, there, there's so many parallels between these two accounts. It, it's almost the same, it's almost the same story. This one just in sort of parable answer form versus a more direct form, which we see with the rich young ruler. Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, what I find really fascinating about these is that whereas, like you said, the, some of the other parables, they come under the volitional teaching of Christ. That is, He is presenting forward the topic at hand. So usually it's in the context of conversation, but He essentially makes [00:30:00] the segue. He presents and opens up this new kind of vista to explore. In this case, or in both those cases you talked about, the confrontation really comes from the outside. Of course, God, through Christ, predestined all of these things to pass, so I'm not saying that Christ was caught off guard, of course, by this line of questioning. And presumably He understands that when the lawyer asks this question, He knows that it's from a position of self-justification. So I don't disagree that that might be there, some of that at play, and that really the ultimate end of this would bring, to bring one's self to the realization that you can't do this. At the same time, though, I think almost, especially in this one, I think, uh, it's not that Jesus withholds that, but I read that do, go and do likewise is this is what you said you wanted. You asked me for an answer, and I gave you the answer. You asked for the law- Yeah ... I will give you the law. So I actually don't know how this ended. It doesn't strike me that it ended well, and I think, I don't know if there was some kind of massive realization there, but it's almost as if there is some [00:31:00] obscuring of this. This is like typical parable, parable language where I think if you're there and you're listening, and you're trying to just track with the question and track how that compounds and corresponds with the law, that you would leave more destitute, more confused, and perhaps more angry than before, and certainly not in a position of understanding, "Well, th- this one before me is the Christ." But that's exactly what parables do. So again, I, I think to me- Right ... I see this more as certainly, again, there are these wonderful themes These kind of overtures of the gospel within, but they are dark and very obscured because the man asks a question about the law, and Jesus comes with a message about the law. And like you said, that law is- Yeah ... like, there's almost no grace in his tone as I read it because, not that he is not graceful or full of grace and gracious, but this guy asks for justification under the law. And so it ends with saying, it ends with this really phenomenal phrase, of course, of the lawyer realizing he's got himself [00:32:00] caught in having to respond truthfully in answering the question of who is the neighbor, but of course doesn't identify the neighbor except to say, "Oh, the one who has compassion," as if like he himself couldn't bring himself- Right to say these words. And then for Jesus to say, "Yeah, go do it," is, is kind of like the ultimate nail in the coffin.  Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and to tell a first century Jew to go and do, to be- Yes ... like a Samaritan is- Yes ... you know, e- even, even though that's not, like, highlighted in the text, you're right. Like, the, the lawyer probably couldn't bring himself to say the Samaritan was, right? And I, I think, um, you know, whether you take, uh, and maybe I'm novel on this. I guess I haven't really read, read a lot of people that take a, a more optimistic approach of this. But whether you take a more optimistic outcome approach or a more pessimistic or neutral, whatever, the, the actual outcome is the same, right? The, the lawyer is asking about self-justification under the law, like you said. Right. And Christ gives him [00:33:00] that. He tells him exactly what that means and what that looks like. And I think the, the impossibility of being the good neighbor as is described in the parable is exactly the sort of beat down of the law that, that, you know, we've talked about in the past is it's not as though, um, the, the, the actions of the Samaritan are not, uh, outwardly impossible, right? We- Right ... it's not unreasonable to think that someone could rescue someone from the side of the road and bring them to ... And like, the scenario itself is not that crazy. But the, the overall complex of the scenario, right? The fact that this man, um, was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, right? The, the ... All of this points to sort of like an impossible circumstance, an impossible situation. And, and the idea that even [00:34:00] within that impossible situation you're still expected to take care of the person who is your enemy, right? The Samaritan seeing a Jewish man beaten by the side of the road- That's right ... and although the parable doesn't specifically call out that he's Jewish, if he's going from Jerusalem to Jericho, there's an implication that he may actually also have been a priest. Um, we, we don't need to get into all the details on that, but there's, there's some good, uh, some good research out there that would point to the fact that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is, uh, was actually a very common pathway traveled by either priests or Levites. And further evidence is that a priest and a Levite are also on this same road. And so the idea that the Samaritan would, um, would- Sacrifice of himself to take care of someone who very likely considers him to be an enemy, and sacrifices in a pretty significant way. Um, I, I'll, I'll pause and now as you're [00:35:00]talking I'll do all the, the background scrambling to make it look like I know exactly how much- a denari is supposed to, to be, and I know we've talked about it before, it's just not there.  Lavish Impossible Mercy Tony Arsenal: But, but it's not a- Yeah ... it's not a trivial amount of money. That's right. We're not talking about checking this guy into, like, a Motel 6 and, and dropping a couple hundred dollars. We're, we're talking about a substantial amount of money and, and we're talking about a commitment to pay whatever is required. Okay. An unknown amount of money for this man who has been left for dead. We're not talking about a minor injury. The, the robbers beat him up, they took his clothes, and they expected him to die in the desert. He needed to be carried on a donkey. He needed to have immediate first aid attention. We're talking about a, a relatively long-term recovery. So the scenario would be more like, we think of it like, "Oh yeah, I dropped him off at the local hotel for him to sleep it off." The scenario would be more like, "I found a guy on the side of the road. I didn't know who he was. He's, he's of a group of people that would consider me to be their enemy, and he's been shot 100 times, and I'm gonna patch up his [00:36:00] wounds. I'm gonna take him to the hospital. I'm gonna not only pay and say, 'Here, I, I've already used some supplies. Let me pay for that,' but I'm gonna pay for all of his medical bills until he's healed." Like, that's the scenario we're talking about. So it's not, it's not just, like, a good deed that has been done that is maybe, like, a really, really good deed, like it's a really nice thing to do. It's a, it's an outlandishly almost impossible to conceive of doing good deed. N- I don't know anyone, um, who would... And, and I know a lot of really great people. This is not a slam. I don't know anyone who would find a stranger on the road and who is, who's gravely injured and commit to pay for all of their medical care until they're healed. I just don't know anybody who would do that. Right. Um, some might say there's actually some wisdom in that, and, uh, we've talked about how sometimes the parables present a situation where maybe, like, this isn't actually the best practical knowledge. It's there to prove a point. Right. But I don't know anybody who, I don't know anybody who would do that, who, who would even think about doing that. Um, so the, the scenario here is one [00:37:00] of impossible lavish goodness being extended to those who you have no reason to be good to, and probably have reason to not be good to. That's what we're talking about. And so the, when the, the lawyer is told to go and do likewise, he's being told to do something that is impossible to fulfill, or even to conceive of fulfilling. And so there is this element of, like, "You think you can obey the law? Well, let me tell you how much you can't  Jesse Schwamb: obey  Tony Arsenal: the law."  Jesse Schwamb: Right. By the way, this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Like a good Samaritan, State Farm is there. Every time we've been saying good neighbor, I've been just been trying to avoid thinking about- Yeah Jake from State Farm. That's what I've been doing most of this time.  Tony Arsenal: Jake from State Farm?  Jesse Schwamb: Um, I totally agree, of course.  Priest Levite And The Law Jesse Schwamb: Like, what strikes me here is that it's, like you said, there is all this emphasis on what it means to show neighborly love, but the setup is also in those who basically should be showing it but aren't, and that's where we get, can get into this lovely... It's, [00:38:00] it's okay to kinda think through some of these characters. You know, for this priest and the Levite here, and what we know about them is that they, at first it sounds like there, there's almost this sense in the language like the priest falls ab- upon this, this, you know, bloodied man by chance, and that kinda heightens the drama, I think. The priest's confrontation is a little bit unplanned, but it's immediate and unavoidable, and he chooses to cross on the other side of the road, which is of course a deliberate act of avoidance. It's not mere obliviousness. And then the Levi almost goes further, or he came to the place, he saw him closer inspection, you know, greater culpability, and yet he still passes by. I really do wish I could hear this, like, in real time, like be among, because I have to- Yeah ... wonder that there'd be this kind of sense of building in the story. And the people might be kind of getting the sense that the characters that they know and love or should love as the heroes are not gonna be performing that way. And so I think even they're curious. They might be hoping against hope that it's gonna turn out well, but knowing the question and maybe something about Jesus, [00:39:00] they might anticipate that he's gonna go in a different direction. And so again, I think we have to stick with the text here. Like, Jesus doesn't explicitly state the motives of these gentlemen, but it's truthful. What's true- Right ... is that, like, these boys should have known better. You know, a lot of people have speculated that it was for ritual purity concerns or the, another ambush or social distance or just callousness. And I think that ambiguity might be deliberate because, again, what cuts against the lawyer here is whatever the specific excuse, the point is that these, like this kind of professional religiosity and even, like, meticulous law observance are of course not identical with, and probably can even distract or obstruct the love of neighbor that the law itself commands, which is wild, right? Because we talked about how, again, this just shows the law doesn't empower you to do the thing, and in fact, here- Right ... you could essentially abuse the law so that you suck the spirit right out of it and therefore do not do the very thing that it was intended to accomplish. So even this by itself, you just stop the parable here, it's kind of condemning because it's really this [00:40:00] potent warning against some kind of merely external ceremonial, professionalized religiosity that fails to produce, I guess, what Matthew calls, like, the weightier matters of law, like justice and mercy and faithfulness. And, you know, we should understand this because I think those that are from tradition have a certain affinity for the third use of the law as a guide for the grateful Christian living, and that's, you know, kind of what we're talking about here. But it insists that true law keeping is never merely ritual or notional, but it must issue in love, like costly love. Love outside of being inconvenienced is not genuine. I, I guess we'll get there. But, you know, I don't wanna harp on the characters as some are prone to do, but that is, I think, why the characters are here. It's both to set up and show, like, you're about to see that you really do not wanna identify by your own persuasion, by your own presuppositions with the one who's gonna be the hero, that is the, the one that shows neighborly love. At the same time, I'm gonna show you by way of condemnation that those who should exercise the greater love, [00:41:00] that do know better, that should know better, that should emblem- be emblematic of the spirit of the law, have done the exact same thing. Which I can only, uh, hope but believe is what this lawyer heard as well was that he was hearing that he was being stuck into this place before he was even given the question, well, who was the neighbor here? Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think, um- There is a real sense in some of the parables that are sort of spoken against people. Um, this one doesn't specifically use that language, but it, it is a targeted, kind of a targeted response. There is a sense that throughout the course of the parable being told, they start to recognize midway through that they're like- Right you are the man. Like, this is one- Right, right ... of those Nathan and David kind of parables where, like, at some point the realization must have dawned on this guy that, like, "I've gotta be somebody in this parable." And I think that's where, where the, the challenging part is, is it's not clear, um, [00:42:00] it's not really clear even at the end of the parable who Christ is intending this guy to be, right? Right. Is he the lawyer or is he the, uh, is he the, the dead man on the side of the road, right? Is he... Or the dying man. Is, is he the l- the priest and Levite who pass by? Is he supposed to be the Samaritan, which would just be wildly offensive. Um, he's not necessarily, like, supposed to be anyone except for the fact that now at th- the punchline of the, the encounter here, Christ says, "Go and be like the Samaritan." And it's kind of like y- you know, if you were really following God's law, you would be the Samaritan in this one- Yeah, that's right ... but you're not. That's right. You're not and you can't be. Um, and so go, go ahead and do likewise.  Christ As True Neighbor Tony Arsenal: Um, I, I do think, too, there is some elements here where, um, I- Again, I, I think I take a little bit more of a typological, Christological-centered approach on this, but I, I don't think they're incompatible. But I do think there's an element here where Christ is also [00:43:00] unveiling, uh, sort of what he would do, like what, what his own plan of salvation is as the good, as the capital G, capital N good neighbor. Um, he is the one who does pour oil and wine on our wounds, right? A- and I don't wanna ... I don't think we need to fly off the allegorical deep end of reading oil and wine to be a reference to the Holy Spirit and t- Right but sometimes those things are evocative, indirect things that should, we should call our mind to those things. Like, I think, um, you know, when Melchizedek comes to bless Abraham and he, he presents him with bread and wine, right? I, I think, like, it's okay for us to go, "Wow, the Holy Spirit really made a point there that's subtle." And I think those little things within this parable drive me to look at this a little bit more along the lines of not only is there this sort of, like, law beat down, you [00:44:00] know, John Bunyan or not, um, Bunyan style, like the, "Moses just beat the crap out of me," kind of a- Right ... kind of a thing from Pilgrim's Progress. There's that, and I think it's really there. But it's also, uh, it's also sort of like this, uh, you know, "Blessed is the one who has ears to hear" side of it of, like, for those who are regenerated and can see the parable, can see the figures in the parable, it is now this beautiful picture of what it is that Christ does for those who cannot do it for themselves, right? And it's almost like the parable becomes a litmus test. If you look at the parable, and as you're reading through it, you sit there and you go, "Yeah, man, I'm like that guy who got beat up and left for dead. That, that really describes me," um, you're gonna get to the end of this and you're gonna be sort of, like, sitting in awe of, like, "Man, I have such a great savior who threw me on his donkey and, and promised to take care of all of my, all of my wounds, and promised to pay whatever it, whatever it cost." Um, y- you know, and all of these elements of, [00:45:00] like, oil and wine and, and all of these things be- kind of become alive to you in a way that someone who sees themselves as the, the good Samaritan, who thinks they're the one who's gonna come and rescue people, or I think increasingly in our day, and it's, it's weird to even say this, I think there are people who would look at this and resonate with the priest and lawyer and actually say, like, "Yeah, they shoulda, they shoulda crossed to the other side of the room." Mm-hmm. I've heard defenses of that in trying to argue that- The priest and the Levite, if they had, if this person was dead, they had touched the dead body, then, you know, they would've been ceremonially unclean. Uh, all of that is, I think, worth speculating about. But the reality is, um, who you see yourself in the parable actually says a lot, I think, about how you see Christ in light of either our ability to fulfill the law or our inability to fulfill the law, and therefore have our need for Christ. If you think you're the good Samaritan, if you think you're the one that's gonna come and [00:46:00] rescue people, that you're gonna be, you're gonna be the good neighbor, you're much more likely to see, uh, to, to be needing this as a sort of a law beat-down. Where those of us who, maybe this is the way you wanna parse it out, right? There's those of us who are, uh, regenerated and in Christ, and this is third-use law, right? This is, this is us- Right ... seeing what it means to be holy, and going and doing likewise, trying in our power, in our, our best to go and do likewise, empowered by the Holy Spirit, recognizing that we can't, and trusting the Lord to accept our feeble attempts- Right and be pleased by them. Right. Um, or maybe if you're not regenerated, this is f- this is first use, right? Right. And, and, and this is actually there to terrify you and to show you your condemnation and to serve as your condemnation. And, and there's even, and I didn't really intend to go all the way with this, but there's, there is also an element in here, and this is where, like, the mercy ministry interpretation comes in, where this is civil, this is civil law, where this is the, the, the, um, you know, the civil use of the law [00:47:00] to restrain evil, to show society what it is to be good, to, to restrain sin. Right. Yes, we want to be, uh, we, I would rather live in a society where people stop and help someone who's stranded or injured on the side of the road than, than a society where people pass by. Um, so I, I think all of those elements are in play here, and we do have to be careful not to take the full-on, like, never go full allegory approach to this, 'cause y- you can really... That's just a good general wisdom for all of, all of the Bible, but especially the parables and other figurative stuff. You can really just go totally far afield of what actually the point of the parable is- Right ... if you're not grounding it in the purpose that Christ is teaching it for, and, and the stated outcome of the parable, right? No one in the Bible makes c- I don't know that anyone in the Bible makes specific commentary on this within scripture, but the, the idea that, like, there's all these hidden meanings, well, if those are the hidden meanings, then why doesn't Christ talk about it? Why doesn't he come back- Right ... and [00:48:00] interpret those symbols later on like he does, like the Parable of the Sower or the Parable of the Seeds or Soils. Um, that one is much more directly allegorical in that the different seeds, the different soils represent specific people with specific s- scenarios. Christ comes and, and does that allegorical interpretation later on in the passage. There's nothing like that here. So I think we have to be really careful not to slip down that road. Jesse Schwamb: I think that it could be all those things. I, I totally agree with you on that. I think it could be all the use cases of the law. I think what makes this so wonderfully complex and a little bit tricky is that when I read this, I actually don't necessarily find myself gravitating toward putting myself in one place or the other. It almost depends on where I am or what's going on in my life. So for example, I think any time that any one of us, and we've all done this as Christians, have quenched the spirit, especially with respect to helping, serving, or loving others as my, our neighbor, then we're firmly in this parable in the place [00:49:00] of the priest and the Levite. Sometimes I think we are the one on the side of the road. We look to the church, to our brothers and sisters to help us, and what do they help us with? Like you were saying, Tony, they help us with that blood and oil. They help us with this, the power of the Holy Spirit, which is given to each one to help and to serve, to identify, to comfort with the comfort we ourselves have been received. And then I do think, and this might be unpopular, that, that sometimes by the grace of God, He empowers us to be the Samaritan, but only through His empowerment. Not, of course, because we're trying to just self-justify or because we're overtly generous in our own merit, but in fact, this is the way we ought to live, and that we ought to commend that kind of behavior to, again, acknowledge it as God-given and to promulgate it, especially among the body of believers. So I do think all three forms of the law are present there, but I do think I tend to, for whatever reason, right or wrong, I tend to tilt a little bit toward that third use here, just to see this as it's not wrong to, of course, to, I think, uh, lay over all of this, all these delightful variables and [00:50:00] details. Again, this idea of blood and oil, n- normative things, normal things, standard things that are being used to address- Yeah ... wounds. They're, they're... Of course, that would've been the practical way which you would've provided some kind of medicinal care to somebody in both that extreme circumstance, but also generally, because nobody's, like, keeping gauze or popping Advil to help this, this poor guy. And so it is- Right ... like this beautiful complexion of, I think, everything that we just talked about, that there is the law present, and depending on where you are, both in terms of your ingrafting into eternity, into the Kingdom of God, and then where you are in life, you- we should read ourselves probably, or l- let me say it this way, not so it's like eisegesis, but, like, that we should see ourselves often at different pli- times maybe playing or being tempted to play the parts of these different characters. And in that we find, I think, ultimately, of course, as you're saying, that Christ is over all, and that He is the one that, of course, perfectly emphasizes all of what it means to be the Savior, the [00:51:00] true loving neighbor who cares and binds and heals completely full stop. And yet there is something instructive here, I think, as well about going and bringing that compassion. I was just thinking, like, as we were talking, that there's such a difference, isn't there, like, in our world between these days, like, pity and compassion? Like, pity often is like, "Yeah, I feel sorry for you," but it strikes me as kind of like the James, is it James 1 or James 2, where it's kind of like, "Oh, you're... I, I'm so sorry that, like, you're, you're hungry and cold. You know what? Go, be warm, and be well-fed." You know, that's like pity. Like, "Yeah, I just- Yeah ... I feel a little bad. I identified with your emotions." Sending  Tony Arsenal: good vibes.  Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. I've got- Yeah. Yeah. That's right, right? Sending good thoughts and good vibes your way. I wanna say, like, keep those to yourself 'cause they're probably not all that- Yeah ... good. Um- I  Tony Arsenal: don't want your vibes.  Jesse Schwamb: I don't want your vibes. Get your vibes out of here. What I need is that power of God himself, uh, to bring compassion, and compassion is always wrapped in action. It identifies- Right ... and then goes. It, it's, it [00:52:00] is not self-promoting, it's self-sacrificing. And so that rule of law, which is like the good rule of law, the good teaching, the kind that brings life because it's the Decalogue wrapped in skin perfectly performed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the one who is perfect again in his passive obedience and active obedience. Yes, yes, we need, we need all of that. It's modeled here, I think, to a certain extent, but I think the go and do likewise is actually for all of us, but it's not the kind like we would say, "Well, like, good luck." It's more the- Yeah ... you know the one from whose side the blood flowed. You know the one who is pressed in the garden as if olives under the press leaking oil. You know who that one was, and that one is His spirit resides in you. So now go and do these acts- Yeah ... of mercy. Again, not s- for some kind of meritorious reward, but because you were made for good works, which were set apart for you to do, and part of those good works are [00:53:00] just always being a good neighbor. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, and, and maybe to, to close out, I, I, I think maybe we actually did it. I don't know that we're gonna have to do another episode on this. I guess we'll see after we do- Who would've guessed? ... our postmortem here.  Mary Martha And Final Charge Tony Arsenal: But I, I think part, part of, um, part of what we need to at least acknowledge is that what, what follows this parable, right? This, this goes from a parable of a lawyer seeking to justify himself to now the account of Mary and Martha, and the fact that, uh, that, um, M- Martha, you know, is busy with much work, and Mary is sitting and listening to, to Jesus and is said to have chosen the better part. And I think, like- Mm ... this is something that I think because of the way, like, Bibles are formatted, the way that certain things are sort of, like, extracted out as discrete teaching units, this parable is pulled out and separated from this next part. And I, I think we can [00:54:00] really run into problems when we do that because- You know, even if we, even if we were to sort of treat the scripture as, like, a purely human book, right? Luke chose to put this account of Mary and Martha after this, right? And, and- Right ... probably not just because, like, it happened chronologically. There's no real, um, there's no real necessity that this account of Mary and Martha in this particular story had to happen immediately afterwards. Like, there's no organic link in, in the chronology of the story to drive that, right? And the two aren't related in terms of, like, historical cause and effect or, uh, proximity. There's none of those things. So the only answer as to why this was selected to follow the parable of the Good Samaritan is that there's some thematic connection that drove Luke as an author to put this, put this right following that. And so I think even that should drive us to thinking about, all [00:55:00] right, we've got this statement of go and do likewise, show mercy. Now there's almost this foil that the, the, the person in, in the account in the, the narrative here, and a, a true narrative, right? We're not in parable land anymore, but the person in the narrative that seems to be showing mercy, seems to be taking care of people the most, is actually the one who's chastised a little bit for, for being- Right overly zealous about m- mercy ministry, hospitality ministry- Right ... is what you might call it. She's the one who's like, "Tell my sister to help me with this." And she said, like, "You know, you're always gonna have time to do this, but, like, I'

from Acts 20:36-38 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(August 9, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Praying Our Goodbyes”"

Romans 11:7-24 Gods Severity (vv. 7-10) He allows them to be blinded by religion (Is. 29:10, 13) He allows them to be burdened with religion (Psalm 69:22-23) Gods Goodness (vv. 11-18) Humanity benefited from their fall Humanity blessed by their failure Rejection by the Jews Rescue for the Gentile Restoration of all who believe Gods Purpose (vv. 19-24) Abraham: The Root (Gen. 12:1-3; Rom. 4:1-12) Christ: The Vine (Jn. 15:1-8) Believing Jews and Gentiles: The Branches/The Church (Eph. 2:14-18) More To Consider Though most Jews have rejected the message of salvation in Jesus, a remnant within the total populationthe electdid obtain salvation (vv. 56). The rest were hardeneda curious term. Since the entire point of 9:3010:3 and 10:1621 is that Israel was responsible for its rejection of Gods salvation despite the prophets best efforts to call them to repentance, Paul did not mean that God determined their obstinacy. If God Himself hardened some Jews hearts so they could not believe, it makes no sense for God to say through Isaiah, I spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in the wrong path, following their own thoughts (Rm 10:21; Is 65:2). This passage from Isaiah that Paul cited goes on to castigate Israel for provoking God and repudiating His laws. Other uses of the hardening metaphor (a calcifying or callous-building effect) often make clear that hardening of the heart is a self-induced state (e.g., Mt 13:15; Mk 6:52; 8:17; 2 Co 3:14). Even the explicit statement that God hardened Pharaohs heart follows a series of events showing that Pharaoh was hardening his own heart (Ex 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7, 3435; 1 Sm 6:6; cp. Ex 9:12; 10:1; 11:10; 14:8). Therefore, though God may indeed solidify peoples resolve to reject the truth, apparently He does so because they have first resolved themselves to do so. God does not harden hearts that would otherwise have been responsive to Him. Jesus quotation of Is 6:910 made this very point (Mt 13:1415). Ted Cabal et al., The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007), 1698. The wild olive was often ingrafted into the fruitful one when it began to decay, and this not only brought forth fruit, but caused the decaying olive to revive and flourish. Matthew Henry and Thomas Scott, Matthew Henrys Concise Commentary (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), Ro 11:11.

from Acts 9:10-19 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(August 2, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Praying for New Life”"

from Acts 7:59 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(July 26, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Witness”"

In Episode 499 of the Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb conclude their extended study of Matthew 25 with a close examination of the Sheep and Goats passage (vv. 31–46). The conversation tackles one of the most frequently misread sections in the Gospels — a text often weaponized for works-righteousness or social-justice reductionism — and recovers its deeply Reformed, gospel-saturated meaning. The hosts argue that the works displayed at the final judgment are not meritorious currency but the spontaneous, unselfconscious fruit of transformed hearts. They explore the significance of the sheep's surprise, the inheritance language of the kingdom, unconditional election, and the precise meaning of "the least of these." The result is a theologically rich, pastorally grounding episode that offers genuine assurance to believers while calling the church to practical, ordinary mercy toward its own members. Key Takeaways Works at the final judgment reveal identity, not merit. The sheep are on the right because they are sheep — not because their accumulated deeds earned them a place. Their works flow from a renewed nature, not toward a threshold they must clear. The righteous are surprised — and that surprise is theologically decisive. If the sheep were consciously stacking up merit for judgment, they would have kept careful ledgers. Their inability to recall their own works demolishes any works-righteousness reading of the passage. Inheritance is not wages. Jesus' use of the word "inherit" signals that the kingdom is received by virtue of relationship, not performance — a point reinforced by Paul in Romans 8 and Galatians 4. Election precedes and grounds the works. The kingdom was prepared "before the foundation of the world," meaning the deepest cause of the sheep's blessedness long predates any of their deeds. Works are downstream of grace, never upstream. "The least of these" refers primarily to fellow believers, not to the poor in general. The phrase "my brothers" in verse 40 narrows the referent to members of Christ's body — those who belong to him by adoption, faith, and union with Christ. There is no two-stage justification. The final judgment is not a second review of whether one has done enough. It is a reassertion of the righteousness of Christ already imputed to believers — a public vindication, not a fresh assessment. Practical, ordinary mercy toward the church is the mark of kingdom membership. The six works listed — feeding, giving drink, hospitality, clothing, visiting the sick, visiting the imprisoned — are not heroic or extraordinary. They are the unglamorous, costly, consistent kindness that flows naturally from those who have been made new. Key Concepts The Surprise of the Righteous: A Devastation of Works-Righteousness One of the most theologically loaded moments in Matthew 25:31–46 is the reaction of the righteous at the judgment: "Lord, when did we see you?" They are not feigning humility. They genuinely do not remember. As Jesse Schwamb notes in this episode, this surprise is "devastating to a works-righteousness reading of the passage" — because anyone consciously building a merit ledger would have kept meticulous records. The sheep kept none. Their works flowed so naturally and unselfconsciously from hearts already made new by the Spirit that those works barely registered as remarkable. This is precisely what the Reformed doctrine of sanctification predicts: truly gracious affections issue in Christian practice as the spontaneous fruit of a transformed nature — as natural as a good tree producing good fruit. The works are real, the works matter, but they are not calculated. They are evidence, not currency. Inheritance, Election, and the Order of Grace Jesus does not tell the sheep they earned the kingdom. He tells them to inherit it — and he specifies that it was prepared for them "from the foundation of the world." These two details together form a nearly complete statement of Reformed soteriology embedded in the judgment scene itself. Inheritance, as both Paul and Jesus make clear, is received through relationship and not through performance. An heir does not negotiate terms; an heir receives by virtue of who they are in relation to the testator. Layered on top of this is the language of eternal, unconditional election: the kingdom's preparation predates all human works, good or bad. There is no "looking down the corridor of foreseen merit" here. The sheep's blessedness has its deepest root in the sovereign grace of God exercised in eternity past — which means their works, however real and meaningful, can never be the ground of their standing before the King. "The Least of These": The Church as the Primary Referent A significant and often overlooked interpretive question in Matthew 25 is the identity of "the least of these my brothers" (v. 40). The episode argues, in line with the dominant Reformed and historical reading, that this phrase refers primarily to fellow believers — members of Christ's body who are suffering, vulnerable, or marginalized within the community of faith. The word "brothers" is not incidental. It places the referent in a specific covenantal and familial relationship with Christ. This does not exclude broader applications of mercy — the hosts acknowledge that the principle may extend centrifugally outward — but the center of the text is the church's care for its own. This reading is consistent with Galatians 6:10 ("do good to all people, especially the household of faith"), with Acts 9 (where persecuting the church is persecuting Christ), and with the overall logic of the passage, in which belonging to the King is the decisive category. Memorable Quotes Their works flowed so naturally and unselfconsciously from a renewed heart that they scarcely remembered them, let alone regarded them as currency for salvation. — Jesse Schwamb Sheep are put on the right side because they are sheep, and goats are put on the left side because they are goats — not because they act like sheep or because they act like goats. Those characteristics flow from what they are. They don't make them what they are. — Tony Arsenal God provides grace. Now do all that you can do. That's the Christian way to look at things. He has prepared good works in advance for us to walk in. This is not some sort of measurement of whether or not you're in the kingdom. It's a description of what those who are in the kingdom look like and how they behave. — Tony Arsenal Full Transcript [00:00:08] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 499 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:01:13] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony, and this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey, brother.  [00:01:18] Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother. Well, we're back. We're back in Matthew 25, and if you haven't been tracking with us for a little while, we've, we've talked about all the parables hanging out in Matthew 25. But what we've been talking about recently is this kind of surprise pop quiz, that's redundant, that Jesus kind of gives at the final judgment, and he talks about separating these groups into sheep, into goats, and the sheep aren't shocked that they get into heaven. They're shocked that their quiet, kind of unglamorous kindness apparently got tallied at all. And because all of these good works apparently are done from a heart already made new, have a way of sneaking past even their own doers' notice. But then there's this other group, the goats, and they learn the hard way that they never really did anything for anybody. And it's not a great look when your deeds are just faith's paper trail. And so Jesus has a lot to say to us in this, what we're calling, like, parable adjacent kind of message that he gives. Summarizing these three- Yeah ... great teachings, here comes all of this really direct and explicit instruction about, uh, the final judgment, which by the way is impossible for me now to hear or say without thinking of the final countdown. [00:02:30] Tony Arsenal: The final judgment.  [00:02:32] Jesse Schwamb: I was hope- I was hoping you would sing us into that, and it was beautiful. Yeah. It was fantastic.  I  [00:02:36] Tony Arsenal: try. I  try.  [00:02:37] Jesse Schwamb: So I think on this episode we got a lot to say in our ongoing conversation about this judgment, about these deeds, these works. What are they? What is their purpose, especially for these different groups of sheeps and goats? What's the deal?  [00:02:52] Affirm Deny Segment [00:02:52] Jesse Schwamb: So we'll get to all of that in just a second, but first, it's that blessed and glorious time in every Reformed Brotherhood conversation where we either affirm with something that is something that we really like, think is understated, that's really is not getting the attention, people are sleeping on, or conversely, we deny against something that just isn't that cool, just is not that great. So Tony, are you affirming with something or are you gonna deny against something today?  [00:03:17] Tony Arsenal: I'm affirming with something. I'm not sure how long this has been a thing. I stumbled upon it, uh, a little while ago, and it's been in my affirmations list for a couple weeks. Um, and I'm also not 100% sure that this is available to every Logos Bible user. So those are the caveats.  [00:03:33] Logos Minutes Reading Plans [00:03:33] Tony Arsenal: Um, what I stumbled upon is if you create a reading plan now, instead of saying, "I wanna finish this book by this date or in this number of sessions," uh, you can say, "I wanna finish this book by reading X minutes a day," which is great. Um, it's a, it's a feature that I've, I thought, like, why didn't they have this a long time ago? Because a lot of times you want to sort of set aside a certain amount of time a day. Maybe it's 15, 20 minutes of Bible reading. Maybe it's five minutes of Bible reading. Maybe it's 30 minutes of- Bavinck or Calvin or whatever you're reading. So what you can do now is you tell it the page range or you tell it, "I wanna read the whole book." Uh, you could do, you know, passages or verse ranges or sections of the Bible. And then where you normally in the next screen where it would ask you, uh, how many days you wanna read, how many sessions, or whether you wanna read until a certain date, there's a new option. And so it just divides that up based on the amount of time. What's really slick is it will actually break pages in half. Nice. So, like, if you have a short, um, either a short amount of pages that you wanna read, and it's kinda like I wanna read for two or three minutes a day, and two minutes is not a whole page. I run into this when I'm reading Matthew Henry when I'm preparing for sermons, because for whatever reason, uh, maybe it's just the Logos page pagination, but the pages are really long. Like, a one page of Matthew Henry's commentary will sometimes take, like, 10 or 15 minutes to read, which is obnoxious. Um, I think it's just that the pages are just, like... I don't know, I think it's just long pages. Um, but if you say I wanna read this one page and I wanna read for five minutes a day, it'll actually split the page up, um, into chunks based on the word count and whatnot. And obviously, that five minutes is, it's not calculating how quickly you read, like, uh, Kindle does sometimes when you're doing that.  [00:05:25] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:05:25] Tony Arsenal: Um, so it's basing that on an average reading speed. So if you're a little faster, uh, of a reader, then it'll be, you know, you'll get done a little quicker, and it might take you a little longer if you're slower. But it's a really slick feature, and I think it's, like I said, I think most of us If we wanna be diligent to read whatever it is we're reading, whether it's the Bible or other theological works, um, we want to set aside time, and we wanna sorta time block. We've talked a lot about productivity, um, in this podcast. We wanna, like, time block our time so it's protected and it's, it's set aside for that task or for that purpose, and this is a great way to do it. So you just put it on your calendar. You say, "I've got 15 minutes that's set aside to read the Bible in the morning, and I know that it's gonna be a digestible chunk." And then it's a, you know, it's no longer a, a date-bound reading plan, so there's no falling behind. If you miss a day, it just means you pick up the next day. Right. So it's a great way to do it. Again, not that there's anything wrong with time-bound reading plans or deadlines, but it's a little bit of a different way to make sure that you're getting into the Word or whatever book you're reading, uh, consistently. [00:06:30] Jesse Schwamb: That's definitely a feature that I think people are sleeping on in Logos. I have that too, so I don't know if, like you said, it is d- coupled with some kind of particular package or dependent on that.  [00:06:40] Stress Free Reading Habits [00:06:40] Jesse Schwamb: But generally, I think maybe we haven't spoken enough about, like, just making what- whatever it looks like, stress-free reading plans, because I was also reading some stuff by Ryan Holiday recently, and just the reminder of how there really is a fair amount of time to read, to actually consume, like- Yeah good written material. And really, it's maybe a little bit more about how, like, we understand walking and the benefits of walking now. You don't need to, like, set aside 20 or 30 minutes to go for a walk. Even going for, like, a quick burst of three to five minutes is so happy and healthful for you. And so I think- Yeah that in the same way, we actually do have more time to read than we think, and if you wanna, like, consume material and learn more things or just become more meditative in your thoughts spiritually, I think if you create the plan, that's just another thing to, like, help you on the way. But it's gotta be one that's, like, stress-free, like you're saying, and that's what I like about the Logos. You just set it up, and every time you go back into it, it's kinda asynchronous, and so, like, it just starts you off with wherever you're at. It's never gonna, like, pop up and be like, "You missed a day, and now you owe me 60 pages." Yeah. "Get on the ground and give it to me." Like, it's, it's not gonna be like that. So I love the joy of having the plan before you, and then that means that when the time comes, you're like, "Oh, I got a couple minutes," you can just go there. It can guide you into that reading, like, easily, succinctly, with low barriers, and make you feel happy and feel, like, that joy of reading again.  [00:08:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, I, I think it's great. And, you know, I think sometimes we fall into this trap, and you kind of alluded to it. Like, you fall into this trap that if you don't, uh, if you don't have, like, 20, 30 minutes to sit and read, that it's not worth it. Right. Right. And I know I used to fall into that trap, where I felt like if I didn't sit down and read an entire chapter, that I somehow was not actually, like, getting the material. But I think most of us have some sort of regular, uh, like, waste time. Uh, and what I mean is, like, for me, I ride the bus home every, like, every day. Most days I ride the bus home, and I know that's about a 25, 30-minute period of time that, um, I can choose to, like, scroll Twitter, and that's fine. Like, it's fine to do that. I can listen to podcasts. Um, I can do all sorts of stuff. I play video games on my tablet. Um, or I could set aside 15 of those minutes and have a p- sort of a preset reading. And you will be surprised, or maybe you won't. Maybe I'm the only one who's been surprised at this, but I think you'll be surprised uh, to find how quickly you actually move through material, even at- Right something like five minutes a day. So just for example, Joel Beeke's, uh, Systematic Theology Volume 1 is about 28 hours worth of reading, at least according to Logos. If you set aside 15 minutes per day, you will finish that reading in approximately 114 sessions. So that's not that long. That's not bad. That's like a third of a year. That's not bad, yeah. So you could, you could read through all of Joel Beeke, which is thousands of pages. I mean, we're talking, we're talking four, four different five or 600 page volumes. Um, and this, this actually is counting, like, the table of contents and the index, so, like, not all of it is what you're gonna read. You could read through that whole thing in under a year and a half if you just set aside 10 or 15 minutes. Um, and obviously if you have more time, maybe you have a 45 minute, um, bus ride home or, you know, you, you regularly have doctor's appointments and you know you're gonna be in the waiting room two days a week every week or something like that, this is a great way to just make sure you've got something set aside. Like your dad always says, you always say, like, "Bring a book." Well- That's right ... this is not only bring a book, but it's bring a book with like a s- like a set chunk of that book set aside for that time period. So maybe it's your lunch break, maybe it's the walk in from the bus stop, whatever it is. Um, I think it's, it's pretty straightforward. And all the old features, like all the old ways of setting up reading plans are still there. They're not eliminating those. Um, and this is just a great way, I think, to get, kind of get your reps in. Like, sometimes you just have to do the work and- Right ... get your reps in.  [00:10:45] Jesse Schwamb: Get it.  [00:10:45] Tony Arsenal: And this is a low pressure, this is a low pressure way to do it. It's not, um, it's not setting aside specific amounts of, uh, dates or anything like that. So yeah, check it out. It's, it's super easy to access, it's the same way you would always make a reading, um, like a reading goal. Um, and you actually can still set a regular reading schedule even with this feature. You could still say, "I wanna read Monday, Wednesday, Friday." You could say, "I don't wanna have a schedule at all," which means you just, when you click on it, it just brings you to the next section, but there's never any reminders. So they actually really are, like, expanding the way that, uh, you're able to generate these reading plans. The one thing I wish they had that I'm not sure why they don't, I wish they had a dynamic catch-up feature where, like, if you were... You know, let's say I wanted to finish this book and I wanted to finish it by, I don't know, the end of the year, and I missed a couple days or I missed a week, I wish there was a way to push a button and have it just redistribute the remaining readings out across- Right ... what's left of the reading plan. That's not there. That's a... If you're listening, Logos, or someone who works at Logos, that's what we need. I've told you that before. Why haven't you listened to me? But, um, uh, yeah, we need that. But th- this is a good start too, because again, it's, it's not, um- It's not making you do a deadline. Right. So it's much more relaxed paced. [00:11:59] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly. Exactly. That's one of the things I love about it.  [00:12:03] Burst Reading Benefits [00:12:03] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, let me make, like, one more plea if you're, like, like you're listening and you're unconvinced about this burst style reading, and that is I've been so convinced that that kind of consumption can be really helpful to processing reading. Because especially if it's like, say you're reading something of the Puritans or something relatively deep, there is something to be said of course for, like, being able to sit down if you have all this time and just kind of read to get the flow. But what I think even there I struggle with is some things are worth stopping and thinking about, and this forces- Yeah ... some kind of meditation that happens in the background anyway, and I've found that to be so helpful. Like, it kind of just creates a little bit of attentional space by way of making you walk away from the thing that you just read. And also, if you know that you've only got this short little time span available, I think I'm prone to read kind of in a different way with a little bit more focus.  [00:12:52] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:12:53] Jesse Schwamb: And then I find myself really thinking about some of those things. And some of the things that you and I talk about, the things that we love to read, are worth stopping and considering. And so it's too easy to be like, "Well, I just, I need to hit the page number. I gotta get the count in. I wanna get this volume finished." Yeah. And that's great, but at the same time, like presumably, like we read to comprehend, we read to put into practice, we read to, like, help us build wisdom and to process the world and to understand things in a more robust and profound way, and that can really only happen with that kind of spacing. So this builds in some spacing, so embrace that as I think a feature and not a bug maybe of some good reading.  [00:13:29] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, it's funny you, you mentioned Ryan Holiday earlier. One of the things I appreciate about his, um, at least most of his books, I've only read the sort of the Stoic Wisdom series, but, um, he keeps his chapters super short. [00:13:40] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:13:40] Tony Arsenal: So, like, part of that is sort of the self-help grocery store format that he's, he's going for. Um, not that it's... It's not empty calories, that's not what I'm saying. I think sometimes that is implied there. But he keeps his chapters short, so it's very easy, like, to just pick up. I'm working through Discipline Is Destiny right now. It's the one I'm reading now. It's very easy to just pick it up and be like, "I'm gonna read one chapter," and it's, like, five, 10 minutes long. Um, and the chapters are... They're not identical, but they repeat enough themes that, like, y- you don't need to really, like, sit down and really, like, cram through it to get the concept. Right. But you'll read through and you'll get the concept over and over again. And I actually think the Puritans can... Some of the Puritans can be that same way, where they say the same thing- Right ... slightly differently over and over again. Um, another book that reminds me of that is, um, Knowing Christ by Mark Jones, which we talked, but that's a, it's weird that that's actually kind of an old book now. Um- Right ... I think it's coming up on close to a decade now since it came out. Um, but those chapters are super short, 10, 15 minutes. So this kind of at a burst reading, session reading, rap reading, whatever you wanna call it, it's actually super productive and it's, it is, you're right, it's very good for meditation because you are taking time to do it. You're doing it consistently, so it's kind of, it's kind of like hammering itself into your head. Um, but it's not, it's not so much time that it, you get, like, reading fatigue.  [00:15:01] Jesse Schwamb: Right. Right. Exactly. That's a beautiful thing.  [00:15:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:15:05] Jesse Schwamb: I, I agree. Like, it's reading all kinds of ways, but one of the things that Ryan Holiday was recently convicted me of is, like, he talks about how many things he's able to consume. People are always like, "How are you able to read all those books with all the traveling, all the different things, engagements that you have?" And he's like, "Because I just read all the time. I read when I'm-" Right ... waiting at the post office. I read when I have, like, literally three minutes between doing something or picking up a kid, that, that I read." And I don't know, I kinda like that idea. I, I... he's not ashamed to be like, "If that's... If I have 30 seconds, I probably just pull up a book," because I think that that's even- Yeah ... valuable space in which to consume good writing. So, and when I r- I, I, like, subscribe to all, maybe like you, like all these different feeds, all these lists. There are just- Yeah ... so many things I wanna read. My to-read list is so stacked, pun intended, and it's like books of- I know ... all kinds. And then I'm in this space now where I find that as I'm getting older, again, one, like suddenly birds continue to be interesting to me in new ways that I never anticipated, and the second thing is, like, suddenly I wanna read all this history. And so, like, now there's like this whole, where it never really appealed to me before, now there's like this, all this new, like, vistas opened up, and I'm like, "Who has time for this?" So- Yeah ... maybe the idea is to just, again, consume it in bites. And I'm beginning to really appreciate that as an effective strategy for not, like, re- necessarily reading more, but learning more, and learning it better. [00:16:26] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And I actually think it is probably an effective strategy for reading more for most people. I know it has been for me- True ... to just sit down and do, do a few minutes at a time. Um- Just get it ... I've got kids, there's work to do. Like, it's, y- you're not gonna be able to... Most, I think most of our listeners are probably not in a- stage of life anymore where you can really devote hours to study like you maybe you could when you were in your 20s, where you just- Right you had a job and you didn't have much else responsibility. You, you just, you know, you just had things to do. Uh, it's not like that for most of us anymore. So being able to take five, 10 minutes and, and read a book is probably a luxury, but it's probably a luxury that we could, we could probably structure our lives and make that more of a reality. Right. And this feature in Logos will help you do that with really any theological book you can practically think you wanna get your hands on that's available on Logos. So Jesse- Right ... we could talk about reading all night every night, and we- ... love to read, but that's not what this podcast is about today. So why don't you tell us what you're affirming or denying?  [00:17:27] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:17:27] Jesse Book Pick Perkins [00:17:27] Jesse Schwamb: Well, now, now I'm gonna switch it up because I had a book, and so, like, it just seems like people are gonna be like, "Oh, of course," and you just rolled right into that. So the quick affirmation is more Puritan stuff, A Perfect Redeemer by William Perkins. That's this week's book, so you should do that. I don't know if it's available on Logos. I presume that it is, and you can set up your own reading plan, and it's beautiful and amazing, and Perkins makes a case that true satisfaction isn't found in things, but in Christ. He tears down all these illusions of self-sufficiency and points us to rest fully in God's grace. It's beautiful. It's glorious. It's practical. It's like 27, to your point, Tony, 27, I think, like, really brief chapters. Perfect for the bus. Like, it's prime bus reading.  [00:18:05] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:18:06] Jesse Schwamb: So yeah, that's affirmation. Okay.  [00:18:07] Denial Dying Guitar Batteries [00:18:07] Jesse Schwamb: Here's a denial, 'cause I've rarely do denials, but as you were speaking I was reminded of one that came up this morning that maybe is only going to really resonate with a small group, but I think if you know, you know. I was actually, this denial was constructed out of a conversation I had with a dear brother this morning, who I think was sharing the denial with me, uh, but might have been suspicious entirely of what I was going after. But it's this. A lot of, I'm trying to think how to set this up properly so it's, like, explained to a wider audience. So a lot of guitar instruments, that's a weird way to say this, but, like, I'm talking about guitars that have to be plugged in, have some kind of, like, onboard electronics. But principally, like, electric instruments. I'm talking about, like, electric bass, electric guitar. They usually have what's called, like, a preamp in them, which means that the signal is essentially being set up before it goes to the board, and that process requires some power. And so generally those instruments have, like, a little, you know, battery that goes in them, uh, uh, different kinds. Here's my denial. I don't know why so many of these instruments, including the- most of the ones that I own, have no nothing, no indicator to tell you how close that battery is to dying. And so what happens is- Yeah you, I think every musician, everybody who plays an instrument of, of this nature has had this happen to them, where they need to play it in a critical environment, and then the battery dies. And why I'm denying this is because this came up for me yesterday, where I was, had the benefit of playing at a church event, but it was with my acoustic electric guitar. It, it's a Martin D-16. It's a beautiful guitar. But even the Martin, it doesn't have an indicator on it. And so, like, I always swap out the battery, which I think is probably pretty wasteful, because I knew I had to leave this guitar plugged in on stage for, like, almost two and a half hours before it was gonna be used, and whenever it's plugged in, it's drawing the power. And so, so many times you get halfway through, you're playing, you're in a worship set or you're making music with people, and it just goes out on you, and when it goes out, there's no way to get the sound back except for, at least in my instrument, you have to unplug it, you have to pop out the battery, you have to put it back in. There's no, nothing discreet about this. There's nothing convenient about this. And there's certainly nothing- ... like, noiseless about that, especially if the person running sound is not being- Doesn't know ... very, like, adept with how they're handling the instrument so that you don't, like, blow people's ears out as you try to replace the battery. So I'm just wondering about this. Like, come on, instrument manufacturers. I know it's probably not pretty to put this somewhere, but you could put it somewhere discreet. Here's what I just wanna say, though, finally. Um, please don't at me. I know that there are some, especially like acoustic electric guitars, Fender's a good example, like onboard Fishman pickups that have, like, the EQ box. Some of them do have this indicator, but not enough. And if it's, like, an electric guitar- Yeah ... I rarely see this on a pure electric guitar. So please, for the love, just put, like, a little light. Maybe, maybe it turns orange or yellow or red when, like, the battery's about to go. I just, I need to know, because it's, it's so nerve-wracking when you're playing and you're like, "Oh, no. When did I last change this battery? How much longer is this thing going to last?"  [00:21:28] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm wondering, um, maybe I don't know enough about electrical engineering, but I actually feel like being able to determine when a random battery is starting to lose charge is probably a fairly intricate process, so that might be why, like, there's not as many. It's funny, my Ibanez guitar, which I haven't, I haven't even taken out of its case in years, I just don't, don't have a, a, a real occasion for it anymore, um, it has an indicator on it. So it's funny that you say that 'cause, like-  [00:21:59] Jesse Schwamb: Some do  [00:22:00] Tony Arsenal: Not a cheap guitar, but it's, um- Right ... it's not, yeah, it's not like a super expensive guitar. Uh, and it does have a little indicator. It's just like a little blinking light when the battery- Yes ... starts to go, it just blinks. Um, but yeah, even then, it still... It's funny, I, um, when I was in like high school and, and first couple years of college, I helped out with youth ministry at my church quite a bit, and I would often be on the team that would go, like, down to the camp the day before to set up all the equipment and to, like, get everything ready. And I remember I was always, I was always being told like, "Make sure you change the batteries. Make sure you change the batteries." Right. And like- Right ... it was always my job first thing in the morning to go around to all the microphones and all the guitars and, like, change out all the batteries. And I remember thinking, "This is so wasteful." Right. But then I remember, like, the one time we didn't do it, and it, like, crashed in the middle of, like, the big... And again, like, I don't even know if I would support this model of camp ministry anymore, but it crashed in the middle of, like, the big worship set on, like, the, like, the emotional decision- Yeah for Jesus night. Your altar call- It crashed in the middle of it ... totally blown  [00:23:01] Jesse Schwamb: up.  [00:23:01] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and it, it, and it did. Like, it affected everything. We had to, like, stop and... So yeah, always, always change your batteries. Um, you know, like, I, you, I, when I was doing musical worship on a regular basis, I just had a couple, like, inexpensive rechargeable batteries that I would swap out at the beginning of each session. I would put the battery that was in my guitar into the charger and the battery that was in the charger into my guitar. Um, and those, those wear out over time too, so that- Right ... you know, that, that's not a healthy charging habit for those batteries, and you go through them faster. But it's better than throwing away a nine-volt battery every couple of, you know, couple of days, so. [00:23:37] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:23:37] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. That's annoying. It's, it's obnoxious when that happens. Um,  [00:23:40] Jesse Schwamb: that's, that's why I'm just straight denying against it. I suspect that this is a matter of aesthetics, and that many of these manufacturers don't wanna put something as ugly as a light somewhere on this beautiful instrument, even if it's in, like, a discreet place. That's my guess. Yeah,  [00:23:53] Tony Arsenal: maybe.  [00:23:54] Jesse Schwamb: I also theorize, like, why can't there be an intermediary pedal that would help us with this? So, like, many people, including myself, have a tuning pedal which you can essentially bypass, and you, you engage it when you wanna tune. Why can't that draw... I, I think it should be relatively straightforward, but who knows? But either way, all I need is just a heads-up. I don't need like a, "You have, you know, 16% left," or, "You have 2.67 hours left." I just need to know that it's not gonna fail me at this most critical time. Like, just tell me to swap it. That's all, that's all, that's all you have to say. Yeah. Just tell me to swap it. So I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but I think it might be a matter of, of beauty over function and purpose- Maybe ... because-  [00:24:33] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:24:34] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, that's probably- Many, many are particular about that kind of thing Yeah. So anyway- Yeah ... yeah, I, that's maybe... I like what you said, Tony. It's maybe a good PSA. Like, change your batteries often and frequently. Don't be like me. Don't be in that position where all of a sudden, I remember I was leading some very acoustic worship on an evening service. It was a very full congregation, probably, like, 200 people. And, uh, we finished up, and somebody had to yell out, uh, "We can't hear your guitar at all." And I'm just up there playing. [00:25:01] Tony Arsenal: Ugh.  [00:25:01] Jesse Schwamb: And yeah. You know, it's distracting. It's one of those things. But-  [00:25:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah ...  [00:25:05] Jesse Schwamb: um, in the end... Uh, ironically, some people at the end of that were like, "Well, that was really great. It was much better than usual. We heard a lot less guitar." And I was like- ... "Okay."  [00:25:14] Tony Arsenal: My, um, my Ibanez, I never used it, but my Ibanez has an XLR cable in addition to the quarter-inch- Oh and the XLR provides power to the preamp. So that's- See, there you go ... the real solution is just to have a direct XLR, uh, XLR mic cable that goes in, uh, and then you bypass the direct box. Although then you can't, then you can't go into a tuner or pedal. Yes. So-  [00:25:33] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly ...  [00:25:34] Tony Arsenal: pros and cons. Yeah. But-  [00:25:35] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. It go- it, it, it's all over the place. But let, let's talk about- Yes ... judgment, shall we? Like, what, what-  [00:25:41] Tony Arsenal: Welcome, welcome to the Reformed Guitar Cast for the  [00:25:43] Jesse Schwamb: night. Yes. E- exactly. We could talk all day about books, reading, reading plans, study plans, productivity, and guitars. These are all beautiful things. And  [00:25:51] Tony Arsenal: batteries and  [00:25:52] Jesse Schwamb: electrics. And batteries. Of which, uh, allegedly you can ha- never have enough of any of those things in that group.  [00:25:57] Tony Arsenal: It's true.  [00:25:58] Back To Matthew 25 Reading [00:25:58] Jesse Schwamb: But let's talk about, uh, judgment. And I suppose we should go back to Matthew 25, which we've been hanging out in quite a bit. And someday we'll move out of this passage. Pro- probably not today, but someday- we will actually get beyond it. And I, I know, I know we're 25 minutes in, but I am gonna read again for all of us because Tony and I, you have been resolute in saying that the best parts of our conversations really are the scripture, hearing them and going through them with great depth and a deliberate kind of measured slowness, which we're unapologetic for. And so let's just go to Matthew 25. I'm gonna read verses 31 through 46 with a f- a fair amount of speed, but enough to get us to the place where again, I just want this to be familiar as we speak about it. "But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in, naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?" And the King will answer and say to them, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brethren of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me." Then he will also say to those on his left, "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me." Then they themselves also will answer saying, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?" Then he will answer them saying, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these, least of these, you did not do it to me." And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous unto eternal life  [00:28:27] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:28:29] Heavy Passage Rightly Used [00:28:29] Tony Arsenal: Like we said last week, this is a really kinda heavy passage. Um, and it can be, uh... Let me put it this way. It can be used to make, uh, believers fearful in the wrong way. I, I do think the, the passage is to instill fear of God and is inst- to drive us to good works. But it can be used in a way to sort of, as I mentioned last week, it can be used in a way to sort of say, "If you don't do all these good things and you don't measure up, then Jesus never knew you." Um, and, and it implies, or sometimes even fully says that, uh, Jesus comes to know us because of the good works that we do. Right. Right? And that's just not, um, that's just not Christian theology. That's not Reformed theology certainly. Um, it's, it's not Protestant theology, and it's not even really Roman Catholic theology down. Um, but this passage really is more about understanding what marks the life of a person who has already come to faith in Christ. That's right.  [00:29:30] Justification Not Two Stage [00:29:37] Tony Arsenal: What marks the life of someone who has been changed and transformed, uh, to be like their master, like their king. Um, so, so this passage doesn't try to teach us what we have to do to merit eternal life. Um, this isn't... A- and maybe we'll get into some of this, I don't know if we will or not, but this isn't sort of John Piper future justification, um, you know, on the basis of works, or future sa- salvation on the basis of works. Um, there's no two stages to justification, right? If we're justified, it's because Christ has imputed his righteousness to us. That's right. And what happens in the, in the final judgment, there's a real thing that happens, but it's not an assessment of whether or not we have done enough or been enough. It's the reassertion of the righteousness of Christ over us. So we'll, we'll get into that, we'll talk about it, but I wanted to make sure we set the frame for that, um, before we get into it. 'Cause sometimes when you talk about these passages, it's hard to talk about future judgment according to works, which is a genuine Christian reality, right? There's a future judgment according to works. But it's hard to talk about that without starting to sound a little bit like we're, we're earning our salvation or, like, our, our justification's in, like, sort of a second stage of review or something like that. So we'll, we'll get into that, but this is not, this is not works righteousness, this is not future justification, this is two stages of justification. [00:30:52] Jesse Schwamb: And that seems, like, very clear from the way that Jesus sets this whole up. The language is so beautifully gospelly centered and oriented.  [00:31:00] Inheritance Not Wages [00:31:00] Jesse Schwamb: Even behind the judgment, like, this curtain of judgment, when you, when you open it up, is the gospel in all of its fullness, and that begins with th- this idea of inheriting the kingdom. And inheritance, of course, is not wages. In fact, like, Paul makes this kind of, like, identical move in Romans 8 and in Galatians 4 where he basically emphasizes what Jesus is talking about here. That is, sons and daughters inherit, inherit. They don't earn a paycheck. An heir receives by virtue of relationship and not performance. And that single word is, I think in the judgment of, like, most of the Reformed understanding here, decisive for, like, reading this whole passage correctly. That whatever role these works mention in verses 35 and 36 play, they cannot be meritorious works. It's not the ground of the inheritance, because inheritances by definition are not earned. Yeah.  [00:31:51] Election Before Works [00:31:51] Jesse Schwamb: And then, like, right into the same kind of train of thought, the same line of reasoning, is this idea that, well, not only are you inheriting the kingdom, but all this was prepared for you before the foundation of the world. And here again is, like, the beautiful gospel in the form of this un- you know, eternal, like, unconditional election stated, like, very plainly. Now the kingdom isn't pr- w- was not prepared in response to, like, some kind of foreseen works. I think we talked about that last week, right? Did we talk about the cor- looking down the corridor, all that kind of weird stuff? Yeah.  [00:32:22] Tony Arsenal: Yep.  [00:32:23] Jesse Schwamb: It was prepared in eternity past before any works, like good or bad, had been performed by anyone. And so that's, like, the true answer, in my opinion, to, like, any Pelagian or semi-Pelagian reading of this passage. The deepest cause of the sheep's blessedness long predates their deeds of mercy, and so their works are downstream of election and grace, not upstream of it. That's really good news. Like, that again is the Gospel, that all things are entrusted to, belong to God. God does all the verbs. However you want to say it, what we have here is true grace, and that their works are flowing out of that grace. And so because of that, there's no... It's, like, it would be insanity to boast in them, because that boasting would mean absolutely nothing. And so Jesus sidesteps that altogether by talking about inheriting the kingdom and having this all prepared for us before the foundation of the world. [00:33:15] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:33:15] Kingdom Language Clues [00:33:15] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and there's some interesting, um, I think some interesting text feature that I just noticed here that, um, I don't wanna read too much into it, but one of the things that's striking about this is the, the language around the sheep or around those on the, um, on the right of the king here. Um, there's much more of a communal, um, kingdom-type language, right? Uh, in the first section where it's talking about those on the right, uh, the word king is used repeatedly.  [00:33:45] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:33:45] Tony Arsenal: Right? And then when you get to the second section on those on the left, the ones that the, the, the righteous son of man does not know, um, it doesn't use the word king. And that's not, of course, not to say that he's not the king of those who are, you know, condemned. He's the king of all. But there is this, this, uh, obviously intentional, uh, choice to use the word king, and what, what is a king if not someone who has a kingdom and a people? Exactly. So there, there even baked into that simple linguistic feature is already this idea that the people he's speaking to are his people. And so, like I said, we've talked about parables and parable-adjacent teaching as kind of being sort of systematic language in story form, systematic theology in story form. Even here, we're seeing election, we're seeing definite atonement, right? The people are his people because he prepared this kingdom for them before the foundation of the world. [00:34:42] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:34:42] Tony Arsenal: Um, and then the, the people who aren't his, they don't even get to be associated with him as king. They don't even beg- get to, get to be associated with his kingdom. They're so far outside of the kingdom of heaven, outside of this kingdom, that even to say that the king is speaking to them is almost like, uh, it's almost like a contradiction, right? So, um- In sort of like common parlance, we might refer to another nation's king as King Charles or, you know, K- King whatever, um, or President so-and-so. But that person is not my king. Right. And so although, like, maybe there's some decorum just in general, and, like, politically it's wise, I'd have no obligation to call King Charles King Charles. Like, I can ... I ... He's not my king. I don't owe any obligation of, of fidelity to him or to his title or to his crown. Another funny example, um, recently, um, you know, I work, uh, at a hospital. We have a spiritual health or chaplaincy department, and there's some Catholic priests who are on staff there. And, um, the, the spiritual health department is part of the care experience group, which is the same group that my patient relations team is part of. And some- someone noticed that at, like, broader team group meetings, I don't refer to them as Father. I'm one of the only people in the room who just says Joakim or, you know, or Sam. Like, I don't ... And they don't mind. It doesn't bother them at all.  [00:36:03] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:36:04] Tony Arsenal: Um, and it's funny because someone asked me that, and I'm like, "Well, they're not my priest, and I, like, I don't acknowledge- Right their status as the Father. Like, there's actually some biblical reasons why I wouldn't do that." I think this is kind of sort of almost like, in a third person perspective, kind of the same thing. Like, the k- king, i- the, the Gospel writer here, Matt, is refusing to use the word king in relation to this Son of Man in relation to these people to say something about them, to say something about those people- Yes who are outside of the kingdom  [00:36:34] Jesse Schwamb: Yes, that's right on. It's a bit like, I suppose, in a, a lesser way, like there was a time... So you're married to my sister. There was a time where you weren't, we weren't Yeah ... uh, and during that time, like I, I was not in your family, nor were you in mine.  [00:36:48] Tony Arsenal: Right.  [00:36:48] Jesse Schwamb: And then at, when you married her, I am part of your family. Like you can't kick me out. As long as you're married to Ashley, I will be part of your family and you part of mine. Right. That's how it works. And so that identity proceeds, like it c- this is like confusion between identity sometimes and I think like harmony, and so many people wanna read this as like some kind of like harmonic reflection of the state of obedience of these persons, and therefore, if they had harmony, then they were in the kingdom, and that's getting it backwards. That they were part of God's kingdom by his family by definition of identity.  [00:37:20] Surprised Righteous Hearts [00:37:20] Jesse Schwamb: So that by the time like we get to verse 37 when Jesus is saying the, the righteous are gonna answer him and they're gonna say, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?" I think that's one of the most like theologically important verses in this passage, which proves the point you just made. And I think it's often under-read because the righteous, they don't remember doing any of these things for Christ. They are surprised. They have like no self-conscious ledger of merit that they can point to, and that surprise I think is devastating to works righteousness reading of the passage because- Yes if these people were consciously stacking up merit to present at the judgment, then they would've kept a very careful account. But instead, their works flowed so naturally and unselfconsciously from a renewed heart that they scarcely remembered them, let alone like regarded them as currency for salvation. And so I think, I know there's been a lot written, you and I have talked about a lot about how people wanna parse this idea of works, understanding that it has some place, but what is that proper place? This I think does lead us into like the right focus in that kind of discussion because it's precisely what like the Reformed doctrine of sanctification would predict, and that is, you know, truly gracious affections I think issue in Christian practice as a reliable sign, hear me out here, but crucially that practice is not calculated or like self-res- referential. It's like the spontaneous fruit of transformed nature, as natural it is for a good tree to bring forth good fruit. And so the righteous in this passage, they're not the legalists that some would, I think, portray them to be or get worried that they are. They're not tallying good deeds. They're simply people who, having been made new, and who makes them new? God in Christ, right, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Because they've been made new, they just could not help but love their neighbor.  [00:39:13] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:39:13] Sheep And Goats Identity [00:39:13] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and, and you know, I think it's sometimes hard... We, we made the point last week that, um, the, the language in verse 32 where it says, uh, "He," He being the Son of Man, "He will separate one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats," that, that comparative as is the same language that introduces other parables. Right. And so the, the parable, parabolic element of this is a comparison to a shepherd separating two different kinds of animals in his, his bigger flock. Mm-hmm. I made the point that like we should be careful to overread sort of like what sheep are like into the behavior of those who are righteous on the right of Christ here. Um, because sheep are dumb, sheep do stupid things, sheep are disobedient. There, there's no use for like sheep to do good things and goats are not. And productive goats are also productive. Um, so what we should see though is that sheep are put on the right side because they are sheep, and goats are put on the, the left side because they are goats. Um, not because they act like sheep or because they act like goats, right? And so I think, yes, goats and sheep may have thinked behavioral, recognizable behavioral characteristics, but those characteristics flow from what they are. They don't make them what they are.  [00:40:35] Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  [00:40:35] Tony Arsenal: And so I think that's kind of what we see here in the parable, is the people on the, the right, the righteous on the right hand of the, the Son here, of the King as He sits on His glorious throne, the righteous simply do what righteous people do, right? They, they don't ... So much so, and again I think the shock of this is, is sort of the, the path of the teaching. The shock of this, the surprise of this on the part of the righteous are, uh, like it's palpable. And I think that when you actually talk to someone who is ... Think of the most sanctified, holy, righteous Christian you know, right? And I'm not gonna try to tell you who that is, but think of that person and think of a time that you have paid them a compliment or thanked them for doing the right thing.  [00:41:24] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:41:24] Tony Arsenal: They're like, "Oh, I didn't even think about that." Like, it's just not even on, not even on their radar. How many times have you, um, have you done a kind thing for someone at work and they like make a big deal out of it and you're like, "Oh, this is just I thought this is just what we do to each other. I thought we were just kind to each other." Um, and, and f- the flip side of this too is the, uh, the righteous in this parable or in this teaching, they're actually sort of like questioning the Lord's judgment in that they're saying like, "Wait a second, like w- why am I on the right here?" And He's like, "Well, uh, you were h- I was hungry and you fed me, and I, you know, I was thirsty and you gave me drink." And they're like, "When did we do that?" The flip side- Right ... of that is that those on the left, they're trying to justify themselves, right? They're trying to justify themselves, 'cause He's like, "Well, you didn't do these things. You're not my people." And they're like, "Well, when did we see you? When did we see you, when did you have these things happen and we didn't take care of it?" So the, the righteous are like surprised that this happened, and are almost questioning the fact that it's true, and the unrighteous are trying to justify themselves, basically blaming God. Bad judgment. It's not altogether, um... I forget which pro- I wanna say Micah or Malachi, one of those two, um, um, where the, the, um, God basically says, like, "Y- you, you're sinful people." And they're like, "When? When were we sinful people? Like, you tell me." Yeah. And then of course he does, 'cause it's the prophets. Right. But it's the same kind of thing. He comes to the, to the unrighteous in judgment. He says, "Depart from me, y- you cursed people." And then he says, "These are the, these are the things that have marked your life." And then they're like, "Where, when did that mark my life? Like, what are you talking about?" And he, he, the funny part is he doesn't give them an answer. He doesn't explain to them really. Right. He, he just like, "No, you can go, you can go away from me 'cause you." He does say like, "Well, you never, you did not do this to the least of these," and we, we need to unpack that phrase a little bit. But he doesn't give a long explanation to them justifying his judgment. He just makes the statement, basically makes the statement again, "You just didn't do it, so that's the consequence of eternal punishment." Um, again, not in like, "You didn't feed the poor, therefore you're going to hell" kind of a statement. It's more like, "You are not the kind of person that is a, a part of my kingdom." [00:43:48] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:43:49] Tony Arsenal: Without necessarily a firm statement about w- how that came to be, just a statement, "You are not the kind of person that is part of my kingdom." That's  [00:43:56] Jesse Schwamb: right. That's right. I think that's actually very evident in these, like, six concrete works of mercy which are listed, feeding, giving drink, hospitality to strangers, clothing, visiting the sick, uh, visiting the imprisoned. And as we've said before, those are not extraordinary feats. I mean, there's no mention- Right ... of miracles or doctrinal precision or heroic martyrdom. Yeah. It's just these ordinary, super unglamorous ministry of practical love, and I think that is significant, like you're saying, because it is a mark of true faith, this idea that it's found frequently not in spectacular religious performance, which is what some of the audience is probably after, honestly, but in this quiet but costly unnoticed compassion. And I think that is critical to understanding that those who have been identified and marked by Christ undertake these things with a seriousness, under being willing to bear the c- the cross and the curses and the cost of all those things, uh, because it is born out of a transformed life, one that has been re-identified almost as it were a new creation. And so that- Yeah ... created man does these things without putting the notches on the belts, so to speak, to tally them up because I think to that person that would be insane. What is the purpose of doing that? If I can't earn my salvation, I'm doing these things anyway. It, it wouldn't even matter. It's like trying to pay a bill that you have no money for anyway. Why would you then try to count the dollars that you have in your pocket to see if for some reason you could cover the cost? It's impossible. Yeah. And so everything changes to such a degree that I know we keep saying, like, surprised, and that is what is kind of manifested in the passage. But it's, it's not kind of like the shock of like, "I don't know what you're talking about." It's more, it's more this idea of, again, I think those being brought forward at the final judgment, and it's almost as if Jesus is saying, "You are coming into this kingdom- Because, or you are being, uh, allowed, so to speak, to come into my presence in the fullness because you did all those things. And their surprise is almost as to say, "Well, why would those things bring me into the fullness if I've, in fact, have inherited it because you've called me your own?" Does that make sense? Like, I think it's- Yeah ... there's a little bit gone there- Yeah ... that's not just they're kind of like, "Oh, this slipped my mind," or, uh, "It came so easy to me that I didn't even know I was doing it." I think it was more about the g- we should just get to the least of these then, right? Like, what does it mean- Yeah that they did these to the least of these, and how does that surprise fit into that?  [00:46:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:46:20] Least Of These Explained [00:46:20] Tony Arsenal: The other element of this that I think is super important for us to cover in the 10 minutes or so we have left. Um, this phrase, "the least of these," right? Yes. And, and this, this can really cause this passage to be misunderstood  Um, I wanna s- loud and clear, uh, taking care of the poor in our society, you know, mercy ministries outside of the church, those things are all good, and I think scripture makes an argument that we should be engaged in those, both individually and also that the church has an obligation to, um, to meet some practical needs of those who are destitute around it. Um, but that's not what this passage is saying, right? Right. So when we look at the phrase "the least" first, first thing that, that comes off here, right, in verse 40 where this phrase first appears, "Truly I say to you, as you did it to the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me." Right? This is not a general statement. The least of these are not, like, the lowest and meekest and poorest of the world. The least of these my brothers referring to those who belong to Christ. Right. Those who are related to me. And, and I actually think that that, that is probably, like, the hallmark of passage. Beyond, um, what we've talked about already of just sort of like not being about works righteousness, this is really about being a part of the church, right? They're marked by the fact that they have inherited this kingdom which was prepared for them before the foundation of the world. They're marked by the fact that, uh, they are the people of this king, so much so that the other people aren't e- the word king can't even appear in association with these other people. And this last part, they're marked by the way they have treated those in whom they are with c- in, in community with, right? They're marked by the way they have treated those who are related to the king by blood, who are adopted, who are married to the king, who are in, in the family of the king, his brothers. [00:48:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. Okay.  [00:48:18] Tony Arsenal: So this is painting a picture of kind of what we see, right? W- we see in, uh, Galatians, right? Um, "Do, do good to all people, especially the household of faith." Mm-hmm. Right? Uh, our own tagline, "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood," right? That's, that's a statement of like, yes, you're supposed to be kind to all people, but you're especially supposed to be kind and be committed to and taking care of those who are in the household of faith, who are in the church. That is what this passage is about. That is what marks those people who belong to the king. The sheep are part of the sh- part of the sheep because they're in that same flock, because they- Right ... are ontologically, they've been made new and they've been renewed into this new creation as sheep. Um, that's what this passage is getting at. And then the people who, uh, who are not a part of that, they, they have not done anything with the church. They're not associated with the church. They didn't take care of the church. They didn't, they didn't feed the church. They didn't do anything with that. And this, this again, like, think about, like, Acts chapter, you know, when, when, um, when Paul is, when Saul is called by Christ, right? "When did I persecute you?" "Well, you, why are you persecuting me, Saul? Well, you persecuted my people." So this, this passage ties a lot of those same s- same threads together- Yeah ... in a way that I think presents this really cohesive picture of what it is that's going on. This is not works righteousness. Right. [00:49:37] Serving Christ In Church [00:49:37] Tony Arsenal: This is an assessment of the fact that you are, in fact, a m- a member of the people of God, that you have been engrafted into Christ and have become a part of his body. And just as he is our head, we are his body. The people who are cast out, the reason he never knew them is 'cause they've never been engrafted into him. [00:49:55] Jesse Schwamb: Right. Sometimes this does, I think, get read and defined as, like, the all the poor and suffering writ large, which is helpful, but I don't think, like, the dominant view here, at least in my perspective. And you, and you tell me otherwise. Yeah. Because, uh, on this view, of course, like, Christ does identify with all who suffer, and that maybe mercy to any sufferer is mercy to him. I think that could be partly correct, part reflection and application here. However, the stronger view, I think, e- like, even historically, is that- Really we're talking about, especially when we get to, like, visiting those in prison, the, the persecuted or itinerant Christian missionary. When we're talking about the imprisonment and persecution language is, that especially suits believers suffering for the gospel's sake, not merely the poor in general. Now, is, are there ways for us as Christians to embody the gospel and to be a witness for Christ by going out and performing acts of social justice? I would say yes, if you connect those items explicitly to the gospel. That is, that you make it clear your emphasis, genesis, your volition comes through this message of who Christ is. Otherwise, there's plenty of institutions doing very good things, and I don't necessarily, what's in view here i

from Acts 18:9; 23:11; 27:13-32 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our … Continue reading "(July 19, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Assurance”"

Now right here… we're introduced to someone unexpected. It's not a king. It's not a warrior. It's not a priest. But instead… it's a woman named Deborah. Now… throughout church history... people have argued about Deborah. Some have tried to explain away her leadership. Others have tried to use Deborah… to make arguments… Scripture itself never makes. But folks... we just need to get out of the way… and simply let the Bible speak. The Bible presents Deborah with tremendous honor. She's called three things. First… Deborah Was a Prophetess. Now what does that mean? Folks… it means she spoke God's Word faithfully. Now we need to stop for a moment… and we need to understand what a prophet actually did. Most people hear the word "prophet"… and immediately think of someone who… predicts the future. Now… sometimes prophets did predict the future. But their primary responsibility… was something much greater. A prophet represented God… before the people. They proclaimed God's truth. They called people back to covenant faithfulness. They confronted sin. They encouraged obedience. Matthew Henry once wrote: "The greatest work of a prophet… is not foretelling the future, but bringing men… back to God." Folks... in Judges 4… that's exactly what Deborah was doing. Israel had forgotten God's Word. So God raised up somebody… who would faithfully proclaim it.

Now right here… we're introduced to someone unexpected. It's not a king. It's not a warrior. It's not a priest. But instead… it's a woman named Deborah. Now… throughout church history... people have argued about Deborah. Some have tried to explain away her leadership. Others have tried to use Deborah… to make arguments… Scripture itself never makes. But folks... we just need to get out of the way… and simply let the Bible speak. The Bible presents Deborah with tremendous honor. She's called three things. First… Deborah Was a Prophetess. Now what does that mean? Folks… it means she spoke God's Word faithfully. Now we need to stop for a moment… and we need to understand what a prophet actually did. Most people hear the word "prophet"… and immediately think of someone who… predicts the future. Now… sometimes prophets did predict the future. But their primary responsibility… was something much greater. A prophet represented God… before the people. They proclaimed God's truth. They called people back to covenant faithfulness. They confronted sin. They encouraged obedience. Matthew Henry once wrote: "The greatest work of a prophet… is not foretelling the future, but bringing men… back to God." Folks... in Judges 4… that's exactly what Deborah was doing. Israel had forgotten God's Word. So God raised up somebody… who would faithfully proclaim it.

from Acts 16:25-34 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(July 12, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Praise Anyway”"

Today's Bible Verse: "The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains because they had chariots fitted with iron." — Judges 1:19 Judges 1:19 reminds us that even when God is with us, we may still encounter obstacles that feel overwhelming. The tribe of Judah experienced victory because the Lord was with them, yet they struggled to overcome the people living in the plains because they had powerful iron chariots. This passage reveals the tension between God’s presence and the challenges we face. Become a BibleStudyTools.com PLUS Member today: https://www.biblestudytools.com/subscribe/ Looking for a peaceful way to end your day? Listen to "Your Nightly Scripture" to end your day with God's word Meet Today’s Host: Jennifer Slattery Discover more devotions with Jennifer at Your Daily Bible Verse on LifeAudio Jennifer Slattery is a national speaker and multi-published author, She’s passionate about helping believers live with bold faith, rooted in surrender to Christ’s purpose. Jennifer co-hosts both Your Daily Bible Verse and Faith Over Fear, encouraging listeners to step into their God-given identity. Her teachings blend Scripture with personal insight to help others embrace God’s power over fear and move forward with confidence.

from Acts 4:23-31 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(July 5, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Praying Boldly”"

from Acts 8:26-40 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(June 28, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Listening and Discerning”"

from Acts 13:1-3 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(June 21, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Prayer and Fasting”"

from Acts 2:42 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(June 14, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Guided by Scripture”"

from Acts 1:1-14 Revival historian J. Edwin Orr observes, “no great spiritual awakening has begun anywhere in the world apart from united prayer—Christians persistently praying for revival.” Similarly, Matthew Henry suggested that when God wants to do something special in the world, he first gets his people to start praying. Continuing in our year-long series … Continue reading "(June 7, 2026) “Prayer Life of the Early Church: Constantly Together”"

In this profound exploration of Matthew 22:1-14, we examine Jesus's parable of the wedding feast—one of the most theologically dense teachings in Scripture. This parable reveals the magnificent scope of God's gospel invitation extended to all humanity, the tragic reality of human rejection, and the sovereign grace that ensures God's purposes will not be thwarted. Through the imagery of a royal wedding banquet, Jesus addresses the religious leaders who challenged His authority while simultaneously unveiling timeless truths about salvation, election, and the nature of the Church. This episode unpacks the parable's layers of meaning, from the universal call of the gospel to the particular grace of election, equipping believers to understand both the urgency and the sovereignty of God's redemptive work. Key Takeaways The Universal Gospel Call Is Genuine and Urgent: God's invitation to salvation goes out indiscriminately to all people, regardless of ethnicity, social status, or moral condition. This external call is sincere, well-meant, and accompanied by genuine offers of grace. Human Rejection Is Willful and Culpable: The parable demonstrates that humanity's refusal of God's invitation is not due to insufficient information but to volitional rebellion. This rejection often progresses from indifference to active hostility against God and His messengers. God's Sovereign Purposes Cannot Be Frustrated: Despite widespread rejection, the wedding hall will be filled. God's redemptive plan includes the expansion of His covenant community beyond ethnic Israel to include Gentiles from every nation. The Wedding Garment Represents Imputed Righteousness: The garment required for the feast symbolizes the righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone, not earned through human effort. This illustrates the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. The Visible Church Contains Both Genuine and False Believers: The parable warns that not all who hear the gospel and enter the visible church possess true saving faith, distinguishing between the external call and the internal, effectual work of the Spirit. Eternal Punishment Is Real and Conscious: The parable's conclusion soberly affirms the doctrine of eternal, conscious punishment for those who reject Christ, depicted as "outer darkness" with "weeping and gnashing of teeth." "Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen": This foundational statement maintains the biblical tension between the universal external call of the gospel and the particular, effectual call of God that sovereignly draws the elect to salvation. Key Concepts The Nature of the Gospel Call: External and Effectual Reformed theology has carefully distinguished between two aspects of God's call. The external or general call is the sincere proclamation of the gospel to all without distinction, inviting everyone to faith and repentance. This call is genuine on God's part—He truly offers salvation to all who hear. However, due to total depravity, the natural person will not respond to this call on their own. The internal or effectual call is the sovereign, irresistible work of the Holy Spirit by which the elect are regenerated, have their wills renewed, and are infallibly brought to saving faith. This distinction preserves both human responsibility (we are culpable for rejecting a genuine offer) and divine sovereignty (God alone saves by His grace). The parable beautifully illustrates both realities: servants genuinely invite all they find on the highways, yet the King ultimately determines who is properly clothed for the feast. The Wedding Garment and Justification by Faith Alone The wedding garment represents one of the parable's most critical theological elements. In ancient Near Eastern culture, hosts often provided garments for wedding guests, making the lack of proper attire inexcusable. Theologically, this garment symbolizes the righteousness of Christ imputed to believers—a righteousness not produced by human effort but received through faith alone. This directly confronts any notion of works-righteousness or the idea that we can stand before God based on our own moral achievements, religious observances, or church membership. The man without the garment represents those who presume to approach God on the basis of their own righteousness rather than Christ's alien righteousness. His speechlessness before judgment illustrates that on the last day, no one will successfully argue their case on grounds of personal merit. This underscores the Reformation principle of sola gratia and sola fide—salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, clothing us in a righteousness that is entirely Christ's. The Tension Between Universal Call and Particular Election The parable's conclusion—"many are called, but few are chosen"—encapsulates one of theology's profound mysteries. This statement places two realities side by side without resolving the tension philosophically. The invitation truly goes to all (universal call), yet only some respond savingly (particular election). Reformed theology maintains this biblical tension rather than collapsing it in either direction. We don't limit the external call only to the elect (hyper-Calvinism), nor do we make the internal call dependent solely on human decision (Arminianism). Instead, we affirm that the gospel invitation is genuinely universal while the effectual drawing is sovereignly particular. This means Christians can proclaim unreservedly, "Christ has died for you" to any person, knowing the offer is sincere, while simultaneously trusting that God will infallibly save all His elect through that proclamation. Memorable Quotes "The most scandalous and tragic thing that could happen at a wedding or a wedding banquet is that nobody shows up. The guests don't come. Or in fact, not only do they not come, they don't want to come—they burn the invitations." "You don't bring anything to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary." "Many a man in this world will silence his own conscience with many a fair excuse. But in that day, there will be no excuse, no plea, no delay." - William Perkins Full Episode Transcript [00:00:58] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 493 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse, and this is the podcast where we will talk about every single parable. Hey, brothers and sisters. So when was the last time that you were at a wedding? I think weddings are one of the most glorious of all kinds of human events and celebrations, and I think the solemness of the vows and the promises that are exchanged between a man and a woman in marriage in that ceremony, or maybe only equaled by the joy of those same vows and promises. And of course, the whole point of coming together to celebrate a, a wedding. Is to make that joy consummate and complete by having others participate in it. The seeing the union of a man and a woman become one, the excitement of that love expressed in promise and commitment. It's an incredible thing. And I was thinking about this recently because our wedding invitation is actually framed in, in our living room because one of the guests that we invited gave that to us as a really thoughtful gift. And so our wedding ceremony and the party that followed, and it was a. Amazing and awesome party, especially thanks to my in-laws and my parents who generously made sure that that was possible was an exceptional event that we still talk about all the time. Actually, you know, in my wedding when we had this grand kind of wedding banquet afterwards, we had a friend of ours who actually performed the song that we danced to on grand piano and sang for us, which is amazing. We had a DJ in one room and we had a live jazz band in another, and I specifically recall. That when we left late in the evening, my new wife and I, that there were still people on the dance floor having a good time. And I thought, this is the way it's supposed to be. I mean, this is a wedding. This is a wedding banquet. [00:02:58] Why No One Comes [00:02:58] Jesse Schwamb: And so it also made me think recently, especially as we find ourselves in Matthew chapter 22, continuing to look at all these incredible parables that Jesus gives to us, that perhaps the most scandalous and tragic thing that could happen at a wedding or a wedding banquet is that nobody shows up. The guests don't come. Or in fact, like not only do they not come, they don't want to come, they burn the invitations. They wanna have nothing to do with the celebration or the ceremony itself. And so Jesus has been doing all of this teaching that we've been tracking, and he's been responding to these leaders in the Jewish community, the people we call the Pharisees and the scribes who have challenged his authority. And he's been progressing in the way that he's almost ratcheting up the language that he's using, the indictments that he's bringing to them. And now he's about to bring in weddings and specifically the wedding banquet. And that is where we're gonna find ourselves in a Matthew Chapter 22. Now, by the way, I should also mention that because my wife is super popular lady and super lovable. We had a pretty large wedding. I think we had over 200 guests, and so. Because my father-in-law is retired military, we were actually able to have our whole wedding banquet, our whole celebration and party on a local army base. But because of that, it meant that before you could actually get onto the base, all of our guests. Had to be searched. So it's nothing like, you know, basically just shaken down your wedding guests before they show up. So that also was super fun.  [00:04:32] Reading Matthew 22 [00:04:32] Jesse Schwamb: But let's go to the scriptures, everybody. So here's Matthew chapter 22. Uh, listen to this as we take a look at what Jesus has to say and why he brings in weddings. Actually, it might be helpful to say or to give you something, rather to listen to or listen for before you even hear me read the scriptures because. This parable of this wedding banquet, it is definitely one of the most theologically dense parables in the entire synaptic tradition. It is set like we've been saying within the final week of Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem, and it's embedded in the sequence of confrontational exchanges that he's having with the Jewish leadership because they have challenged his authority. And so as you listen to this being read, I want you to clue in, key in as they say to a couple of things. See if you can find the, like the Christological proclamation in this. There's a, a covenantal poll. I think there's some sociological instruction and there's an eschatological warning. All of this happens as is Jesus's jam in the short span of several verses where he illuminates all of these principles of the sovereign grace of God and the summons of the gospel. Total depravity and culpability of this, these rebellious people who refuse the call, the historical judgment of God upon the covenant breaking Israel. And then of course, the subsequent expansion of that covenant into the community include to include the Gentiles. All of this is happening. In this parable, and so I want you just to listen for that as we together read. Or in my case, I guess I just read, especially if you're driving, do not read the parable that begins in the first part of Matthew chapter 22. Here's the word of God. And Jesus answered and spoke to them again in parables saying The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and he sent out his slaves to call those who had been called to the wedding feast and they were unwilling to come again. He sent out other slaves saying, tell those who have been called. Behold. I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fon livestock are all butchered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast. But they paid no attention and went their way, one to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized the slaves and mistreated them and killed them. But the king was enraged and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his slaves, the wedding is ready, but those who were called were not worthy. Go, therefore, to the main highways and as many as you find there, call to the wedding feast. And those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found both evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who is not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes? And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for many are called, but few are chosen.  [00:07:50] Parable Context [00:07:50] Jesse Schwamb: Wow. So what an incredible. Story, what an incredible foundation or rubric or context in which so many rich theological concepts and pastoral concepts, doctrinal concepts are given to us from Jesus. And you'll notice that of course, chronologically here, this parable is following the parable of the two sons and the parable of the wicked tenants. Those are the vine growers that we were talking about over the last several episodes. And this one rounds everything out. It forms like a triptych of rejection parables directed against these chief priests and the Pharisees who keep coming after Jesus and his authority. And Matthew signals this kind of escalating tension. The Jewish leaders are now explicitly seeking to arrest Jesus. And Jesus responds not by treating their, not by retreating, of course, but by intensifying his indictment in this parabolic form. And here's where we arrive in Matthew 22. It's interesting to me, of course, that this is the approach that Jesus takes. He has already conveyed these two great stories, and at the end of the last one, Tony and I spoke about how this was where at least Matthew explains to us very directly that the, the Pharisees and the scribes, they understood, they discerned that Jesus was speaking about them, and yet Jesus says, I'm not done yet. I've got one more. And this is the culmination of all the things that he's been saying. And it starts again in verse one with Jesus saying, and again, he spoke to them in a parable. You know, it signals that the parable itself is still a reply. Not to a verbal question at this immediate moment, but to this ongoing posture of rejection exhibited by the religious leaders. You notice that what Matthew says here is very, I think, theologically significant in light of where Jesus explains that the parables both reveal and they conceal their instruments of divine judgment upon heart and hearts, even as they illuminate those with ears to hear. This is why I think it's just so important that as Christians. Even as we study God's word, as we participate in it, so to speak, as we let it read us, that we come with this posture of prayer, that we desperately need God's Holy, holy, holy Spirit to illuminate for us what the scriptures say, to lead us into the paths of righteousness and judgment, which are present in the scriptures, so that we may understand them with these spirit-filled eyes, with a spirit enabled brain with ears that have been unstopped by the spirit. So these parables are the mode by which Christ simultaneously honors and judges his audience. He shows indirectly what it would've been of no use to state plainly. And so the parable form itself is really part of the message here. I think that's something hopefully you picked up as we've been processing them all together, that Jesus opponents cannot arrest what they cannot fully comprehend, yet their incomprehension is itself their condemnation, right? This is, this is the mystery. Of the gospel of what God does, where there is this outward and full unbiased external call, and yet there is something that is efficacious by the power of the Holy Spirit for those whom God has chosen and called to himself so reformed to eus. Are attentive to the authorial intent in historical situatedness of each thing that Jesus says. That's one of the things I think is great about the way in which we kind of have organized our theological perspective and these parables function as a prophetic oracle of judgment. And certainly that's like in an Old Testament accent. I mean, that's the Old Testament jam. It's an Old Testament lawsuit kind of John. It's like law and order. If law and order were Moses, were doing it right. So notice that again, as Tony and I've said so many times before, what I kind of always find so phenomenal about these parables is that often we think of parables as having the main object of being a noun of some kind. It's a person, it's a place. It's a thing that is sometimes the case, but more often than not, it's one of those nouns associated with a verb.  [00:11:59] Kingdom And The King [00:11:59] Jesse Schwamb: And so we get that in verse two. The kingdom of heaven may be compared to what? To a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. And so it implies that the kingdom is being revealed and likened in a definitive act. We got verbs, loved ones. This is the classic. The ultimate, God does all the verbs because you're gonna hear her over and over again. God is going out. God is giving. God is seeking. God is going after, and these verbs are really the center of the parable itself. It's not just that it's the wedding banquet as maybe the title in your scripture gives you, but it's more about this giving of this event and it's preparing of this grand feast. And so the recurrence of this allegory seemed, I think, pretty straightforward to us. The the king is God, the Father, the Son is Christ, and the wedding banquet, which by the way in the Greek here is plural, is really emphasizing that it's a totality of an occasion. This is the Messianic feast. This is the eschatological consummation of the Covenant of Grace. And that image imagery draws like so deep from this Old Testament well and background of God as the husband and the bridegroom of Israel. Again, how lovely and amazing for Jesus and his thorough knowledge of the scriptures to draw in something that the audience would've been like, yes, I know what you're talking about. I'm totally down with that. And so the son's wedding is therefore not some kind of like incidental entertainment. It is the central event of all history, the installation of the Messianic king and the gathering of his bride. And of course, the people hearing this would've immediately gravitated toward that. I think they would've leaned in maybe even like smiled or smirked at one another, knowing that this was now all that veiled. What Christ was drawing on here was the classic presentation. Of the family of God represented in the children of Israel itself, being drawn back into consummate harmony with God the Father, where there was peace and unitedness, and a celebration of this fact that all things were now made and brought together, that God was restoring and bringing all those back to himself in his true and true kingdom that could not be thwarted. So the fact that the king gives the banquet, prepares it, sends servants, selects the guests, underscores this incredible modernistic character of salvation. I think it's impossible to miss here that God is literally doing all the verbs. The initiative at every point is divine. There's no hint here of synergism. The guests do not arrange their own invitations, literally. And so that's why in verse three, we see God, he sending out his servants. And of course that's a familiar theme. It should be to us. If you've been tracking with us the last several parables we've been speaking of because the servants represent the prophets of the Old Testament and subsequently the apostles and the ministers of the word. The invitation had already gone out to quote those who were invited. So it's this perfect passive parable in the Greek, it's, it's indicating a prior and standing invitation. This is the external or general call of the gospel going out through the preaching of the word. And notice that there is always a response. Even here, Jesus moves directly and quickly to here's what the response was. In other words, as the scripture has told us that God's word never goes out in returns void, there's always, as it were, a response here, that's illustrated for us very directly because the response is not so good.  [00:15:32] Invitation Refused [00:15:32] Jesse Schwamb: I mean, this is what would, this is horrible like wedding etiquette. They were not willing to come. And this verb I think is critical because it's volitional refusal. It's not mere ignorance. And reformed theology is insistent here against any kind of constellation that makes man's rejection of the gospel. A matter of insufficient information or circumstances we know better, right? We as people should know that we as Christians who have been changed, know that the natural man here is not natural, merely because he lacks the certain kind of information as if he could be restored or regenerated or reformed if we just knew more things. The will is in bondage to sin. And so as the Westminster Confession, faith says, man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation. This is classic Jonathan Edwards, like, you don't bring anything to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. For some reason in my head, I said that with kind of a, a weird, almost like southern attitude, which I did not mean to convey. But the point is that this refusal is total, it's willing, it's culpable, it's damnable, it's precisely that, which makes it all the more grievous. The invitation is genuine, the refusal is genuine, and the guilt here is entirely real. So the invited in verse three, represent all of Israel. I, I would say like particularly the leaders here, Tony and I have been talking about the responsibility of these, these leaders in particular to, of course, lead Shepherd, grow these people in faith and a love toward God in a way that is toward freedom and now toward more conviction around extraneous rules or heavy burdens that they set up for them that they cannot perform. And so we have these leaders who had received the covenantal promises and the prophetic witness. I mean, that's like classic Romans nine. The rejection of the servants echoes the pattern of prophetic persecution throughout all of Israel's history. So this is sad stuff. It's a sad beginning to have this grand wedding feast prepared by this king for his son set in motion with the invitations already gone out. And essentially all of those who have been invited have Ally refused.  [00:17:49] Feast Is Ready [00:17:49] Jesse Schwamb: But what's so incredible about God and his loving kindness is still represented here in verse four. The king does not relent after the first refusal, which is remarkable. I mean, this is, again, going back to our proper understanding that we love because God first loved us. That love always leads to giving. And so therefore, God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And when did he give his son? At the fullness of time when we were still at enmity, when we were enemies with him still, he sent his son for us and he sends, therefore a second embassy with an even more urgent and elaborate message that he gives them. He puts into their mouth. And the feast, again, is not merely planned. It's prepared. It's ready. The oxen and fat and calves are images of this lavish like sacrificial celebration. Everything's all slaughtered. Everything is ready to go. Now, I don't know the last time you've been to like an epic feast. I do mean like epic over the top feast. I want you to look up something for me. When you have a chance, look up, just go to your browser of choice and type in shady maples smorgasbord. Now, I don't know if you know what a smorgasbord is, but it's like a, I guess it's like a buffet, but like if you took a buffet and multiply it by a million and then only serve like rich, decadent food and more food than you could possibly really imagine and close to where I live, there's a very famous Amish style. Buffet called Shady Maple Smoker Sport. Just go look it up. 'cause it's gonna be possible for you to describe, but all I can say to you is this isn't just like your standard buffet, it's not just like a potluck where it's like, Hey, we got ham. And, um, we've got some salads and, uh, we've got that, uh, what's that? That weird stuff. You can I, the ambrosia, like we, we've got your hydrox cookies for dessert. This is the last time I was there and uh, actually I was there with my parents and my wife and they treated us. And because this was at a part of my life where my gallbladder was trying to attack me and kill me, I remember just being so ill while I was there feeling so ill, and yet just being so disappointed and bummed out that I couldn't eat all this glorious food because there was filet mignon and lobsters. And shrimp and fish and ham like glazed ham and like carving stations. And then for desserts there was like custards and pies and ice cream and cookies and whoopee pies. And it was this over the top celebration of food. And you couldn't help but just feel like, wow, this thing that we're doing right now is like incredible. I've also, I don't think ever seen my father sample so many different desserts because it was special. This was a, a lavish and incredible celebration for us, and it was prepared, it was ready to go. And we find the same thing here. And so the second sending corresponds to this ministry of the Apostles and the early churches proclamation to Israel. The urgency of the messages come now. It reflects this eschatological pressure of the gospel. A good kind of pressure as if like there's a tea kettle on the stove and it's heating up, and now it's starting to whistle and then to boil over. The kingdom has arrived. Loved ones, the feast is set, delay is inexcusable, and, and so the language of readiness, I think is this glorious language of the gospel. The atonement has accomplished. Christ has been crucified, risen, and exalted, and the feast of salvation is prepared. And what I love is that the reformed tradition consistently insists on the sufficiency of Christ's work for all and the genuine freeness of that gospel offer. I like this is what I usually go back to, is that the cannons of dort affirm this in this way. This is the quote. The promise of the gospel is that whosoever believes in Christ, crucified shall not perish, but of everlasting life. This promise together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and proclaimed to all the nations. The invitation is genuine and urgent. The feast is truly ready. [00:22:01] Mission To All [00:22:01] Jesse Schwamb: The church that I attend is part of the Christian Missionary Alliance denomination, and one of the many things I love about my church is that outward and continual focus on this very thing. That the invitation is genuine. It is urgent, and the feast is truly ready, and it is for all peoples. This freeness to, as we talked about before, scatter the seed of the gospel message unreservedly and without bias to all, all in your sphere of influence. All nations, all people, all tongues, all tribe. And my church is very serious about this. In fact, one of the things our pastor loves to do is oftentimes when he's giving it this kind of proclamation, in fact, just this Lord's day, he was speaking from Matthew 28 and about the Great Commission and the essential nature of that great commission is every Christian's promise to participate in that. It is something you and I are commissioned for and we ought to regularly evaluate our, what our prayers look like. What our finances look like and what our time looks like with respect to whether we are taking seriously that commission, which God has given to us. And so in reminding us of that very fact, one of the things he'll often say from the pulpit is he'll ask out to the congregation, he'll say, what is our middle name? And everybody will respond, missionary. And, and while it's a little bit trite, it reminds us that as part of like the essential ethos in DNA of who we are as Christians, and in fact in this particular year. One of the themes that the whole Christian Missionary Alliance nomination has been focusing on is all of Jesus for All the World takes all of us. I love that all of Jesus for all the world takes all of us. And so we have embedded in this parable here, so much of this intentionality of the gospel, of going out for all people, making this, this message and this mission available. Going out and speaking and preaching and witnessing and testifying of how great God is and what he has done in setting and preparing this gospel message for all people. But in verse five, we find out that even still with all of this, they paid no attention. They went off one to his farm and another to his business. In other words, the word here suggests this kind of contemptuous indifference rather than this active hatred that that actually comes a little bit later. But worldly affairs, a farm, some converse. All this displaces the invitation. And these are not wicked activities, of course, in themselves. Their wickedness consists in their displacement of what is the ultimate. And that I think is actually like very penetrating diagnosis of the human condition. The great enemy of the gospel, at least it seems to me, is not always, as you talk to people, like some kind of dramatic philosophical rejection, some well articulated hatred toward God. It's instead like a quiet absorption in the ordinary pursuits of life. It's like what I think Augustine called being curved inward upon oneself. The world is a great enchant. It be witches our souls, it distracts us. There are so many things that can pull us away from not only meditating on this gospel message, but coming alongside and appreciating. In participating in that great commission. There's so many things to distract us. It's, it's not as if we need a list. I think if I asked each one of you or you asked me, what are some things that you find distracting that pull you away from time and prayer time, studying God's word, time spent with my wife, time spent serving in my local church. I'm not gonna be hard pressed to find those things to say to you. So this idea that we have, whether it's the farm or this business pursuit here, I suppose it could be representative to at least great earthly loves. You have the land, kind of a agrarian rooted life, and then there's trade mercantile and acquisitive life. I mean, maybe these just suggests that the rejection spans all of our social and economic classes, both within Israel at the time and for us today. And so we move both from like this kind of cold indifference, this we'll have other things to do. I'm, I'm just too busy. And, uh, how many times do we really convince ourselves that we can justify our busyness when we feel the pull of the spirit that there is a need? We feel the pull of the gospel message because there's the gospel pressure to ensure that we are speaking truth and love to those around us. That we ourselves are responding to this invitation with our wholeheartedness, our mind, soul, and spirit, everything that we are, and we convince ourselves. Well, I just, you know, I have a lot going on right now. God, there's just so much that I need to do.  [00:26:34] Indifference Turns Violent [00:26:34] Jesse Schwamb: Now we get to verse six and things shift a little bit. Verse six reads, while the rest sees the servants and treated them shamefully and killed them. Now, what's interesting to me is the indifference, kinda just that cold lackadaisical ness of verse five escalates somehow into violence. In verse six, some of them invited not only ignore the servants, but actively persecute them. And so here we have them, basically are being told they treated them outrageously, shamelessly, they killed them, and, and that's really the language of the entire prophetic tradition, the killing of the prophets. In fact, this Greek word here is ris. It's a word for arrogance. Honor, violating, assault, a sin against the honor of both the messenger and the one who sent him both. Like the one who is the emissary and the one who grants power or vouch saves authority to that emissary. And so to assault the king's servant is of course, to come against the king, and this is an act of high treason. It's against the sovereign God of the entire universe. I, I like here something that Calvin notes about this kind of inexcusable aggregation of aggravation of Israel's sin. He writes, they not only rejected the grace, which was offered to them, but added cruelty to their contempt. That's incredible. Right? That's exactly what we do. We reject God. It's, it's of course like not only just taking all the gifts he gives us and pretending as if they're under our own authority or. Have been the result of our own talents or abilities. But instead, when we do this, we add cruelty to all of our contempt. And the reformed doctrine, of course, of total depravity is not merely the claim that humans are bad. It's the claim that following humanity left to itself moves progressively from the indifference. That we saw in the previous verse, verse five, two, hostility toward the living God in his gospel messengers, which we see in verse six. In other words, unless God constrain us, loved ones, that is the natural end of man to move from this place where I do not care about God till I hate him, and then I hate all those who represent him, all those who speak on his behalf. [00:28:46] Judgment On The City [00:28:46] Jesse Schwamb: And so the king's response here, as you might imagine, is one of anger. He's angry. He sends his troops and he destroys the scriptures, say those are murderers, and he burns their city. I mean, the verse is almost certainly this kind of pro prophecy filled in its intent and its content. It's I think, probably a transparent reference to the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies in 80, 70. And Matthew, even if we say he's writing after that event, or in like a conservative dating with prophetic anticipation, presents Christ as foreseeing and pronouncing the divine judgment upon the city. And this King's anger, of course, is not just, it's not anger that's looking for reciprocity. It's not just anger that's saying, this has made me upset and I'm responding viscerally and emotionally. It's not petulant rage. It is holy and righteous wrath of the sovereign whose grace has been despised and whose servants have been murdered. The destruction is complete. The murderers are destroyed, the city is burned to the ground, and there are foreign tradition kind of following. A covenantal hermeneutic, I think reads 80, 70 as this terminus of the old Covenant administration in many ways, and the judgment upon Nashville Israel for his rejection, for her rejection, rather of the Messiah, you know? While all of that is true, I think what this presents for us is a reminder of how serious our God's Holiness is. And that again, every time we sin, every time that we come against God and someone would challenge his authority as it were, either directly or indirectly, we put ourselves in the place of those who reject the gospel message. And in so doing, we ought to fall on our knees and ask for the kind of repentance that is necessary because we ourselves are putting our place, we're extending among. The murderers, and in this case, the, the message that Jesus has for those is only anger and again, is a righteous kind of anger. So one might imagine as we read in like the previous parables, that Jesus could have just entirely ended there. It almost sounds like we've drawn to a close.  [00:31:04] Invitation Rejected [00:31:04] Jesse Schwamb: Listen, there's a king. He has a wedding banquet for his son. He sent out last invitations. Nobody came. He goes to confronts the guests and not only do they say we're not interested, some of them are like, yeah, we burned all the invitations. And then the people that you sent to remind us, we killed those people. And it'll be right for the king to say. That's it. Everybody's done here. I'm shutting the whole thing down. And honestly, that could have happened in the garden. That could happen at the cross. Instead, we find something totally different. The parable goes on.  [00:31:33] Feast Still Happens [00:31:33] Jesse Schwamb: In fact, verse eight reads, then he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Notice loved ones that the feast does not get canceled. I mean, Christmas doesn't get canceled. It's just redirected. The king's purposes will not, cannot be frustrated, and this is a critical sociological and eschatological claim to me, at least. What we're seeing here is the refusal of the invited guests does not leave the wedding hall empty. Praise the Lord. It occasions the wider extension of the invitation.  [00:32:07] Gospel Offer Explained [00:32:07] Jesse Schwamb: And this idea of not worthy does not introduce a prior standard of merit by which the guests were found deficient. But instead, as you know, their unworthiness consists in their refusal To refuse the gospel is to demonstrate one's unworthiness of it. And so worthiness in this context is not some kinda like moral achievement, but it's a covenantal responsiveness. It's the openness of the creature to receive what the king graciously provides. It's why when we stand before God in the kind of judgment that we rightfully deserve, and he says something to the extent of, why should I let you into my heaven? Why should I let you enjoy eternal life with me? We should rightly say, because you promised. And because by the power of your Holy Spirit, through the faith you have given and instilled in me by this imputed righteousness, I can trust you at your promise. And so I think this verse is like so critical for understanding the well meant offer of the gospel. Again, we should together affirm that the gospel is offered to all without distinction, and that those who do not come are inexcusable. God does not will. The damnation of those who reject the gospel as a bare first intention, their damnation follows from their own culpable refusal.  [00:33:31] Mission To All Roads [00:33:31] Jesse Schwamb: And so the king says, listen guys, go out everywhere. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding piece. As many as you find. I don't know how you're envisioning. If you were listening to this story and you were like setting the actual scene, but I don't know, to me, I just find them, the, the servants or the slaves that they look at it one another and they're just like s go time and they just turn around and start going everywhere to all the places, uh, to anyone who will listen to all the like, stops that there were on the byways. All the highways, all the roads. They're just going through all the places. Wherever the road takes 'em, that's where they're going. And all along the way they're spreading this mission, this invitation, and the mission now. Is universal in scope. The main roads, literally the, the exits, the outlets of all these places. The thoroughfares, where the roads branch out of the city and the highways diverge in the countryside. This is representing, of course, like the ends of the earth, the places where any and all may be found. And the command here to as many as you find to go to those is of course, like a command of universal scope. It's for you and me, loved ones there. There's no prior qualification, rich or poor, Jewish, gentile, moral or immoral. This is the missio day, breaking through all ethnic and social boundaries, and in this loving way, in this pastoral way, it underpins the free and indiscriminate offer of the gospel. Again, like going back to the Westminster Confession and the shorter catechism, affirming this covenant of grace that is administered by the preaching of the word. And no matter where you work, like reform theology from like William Cur, David Bernard, like to the modern missionary movement, we're drawing from this mandate of precisely this kind of universal commission. You know, it's like Spurgeon, I think once said something effect of like, Christ has done more than give a general invitation. He has given an urgent, pressing, commanding invitation to all something like that. And I always remember that because when I think about what it means to step into this role of fulfilling the great commission of understanding what Jesus is saying here, it's not just as if we're saying, listen, the world is in a dire place. This is an emergency situation. And so for all of us in our sphere of influence. To bring forward this message of the indiscriminate offer of the gospel is to take God at his word and then to deliver that word to all of those, all the highways, all the byways, all the outplace, every tribe, Tong, nation. What a glorious thing that our God has given us and put us on mission in this way so that no matter who we meet, we know we might say Jesus loves you, that Jesus has died for you. This is, I think, one of the things that those who maybe are new to the reformed tradition and the theological perspective. Find a little bit interesting to parse out, or maybe sometimes if you've had conversations like I have people think that we're parsing the words too much, but there's something to be said for the death of Jesus being sufficient for all and efficacious for the elect, that we're not simply splitting words. There we're describing very discreetly, very cogently, very crisply. This indiscriminate gospel message while at the same time recognizing that it's God's sovereign choice and will to draw those whom he will to himself. And so in verse 10.  [00:36:54] Good And Bad Gathered [00:36:54] Jesse Schwamb: These servants go out to the roads and they gather all whom they found both good and bad. And so the wedding hall, guess what was filled with guests, because this is God's sovereign prerogative because he can do all these things because even those who have denied him does not remove him from power. That he does all the verbs and so the servants obey and the results are comprehensive. They gather in all of these, and Matthew's quick to say both the good and the bad, and I think like the good and the bad pairing is significant. I don't think this is necessarily meaning that there's the morally virtuous and the morally depraved, though that probably is included somewhere. But I think this, this more, this reflection that, once again, it's all kinds of people. For God's to love the world that whomsoever, all of those who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life. The wedding hall is filled, it was filled, and it's filled by God's sovereign action through human instrumentality.  [00:37:53] Visible And Invisible Church [00:37:53] Jesse Schwamb: And there is, like I'd say, if you're tracking with this, you should notice that there is a, a kinda a tension here. It sits between verses 10 and 11, and it's going to resolve the banquet hall is full. But you'll notice that it's not all within, well, not everybody who's within it are truly saved. And we'll get to why that isn't just a second. But the filling of the hall through the universal gospel summons does produce a mixed company. We've already talked about the parable of the terrors in the wheat before, so this, this should be news if you've been listening to us for a little while, but it's precisely the condition of the visible church in this age. Again, I just think it's fantastic that when we go to the scriptures, one of the reasons we know it's true is because God tells us the truth about the way things are. And we know that this is the way that the church is today. We would call this the visible versus the invisible church. And of course there's a distinguishing between the visible church, which consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion from the invisible church, which is the totality of the elect, those who God has actually called to himself. So the hole is full. But not all in the hall are clothed. And this is fascinating how Jesus brings in this idea of dressing of not, I mean, not what you put on your salad, a smorgasbord, but like what you're actually wearing.  [00:39:07] Wedding Garment Meaning [00:39:07] Jesse Schwamb: So in verse 11, but the king came in to look at the guests and he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. So notice that the parable scene here kind of shifts dramatically all of a sudden because the king arrives suddenly. He's present. He was speaking, he was giving instructions, he was preparing, he was a character, kind of chilling in the background. But now there's this eschatological moment the king's coming to inspect. The guests corresponds to this final judgment, and what he finds is there's a man without a wedding garment. He's at the center, I think of this parables, theological climax. So what, what is this wedding garment? I would put it to you like, as you're thinking through this and maybe interpreting listening for yourself, what do you think the wedding garment is? And I would say like what most reformed interpreters have been unified on is that this really represents that imputed righteousness, the the righteousness of Christ that's credited to the believer and received by faith alone. And so by a wedding garment, I would understand this to mean the purity and the holiness of that transforms and regenerated life, which is required of all those who are brought inside the true and invisible church. And though he immediately qualifies this as like righteousness, that is inseparable from justification. It is not earned, but it is received. In fact, I think, uh, I have my Logos Bible software up as I'm talking to you, and I see that Matthew Henry comments on this by saying, the righteousness of Christ is the robe of righteousness, the garment of salvation in which true believers are closed. I mean. That's a great turn of phrase, brothers and sisters. I love this idea of what the scriptures tell us elsewhere of putting on these garments of praise or worship, the garments of Christ, of being exchanged out as it were, for what is dirty and unsuitable for something that suits the occasion that is given to you to wear by faith alone. And of course, this wedding garment is not a work that the guest has produced, but it's a garment provided, uh, presumably like the king's servants actually supplied it. Uh, I, I think that's like a detail implied by the ancient custom and the severity of the guest condemnation for lacking it. It's almost as if the king is saying. Uh, like you were, should have been provided. Why did you not put this on? Why did by faith you not accept this? And this underscores the so gratia and so fide. The righteousness by which we stand before God on the last day is not our own, but Christ, it's received through faith. And the man without the garment represents those who presume to stand before God on the basis of their own righteousness. Whether that's religious profession. Moral achievement, charitable giving, mere church membership rather. And instead of. That alien and beautiful righteousness of Christ. So the fact that this man is inside the hall, you know, he's come in through the general call confirms that the parable addresses not only those outside the church, but those within it who lack genuine saving faith. It's almost, to me, kind of like an intra ecclesial warning. It's, it's not merely a missional observation. I think that is for all of us. It's why Paul elsewhere says. Check test, confirm to see whether you yourselves are in this faith because it is by faith that we put on these wedding garments which are appropriate and suitable for this great eschatological Messianic wedding feast with the lamb. [00:42:48] Speechless Before Judgment [00:42:48] Jesse Schwamb: So in verse 12, the king says to him, friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment? And notice the man's response. I, I almost find this kind of funny because he just says, and he was speechless. Like there was, there was nothing for him, uh, to, to say it all. And of course, like this question that's posed here, this, how did you get in here without the winning government? It's not a real question, right? It's not a question of genuine puzzlement. It's the same way in which when we find God walking in the cool of the day, in the garden after the sin of Adam and E, where he says, Adam, where are you? It's not a genuine question of a quizzical nature. It's instead, this rhetorical structure is God questions through judgments. And when he says to Cain, where is Abel your brother, where is Abel, your brother? He's exposing and he's condemning. He's not merely inquiring. And so this man in response, sensing this condemnation, discerning this condemnation, this judgment that's been brought against him, I think this is why the Greek says he was muzzled. He was silenced, his mouth was shut up. He had no answer. Uh, it's not because the question was unfair. But because there was just no legitimate words that he could bring there, there was no argumentation. In other words, there's no poll mic. There was no great debate that he could have. In this moment. Every mouth will be stopped before God. I mean, that's like Romans three. The silence of the ungodly before the Divine Tribunal is a consistent biblical theme, and we find it here. Again, this is the eschatological end to those who are condemned. No one loved ones is gonna stand before God on the last day and successfully argue their case on the ground of personal merit. I love William Perkins on this topic. He was apparently really moved. I learned by this verse and by what he saw in the silence as a profound warning against false assurance. So he actually wrote many a man in this world. Silence is his own conscience. With many fair excuse. Do you hear that? I, I love that turn of phrase. So we're talking about silence. It's about being silence, but I love how he says it's very easy to, to silence, not yourself, not like somebody coming against you with debate, but your own conscience. So he writes, again, many a man in this world will silence his own conscience with many a fair excuse. But in that day, there will be no excuse, no plea, no delay. So that time of plea is now, it's in this life. It's by faith and repentance, which is why there's an urgency to this gospel message. And so the king.  [00:45:17] Outer Darkness Warning [00:45:17] Jesse Schwamb: In hearing this and knowing that this man has no excuse for his outer attire, he says to him, listen to the servants. Bind him hand and foot, cast him into outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The sentence is severe. It's total. Of the command is given to the servants and attendance maybe in this parable and parabolic form, likely the angelic executors of divine judgment and it is binding. It renders the condemned utterly helpless. It's a picture of total divine control over the destiny of the ate. He has cast into this outer darkness, outside the light and warmth of the banquet hall entirely. And I think it's incumbent upon us to take a second and to grieve the repercussions of what is being said here. That the death and destruction of the ATE should make us grieve. It should compel us to go out into the highways, the byways, and to share this message. Unreservedly. One of the ways we know really the full anguish of what this entails is this phrase, weeping and gnashing of teeth, actually occurs seven times in Matthew, and it functions as this refrain, this chorus, this common language of this eschatological condemnation, it combines interestingly in this wordplay here, both the anguish of grief with the rage of frustrated pride. It's a portrait, not of this just like regret, but continuing imp penitent, hostility against God and eternal punishment. And I think if Tony were here, he would agree with me that we have consistently affirmed the doctrine of eternal conscience punishment. You know, the Westminster Confession says, the wicked who know not God and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be cast into eternal torments. In other words, this outer darkness is not annihilation. The weeping and the gnashing continues. It implies an ongoing conscious existence. It's the image of a binding stands against the notion of this kind of postmortem repentance or universalism. The severity of that verse, I think, really must be allowed to stand in its canonical context without mitigation. The, the severity of this judgment ought to fill us with fear, not theological domestication. We, we shouldn't set this aside and be saying, well, this implies that there is nothing after that time. No, there continues to be only time with God in his presence, in eternal, consummate joy and harmony and peacefulness and celebration. Or there is literally. A weeping and a gnashing of teeth, an unresolved rage and anger where that is punished by God because he's absent where there's unmitigated pain and suffering because it is absent the presence and the mediation of God himself, who even now in this world, holds us back so that while we are sinful and we are not as bad as we could or ought to be because of his great kindness, all of us, even those. Who are not believers.  [00:48:37] Called Yet Chosen [00:48:37] Jesse Schwamb: And so because of that, it ends with these very famous in stock words in in verse 14, for many are called, but few are chosen. And that concluding aphorism is, I think, the theological linchpin of this entire thing. The contrast between this idea of called and chosen, you know, this is the vocabulary that is deliberately covenantal and elective, and we shouldn't shy away from that. Of course, it's referring to this external call, the universal proclamation of the gospel to all the hearers. The call is genuine, it's earnest, it's gentile, it's sufficient as an offer. It is the call that goes to all the highways, all who hear the gospel are truly called to repentance and faith. And for me, in my own journey of understanding what this means as God has allowed me to, that has been critical. This idea that this universal call means that it is sufficient as a call to repentance and faith for all those who hear it. And then it does become the responsibility of all those who hear it to respond to it. And so this idea then of this pairing then with the chosen and the elect is referring of course to those whom God has chosen from before the foundation of the world. The elect are those who not only receive the external call, but are effectually drawn by the eternal efficacious call of the Holy Spirit. We can look to Romans eight 30, those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified. And I say, because this is a Reformed Theological podcast, and this is what you came here for, I presume, brothers and sisters. Then it behooves us to at least mention again that the reformed tradition has classically distinguished between that external or general call, the sincere well meant proclamation of the gospel to all without distinction, inviting everybody to faith and repentance. That call is genuine on God's part and God's doing the verbs in that as well. And then again, we, we set that over in next two, the internal, what we call like effectual efficacious call. It's sovereign. It's irresistible work of the Holy Spirit by which the elect regenerated, have their will renewed and are infallibly brought to saving faith. All those whom God has predestined unto life and those only he's pleased in his appointed and accepted time to affectionately call by His word and his spirit out of the state of sin and death to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. I was thinking recently of this idea of the narrow path and somewhere between like the scriptures there and pilgrim's progress, and paths and journeys. I had this image in my mind of the road on which we walk. And in this life, the natural man on that road encounters all these like intractable boulders, these things that cannot be traversed. These just great mountainous pieces of rock, which block the path. And so prevent us from at least accomplishing the thing that we would like. Like to live forever, to have peace with God, to be at peace with ourselves, to love our brothers and our sisters as much as we love ourselves to honor something that is greater than us. And those boulders are things like sin, death in the devil, which constantly invade us, which constantly thwart us, which constantly block us. And in Christ, what he has accomplished in salvation is not just, I think to remove those boulders, though that would've been good enough of course to just get them outta the way. Instead, it's as if he's taken them and he's crushed them, and now to the softest sand between our toes and we walk over them in victory by the power of his name through the Holy Spirit into eternal life. Into that grand wedding feast spoil, which we have been invited because he has done this because he loves us. And so verse 14 places these two realities side by side without resolving the tension. Philosophically, this is one of the great mysteries of theology. Uh, reformed theology does not collapse the distinction by limiting the external call to the elect alone as like maybe kind of a hyper Calvinist model, but it doesn't make the internal call dependent on a human decision. As like Armenian theology would instead, you know, the tension is, is biblical. This is here for us. It's here for us, because I believe that God wishes for us to submit our knowledge and our reasoning to him knowing that he is far and above us. And because this tension is biblical, it has to be maintained. The invitation is genuinely universal. The effectual drawing is sovereignly particular. How great is our God loved ones? There is no one like him. And so there's so much in this that I think we could spend all of the rest of our life thinking about, and that would be a noble, I was just thinking today that, um, you know, unless the Lord Terrys like, maybe this will be the last series me and Tony ever do, because there's so much that's rich and deep in these parables and there's so many of them, and the teaching of Christ is, is so complete of course, for us because it gives us everything that we need for life and salvation and godliness that. We find that the more that we look into them, the more that we ask the Holy Spirit to bathe us in a realization that comes from the spirit of God, the more that we will find. They challenge us. They encourage us. They equip us. So I'm thinking and praying for you all as I hope that you are for Tony and I as we continue to wrestle with these things as we continue to talk them out, because I'm asking God that he would equip us as we look at the teaching of his son in these parables with a firm understanding of the truth and equip us with his promises and with his encouragement so that. As he grows us in our faith, our faith for us would be like a thousand eyes and a thousand wings that we would find ourselves moving from glory to glory. Because we see in these parables the great work of God for us. What he has accomplished through his son and how he continues to be for us and the son who is given for us is with us. That we have his Holy Spirit within us and who discerns the mind of God, accept the spirits of God. So love us. Let's continue to get after what's being said in these parables here because there's so much for us here.  [00:55:14] Living The Commission [00:55:14] Jesse Schwamb: And might I add, just to tack onto the end, there's also so much for the world. I know that we're quick to say, or like colloquially Christians have said in the past like, Jesus is the answer, but you I think cannot necessarily fault the world for sometimes asking, well, what is the question? And unless we go forward with this proper understanding that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That all are in need of this savior and that this gospel message is for, in fact, for all people without reservation. Full stop. I guess I ask for you and I and Tony who's editing this episode, are we going out into the highways and byways? What is the proof of the pudding in the eating look like when we examine our lives, but with specifically our finances and our time and our prayer closet and our service? Aren't we in fact concerned with the great commission that is reflected here? Are we concerned with the emergence and urgent need of this gospel message, which is for all people because God so loved the world that he gave his only forgotten son. That whosoever shall believe in him will not per but have everlasting life.  [00:56:27] Community And Support [00:56:27] Jesse Schwamb: So come hang out with us. Come talk about this parable. You know where to go. But I'm gonna tell you anyway because that's what we do. If you go to your browser, type in T Me Back slash Reform Brotherhood, t Me Back slash Reform Brotherhood, that link will take you to an app called Telegram. Telegram is just a messaging app. It's like, I dunno, iMessages for Apple or whatever you Android people are using these days. And there's just a little community that we've sectioned off there. And it's a community of listeners to the Reform Brotherhood who are talking about all kinds of things. You, you wanna be in that group? It is. It is a great group. Don't, don't reject the invitation. Don't reject it. Just, just come. I know you're thinking, listen, I got land. I got commerce I gotta deal with. That's fine. Come, come and join us. So go to t.me/reform brotherhood. One last thing. I would be remiss if I didn't thank all of those who make sure that this podcast still goes out to all the highways and the byways of the internet. That there is no Jericho paywall around it because it does cost money to put out there all the subscriptions, all the distribution. It's surprising, but there are. Intense fees with a lot of that stuff, and so I wanna say thank you, thank you, thank you to those who have listened and said, you know what? I would like to make sure. That this continues to go on. I've been blessed just by the conversation. God has done something here because again, he does all the verbs. Tony and I do zero verbs, and so because of that, they've gone to patreon.com Reform Brotherhood, and they've just decided to give a little bit of the kindness of their heart and generosity to the Lord. So if you're thinking, you know what? I've been listening for a while, and I do appreciate that this just magically, as it were, pops up in my feed and I continue to listen to it. Would you please consider helping us? Uh, Tony and I and so many other listeners who give a little bit just to make sure that together we can keep this thing going strong. And again, you can just go to patreon.com/reform brotherhood. There's also a website, uh, reform brother.com and all kinds of other fun stuff. But I will leave that to you. I, I didn't even bring it up. See, I'm just so glad that you mentioned it yourself 'cause it would've been awkward otherwise.  [00:58:31] Final Blessing [00:58:31] Jesse Schwamb: So loved ones. There are still so many more parables to go. They're all so good. So I hope that you all come back and join us next time as we continue to move through these parables. But until then, there's something that you should definitely do honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. 

In this episode, Nancy wraps up the topic of meekness with a final look at Matthew Henry's teaching on governing others and receiving correction. She exhorts parents, teachers, and other authorities to govern themselves before correcting others, to avoid harsh overcorrection, and to receive rebuke with humility, patience, and a quiet spirit.  Find more from Nancy and others on Canon+: https://canonplus.com/tabs/none/pages/nancy-wilson 

Listen along as we continue our time in 1 Peter. Notes//Quotes: 1 Peter 2:9-12 - Faith Title: Earworm [Verse 1] Guilty running down the side of the egg I'm in love with the past, and the things that they said Guilty running down the side of my head I get by on the promise of future excess Guilty running, guilty running I put my back in waiting for something [Chorus] I keep waiting for the shoe to drop Microplastics in my lemonade I keep waiting for my friend to call And forgive me of my bad faith Guilty running, guilty, I'm running out of time - Hudson Freeman 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”   (Exodus 19:6&7) “They all make one family, a sort and species of people distinct from the common world, of another spirit, principle, and practice, which they could never be if they were not chosen in Christ to be such, and sanctified by His Spirit.” - Matthew Henry “26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31) “The community that is created by the cross, is not just a warm family or aggregation of people giving one another emotional support. It is an alternate society with different habits, different customs, different loves. It is a foretaste of the heavenly city to come.” - Timothy Keller  

In this episode, Nancy Wilson continues her discussion of meekness from Matthew Henry's The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit, describing quietness as the soul's stillness under provocation, anxiety, fear, and trouble, and urging women to take responsibility for calming their own spirits by faith in God. Find more from Nancy and others on Canon+: https://canonplus.com/tabs/none/pages/nancy-wilson 

Was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD really the worst tribulation in history? In this episode of the Olivet Discourse series, Matt Plett unpacks Matthew 24 and explains why Jesus described this event as unmatched in all of history. This wasn’t just physical devastation—it was a covenantal judgment. Jerusalem’s rejection of Christ marked the end of the Old Covenant world and the fulfillment of God’s promised curses. Drawing from Scripture, historical records from Josephus, and insights from Matthew Henry and John Calvin, this episode shows how 70 AD stands as a decisive turning point in redemptive history. You’ll also see how Jesus’ warnings about false prophets, tribulation, and the “coming of the Son of Man” were fulfilled in this generation—not as the end of the world, but as a Day of the Lord's judgment. This episode will sharpen your understanding of Bible prophecy, strengthen your confidence in Scripture, and refocus your attention on the advance of the Gospel in history.

Was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD really the worst tribulation in history?In this episode of the Olivet Discourse series, Matt Plett unpacks Matthew 24 and explains why Jesus described this event as unmatched in all of history. This wasn't just physical devastation—it was a covenantal judgment. Jerusalem's rejection of Christ marked the end of the Old Covenant world and the fulfillment of God's promised curses.Drawing from Scripture, historical records from Josephus, and insights from Matthew Henry and John Calvin, this episode shows how 70 AD stands as a decisive turning point in redemptive history. You'll also see how Jesus' warnings about false prophets, tribulation, and the “coming of the Son of Man” were fulfilled in this generation—not as the end of the world, but as a Day of the Lord's judgment. This episode will sharpen your understanding of Bible prophecy, strengthen your confidence in Scripture, and refocus your attention on the advance of the Gospel in history.Watch all of our videos and subscribe to our channel for the latest content >HereHere

Was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD really the worst tribulation in history? In this episode of the Olivet Discourse series, Matt Plett unpacks Matthew 24 and explains why Jesus described this event as unmatched in all of history. This wasn’t just physical devastation—it was a covenantal judgment. Jerusalem’s rejection of Christ marked the end of the Old Covenant world and the fulfillment of God’s promised curses. Drawing from Scripture, historical records from Josephus, and insights from Matthew Henry and John Calvin, this episode shows how 70 AD stands as a decisive turning point in redemptive history. You’ll also see how Jesus’ warnings about false prophets, tribulation, and the “coming of the Son of Man” were fulfilled in this generation—not as the end of the world, but as a Day of the Lord's judgment. This episode will sharpen your understanding of Bible prophecy, strengthen your confidence in Scripture, and refocus your attention on the advance of the Gospel in history.

How do you move from simply reading the Bible to truly understanding its depths?In Session 2 of the Rooted Conference, Pastor Daniel Batarseh shares the "Tool Belt" of hermeneutics he uses for deeper Bible study. This session moves beyond basic reading, equipping you with practical tools to uncover the richness of God's Word—focusing on finding Christ throughout the entire Bible and effectively using outside resources.In this session, you will learn:Types and Shadows: Discover how Old Testament people, events, and symbols prophetically point to the person and work of Jesus Christ.Biblical Allusions: Learn to recognize the thousands of subtle echoes and indirect references the New Testament makes to the Hebrew Scriptures.Essential Study Tools: A guide to using commentaries (Matthew Henry, David Guzik), concordances (Strong's, Blue Letter Bible), and quality historical books (The Puritans).The Power of Community: Why sitting under faithful teaching and discussing the Word with others is essential for spiritual growth.The Emergency Tool: A powerful strategy for when you lack the motivation to read your Bible.Whether you are a new believer or a seasoned student of the Word, these insights will help you rediscover a sense of wonder in the Scriptures and fuel a personal revival of the Bible in your daily life.

Synopsis: What we believe about God shapes how we worship Him — and how we worship Him shapes the kind of people we become. Lot's doctrine is too small to govern his choices. His worship has lapsed. And so he is selfish, graspy, and puts his household in harm's way. Abram believes the promises. He worships. And so he is magnanimous, generous, and secure. Lot chooses by sight. Abram chooses by faith. Lot takes. Abram receives. Lot has a rich land that endangers his soul. Abram is a pilgrim who rests secure in the God he serves wherever he goes. Matthew Henry said it best: "Lot had the paradise, but Abram had the promise." This is life between the altars. Sermon Text: Genesis 13:5-18

In this episode, Nancy Wilson continues through Matthew Henry's Meekness and Quietness of Spirit with a look at the problem of anger, explaining how meekness keeps reason on the throne, restrains hasty words, and teaches us to answer criticism and conflict with patience, humility, and a soft answer.  Find more from Nancy and others on Canon+: https://canonplus.com/tabs/none/pages/nancy-wilson 

In this episode, Nancy Wilson contrasts external adornment with the hidden beauty of a meek and quiet spirit, and draws on scripture and the words of Matthew Henry to show how trust in God, freedom from worry, and inward grace are of great price in the sight of God. Find more from Nancy and others on Canon+: https://canonplus.com/tabs/none/pages/nancy-wilson 

As we mentioned last week, Media Gratiae is currently producing a new study with Jeremy Walker. We're excited about this project and will share more details with you in the coming months. This week we bring you the final conversation between Jeremy Walker and Teddy James on the corporate prayer service. While last week's episode focused on preparing the heart for gathered prayer, this week turns to the practical side: How can a church begin a regular prayer service if it doesn't have one? And once it exists, how can we participate more faithfully—whether leading out or following along? We pray this episode equips and encourages you, your family, and your church as you approach the throne of grace together. Show Notes: The Corporate Prayer Service Sermons: Leading in Prayer: https://youtu.be/WjI_2I8O5Do Engage in Prayer: https://youtu.be/pLCHOFliU7Q Piercing Heaven - https://www.wtsbooks.com/products/piercing-heaven-prayers-of-the-puritans-9781683593348?variant=31497830793278 Valley of Vision - https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/devotional-books/the-valley-of-vision/ Prayer by John Bunyan - https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/christian-living/prayer-by-john-bunyan/ A Way to Pray (A Method of Prayer) by Matthew Henry - https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/christian-living/way-to-pray/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Share a commentA list of rules can feel like relief. You can measure yourself, compare yourself, and quiet the anxiety of not knowing where you stand. But that same checklist can quietly hollow out the Christian life, replacing prayerful wisdom with box-ticking and swapping dependence on the Holy Spirit for a craving for clearer boundaries.We walk through Paul's explosive line from Romans 6: you are not under law but under grace. We break down what that actually means in everyday discipleship: we are no longer chasing God's approval through law-keeping, we are no longer living under the law's eternal penalty, and we are no longer driven by law as our core motivation. Grace is not moral laziness. Grace is the dynamic power of God that saves and instructs, shaping holiness from the inside out.From there we contrast legalism and grace in practical terms. Legalism obsesses over external compliance while grace aims at internal character. Legalism is built on rules while grace is built on relationship with Jesus Christ. Legalism settles for conformity while grace pursues real transformation. We also offer simple guidelines for navigating gray areas where Scripture is silent, and we name the danger of “boundary markers” that masquerade as spiritual maturity.We close with the difference that matters most: legalism produces fear and more guilt, while grace produces fellowship with God and gratitude that fuels obedience, illustrated by Matthew Henry's unforgettable response to being robbed. If you've ever felt trapped between harsh rule-keeping and careless freedom, this conversation will help you find the better way. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with one area where you want to live more from grace.Explore all of our Biblically Faithful Resources at https://www.wisdomonline.org Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

Share a commentA list of rules can feel like relief. You can measure yourself, compare yourself, and quiet the anxiety of not knowing where you stand. But that same checklist can quietly hollow out the Christian life, replacing prayerful wisdom with box-ticking and swapping dependence on the Holy Spirit for a craving for clearer boundaries.We walk through Paul's explosive line from Romans 6: you are not under law but under grace. We break down what that actually means in everyday discipleship: we are no longer chasing God's approval through law-keeping, we are no longer living under the law's eternal penalty, and we are no longer driven by law as our core motivation. Grace is not moral laziness. Grace is the dynamic power of God that saves and instructs, shaping holiness from the inside out.From there we contrast legalism and grace in practical terms. Legalism obsesses over external compliance while grace aims at internal character. Legalism is built on rules while grace is built on relationship with Jesus Christ. Legalism settles for conformity while grace pursues real transformation. We also offer simple guidelines for navigating gray areas where Scripture is silent, and we name the danger of “boundary markers” that masquerade as spiritual maturity.We close with the difference that matters most: legalism produces fear and more guilt, while grace produces fellowship with God and gratitude that fuels obedience, illustrated by Matthew Henry's unforgettable response to being robbed. If you've ever felt trapped between harsh rule-keeping and careless freedom, this conversation will help you find the better way. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with one area where you want to live more from grace.Explore all of our Biblically Faithful Resources at https://www.wisdomonline.org Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/Support the show

I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 15th of April, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.We go to the Gospel of Matthew 26:40. This is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?” How much time are you and I spending in prayer at the moment? Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was the most testing time of His life on earth. He was sweating drops of blood. He was stressing out so much, full of fear and anxiety. He was God, but He was a man too, and He asked the disciples just to pray with Him and He came back and they were sleeping. “Could you not watch with Me one hour?” Folks, we need to really sharpen up on our prayer life. E. M. Bounce was a great man of God. He lived in the 1800's, but most of all, he wrote books on prayer. He was a prayer warrior. This is what E. M. Bounce said, and I am going to say it slowly because it is very important that you hear this. He said, and I quote: “He who does not pray therefore robs himself of God's help and power.” It is not God who is suffering, it is us. You see, when you pray, God speaks to you, and He gives you direction. Martin Luther, who was responsible for introducing us to grace - “and the just shall live by faith” - grace through faith, Romans 1:17 impacted his life, Luther said when they asked him, “What do you do when you get really busy? Do you cut back on your quiet time in the morning?” “No”, he said, “I get up earlier.” There is no excuse.Sir, I want to tell you, spend less time preparing your sermon and more time in prayer. That is what I am doing in my latter years because many a time I have got up on the platform to preach, and as I get up on the platform, the Lord says to me, almost audibly, “I don't want you to tell them about the subject of whatever it might be, I want you to change your message, and I want you to speak about something totally different.” That normally works out to be one of the best messages I have preached. We need to pray! Remember what we always say? When men work, they work, but when men pray, God works. And by the way, ladies, I am not talking about men only. Matthew Henry wrote the most extensive book, a commentary on the Bible, 6 volumes, but he was a man who used to get up at 4 a.m., and he worked on that commentary book for 8 hours a day, and he died at 51 years old. Today, spend more time in prayer and less time speaking. Jesus bless you and goodbye.

Group Guide Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week. TranscriptGood morning. Good morning. My name is Mike. I'm an elder in training here. Today is Palm Sunday. So we're taking a break from first and Second Samuel, the series we've been doing there. And we're going to be in the Gospel According to John. This is the Sunday before Easter, and this is the time we commemorate Jesus entry into Jerusalem. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the final week of Jesus life. Most of the Gospel accounts actually move pretty quickly from his entry into Jerusalem up to his death on the cross. But John is different. In the Gospel of John, the first 11 chapters are about Jesus life leading up to his final week on the earth. The next eight chapters are about his final week of life leading up to his death. So John really slows way down to capture some intimate moments in the life of Jesus. In fact, chapters 13 through 17 are all an account of his last night with his disciples. And so try to put yourself in that moment where you as a disciple, you've left behind your profession, you've left behind your possessions, and you've been living your daily life now with Jesus for several years. And things are starting to shift. Things are getting a little bit emotional, things are getting a little bit intense. And you can feel a sort of heaviness almost in the air. And that's what we're jumping into today. We're stepping into Jesus final conversation with his disciples before the cross. And Jesus knows he's going to die. And what we're going to read is what he chooses to communicate to his closest followers before his death. We're going to pick up today in John chapter 14. This is on page 525 in your blue Bibles. I would encourage you to follow or follow along there. If you, if you don't have a Bible, you can use that. We're going to begin in verse one. But before we do, I am going to pray because I need help. Father, we come before you now as your children, excited to hear from you and from your word. And I stand up here as a desperate man, but I know that you're the God of desperate people. Please help me this morning to forget myself and to teach people about you. In Jesus name, Amen. I'm going to pick up in verse one of chapter 14, follow along with me.> Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.> In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?> And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.> And you know the way to where I am going.> Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"> Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.> If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." (John 14:1–7, ESV)All right. He starts out by saying, let not your hearts be troubled. That is to say, don't worry. Don't let your heart be anxious. Well, why is he telling them not to worry? In the context of this passage, if you go back to chapter 13, he actually says some really heavy things to them, things that would really shake them. Chapter 13 and verse 21, he tells them that one of them is going to betray him. In verse 33, he tells them he's leaving, and they can't follow, at least not immediately. And in verse 38, he looks at Peter and says, you're going to deny me? Now? Imagine being in that room. Imagine sort of going along together, business as usual. And then one night, you sit down for dinner, and all of that comes out. Oh, think of it like us having family meeting, right? We're singing, we're playing games. We're having a great time together, thinking about all the things that God has done. We're there to celebrate togetherness. And Chet hops up and says, we're planning a church. Mike and Isaac are going, and some of you need to go. And it's like whiplash. Oh, no. We were here for togetherness. And so in some sense, I think there's a feeling in this room where he's telling them all these things that they're going to do or that they're going to be without him. And I think there's a heavy, heavy weight on their shoulders. I think their thoughts are racing, their minds are racing. They're thinking things like betrayal, you're going to leave. Peter is going to just cast you aside, huh? And I think the intensity kind of rings through. And I think if we were sort of in that moment, too, and someone was telling us that's what we'd experience, we would feel that weight as well.So Jesus knows that when hearing this, the disciples would just naturally be anxious. And he says, don't worry. How? Believe in God, believe also in me. And there's two things I think we learned from his response here. One is that Jesus actually contrasts fear with belief. Why because often our anxiety is rooted in untruths, in misunderstandings, in disordered thinking. And how you deal with fear and anxiety is you reorient your mind to what is true. But it's not enough to just reorient your mind to anything. It actually has to be something that's true. Matthew Henry, in his commentary on John, says, the joy of faith is the best remedy against the griefs of sense. So that joy, the joy that comes with faith in God, stands in direct opposition to the pain of our existence. And no matter what life you've lived, you either have experienced or will experience the pain that comes with being human or on this earth. Maybe it shows itself for you in sickness or maybe in toil, maybe in labor, maybe in fractured relationships. Or maybe, like the disciples, it's the impending loss of someone you deeply care about, or the fact that, like Peter, you're about to do something awful to another person, a person that you love, no matter what it is, that makes you anxious. Jesus says, believe in God, believe also in Me. And that's what separates Christianity from the other religions. It's not believe in yourself. It's not buckle down and get through it. It's not serve God better so he'll bless you more. It's believe in God, believe be in relationship with him, and throughout a lifetime of knowing him, be slowly changed to be more like Jesus. There is hope for the anxious heart. There is hope for those dealing with trials, and it's coming from the relationship with Christ.The second thing that we see here is when he says, believe in God, believe also in me, is that he's linking himself with. With God. And this is actually some foreshadowing of what he's going to say later on. But, guys, this is serious. And I think if you've been around the church maybe for a while, you're probably so used to hearing things like this, you know, yes, Jesus is God, that you may not really flinch when you hear it. However, this was an absurd and outlandish statement. How would the Jewish men who are sitting there with him feel? It would be almost to them, like someone saying, well, I played quarterback in high school, so I should be considered alongside Tom Brady. I acted in a middle school play, so I'm expecting an invitation to this year's Oscars. Or maybe me just walking up here and saying, well, hey, we're going to go plant a church. And those of you coming with me, you don't have to worry because I'll do all the work for us. I'll Guide us. I'll lead us. Put your trust in me. I have got this. I think that some of you, even knowing that those are illustrations, would probably recoil a little bit inside at someone getting up there and doing something like that. Just know that if that was something you're a little bit sensitive to, the Jews would be way more sensitive to something like this. They were extremely sensitive to blasphemy, which is claiming to be God, and rightfully so. This was actually, in their. In their law, punishable by death. So him saying, believe in God and believe in me is saying that he is God. And that's a big deal that is included here for us by John because he says later in his book that he is writing so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that in believing you may have life in his name. So John wants to communicate to us that Jesus is God. And he records this claim that Jesus himself makes when he says, believe in God, believe also in Me. And can I tell you actually how great of a thing that is? Because if a church planter or a spiritual leader or a political leader or whoever gets up and tries to act like he is on par with God, run away from that person, he will only let you down. But Jesus, God the Son, perfect in all his attributes, will never. For whoever believes in him will not be disappointed. And to those of you in this room who hold positions of spiritual leadership, pastors, group leaders, church planners, Baptist convention workers, kid city teachers, Sunday school teachers, right people follow you as you follow Christ. Do not lose sight of him on this journey. So Jesus is saying, don't be afraid of the things to come. Instead, believe in God and believe in Me.Let's pick up in verse two.> In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?> And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.> And you know the way to where I am going. (John 14:2–4, ESV)So remember, this ties back to chapter 13, where he's telling them he's going away. The disciples love Jesus and they're concerned because they don't know where he'll be. And he tells them that he'll be in heaven. Now, he doesn't say that to them directly. The metaphor he uses is a house with many rooms. He says, in my Father's house there are many rooms. And this is a beautiful thing to believe that in the Father's house, Heaven, there is room for every disciple. And of course, this is encouraging to the disciples that he is speaking with, but it's also encouraging to the disciples that are reading this in 2026 that the father has room for all of his children. And some of you are excited about that because, you know, it kind of just sounds great. But for some of you, it's probably a little bit different because maybe here on earth, someone did not have room for you. Maybe schoolmates or neighbors, or maybe your actual family. But here, Jesus makes a promise that rests on the gracious love of God, and that is that for his disciples, for his children, there is always room. You'll hear some version of this in the world today, but they'll tell you that you have to group up with people who are like you, who can relate to you, who accept you. But in the Father's house, all of us who believe in Jesus are grouped together and we're all equal. Equal in being undeserving. But because of Jesus, there is room for us all. And we talk like this here. Sometimes we say things like, well, we're going to multiply. We're going to multiply groups to make more room for people. Even though there's some sadness, right, that comes with leaving behind the people that we grow to love. There's excitement in being able to welcome people into the family. But there is going to come a day where we will be in the Father's house, and there is space for all of his children there. And Jesus says, that's where I'm going. And the reason I'm going is to prepare that place, and one day you're going to come and be with me there. And then he says, okay, you know the way to where I am going.Thomas responds in verse five, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? So Jesus is talking about heaven, and they don't really seem to get it. And Thomas speaks up and says, well, we don't know where you're going, so how can we get there? And if you're sitting there with them and you didn't realize he was talking about heaven, well, you might be wondering the same thing. I don't know. Maybe they were thinking geographically. Is he going up to Samaria? Is he going back to Galilee? Are we supposed to take 20 or 26? Is it faster to go over the dam? I don't know. It depends on the time of day. It depends on the day of the week, and it depends on the month of the year. And the disciples don't often follow exactly what Jesus is trying to communicate. But Jesus answers him. He answers him.> Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"> Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:5–6, ESV)So Thomas asks them, how can we know the way? And Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. And this is a classic interaction of God and man, where man is so locked into his own world. What he knows, what he can see, what he can perceive, what he can touch, taste, what he can feel. And Jesus responds from his perspective, his supernatural perspective, by saying that he is the way. If you want to go to the Father's house, you don't have to go north and then turn at the right spot. You go through him, through Jesus. In other passages of scripture, like First Timothy, we read that there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Jesus is the way to God. And this is turning the minds of men upside down, that they would need to get access to God not by a certain task that they perform, but by a relationship with Jesus. But he's not just the way, he's also the truth.> And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14, ESV)> Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:17, ESV)The Word is truth. Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus is the truth. He's truth right in front of them. But truth about what reality? That in six days God created the world. And on the seventh, he looked over it and said that it was good. He's the truth about humanity, that they were perfect and how they were created and their desire to elevate themselves to the level of creator. God corrupted them, introduced sin, and brought on them a curse called death. He's the truth about eternity, that those in sin are destined to be forever separated from God. He's the truth about hope. That one day, through the line of David, a suffering servant would become king and reign in peace and righteousness. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life.> For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)> Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." (John 11:25–26, ESV)Believing in Jesus is life. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And each of those on their own is incredible, but they do almost connect in some way. If he's the way to God, he must be true. God does not lie. If he is the way to God, he must be the life, because God does not die. And God, it must be true, because he does not lie. And if you see him, you've seen the Father. And so he claims to be both equal with the Father and the only way to access the Father.After hearing all of that, Philip has a request.> Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."> Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?> Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.> Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves." (John 14:8–11, ESV)All right, so hereafter, hearing Thomas question, Philip sort of exclaims, show us the Father and it will be enough for us. We just need to see the Father with our eyes and we will be good. And Jesus rebukes him and he challenges him, asking, how can you say, to show us the Father? Don't you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? And I think this is another thing where if you grow up around the church or in Christianity, you might be tempted to read it and say, boy, how could Philip be so dumb? I mean, this is so clear, right? And, you know, maybe we would have picked up on this, right? Maybe, maybe not. But the problem here is actually not about hearing or comprehension. And it's not that Philip just needs to get his ears checked or practice his social skills and do some reflective listening exercises. The problem is deeper than that. And it's actually in some way similar to the problem with Thomas's question. It puts too much reliance on the natural and it misses the supernatural. And this is actually deep within all of us, that idea that if we could just see it with our eyes, and it would be so much easier to believe that if God could just tell Us the next step, to take what job, to accept, where to live. It would be so much better for us. And we do what Philip does. We say, do that Lord, and oh, it'll be enough. We won't have any more doubts, we won't have any more struggles. We won't worry. We'll believe anything God says and do anything he wants us to, as long as he just shows us what we need to see. It is that easy. But that is not the system that he has created. He has created man to take what he says in faith, not always being able to prove things. And if you're wondering why he would do it that way, consider this. Consider the ability to know all things and to see all possible ways forward. And how everything on this earth connects together is such a powerful and and weighty thing that there is only one being in the universe who can handle it, and it is not you. If you do not have to exercise faith in God, but could see everything played out, it probably would go one of two ways. One is it might just overwhelm you to the point where you would be crippled because some of you have a hard time choosing what soap to buy when you walk down the aisle in Walmart and see 100 different soaps. The other is it would cause you to rely on yourself, on what you've experienced, on what you've seen, instead of your relationship with Christ. And some of you already struggle with that. You rely on your human experience, on the jobs you've worked or the events you've hosted. And if you and Philip could just see God, that would be enough for you. And how does Jesus respond to that? Have I been with you so long and you still don't know me? Right back to the relationship to knowing Jesus is knowing the Father, that the more you get to know him, the more you realize you don't have to see anything. And that your heart and mind are guarded by his love, not your ability to anticipate all outcomes or understand all the workings of the world. And that out of that heart that's deeply connected in relationship with Christ, you can say that> Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. (Psalm 23:4, ESV, partial)We must reject the temptation to believe that seeing with our eyes is better than knowing through relationship with Christ. Today I want you to understand that knowing Jesus means knowing God the Father, and that he is the way and the truth and the life.So what does that mean for us? How do we live in light of a truth like this? Well, Jesus is the way. He is our access to the Father. And if you've seen him, you've seen the Father. That means that we can be in true relationship with God. Terrific. That's really neat. No, this is the God who spoke the universe into existence. There is no more satisfying relationship than this. Not a best friend that you can laugh with, not. Not a spouse that you can confide in, not a child who you can nurture. No relationship can compare to this. Jesus is the truth. He is the absolute truth. He is true reality. And what he says and how he lives are the standard for how we should view the world. Jesus is the life. He. He is the victor over death. He has overcome this world. Do we need any of this, really? Well, the world would say no. There was an opinion piece written in the Washington Post in 2023 entitled, America doesn't need more God, it needs more atheists. Now, of course, I did not read it because it was behind a paywall. But that line of thinking is not new. In the 1880s, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote that God is dead, meaning that God, religion, and morality are no longer the foundations of society, but instead science and the reasoning of men reign supreme. So do we really need God? We've got the human spirit. We've got ingenuity. But what some call our greatest strength is actually, in fact, our deepest weakness. Because what did the serpent say to Eve when she wasn't supposed to eat of the fruit?> But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4–5, ESV)And she bought it and they ate the fruit because they didn't need a way to God. They would just be God. And sin and death entered the world. And humanity has been falling victim to that same exact desire for centuries. Do we really need the truth? If I say, go ahead and speak your truth, you can probably think of tons of times you've seen a phrase like that on the television or on the Internet. And what do people mean by that? What does that actually mean? It means I feel so strongly about this so much that it is reality whether you agree or not. Is that okay? Is it okay to determine what you think is reality? Can we function without objective right or wrong? Well, the answer probably always just depends on what kind of day you're having. Is that how we actually want to exist? Do we need life? Or maybe better phrased, is there any fear in death? The famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said, I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers. That is a fairy story from people afraid of the dark. And so if that is true, then why would we need any offer of life? If death is just the end of consciousness and we simply cease, then what really is the big deal? So what do you think? Are you satisfied with all of that? Are you satisfied with the idea that we don't need to access God because we can just be our own God and therefore we can determine what is true for ourselves and then we die and it's just nothingness? Or does something sear hot within your soul? Does something deep within you recoil at the idea of man, makes his own destiny? Does something cry out alongside the philosopher Blaise Pascal, who said that there is an infinite abyss within man that can only be filled with an infinite God? Guys,> The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19:1, ESV)and he says,> I am the LORD, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:5, ESV, partial)He is real. We are his creation. We need Him. And we're separated from him by our sin, by our insistence that we got this, that we can be in charge, that we can determine the truth. And this intrinsic rebellion causes our separation from Him. And that separation from him, what it really is, is the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's the deepest unrest you've ever experienced. It's total darkness. It's absolute silence. And that's us without him, without any hope. Until one night a few thousand years ago, a child was born. And that night God the Son entered humanity. And he grows up and he lives a perfect life, which we could never do. And he starts saying stuff like, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. And no one comes to God except through me. And I and the Father are one. And he is the only one who could ever actually make those claims. And they want to kill him for it, and he lets them. And he goes willingly to a death on a cross where God crushes him and makes Jesus the one who never sinned to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And if we repent of our sins and put faith in this Christ, this absolute truth, we have a way to God and we have eternal life. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. And when you know him, you know the Father and there is room for you because he guarantees it.And so Christian, if you know Jesus and you know he's the way to God, does your life reflect it. Perhaps you want to believe what he's saying, but deep down you're just a little bit skeptical, like what he is offering is too good to be true and you rather fall back on what you can do, what you can earn, and how many friends you have. If so, repent. Rest in his work do you ever take the relationship for granted? You pray when there's danger, but when things are good, it doesn't really matter to you that you have access to God. If that is you, repent of your self sufficiency and talk to him in prayer. Listen to him through His Word. Enjoy what it means to really know God. To the one today who feels downcast from broken relationship and loss, remember that there is room for you in the Father's house. The band is going to come back up. My hope today is that if you know him, you will respond to this in praise and worship to Jesus because He has reconciled you to God. And that will go into this week with our Good Friday remembrance and our celebration of the Resurrection next Sunday. Absolutely in awe of Jesus. And if you don't know him, please, please take one of those blue Bibles home and read the Gospel of John. You can know him and you can have a relationship with him and nothing will ever change your life like that.Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for Jesus coming to this earth to be the way, to be the truth, to be the life. And we thank you that we have access to you through his sacrifice. We give glory to you in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Way back in episodes 170-180 I did a study through this book and I have wanted to get back into it to get us back on track with the gospel. Pastor Sean DeMars on “American Gospel Christ Alone” documentary says “The gospel is central, The Gospel is never something you gradate from.” I also wanted to dive back in on this for deeper study and growing in discernment against false doctrines/cults. Paul in these lines of writing talks about his continued journey and how it has been preserved by The Lord and is continually fruitful. He then dives into how these men are categorized as “false brothers.” I break down the crazy story between Paul and Peter and the other to best understand it step by step. Then near the end Paul starts this understanding of how the law is applied in our lives as believers.Bible portal website:https://www.bibleportal.com/commentaries (Matthew Henry and Dr. Thomas Constable is on here, I will have Matthew's on hand commentary at the last link)Blue Letter Bible Galatians 2 Greek manuscript: https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/gal/2/1/t_conc_1093021David Guzik Enduring Word commentary on Galatians 2:https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/guzik_david/study-guide/galatians/galatians-2.cfmJohn MacArthur study Bible:https://churchsource.com/products/esv-macarthur-study-bible-2nd-edition-unleashing-gods-truth-one-verse-at-a-time?currency=USD&variant=42369052999777&stkn=0537a4b57eb9&msclkid=aba5ecd46d98138429d6855a2217b293&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=HOLD+|1200236.787030|+3+GShop+Bibles+3x&utm_term=4583657877078475&utm_content=All+Bible+ProductsWilliam MacDonald commentary:https://www.christianbook.com/believers-bible-commentary-second-edition/william-macdonald/9780718076856/pd/076856?en=bing-pla&event=SHOP&kw=academic-20-40|076856&p=1179517&dv=c&cb_src=bing&cb_typ=shopping&cb_cmp=73125296&cb_adg=2725437730&cb_kyw=default&msclkid=a59a3422461f1f130d805dac09a56379&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=B_Shopping: Main&utm_term=4580290578992195&utm_content=s-academicJohn MacArthurs sermon on sanctification (SO GOOD IT HELPED ME SO MUCH)https://youtu.be/r4YwFHLDSkI?si=HGGUNZxDhTsdzrOMMatthew Henry's complete on hand commentary:https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Henrys-Commentary-Whole-Bible/dp/1598562754/ref=asc_df_1598562754?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80126962061080&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=104698&hvtargid=pla-4583726540889258&psc=1

In this episode, Micah Herbster continues the journey through Psalm 119 with verses 101–104, part of the thirteenth stanza—a section centered on pondering and practicing God's Word with both discipline and delight.After reading the passage, Micah walks verse by verse through the Psalmist's testimony, highlighting the clear purpose statements woven throughout the text. Each action is tied to a reason—revealing how obedience to God's Word is never accidental, but intentional.Listeners will explore four defining responses to Scripture:Restrain — learning to hold back from evil in order to obey God's Word, recognizing that true holiness involves a growing hatred for sin.Remain — staying on the path because the Lord Himself is our Instructor, illustrated through the vivid picture of a climber trusting a Sherpa to guide them safely up Mount Everest.Rejoice — discovering the personal sweetness of God's Word, more delightful than honey, savored through meditation and spoken with joy.Repulse — gaining understanding from Scripture that produces discernment and a settled rejection of falsehood and evil.Drawing from rich cross-references and timeless voices like Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, and Thomas Brooks, this episode emphasizes that God's Word does more than inform—it shapes our affections, directs our steps, and trains us to love what God loves and hate what He hates.The episode closes with a prayerful response, “praying the Psalm,” inviting listeners not just to study the Word, but to live it.A thoughtful and practical meditation for anyone seeking to walk wisely, love Scripture deeply, and follow the Lord with understanding and conviction.

John 16:13-14 (NKJV)However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. Matthew Henry wrote —All the gifts and graces of the Spirit, all the preaching, and all the writing of the apostles, under the influence of the Spirit, all the tongues, and miracles, were to glorify Christ.Recently, I hosted one of our monthly online women's gatherings for the Women's Bible Club and the Mercy Room. Our theme this year is Teach Me to Follow.We have been praying for each other to become more sensitive to His promptings. I will share a story of how His prompting to linger on some verses drew me into a beautiful view of Him. “He will glorify Me”— If the Holy Spirit wants to glorify Jesus to you, or through you, stop everything and follow. What a lovely view He wants to share with us. If you would like to support this podcast with a monthly or one-time gift, thank you!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.sherriyoungward.com/support⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To find out about upcoming gatherings and new projects, please join my email list at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.sherriyoungward.com

As we look at the 5th church in the book of Revelation we come to the church in the city of Sardis. Very interesting Church, they were not in similar surrounding threats or sinful influences as other churches, but they had lacked what I came to agreement with when Matthew Henry categorize this church as “hypocrites” and I share further on that. I also share some insight on “one's name being blocked out from the book of life.” This term can scare believers when they first read it, but I share some commentary and some insight to help us understand when this term is used.Josiahmovius12@yahoo.comBible Portal website for free commentary and great resources:https://www.bibleportal.com/commentaries

In this episode, Diana's special guest Jake Doberenz, founder of Theophany Media and host of the Creatively Christian podcast, shares his expertise on effective Bible study. The discussion covers essential principles of biblical interpretation, the importance of studying scripture in community, and approaches to understanding difficult passages. Listeners are also guided on selecting appropriate Bible translations and utilizing various online resources, ensuring a comprehensive and balanced approach to scripture study. The episode concludes with a prayer for listeners' spiritual journey and their engagement with the scriptures. Bio: Jake Doberenz isn't one thing. He identifies as a polymath, a Renaissance man, or a multipotentialite–one interest or specialty can't contain him. But enough of the third-person. I am a writer, speaker, minister, and creative thinker living in Oklahoma City, OK with my wife Samantha. My most significant role is the founder and president of Theophany Media, a Christian education company dedicated to helping Christians engage with culture through new media. I have earned my Master of Theological Studies at Oklahoma Christian University, the same place I earned my Bachelor's degree in Bible with a minor in Communication Studies. I also worked at my alma mater as a Resident Director and Bible TA. I write fiction and nonfiction in a variety of mediums, including poetry, short stories, books, stage plays, academic essays, and devotionals. I also venture out into other mediums, like podcasts and video. My favorite topics of choice to discuss and write about (though always changing) include: creating Christian art, helping people understand the Bible better, Christian identity, theology of social media, use of humor in faith messages, superheroes and theology, and a Christian response to culture. If you want to see his progress, achievements, and appearances sign up for the newsletter so you'll never miss an update! website: Home – Jake Doberenz 00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message 00:47 Welcome to the Podcast 01:44 Introducing the Guest: Jake Doberenz 02:43 Jake's Background and Interests 05:56 Jake's Teaching Journey 10:46 Bible Study for Abuse Survivors 13:25 Choosing the Right Bible Translation 18:42 Understanding the Bible Without Knowing Greek or Hebrew 21:34 Basic Rules of Bible Interpretation 25:43 Embracing Uncomfortable Bible Stories 26:47 Using Jesus as a Lens for Interpretation 30:54 The Importance of Community in Bible Study 34:14 Red Flags in Spiritual Leadership 37:02 Recommended Bible Study Resources 41:33 Exploring Different Perspectives 44:58 Connecting with the Speaker 46:29 Closing Prayer and Final Thoughts   Website: https://dswministries.org Subscribe to the podcast: https://dswministries.org/subscribe-to-podcast/ Social media links: Join our Private Wounds of the Faithful FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1603903730020136 Twitter: https://twitter.com/DswMinistries YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxgIpWVQCmjqog0PMK4khDw/playlists Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dswministries/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DSW-Ministries-230135337033879 Keep in touch with me! Email subscribe to get my handpicked list of the best resources for abuse survivors! https://thoughtful-composer-4268.ck.page #abuse #trauma Affiliate links: Our Sponsor: 753 Academy: https://www.753academy.com/ Can't travel to The Holy Land right now? The next best thing is Walking The Bible Lands! Get a free video sample of the Bible lands here! https://www.walkingthebiblelands.com/a/18410/hN8u6LQP An easy way to help my ministry: https://dswministries.org/product/buy-me-a-cup-of-tea/ A donation link: https://dswministries.org/donate/ Jake Doberenz [00:00:00] Special thanks to 7 5 3 Academy for sponsoring this episode. No matter where you are in your fitness and health journey, they've got you covered. They specialize in helping you exceed your health and fitness goals, whether that is losing body fat, gaining muscle, or nutritional coaching to match your fitness levels. They do it all with a written guarantee for results so you don't waste time and money on a program that doesn't exceed your goals. There are martial arts programs. Specialize in anti-bullying programs for kids to combat proven Filipino martial arts. They take a holistic, fun, and innovative approach that simply works. Sign up for your free class now. It's 7 5 3 academy.com. Find the link in the show notes. Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer songwriter, speaker and domestic violence advocate, [00:01:00] Diana . She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help. Now here is Diana. Hey there, everybody. Come on in, set for a spell. How are you guys doing? I appreciate your support in listening to the podcast, and I hope that you are enjoying some really encouraging words and practical things for you to do your own Bible study and read the word of God for yourself. We have a new guest on the show now I'm very familiar with his podcast, creatively Christian. I've been on his podcast. His show has a few different interviewers. And so [00:02:00] Andrea Sandifer, who you guys know that was on the show, she interviewed me on her show. And our guest today, Jake Doberenz, the man behind that podcast, he is a funny guy. He likes to bring humor from the Bible. And I've been reading his blog and following his newsletters. And his Facebook group. So I thought he would be a great addition to the podcast , and I think you're gonna love him. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about him. He has a lot of interest here, so here we go. Jake, Doberenz isn't one thing. He identifies as a polymath, a renaissance man or a multipotentialite. One interest or specialty, can't contain him. So he [00:03:00] says of himself, but enough of the third person. I'm a writer, speaker, minister, and creative thinker, living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. My most significant role is the founder and president of Theophany Media. A Christian education company dedicated to helping Christians engage with culture through new media. I have earned my Master of Theological studies at Oklahoma Christian University, the same place I earned my bachelor's degree in Bible with a minor in communication studies. I also worked at my alma matter as a resident director and bible ta. I write fiction and nonfiction in a variety of mediums, including poetry, short stories, books, stage plays, academic essays, and [00:04:00] devotionals. I also venture out into other mediums like podcasts and video, my favorite topics of choice to discuss and write about. Although always changing, include creating Christian art, helping people understand the Bible better. Christian identity, theology of social media, use of humor in faith messages, super heroes and theology, any Christian response to culture. So this is gonna be awesome. So I hope that you enjoy my conversation with Jake Doberenz. Please welcome to the show, Jake Doberenz. Thanks for coming on today. Sure thing, anytime. I'm glad to be here. I really enjoyed being on your [00:05:00] podcast, A creatively Christian, and Andrea interviewed me and then she was on my podcast and I follow your Facebook group and get your. Very humorous email newsletter. And so I thought you were the perfect fit to come on to the podcast. And you're a bible geek like me, and you have a different perspective on life. In the Bible, you find humor in the Bible, which a lot of people don't find the Bible very funny. So welcome to the show. Yeah, I'm glad to be here providing some humor and quite possibly even some wisdom and intelligent comments. We'll see if we get to that part. So you haven't been on the podcast before, so. Tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your family. Okay? Yeah. Always a fun question because where do you [00:06:00] start? Where do you end? But yeah. I am in Oklahoma City right now. I'm an Oregon native and got stuck in Oklahoma. Stuck sounds too negative, but I got planted here. That sounds better. I got my bachelor's degree in biblical studies with a minor in communication studies. I have a Master's of Theological studies and for a while I was kind of going down the Bible professor route. That was gonna be my thing. And it's not like completely off the table right now, but it is not my chief kind of path anymore because there are not a lot of jobs in that area and there's a lot of different things there that make it quite challenging. A lot of schooling, a lot of debt for maybe not so much reward, but we'll see what the future brings. I am still flexing my desires to write and teach. That has always been what I wanted to do, even when the subject changed, even when it [00:07:00] was cat psychology or whatever, I always wanted to write and teach and so I'm still doing that in in different ways. I'm certainly still using my degrees, even though I'll be going into teaching middle school geography this year. Ooh, kind of a new adventure. Add some more skills and weird things on my resume. That's kind of how I do it. So geography. Cool. I think that's me. Yeah. Yeah. That's very brave. Middle school, that particular age, did you pick the age group you were teaching or did they just kind of throw you in there? I applied to high school and middle school. I wasn't going to do anybody under middle school and the high school jobs never called me back. And the, I got some different offerings on the middle school side of thing, so I said, okay, that's what you want me to do. God, I will walk into this wilderness. And then they gave me some kind of choices between, and I chose sixth grade specifically, so I'll be with, with sixth graders. [00:08:00] They, uh, we still have some childlike heart and wonder. They're not so jaded like they get when they're a little older, but they're just mature enough where you can start to get a little more serious. So good age. Hmm. I liked sixth grade. It was a good year. We'll be praying for you either way, because that's a lot of work and mm-hmm. But geography's cool. I like Bible geography. Ever since I went to Israel in 2019. How different reading the Bible is when you've been to those places. Have you been to Israel? I haven't. No, I haven't. Yeah. If you're into geography, you would really love going to Israel for obvious reasons, of course, but geography, it just makes the Bible come alive when you've been to the place where Jesus put legion into the herd of pigs and over the cliff. Sure. And I've been to that cliff, and so you can see it now in your head. It's awesome. Or you've been on the Sea of [00:09:00] Galilee and you can actually imagine Jesus walking on the water and because been in the boat. So, yeah, I'm just getting into being interested in geography right now. There you go. Yeah. Cool. What would you say is your particular specialty as far as Bible goes? Yeah. I did my master's thesis on Paul's view of spiritual formation, specifically from one Corinthians chapter three, verse three. Four, just around there. So that's a very specific kind of thing. Most of my training has actually been more on the New Testament side. Specifically Paul, I've done a lot of more academic work with the use of children as a metaphor in the Bible. I've done work with that in both Paul and the Gospels. Sexuality in the New Testament has been something I've kind of explored. [00:10:00] Nowadays though, I have more of theological interests and I'm asking some different kinds of questions. You don't divorce theology from the Bible, but they're just different kinds of questions and different kinds of, and ways and sources for that. But in terms of Bible, yeah, a lot of studying Paul and a lot of thinking about sort of how he makes arguments and specifically like in that thesis, it was all about how he used this metaphor about. Being an infant in Christ, what does all that mean? And how does that reflect how we grow as people? And so I've gone down those kind of rabbit trails a lot my my day. That's really interesting. A Paul's usually a favorite Bible character. Most people, though you can, you never go wrong with the Apostle Paul now. So today we're talking about Bible study for abuse survivors. And reason why we're doing this is because when we've gone through abuse, usually there's some spiritual [00:11:00] abuse involved and we want to distance ourself from God because we've experienced that spiritual abuse and that affects our relationship with God. And a lot of people once they leave or get out of the abuse. Then they're like, okay, I don't wanna read the Bible, I don't wanna pray, and I don't wanna go to church anymore. I don't trust anybody. But I'm trying to encourage on this podcast to come and if you have questions, let's talk about the questions. So, so I've kind of answered my own question, why should we study the Bible for ourselves? But what would you say to that or add to that? Yeah, I think what I would add to that is that, um, one thing that our teachers or pastors or scholars don't have is that they're not you. You are yourself and you come with your experiences and you come [00:12:00] with your own personality and identity, and you are gonna often pick up things that other people might miss, or you're gonna just sort of focus on things more realize as a thread of a theme or something like that. We, we shouldn't come to the Bible biased necessarily, or with too many preconceived notions. 'cause then the text starts to say what we want it to say. That's not what I'm saying. But we do bring ourselves to the text and we have to admit that like, I'm not reading this in a vacuum. I'm reading this because of who I am and what I've experienced and all these things like that. And I think that's really powerful. And I think the Bible is, it's strong enough to take it. Like it's not about pulling whatever meaning you want from it, like I said, but it is about seeing things that are hidden in this multi-layered onion like text here that has so much stuff in it that we can't expect. Even a really smart [00:13:00] guy to just know everything. So yeah, we gotta study the Bible for ourselves. We gotta do our own digging and our own reading. See what we can find. Yeah, I like that answer. Bringing yourself to the table that's. Different than what somebody else would bring to the table. So let's start with something everybody asks about. When it comes to Bible study, you go to the bookstore and you're trying to pick out a Bible, and there's a gazillion different Bible versions out there, and too many versions, in my opinion. Which one do I pick? Does it matter? At the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter. There are those that are better than others, and I'm the term better here. You can use that in different ways. I'm using the term better as in. More accurate to the text, although, hey, we are translating language here. [00:14:00] Translation is an art, not a science, which makes us a little uncomfortable. We can still get that meaning across. You're a, you're an artist and you're a creative. You can still communicate accurately and faithfully even through a song or something like that. And so in the same way, translation is a little bit of an art form and there are people that have to choose certain words, and I think this means that. So yeah, there are some that are more quote unquote scholarly and others that are more paraphrased, like the message, or it's something like the amplified Bible that is just trying to sort of squeeze some more possible meaning out there by becoming like glorified the Sorut. So you got some different options. Most readings are probably not gonna hurt you, at least. As long as you understand like kind of what's going on here. I know in the past the King James has had the word unicorns in it and that that threw some people off and then later we're like, actually we should have translated that. Like Gazelle was not supposed to be translated unicorn. So [00:15:00] okay, we can get some things here that might throw some people off, but as long as we kind of give some grace to the translators, something like the King James is older and we have some different data. We have some older manuscripts that we're pulling from now. So yeah, it's gonna be a little bit more closer to what the originals were saying kind of thing. So yeah, there are those considerations, but I don't think you're gonna make or break your faith if you read the ESV over the NRSV or something like that. Yeah, well I came from a camp that, uh, they were very definitive in what Bible you should read and which ones you should not read and Sure. And they were very dogmatic in that I've changed my stance since then. Because I've actually dug into that sort of thing that okay, you, so you're saying that most of the mainline translations out there, we will still get the main [00:16:00] point of what Bio was trying to say. Right. Yeah, I don't know any that are too left field and crazy or something like that. There are versions, like, I could be wrong about this, but I think the Jehovah's Witness has versions of the Bible that seem to play a little fast and loose with some things and have cut out some different stuff. So obviously I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for Christians. The only other thing I would say is make sure a bunch of different people were involved. Most translations are. Large groups of people. And then you have things like I mentioned the message that Eugene Peterson did, it was just him, but he wasn't necessarily trying to make a definitive thing. That's more of a paraphrase translation, which is like a devotional rather than something to study. So there are just different uses for all these different things. There are, I could go into the weeds. My dad used to own a Christian bookstore. Oh. And so you have your thought for thought translations and then you have your word for word. And [00:17:00] some people think word for word is better because it's more accurate. But the thing, the problem is the Bible might literally say X, but when we translate that word to today, it makes no sense because language is weird like that. And then so the thought for thought is going to be more of an interpretation, but they're trying to say, okay, but what this is trying to say is this and, and here's a thought that you can digest and that makes sense to you. So it's just kind of what you want, but thanks to the internet. In fact, on another screen here, I have pulled up Bible gateway.com. That's what I use a lot. You can look through all sorts of different translations and compare and contrast. If I really wanted to study with more than one, it's legal in most states, so go for it. It's funny you mentioned the message because that was my first Bible when I got saved. My okay friend that I met in high school, I told her I had gotten saved and I didn't have a Bible, and she gave me the message, which [00:18:00] was her Bible, and I loved it. Oh yeah. I highlighted that thing and Oh yeah. And I just tore it up with underlining and I couldn't wait to read it. And then of course you get to Bible college and they tear it out of your hands, so yeah. But yeah, I like the ESV today. I have. A really nice archeology study Bible I bought and I've, I've read the King James most of my Christian life. And switching to another translation was really eye-opening. All this different stuff that I hadn't seen before just popped out, like I didn't know the Bible said that. Wow. It's pretty neat. So along the same lines, do we have to be a Greek and Hebrew scholar to understand the Bible? I hope not because I struggled through Greek and barely made that alive, and so languages are not my strong [00:19:00] suit. Uh, but I think the answer is of course, no. You don't have to be. It depends on what kind of study you're doing, and I probably should have mentioned that earlier, but there's a way to look at the Bible in an academic, scholarly way, and there are some Christians that. Think that's wrong or bad? I don't think it's bad. It's just one way to look at it. When I am in scholarship, when I'm writing this college paper, I am, I have to kind of slice and dice it and I'm doing a work that an atheist could do. It's that kind of work. But then there's another way to look at the Bible that is much more pastorally or for spiritual formation, the kind of thing that treats the text as sacred that an atheist can't do. So if you're doing the academic work, it really helps to know the words because you're trying to get as precise as possible and getting into there. But luckily for us, other people have done the work for us and we have these English translations, so woo. You don't need to know Hebrew and Coin a Greek and [00:20:00] a little bit of Aramic and like Daniel or whatever. Like we don't have to know that because somebody else has done the work for us. And I mentioned already like. There's a lot of people involved in a Bible translation, not just one guy. It's, a lot of people have done this work and they've argued and yelled at each other and come to some conclusions to say, this is the best we can do right now. This is what we got. So, yeah, we don't have to, we don't have to be language PS so, woo. Lucky. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm a language geek. I love languages. Personally, I speak two languages besides English, but I haven't taken any Greek or, or Hebrew, maybe someday, but they didn't cover that in my Bible college. But it's good that we already have the tools online that, hey, this is a translation for that word in. There's really no, no real argument about it is there along mainline denominations. Yeah. Most people probably aren't gonna tell you. You have to know all those languages unless somebody there. There are groups of people that would say [00:21:00] the only inspired text of the Bible is the actual original Greek and Hebrew. And so our English translations are not inspired. But that's a minority view. That's not super common. Yeah. Yeah. The most people can understand. The inspiration still comes through, even when it's translating different languages. The word of gods for the whole world, not just those that can speak actually dead languages that nobody speaks today like Latin. Yeah. So now we're gonna get into the nitty gritty here. Okay. When we are sitting down with our Bible and we're deciding to. Study a passage of scripture or maybe a book. What are some basic rules of interpretation? Now we use the fancy big word hermeneutics, but like the basic ones that you really shouldn't ignore in order to. Do a proper Bible study. This is one that gets definitely drilled [00:22:00] into in Bible school and in other contexts, but it's that actual, it's a word context like context is key. Context is king, and one of the best things we can do is zoom out. So if we're looking at a particular scripture. Like one verse, we zoom out to the chapter. Those headings or whatever aren't like God inspired or whatever, but they're helpful to kind of see what the flow of things are. Then we can zoom out to the book level and sometimes zoom out to the biblical level and things like that. But that is always key. Sometimes we get into trouble thinking that the Bible is just like, the whole thing is like Proverbs, where everything's just disconnected and you got these good one-liners and they're fun and they're good zingers, but most of it is some kind of story or, and Paul, I mentioned that being some of my background, Paul's letters are arguments they build on top of each other, and so you can see if we're trying to look at something wild like. One [00:23:00] Corinthians 14 or something, we can understand it because by just kind of going a little backwards and Oh, okay. So that's always really important. And a lot of times authors in the Bible will also tell us kind of their themes and tell us what they really want us to get across. The gospel of John, for instance, is written so that we may believe Luke talks about writing in a, an orderly account of things. So we have some of these statements that if we zoom out a little bit, oh, okay, we can make sense of this in light of that. And so different things like that. But we could go all day into the hermeneutics and then the other fancy word, X of Jesus and that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, a tool anybody can use is something I learned in elementary school when there was a hard word. It was called rat read around the text. Read around the text. Ooh, that's the acronym there. And that just helps us understand, wait, what is going on? What does Paul mean when he says this? Why is [00:24:00] this guy saying this in judges? Let's take a look. What else is going on here? So it's just a great tool that anybody can use be if they can just zoom out a little bit and read the rest of the Bible and the rest of the passage. Everybody gives a different answer to that question. Now, obviously when we read the Bible, we come upon these passages or some of the stories that are either difficult to understand or it's a topic that we don't wanna deal with. It's really hard to swallow. Like a lot of times it's the genocide passages, of course. Mm-hmm. And or similar things like that. What do we do when we encounter those passages? Yeah. There are also passages that are sometimes called, and the genocide fits into this, but passages called texts of terror. A lot of passages about different abuse situation, and [00:25:00] I won't go into all of those, but I'm sure a lot of us can come up with some things that mm-hmm. Can be triggering in the Bible that seem just really messed up and stuff like that. So I think what's important, first of all is we recognize the, the gut feeling, the awkwardness talk to the beginning about how I see humor in the Bible and I do, I think there are some things in the Bible that we should laugh at. It's actually hilarious. Tell us about what Jonah gets swallowed by a big fish. That's funny. You should be laughing. And it's hilarious that he wants this city destroyed and he's supposed to be a prophet of God and he's not doing his job description and stuff like that. So like. When it's funny, we should laugh and when it's not funny, when it's uncomfortable, we should be okay being uncomfortable. I, I remember when I did college ministry for a time, we talked about the story of, oh man, I can't remember if it's Eli, I think it's Elijah. [00:26:00] And when they make fun of him for being bald and he calls these, she bears to attack these 40 youths, and he, this kid would kid could not get over it. He's like, why is this in the Bible? This is ridiculous. And I just tried to help him. Yeah, let's feel that first. Let's feel that, oh boy, we got some emotions here. So step one, I think it's totally okay to feel those things and then we can do some digging. Again, it's that zooming out. Let's look at the context here. Let's look what's going on there. A lot of times I think some of these texts of terror or uncomfortable texts, um. Sometimes they're not as bad when we look at it through maybe a historical lens or something, but sometimes we can't just justify them really nice and neatly, like some of the stuff about genocide. So ultimately, I have to go back to Jesus because. Jesus is the ultimate expression of God. It is the best [00:27:00] lens into the divine that we've ever seen. It's through this person of Jesus. And so sometimes we got to use our Jesus magnifying glass and look over the scripture and say, that's awkward. I don't like that very much. This makes me, this triggers me. This is, uh, but we put Jesus over and say, but through Christ, we don't have to live like that. We can recognize that there. There are plenty of examples of what not to do in the Bible. Jesus calls us to a different way and Jesus shows us that some things that maybe people thought were really godly and divine at certain points were not. So at the end of the day when things make us uncomfortable, I say feel it. But then ultimately, let's just go back. What does Jesus say? And if Jesus words are kind of. Don't seem to jive with this other crazy stuff going on here. Let's just, let's follow Jesus over some of this, [00:28:00] this other uncomfortable things. Hmm. So it's probably not a satisfying answer, but that's kind of like the point, like we try too hard sometimes to wrap everything in a pretty bow, but sometimes we just can't. With the Bible, the Bible is complicated and that's what makes it powerful. It's not always so neat and tidy and doesn't always make you feel good. It is a like Christ. It is both human, fully human and fully divine. And in that there's some awkward tension. There are some, there are human emotions and human things that that bleed through the divine pages of scripture. I appreciate the honest answer and yeah, I think that was a great answer. It was just reading through the patriarchs and wow, you just wrap your head around how much they messed up. And that's not how God wanted us to live. That's just an example of God just lets [00:29:00] everybody see how these people messed up. But still, God used them in a mighty way. God still gave them grace and forgiveness and love and mercy. I was just on Twitter and that's a dangerous place is Christian Twitter. Oh my goodness. And there was a big thread about some people, they didn't believe that Jesus was the same God as the God of the Old Testament. They cut the line because they thought Jesus over here in the New Testament, his attribute seems so different than. The God of the Old Testament. I don't necessarily agree with that, but that was an interesting concept. That's how they dealt with those horrible stories. I'm just gonna just trust in Jesus and just believe in Jesus and throw everything else away. Yeah. That's a heresy in the second century that, um, yeah. You know, unfortunately haven't quite gotten rid of completely, but is that's what that's called still alive and, [00:30:00] yeah. Oh, that's what you call it. Okay. There's your little fun little historical theology trivia, but yeah, there's probably a word for it. But that goes into my next question is how do you study the Bible and read it and make sure that you're not slipping into some heretical teaching, because I personally know some people that they believe some stuff that's way off base that nobody else. And mainline Christianity believes in, but they're like quoting Bible verses and taking them outta context. How do we avoid going down that path? Yeah, yeah. I had a youth minister who used to joke that if you wanted to, he could justify kicking babies across the room from scripture. Like that was just his wild example because yeah, people can kind of justify the whole gambit of things. So I think now we talked about why it's important to study the Bible for yourself. [00:31:00] At the same time though, I think this living, breathing scripture. Is something that we must read through community. You can do your own work, do your own prep, but ultimately the Bible belongs to all of us. And so we need to read in community. And that can mean your pastors and teachers and your scholars. It can also mean your neighbor and your friend and your kids and your mom and your cousin from a couple states away. But it can also mean dead people, not like seance or whatever, but like, um-ing, you know, read these old preachers and read the church fathers and the church mothers and like, we got 2000 years of Christian history here. There's some wild stuff, but there's some good stuff too. So I say we read scripture in community and you come to your own conclusions. Don't just copy paste whatever Mr. X, Y, Z says, but. What do they [00:32:00] think? And when we start looking at, oh, Christians have kind of seemed to think this for a long time, probably a direction we should lean in. I don't know. I guess people could be wrong, but the way the spirit works I think is a lot of times through community. And it's a way to check, it's a checks and balance for ourselves. So I think that sometimes we can get a little, a little wild with our own interpretations, but we bring in other people. What do you think? Did you see this too? Is this accurate? Is this, does this fit in with historical context of first century Palestine? Or whatever kind of questions you want to ask community. So that's flesh and blood people, but that's also books and podcasts and all sorts of things. I just think we're made to be together. And honestly, when I studied Paul's view of spiritual formation for my thesis, I didn't get to dive into it too much, but what I kept coming across is spiritual formation is not a. You on your own [00:33:00] kind of thing. It is something that happens with people who are this great cloud of witnesses that is cheering you on and it's helping you out. So I think that's a great way to kind of check, check ourselves, and then of course, use your brain. Let's be logical here that scripture probably not actually talking about America because it was written 3000 years ago. I don't know. Thank you. Um, so, so stuff like that, we gotta use our brains. Yeah. I like when you talk about community, because I think, and I've seen this before people go off the rails, is that they're isolating themselves. Mm-hmm. They don't wanna go to church because they don't trust, they don't trust people that they've been hurt. But even if we can't drag ourselves to church just yet in our healing process, yeah. There are other ways to create community and checks and balances. So that's a really good point. We really don't want [00:34:00] to be that guy that started his own denomination on a couple bible verses. Yeah, we got plenty of denominations. I think we're set for a little bit, so let's just chill out for now. Yeah, that's crazy. So like if we're in a community, we're under our Bible teacher or a pastor or Sunday school class, what would be like a red flag that would put your antennas up? Hey, you may wanna check this out for this preacher teacher saying is not a good thing. Are there any like red flags that you would look for? I think arrogance is definitely a big red flag. Ooh, good one. And that is how you get into spiritual, spiritually abusive situations. Definitely. And what I mean by arrogance is people that are not willing to be corrected, not willing to admit the wrong, not willing to learn. I was privileged to have professors where I was getting my Bible degrees. People with [00:35:00] PhDs from the prestigious British universities who would listen to student comments and be like, that's really interesting. Or, heard it like that. Tell me more about that. And one of my Hebrew Bible professors spoke like nine languages. Most of those are dead ones. And still he's curious to know what these 20-year-old college students are thinking. Which is wild because he is way smarter than us. But he is. These guys were adopting this posture of, I can learn from anybody here. I want your perspective. And I could be wrong. We gotta have some things where we have a firm foundation and where we don't sway. We absolutely have to have those. There are some people these days that I think sort of lean too heavily into the wishy-washy. It depends on the day, what I'm feeling, cafeteria style Christianity. We can't do that. But we also can't go over here where it's, I figured it out when I was 30 years old, when I was 40 years old, and now I'm like, [00:36:00] done. I'm done learning. Got it right. I to be the only one to get it right. And that's how denominations start, right? Ooh, everybody else got it wrong all the time. Now I'm right. So that's dangerous. So let's learn from people who are themselves. Learners who are willing to be challenged and to ask questions and wanna know your take on things. I know from being in ministry settings that oftentimes I am the guy with the more Bible degrees than most people in the room. But then there'll be these 70-year-old church ladies who have lived this and they've been in the Bible their whole life. I can learn from them. Mm-hmm. They have something to say, even though they've never read the text in Greek. They have something to add to the conversation. Mm-hmm. So we need to be learners. I love that. That is so awesome and so very true. The Holy Spirit speaks to each of us individually and gives us different [00:37:00] lessons and we can share those lessons. Now, you as a scholarly person, you must have some favorite resources that you use to study the bible. Can you recommend some specific resources that are maybe easy to use? Yeah, there's a couple websites, Bible gateway, I mentioned that already. They have. Some free commentaries and bible encyclopedias and things kind of on the sidebar there. So as you're looking to scripture, you could glorify and study Bible or have access to chunks from different commentaries. And for a while, while I was doing some more preaching, I actually did the paid, there's a kind of a paid version that it was like five bucks a month or something really cheap like that. It just got access to more things so I can have the scripture here and then all my resources next to it. And that was handy. Bible hub.com is also another one. [00:38:00] Um, that one's especially good if you do wanna look at the language stuff, knowing that you're not a scholar, you can say, but what is that Greek word? And you can click on it and it will show you the definitions, show you other places in scripture it's used. You can kind of get a feel for that. So that's a really good one for people who are not, who don't know the languages or. Like me who always needed help with my Greek homework or something like that. So yeah, those come to mind. But man, like we are, we at our fingertips. There's a lot of good stuff out there. A lot of bad stuff, no doubt. But there are podcasts and all sorts of books and there's just, there's a lot of good stuff there. Wouldn't even know where to begin, just sort of thinking broadly. But I think Bible gateway, Bible hub, easy. Anybody can access those for free. And you don't necessarily need a giant library or really expensive commentary sets 'cause they're really expensive. Yeah. That's why my parents get me one commentary for my birthday and [00:39:00] for Christmas each year. And so in 50 years I'll have the full set or whatever. That's not true. That's, it'll actually probably be. I can't do the math however it takes to get 66 books. But anyway. Wow. All I had in bible college that we were allowed to have is Matthew Henry commentary, which is kind of on the dry side. Yeah. Most Bible professors would pass out hearing you say that. It's not bad stuff, but bad, but it's not, it's not easy to read it's thing, let's just say. Yeah. And we were allowed to read Weirs, BE'S books. It's a pretty good series about where I came from. John MacArthur's commentaries were like hearsay. Oh, okay. The Baptist didn't like the, at least the churches that I was in, they didn't like MacArthur's stuff, but, and I had the actual strong concordance. I still own that's, yeah, sure. So sort of a free way to get that, besides if you don't want to get a giant [00:40:00] volume. Yeah. I like to read the physical books too. Sure. Nothing, not knocking the physical. But yeah, if people are on a budget, yeah, people are on a budget and you can't go and buy those big, huge coffee table books. Or if you're near a Christian university, see if you can get a library card that's, they have tons of stuff. I can walk in there and there are a whole shelf of like Genesis commentaries or whatever. It could be information overload. But also I can, I'll pick up a couple different volumes of different perspectives and I'll read what they each have to say about the verse or chapter I'm dealing with and I can kind of synthesize a conclusion. And that's how you do it. Yeah. I'll also mention, I, we were allowed to. Listen on the radio, Jay Vernon McGee and yeah, he was definitely expository. He [00:41:00] would go verse by verse and go through the entire Bible verse by verse, which I thought was really good. And I don't agree with everything he said, but that's the way I learned a lot of stuff was through verse by verse radio program back in the day. Mm. I'm dating myself, aren't I? It's all good here. All good. No, we talked a lot about a bunch of different stuff. Is there anything about Bible study that we didn't talk about that you would like to mention? I know there's so much, uh, yeah, I just touched on it a little bit, but I kind of wanna bring it back. Look at different views than yours. If you are really charismatic, then look at something that's not quite charismatic, or if you are. I won't go. I'll skip all those differences. You know what? You are read some of the stuff that's a little different. Stuff that challenges you. That's how we grow. That's how we grow, [00:42:00] is to hear something a little different. And the thing is, you're not required to believe it. Right. You can just read it and at least know what they're saying. I know in my Christian upbringing, and not necessarily I was intentional, but I only knew my side of the argument. Or if I knew somebody else's argument, it was this straw man version that was just not accurate. And then I, you go to the big wide world and be like, oh wait, there are lots of different views. And those people are actually smart and they have things to say about this, but somebody else is the opposite and they're also a smart person. What's going on? It's just good to expose ourselves to different things. In most cases we could, we, you can choose your own boundaries and things like that. Mm-hmm. It doesn't mean if you're studying something in the Old Testament, you have to read the Jewish and the Muslim and the Mormon view of what. It doesn't mean you have to go there, but just check out some different things. Have your favorite commentaries. Do it, but every once in a while [00:43:00] peek into your, your local heretic and see what they have to say. I dunno, maybe not a heretic, somebody who's a little different. You, you, your istic. Yeah. Our last guest was talking about Calvinism and stuff, but yeah, doesn, excellent suggestion because I definitely was in my own camp for many years until I got out of my abusive situation and started looking into other views and I have since changed nothing major. I didn't change any major views, but I realized that okay, there are other Godly people. Now I see they can use scripture to defend their position too. And there's a little bit of wiggle room in there for sure. Sure. For different viewpoints. I went and did a study and looked at somebody else's view on a tertiary argument. Sure. Tertiary doctrine. It's not a doctrine of the faith, but [00:44:00] something that's very important and it's like, okay, I'm not gonna be judgmental. And that was hard for me to change my viewpoint. Yeah, yeah. But they gave me really great scriptural evidence. So yeah, that's kind of a sideline, but you made excellent point. But anyway, I appreciate you sharing all this valuable information and your view, viewpoint, and it's fascinating. Everybody has different answers for these questions. I've asked everybody the same questions. Right. And they're all giving me different answers, which I think that's very helpful. Oh yeah. Yeah. Very helpful. Yeah, getting people exposed to different things and again, like I am me and you are you, and we're different. And that's the point. Like we all come together with our different focuses and our different backgrounds and knowledge, and together we are the body of Christ. Amen. And that's beautiful. So tell the folks [00:45:00] how people can connect with you and you have resources and maybe if they wanna play stump the Bible teacher, they can email you. Yeah, you can find that all about me@jakedobern.com. D-O-B-E-R-E-N-Z as in zebra. And that's kind of my home base on the interwebs. If you do jake dovers.com/email, you can get on my email list that was mentioned earlier where I talk about. Funny stories from my life that have spiritual points, and I bring out spiritual points from that. And yeah, you can definitely contact me through social media or email, and that's all on my website there. So I'll let you track me down and tell me how wrong I am and all of that kind of stuff. That's fun. It comes with the territory, so totally okay with that. And then lastly, I do a bunch of work with Christian creatives, with Fiani [00:46:00] Media, and as was mentioned, I produce the Creatively Christian podcast. So I would love for you to check that out if that's kind of your thing, if that's your area. Yeah. You guys have a real great variety of guests on that show. It's not just one particular kind of art. You guys represent a lot of different ones, which is fun. Oh yeah. And we're trying to get more variety all the time. Awesome. Now. I don't usually have guests pray on the show, but would you pray for our listeners in their journey in the scriptures? Of course. Let's go ahead and pray. Heavenly God, we come to you in prayer on this podcast episode and we ask that whoever's listening now in the future, in a couple years, where wherever we are, that, that we can be receptive to how you speak to us through scripture and through our [00:47:00] communities that help us see scripture. Let the spirit guide us as we dive into this sacred but sometimes confusing and complicated documents. Lord, I ask that you give us the wisdom to be able to rightly divide your word and to remain faithful even when our own preferences might wanna lean in a different direction. Lord, thank you so much for the ministry of this podcast. We pray that people continue to have healing and continue to find themselves in a better place, both in the world and with you spiritually. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you so much for coming on the show. God bless you. Sure thing. God bless you. Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast. If this episode has been helpful [00:48:00] to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You could connect with us at DSW Ministries dot org where you'll find our blog, along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week.

Presented by Julie Busteed We don't use the word abide very often today. Yet Jesus uses it eleven times in John 15. The scene is the Last Supper. He has just washed his disciples' feet, and now he is teaching and praying for them—sharing his final words with them before the crucifixion. Because Jesus emphasizes this word so strongly, it's worth pausing to understand what he meant. He says: Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:4–5, ESV). The Greek word menō, translated “abide,” means to remain, stay, or dwell. It's an active word—not passive—implying an ongoing, intentional relationship. Some Bible translations even use the word remain. Matthew Henry, in his commentary, highlights the context well: Jesus was about to leave his disciples after being with them for three years. The disciples would soon face the temptation to drift from him, from each other, and from his teaching—perhaps even to return to the old patterns of the law. Jesus impresses on them the urgent importance of remaining in him and in community with one another. And he assures them that the helper, the Holy Spirit, would come to strengthen and sustain them.[1] In this passage, Jesus uses the image of the vine and the branches. Believers in Christ are the branches; he is the vine. A life of fruitfulness depends on staying connected to him. To abide in Christ starts with a relationship. The first step is to come to him as Lord and Savior, recognizing your need for forgiveness and grace. But that's only the beginning. As you follow him, the relationship grows deeper. You learn who he is, what he teaches, and how he calls each of us to live in obedience to him. To love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). Abiding is a lifelong journey of growing, obeying, and staying connected. — [1] Matthew Henry, “John 15,” Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible, BibleGateway, n.d., https://www.biblegateway.com/.