Podcasts about presbyterian

Kelli Ingram is living the ultimate modern rebellion: a southern-born Presbyterian recently-turned-Catholic, a homeschooling farmer, and a mother of nine. Kelli's journey is nothing short of wild. She went from birth control to agonizing infertility and foster care heartbreak to adoption and conception—even delivering her last baby in an inflatable pool…inside an RV park on the Florida coast…on purpose. If you've ever wondered how a self-proclaimed "Type-C" mom completely ditches rigid bedtime schedules and thrives in beautiful, countercultural chaos, you need to hear this.Kelli's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelliingram/NEW: Check out our Merch store! https://shop.lilaroseshow.com/Join our new Patreon community! https://patreon.com/lilaroseshow - We'll have BTS footage, ad-free episodes, and early access to our upcoming guests.A big thanks to our partner, EWTN, the world's leading religious network! Discover news, entertainment and more at https://www.ewtn.com/ Check out our Sponsors:-Hallow: https://www.hallow.com/lila Enter into prayer more deeply this season with the Hallow App, get 3 months free by using this link to sign up! -Patriot Mobile: Get 1 month of free service at https://patriotmobile.com/lila or call 972-PATRIOT w/ code LILA-Presidio Healthcare: Healthcare and doctors who share your values. Visit: https://www.presidiocare.com/lila -We Heart Nutrition: https://www.weheartnutrition.com/ Get high quality vitamin supplements for 20% off using the code LILA.

This recording is the result of our work digitizing over 600 cassette tapes of Elisabeth's talks. Each tape is decades old and the quality of the recordings varies quite a bit from tape to tape. As we preserve Elisabeth's legacy, we will share as much of her work as possible, even when technical issues affect the quality of the audio. Each talk is unique in content and tone. All are a blessing and encouragement. ---- Music by John Hanson

In this week's episode, Brendan Suhr is joined by Dustin Kerns, head coach of the Appalachian State Mountaineers.Kerns reflects on his coaching journey from graduate assistant to Division I head coach, sharing lessons learned from mentors such as Larry Shyatt and Mike Young. He discusses the importance of mastering the “invisible” parts of coaching, building relationships across an institution, and why aspiring coaches must focus on excelling where they are rather than constantly chasing the next opportunity. Kerns also provides an overview of how he rebuilt programs at both Presbyterian and Appalachian State by changing the psychology of winning before focusing on tactics. He shares strategies for establishing accountability, creating alignment throughout your program, and building a culture centered on discipline, selflessness, and team-first habits. The conversation dives into Appalachian State's defensive identity, rebounding philosophy, player development, and the challenges of maintaining consistency in the transfer portal era. All that and more on Episode 332 of the Coaching U Podcast presented by Noah Basketball.Noah Basketball is trusted by 28 NBA teams, over 200 NCAA programs, and over 1,000 high school programs to capture and analyze key shooting metrics to help your players perfect their shot and reach their max potential.Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠noahbasketball.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Douglas Stuart is one of the most successful writers in Britain today. He is celebrated globally for his honest portrayals of human relationships and working-class life. In 2020 he won the Booker Prize for his debut novel Shuggie Bain, a searingly honest novel set in 1980s Glasgow about a boy named Shuggie trying to save his mother, Agnes, from alcoholism and poverty. His second novel Young Mungo, a story of the dangerous first love of two young men, was released in 2022 and became a number one Sunday Times Bestseller. In May 2026, Stuart joined us live in London for an evening on identity, resilience, and the themes of his new novel John of John. In John of John, Stuart returns to the themes of class, family, masculinity, and sexuality. It is the story of John-Calum Macleod, who returns to his childhood home on the island of Harris. Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, he sinks back into his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades. --- This is the first instalment of a two-part episode. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events  ...  Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Douglas Stuart is one of the most successful writers in Britain today. He is celebrated globally for his honest portrayals of human relationships and working-class life. In 2020 he won the Booker Prize for his debut novel Shuggie Bain, a searingly honest novel set in 1980s Glasgow about a boy named Shuggie trying to save his mother, Agnes, from alcoholism and poverty.  His second novel Young Mungo, a story of the dangerous first love of two young men, was released in 2022 and became a number one Sunday Times Bestseller.  In May 2026, Stuart joined us live in London for an evening on identity, resilience, and the themes of his new novel John of John.  In John of John, Stuart returns to the themes of class, family, masculinity, and sexuality. It is the story of John-Calum Macleod, who returns to his childhood home on the island of Harris. Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, he sinks back into his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades. --- If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the "It Matters" sermon series. Preached by Jody Killingsworth.

Jason Sterling May 31, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL 

Trinity Sunday; Sermon based on Proverbs 8 and John 16:12-15. Preached at The First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn (https://linktr.ee/firstchurchbrooklyn). Podcast subscription is available at https://cutt.ly/fpcb-sermons or Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4ccZPt6), Spotify, Amazon, Audible, Podca....This item belongs to: audio/first-church-brooklyn-sermons.This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, Columbia Peaks, Item Tile, Metadata, PNG, Spectrogram, VBR MP3

[audio mp3="https://cpcpca.org/wp-content/uploads/sermons/2026/05/05-31-2026-Sunday-School.mp3"][/audio] Bible Text: Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 | Pastor: Pastor Josh Anderson | Series: Ecclesiastes

Give 'Em Watts! #RTTBROS #Nightlight"The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him." — Psalm 28:7It was June of 1780, and the situation on the ground at the Battle of Springfield, New Jersey, was getting desperate. British forces were pressing hard, American soldiers were outnumbered, and they were running critically short on wadding, the paper soldiers packed down the barrel to seat the powder and the ball. Without it, their muskets were useless. The line was about to break.That's when Reverend James Caldwell did something nobody expected. He was a Presbyterian minister, one of the fiery preachers the British called the Black Robe Regiment, men they feared almost as much as any general. Caldwell ran into the nearest church, gathered up armloads of hymnals, and sprinted back to the firing line. He threw those books to the soldiers and hollered what became one of the most memorable battle cries of the whole revolution: "Give 'em Watts, boys!"The hymnals were full of the sacred songs of Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer who gave us "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" and "Joy to the World." And those soldiers tore out the pages, loaded their muskets, and held the line. The songs of worship literally became the ammunition of war.I have thought about that story more than once sitting with people in hard seasons of life, and in some of my own hard seasons too. There are moments when you feel like those soldiers. Outnumbered, running low, not sure you have what it takes to hold your ground through another night. And in those moments, I think Reverend Caldwell's wild run into that church has something to say to us.Worship is not just what we do on Sunday morning when everything is fine. It is what we reach for when things are not fine. The Psalmist knew this. He didn't write Psalm 28:7 from a comfortable chair. He wrote it from a place of genuine need, trusting a God he could not see to be a shield he desperately required. And what came out the other side? His heart rejoiced and he sang.I'm too soon old and too late smart, but here is something I have learned. When the battle gets heavy and my resources feel thin, the best thing I can do is not strategize harder or worry longer. It's to give 'em Watts. Pull out a hymn. Speak a promise out loud. Remember what God did the last time the situation felt impossible. Let praise become the wadding that loads the musket.History is just HIS story, and that includes the story of a preacher running across a battlefield with his arms full of hymnals. God has a way of making our songs into something stronger than we ever imagined.So tonight, whatever battle you carried through the door with you, give it the Watts treatment. Let a song of praise be the last thing on your lips before you close your eyes.Let's pray: Lord, when I'm running low and the line feels like it's about to break, remind me that praise is not a luxury for easy days. It is the weapon You placed in my hands for hard ones. Teach me to trust You enough to sing. In Jesus' name, Amen.#RTTBROS #Nightlight #ChristianWisdom #BiblicalWisdom #Faith #Worship #DailyDevotion #PracticalBiblicalWisdom #ChristianLiving #HistoryIsHisStoryhttps://linktr.ee/rttbros#Freedom250 #America250Reflection Questions:1. When life gets hard, is your first instinct to worry or to worship? What would it look like to reach for praise before you reach for anxiety?2. Think of a time God came through for you in a desperate moment. How could remembering that story become "ammunition" for something you're facing right now?Call to Action: If this story encouraged you, share it with someone who needs to hear that their praise still has power. Like, follow, and subscribe to keep the Nightlight burning. Find everything at linktr.ee/rttbros.

We welcome Matthew Vogan to discuss The Nature of the Church by John Brown of Wamphray, a concise seventeenth-century work on Presbyterian ecclesiology republished by Grange Press. Brown, a Scottish Covenanter exiled to the Netherlands, wrote with deep conviction about Christ's headship over the church, the visible and invisible church, church government, discipline, unity, and the distinction between church and state. This conversation explores why Brown's work remains timely for pastors, elders, seminarians, and church members today. Rather than treating church government as a secondary or merely practical matter, Brown presents the church as a visible spiritual society established by Christ, governed by his Word, and ordered for the edification of his people. Watch on YouTube Chapters 0:00 Introduction 1:15 The Nature of the Church by John Brown of Wamphray 4:30 John Brown's life, ministry, exile, and Covenanter context 8:40 Matthew Vogan's introduction to John Brown 9:36 Brown's 32 theses and the Westminster Confession 10:54 A majestic view of Christ's church 12:33 The scope of Brown's ecclesiology 15:12 The church as a visible spiritual society 21:43 Church and state under Christ's authority 27:08 Scripture and Presbyterian church government 30:53 Brown's polemics against Erastianism, prelacy, and independency 35:00 Ministerial authority and edification 39:17 The church's spiritual government 42:14 The spirituality of the church 44:59 Key insights from Brown's work 46:06 Communion within the visible catholic church 52:21 Further reading: Durham, Gillespie, Rutherford, and Bannerman 53:55 Final thoughts on The Nature of the Church 55:00 Scottish football and closing conversation 56:57 Reformed Forum resources and conclusion Participants Camden Bucey Matthew Vogan Resources mentioned Grange Press The Nature of the Church by John Brown of Wamphray Trinitarian Bible Society Christ the Center 682: David Dickson's Sermons on Lamentations

We welcome Matthew Vogan to discuss The Nature of the Church by John Brown of Wamphray, a concise seventeenth-century work on Presbyterian ecclesiology republished by Grange Press. Brown, a Scottish […]

The Spectator's editor Michael Gove ‘was born into a sternly Presbyterian culture', but – in this week's magazine – is ‘giving thanks to the Pope' for producing Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical about artificial intelligence (AI). AI will be ‘as transformative as the Industrial Revolution' but decisions ‘about where this technology is going and how it might be deployed are concentrated... in perilously few hands'.Michael joins Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to explain why the document reveals Pope Leo to be 'intellectually confident and coherent', what the Christian response to AI should be and why he believes Catholic social teaching is 'absolutely essential' in instructing us for how to deal with this next technological revolution.Produced by Patrick Gibbons.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts. Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Spectator's editor Michael Gove ‘was born into a sternly Presbyterian culture', but – in this week's magazine – is ‘giving thanks to the Pope' for producing Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical about artificial intelligence (AI). AI will be ‘as transformative as the Industrial Revolution' but decisions ‘about where this technology is going and how it might be deployed are concentrated... in perilously few hands'.Michael joins Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to explain why the document reveals Pope Leo to be 'intellectually confident and coherent', what the Christian response to AI should be and why he believes Catholic social teaching is 'absolutely essential' in instructing us for how to deal with this next technological revolution.Produced by Patrick Gibbons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us Fan MailThis week Greg sat down with George Williams. George is a former Pastor and now the Director of Multiplication for Open Bible. He was also Greg's former pastor for years. Greg & George discussed his testimony, as well as his journey from a centrist charismatic to now a Christian Nationalist and the pivotal moment that opened his eyes. They discussed the 19th Amendment, theonomy, and the death penalty, and also touched on the insanity of pure libertarianism. Enjoy! Dominion Wealth Strategists are the only Kingdom minded company that you need to use. Set up a free consultation here today! You need to protect your sword! Beautiful, classic, and one of a kind! Design your bible rebind from Deus Vult today! 10% for all Dead Men listeners with the code "DEADMANWALKING" Covenant Real Estate: "Confidence from Contract to Close" Facebook: Dead Men Walking PodcastYoutube: Dead Men Walking PodcastInstagram: @DeadMenWalkingPodcastTwitter X: @RealDMWPodcastExclusive Content: PubTV App

Day of Pentecost; Sermon based on Acts 2:1-21. Preached at The First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn (https://linktr.ee/firstchurchbrooklyn). Podcast subscription is available at https://cutt.ly/fpcb-sermons or Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4ccZPt6), Spotify, Amazon, Audible, Podcast Index, or Tu....This item belongs to: audio/first-church-brooklyn-sermons.This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, Columbia Peaks, Item Tile, Metadata, PNG, Spectrogram, VBR MP3

From the "It Matters" sermon series. Preached by Jody Killingsworth.

Sunday Worship May 24th, 2026   “Confusion & Communication” Acts 15:22-35 Rev. Tyler Dirks   Sermon Audio   Sermon Outline: Clarification Communication Constructive Confusion Reflection Questions: When was a time you endured punctilious and pedantic confusion and distress? Are you genuinely willing to own the fact that you, and/or your tribe, have messed up in […] The post Confusion & Communication appeared first on East Charlotte Pres.

[audio mp3="https://cpcpca.org/wp-content/uploads/sermons/2026/05/05-24-2026-Sunday-School.mp3"][/audio] Bible Text: Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:8 | Pastor: Pastor Josh Anderson | Series: Ecclesiastes

Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.comIn this episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram talk with historian D.G. Hart about Christian nationalism, church-state separation, the American founding, and what can happen when Christianity becomes too closely tied to political power. Hart brings a distinctive perspective to this conversation. He is a conservative Presbyterian and a historian of American religion, but he is deeply skeptical of efforts to make Christianity dependent on government power.Hart argues that one of the unusual features of the American experiment is that the United States broke from a long history of church-state entanglement. That separation was not just a legal technicality. It created space for religious pluralism and helped prevent Christianity from becoming coercive through the power of the state.Book:D.G. Hart, Protestants and Patriots: Presbyterians in the Age of Revolution: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780268210823Guest BioD.G. Hart is a historian of American religion and professor of history at Hillsdale College. His work focuses on Protestantism, American religious history, church life, and the relationship between Christianity and political authority. He is the author of several books, including Benjamin Franklin: Cultural Protestant and Protestants and Patriots: Presbyterians in the Age of Revolution. In this conversation, Hart brings a historically grounded and theologically conservative perspective to debates about Christian nationalism, church-state separation, and the American founding.Support the show

This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of “Biblical & Social Justice: What Is It?,”
entitled “A Nation Founded on Christian Principles?”      Listening to the stories of Christian nationalists, one might become persuaded that the United States descended from heaven. Any assertion that the United States was founded on Biblical and Christian principles must also concede that slavery was part and parcel of an unbiblical and unChristian version of so-called Biblical and Christian principles. It is not necessary to attribute the founding of the nation to the Bible or an organized Christian effort. Any review of the actual history of the founding of the United States, absent spiritualized narratives, shows that highly educated and brilliant men were responsible for debating, working, and creating the founding philosophies and documents. All the Framers were informed by their education, experiences, and faith. They were also informed by selfish motivations and economic interests.   It is noteworthy that the Framers decided not to include Scripture in the founding documents. This is consistent with their objective to avoid creating a nation controlled by the church or by religion. Below is a summary of the Framers: Almost all of the 55 Framers had taken part in the Revolution, with at least 29 having served in the Continental forces, most in positions of command. All but two or three had served in colonial or state government during their careers. The vast majority (about 75%) of the delegates were or had been members of the Confederation Congress, and many had been members of the Continental Congress during the Revolution. 25 had been state governors. More than half of the delegates had trained as lawyers (several had even been judges), although only about a quarter had practiced law as their principal means of business. Others were merchants, manufacturers, shippers, land speculators, bankers, or financiers. Several were physicians or small farmers, and one was a minister. Of the 25 who owned fellow humans, 16 depended on slave labor to run the plantations or other businesses that formed the mainstay of their income. Most of the delegates were landowners with substantial holdings, and most, except for Roger Sherman and William Few, were very comfortably wealthy. George Washington and Robert Morris were among the wealthiest men in the entire country. Much of that wealth was built through the unpaid labor of enslaved persons. Of the 55 Framers, only one was a Christian minister. Regarding the religious faith of the Framers: Of the 55 delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 28 were Anglicans, 21 were other Protestants, and two were Roman Catholics (D. Carroll and Fitzsimons). Among the Protestant delegates to the Constitutional Convention, eight were Presbyterians, seven were Congregationalists, two were Lutherans, two were Dutch Reformed, and two were Methodists. A few prominent Founding Fathers were anti-clerical notably Jefferson. It is a reach of imagination and romanticism to believe the 55 Framers acted as a group of Christians in consultation with the Scriptures and prayer. The work of the Framers, as is the case with most good work, owes to the skill of the persons working, whether Christian or non-Christian. One very significant factor argues against the rosy Christian nationalist perspective about our nation's founding: SLAVERY. For many of us, celebrating our nation's founding as a triumph of the Bible and Christianity is offensive given the treatment and property status of our ancestors. To be sure, the formation of the United States, developing the governing documents, and organizing independent colonies was a triumph of human enterprise and self-governing. The telling of history cannot overlook owning, selling, and abusing humans in the service of other humans used to build their economy, was decidedly ungodly. It was not something Jesus would have done. The historic facts regarding the formation of the nation are compelling reading without the hyperbole of a Christian nationalist narrative. The facts are far more interesting than the fabrications.   -  

Send us Fan MailThis week Greg sat down and discussed his thoughts on the Thomas Massie Congressional race, and some of the interactions he has had with pro-Trump Boomers. Enjoy! Dominion Wealth Strategists are the only Kingdom minded company that you need to use. Set up a free consultation here today! You need to protect your sword! Beautiful, classic, and one of a kind! Design your bible rebind from Deus Vult today! 10% for all Dead Men listeners with the code "DEADMANWALKING" Covenant Real Estate: "Confidence from Contract to Close" Facebook: Dead Men Walking PodcastYoutube: Dead Men Walking PodcastInstagram: @DeadMenWalkingPodcastTwitter X: @RealDMWPodcastExclusive Content: PubTV App

Why are there so many Christian denominations? Do the differences actually matter? In this episode of LIVE FREE, Pastors Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Paul Cunningham break down the biggest Christian denominations, including Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Pentecostals, while explaining what truly separates them theologically. This conversation clarifies essential doctrines, denominational differences, church history, biblical authority, and how believers can wisely choose a healthy church without falling into confusion or unnecessary division. In this episode, you'll learn: Why denominations exist Which doctrines are essential for salvation Key differences between major Christian groups How to evaluate healthy churches Why biblical truth matters more than labels Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free.

In this profound exploration of Matthew 21:40-46, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb unpack the Parable of the Wicked Tenants and its devastating indictment of Israel's religious leadership. The hosts navigate the complex theological terrain of kingdom transfer, covenant faithfulness, and the identity of God's people across redemptive history. With careful attention to the text's original context and its implications for the church today, they examine how Christ presents himself as the rejected cornerstone—the one upon whom people either fall in repentance or are crushed in judgment. This episode offers rich insights into supersessionism, the remnant theology of Romans 11, and the practical call for Christians to examine whether they're submitting to Christ as the true cornerstone or attempting to usurp his rightful place. Key Takeaways The Self-Condemning Verdict: The chief priests and Pharisees unknowingly pronounce judgment upon themselves when they declare the wicked tenants deserve destruction, demonstrating how the natural conscience can discern God's justice even when blind to personal complicity. Kingdom Transfer as Covenant Transition: The "taking away" of the kingdom represents not the abandonment of God's elect remnant but the historical-redemptive transition from the typological Old Covenant administration to the New Covenant church gathered from all nations. The Cornerstone's Double Judgment: Christ as the cornerstone presents two modes of encounter—those who fall upon him in repentance are broken but healed; those upon whom he falls in final judgment are ground to powder with no remedy. Visible vs. Invisible Church Distinction: The visible identification of God's people shifted from the geopolitical nation of Israel to the universal church, while the invisible elect have always been saved by grace through faith in the coming Messiah. Fear of Man vs. Fear of God: The Pharisees' restraint from seizing Jesus due to fear of the crowds (rather than fear of God) exemplifies how the wicked are dominated by human opinion rather than divine accountability. Infant Baptism and Covenant Community: The joyful inclusion of children in the visible covenant community through baptism reflects God's gracious promise sealed to those who contribute nothing to their own covenant status. Fruit-Bearing as Evidence: The "new tenants" are characterized not by works-righteousness but by evidential fruit—the genuine works that flow from "true and lively faith" worked by the Holy Spirit. Key Concepts The Irony of Self-Condemnation The theological and pastoral power of this parable reaches its climax when the religious leaders, failing to perceive themselves as the wicked tenants in Jesus's story, pronounce harsh judgment upon the hypothetical villains: "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end." This moment mirrors Nathan's confrontation of David after the Bathsheba affair, yet with a tragic difference—these leaders never experience David's repentance. Calvin observes that the natural conscience, even when blind to personal guilt, retains an "hidden impulse to identify with justice." The Pharisees demonstrate total depravity in high definition: they possess enough moral clarity to recognize egregious covenant-breaking in the abstract, yet remain entirely blind to their own embodiment of that very wickedness. This irony serves as both judgment and warning—we all possess an uncanny ability to see sin clearly everywhere except in the mirror. Kingdom Transfer: Covenant Continuity and Discontinuity The phrase "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing its fruit" requires careful theological handling to avoid both replacement theology (in its pejorative sense) and dispensational fragmentation. The Reformed understanding maintains covenant continuity: there has always been one people of God, defined not ethnically but by faith in the Messiah. What changes is the visible administration of the covenant. Under the Old Covenant, the visible church was largely coterminous with ethnic Israel—a geopolitical reality with boundaries, a zip code, and national identity. Under the New Covenant, the visible church explodes these ethnic and geographic boundaries, fulfilling God's promise to Abraham that "in your seed all nations will be blessed." This is not Plan B; it's the eschatological unveiling of what was always intended. The "breaking off of natural branches" (Romans 11) refers to covenant unfaithfulness resulting in exclusion from visible covenant privileges, while the faithful Jewish remnant—the apostles, early believers, and the ongoing elect from Israel—remain fully incorporated into the church. The vineyard hasn't been abandoned; it's been opened to "other tenants" who will render the proper fruit: Gentiles grafted in alongside believing Jews into the one olive tree of God's redemptive purposes. The Cornerstone: Salvation or Destruction Christ's invocation of Psalm 118:22—"the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone"—followed by his dual judgment ("whoever falls on this stone will be broken...on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust") presents two exhaustive options for relating to Jesus. The cornerstone in ancient construction was the foundational stone by which all other stones found their proper alignment and orientation. To fall upon this stone willingly—in repentance, faith, and self-abandonment—is painful. It shatters pride, self-righteousness, and autonomy. But this breaking leads to healing, to being properly "squared" and aligned with reality as God has constructed it. The alternative is catastrophic: to have the cornerstone fall upon you in final eschatological judgment is to experience irreversible, total destruction—being "ground to powder" with no possibility of remedy. The practical application is urgent: we must examine ourselves continually to ensure we're not attempting to be our own cornerstone, measuring righteousness by our own standards, aligning the universe to ourselves rather than submitting to Christ as the measure of all things. Memorable Quotes "There's never a time where that righteousness is removed or unapplied, but we are constantly faced with a choice as to whether we want to be the kind of people who render our fruit unto the Lord, as the faithful tenants when the unfaithful tenants are replaced. Or do we wanna be the people that reap wicked fruit and keep for ourselves?" — Tony Arsenal "The vineyard of God is still let out, the fruit is still demanded, the cornerstone is still laid. Blessed are they who receive him—and also get those babies into church." — Jesse Schwamb "This is not a wall you're gonna run through. Like you're gonna smash into this wall and it's gonna crush you. And if you are not properly assigning the cornerstone its place... the whole thing is gonna crush you." — Tony Arsenal Full Episode Transcript [00:01:05] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 492 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:01:14] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother.  [00:01:18] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother.  [00:01:19] Parable Recap [00:01:19] Jesse Schwamb: Well, the time has finally come for us to close out our discussion in Matthew 21. This is the Parable of the Vine growers, and everybody should just go back and list everything we said so far, but I think here's how we could sum it up. Jesus's authority gets challenged and he sets a trap so beautiful that we should put it into a museum. He tells basically the religious bigwigs, this whole story where tenants speed up servants, they kill the air. They generally behave like it's an HOA literally run by the devil. And then he asks them this question, so what should the owner of the vineyard do And the chief priest. Chest puffed up. Basically shout out the answers to their own indictment. Smoke 'em. Give the vineyard to somebody who isn't garbage. Listen fellas, you just preached your own funeral. So in this we get to see this total depravity in 4K. Sovereign grace skips the credential gatekeepers and it lands on the tax collectors and the gentiles. They elect the vineyard, the self-righteous, get the rock. And we're gonna close out what all of that means, including probably not a small amount of talk about the kingdom being transferred, whatever that means, and maybe a little engrafting. Aah, Romans 11 style. It's all there for us. And that is what is coming up. [00:02:34] Affirmations Setup [00:02:34] Jesse Schwamb: Of course before we can do any of that, we can't even get there. Tony, before we do affirmations, denials, you and I both know it's our contractual obligation. It's what the people want all over the world. If we skip this, there will be some kind of riot revolt. So we gotta start there. Let's not get too excited yet. So I'm curious as always, are you affirming with something or you not against something for this episode?  [00:02:58] Tony Arsenal: I am, I'm affirming, uh, this is gonna be like people are gonna grow and roll their eyes a little bit.  [00:03:04] Infant Baptism Joy [00:03:04] Tony Arsenal: I'm affirming infant baptism today. We had a lovely infant baptism at church, um, and a couple recently had a child. Um, there's been, this was a kind of a particularly, um, poignant baptism. Um, the, the mother was in the hospital for several weeks before the baby was born, um, with some medical challenges, so was in. In the hospital. In the hospital for like, I want to say probably four weeks, which is a long time. Um, they have several other children, which makes it even harder. Um, and then, uh, then the baby was in the hospital for quite some time. He came a little early and then had some other issues. Um, and so this family was out of church for quite some time dealing with these health issues, and we, we all miss them very much. So it was a very sweet moment. Um, and it's just a, a good reminder, right? And, and the way our church does it is, you know, the pastor, the family comes up, they do vows, they do the baptism, but he calls all the children forward and the children come and sit, uh, right in the front row and they watch this all happen. Um. Which is, is very sweet. And you know, I, I went up there with Augie, and Augie was sitting on my lap and he was very, he was like super locked into this, this whole thing, which is, uh, which was nice to see. So I'm affirming infant baptism. It's a beautiful, beautiful picture of the gospel. Um, it's, it's God's promise being sealed to someone who contributes nothing to, um, to that promise contributes nothing to, uh, their own, um, position in the church or status in the church. They contribute nothing. Um, in most cases they're not even aware of what's going on. So I know not all of our listeners are, uh, are covenant infant Baptists, uh, type people. Um, so yes, I get it. You disagree, but there is something just sweet and beautiful, uh, even I think even for people who aren't quite sold on infant baptism. Um, and I think even sometimes for people who are kind of opposed to infant baptism, I think we've commented in the PA past that there's kind of this impulse that I think all Christian parents have that their children should be. Treated in a certain way that's different than how a non-Christian family treats their children. Right. Um, so there is kind of this instinct that the, there's, whether it's a formal status or just sort of a, a way of thinking about things, there is this impulse that the children of believers are somehow set apart in different, and of course, the, the Presbyterian Covenant Baptist, um, position would, would formalize that through the rite of baptism, uh, at least in part. So I'm affirming infant baptism, both theologically, but also just experimentally today. Like it was just, it was just a balm to my soul to see this, um. And like I said, the congregation has been praying for a long time for the health, uh, and the, the welfare of this family, um, and been, you know, doing meal trains and all the stuff that churches do. But it was, it was a very sweet moment, um, to see the pastor scoop this little baby up in his arms and be able to sort of introduce him to the church as the newest covenant member of the congregation. Uh, it was just a very nice moment. [00:05:59] Baptism Dedication Common Ground [00:05:59] Jesse Schwamb: I think you're right. We can all agree that there's something really beautiful about God growing his church, at least the visible church, through just the multiplicative effect of. People having children, there's something beautiful about that, and then welcoming them in an official way into your congregation, into your midst. Interestingly, in my church, there was a baby dedication today and I was also equally moved though like I would say the promises that were invoked during that time, the equipment's made are very different than what you might hear during kind of pedo infant baptism. You're right in that the spirit of this that is like a representation kind of bringing forward of the child to say he or she is part of us and we're making a commitment to raise them in admonition of the Lord is a really lovely thing. It's like a public recognition that God is providing a manifest blessing in our midst, and that he is growing and working out his church and he's doing it by just bringing new people into it who are being, who are the subjects of procreation. Creation itself, but procreation and how can you not be like, just excited about that. And, and also a little bit like it's also, and I'm not trying to denigrate any practice here, but also just on the face also super adorable. Like when you, when you see a pastor scoop up, like you said, a little child, whether that's to pray with them and dedication or to baptize them. Either way, it's super just like lovely and just pulls in your heartstrings. Yeah. In like this very spiritual way, not just in kind of an emotional kind of way.  [00:07:26] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't, I think, um, when I think back, you know, Augie's, obviously you know this, but Augie was dedicated, um, Addie was not. Um, but when I think back to the vows we took, when we dedicated Augie, there are some differences, but there's also a lot that's not different like the sure close to like, raise up your child in the church and to like, pray for them and set a good example. And then, and then the sort of reciprocal vows that the congregation typically takes, that the congregation will do what they can to support the family as they, they raise this child and the Lord. Um, you know, even in, even in a lot of contexts, like in the Presbyterian church, I'm in like prayers that this, this child would come to know Jesus and would, would come to confess the faith for themselves and become a full, you know, full communicate member of the church. Like, those things are all present. So as much as I think, um. As much as I wanna acknowledge that infant baptism or, or covenant, I, I say covenant baptism versus, um, sort of like baptist theology writ, large credo Baptist theology, which is covenantal, but differently covenantal in most cases. Right. Um, even though that is a dividing line, and I think like it's a real dividing line. There's a real division that exists and that there's good theological historical reasons why those divisions exist. There still is so much that is the same. Um, in terms of how Baptists and, and Presbyterians or however formed, you know, PR Christians, um, re reflect on and think about their children. There's some differences, but in terms of like. We all want our children to come to know Jesus. We all want their first memory to be worshiping in the church and loving the Lord. We, we don't want them to ever remember a time where the name of Christ was not on their lips as their savior. Um, all those things are the same and even the, the way we promise before God and, and primarily before God, but before others, even the way we promise to nourish them in, in right doctrine and nourish them in good teaching and bring them into the church and, and set a faithful example. All of those things are the same. So I I I, I never want to diminish the fact that there are differences 'cause there are real differences and there are important differences. But I also think we often sort of like. I think because we've talked about this before, like Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians are so close that we have to bicker over the things that are different. It's like you're, it's like when you fight with your brother on whose side of the room it's on. Like you're so close that you have to find the little things to really bicker about and then you really, really bicker about them. And I think that kind of like describes the, the Presbyterian Baptist divide in a lot of ways. I know there's a lot of people that would say like, Lutherans are closer to Presbyterians and those people are just, I dunno, they're just wrong. Um, on, on, maybe on baptism, they're, they're not wrong. But in terms of general theological principles, like, you know, Westminster Confession, London Baptists, confession, like, it, it's 95% the same content. Sure. Um, and 95% like the same confession, not just the same like words, but the same meaning of the words. And, um, so yeah. Anyway, that's my affirmation. Infant baptism. It was a joy. I was happy to see it. Um, uh, we have a ton of little, little babies in the, the church. It's funny 'cause another, another, um. A couple announced today that they were expecting, and we've, we've had basically pregnant women in the church for, you know, obviously like at least nine months if someone is still pregnant. But like we've had, we've had this like rotation of, of women delivering babies for like, at least, probably, at least 16, 18 months of, of constantly having people who are, are expecting, which is really a great joy to see. So I, I love it. I love the church. I love the Presbyterian church. Um, and this was just another great example of, of the beauty of, uh, a robust confessionalism and a robust presbyterianism. [00:11:08] Jesse Schwamb: The way in which you said that made it sound like you're about to make like a grand historical statement. Like, we've had pregnant people in the church since the first century.  [00:11:18] Tony Arsenal: Well, I mean that's probably true, but  [00:11:19] Jesse Schwamb: yeah, it definitely  [00:11:20] Tony Arsenal: true. Not, not our church. Our church has only been around, our particular church has only been around for like 10 years, so I'm sure there have been times during that period where there were not pregnant people  [00:11:29] Jesse Schwamb: pregnant. It just sounded like we were going all the way back as if like to, again emphasize and maybe this isn't, this is as fair statement, like how faithful God has been like from the beginning. There's always been. Pregnant lady Church. Look, look at how faithful God is.  [00:11:42] Mic Grabbing Babies [00:11:42] Jesse Schwamb: And, and this is true, I like to play this game when there is a baby dedication. I'm not sure what the sound system is like in your church, but often our, our pastors wear like the tiny little like Backstreet Boys style. It's probably outdated reference, but microphone that comes over the ear and to the mouth and it's very discreet. But the game I like to play is like once, once he takes the child for a time of dedication or specifically prayer, the, the goal is to see like how long before that baby goes for the mic. Because as soon as like a baby sees a mic right there, it's like, oh yeah, this is the best thing that's happened to me in my tiny little life.  [00:12:20] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, it's like an angler fish is really what it is. Yes. It's like that glowing bulb that just sits in front of its face and it's, the baby's just gotta grab it. [00:12:27] Jesse Schwamb: It's just too tempting. It's just too tempting. And I, and I love, you can tell like our pastors are really adept at being able to keep the prayer going and like discreetly maneuver the child, keep the child happy. It's, it's really an amazing thing. So altogether, I'm totally with you on so many levels. It's so good to see that happen in the church. And I'm with you on that. We gotta take joy in that For sure.  [00:12:48] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Jesse, what do you got for us tonight?  [00:12:50] Book Breath Pick [00:12:50] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, something that's entirely unlike everything you just said. Certainly. Well, maybe, I guess there is a large spiritual component to this, but it's, I would say, for me, totally unexpected book recommendation and I came across this 'cause it was recommended to me and a while back, the keen or the listener who's been with us for a really long time, or a member that we talked about the book or why we sleep, this book became for me, like the equivalent of that in a totally different kind of topic or genre. It's called breath. The New Signs of a Lost Art by James Nestor and it explores how the way that humans breathe profoundly affects our health, our performance, our longevity. It's a book that is filled with both science and pseudoscience, which the author is really good at distinguishing and calling you to think about those things. But it's really totally changed how I understand like this little pattern in Habits of breathing. And it's a really interesting book of course. Like he draws from a lot of like religious influences, including of course the Judeo-Christian one. And I think that it even drew me back to understanding how God created us. And he did in a very specific way that text's giving some great description to the breadth that he gives us and how he gives us that breath. So if you're looking, I guess, for a little bit of a read, so that might surprise you about something that you might thought was automatic and simple in life and also that might. Be able to bring you some recommendations on how to better your health. Again, we're not doctors, but we are routinely considered among the top 50 healthcare podcasts. Then I would say this would be an interesting book for you to check out.  [00:14:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I haven't read it, but it's been recommended to me and one of the, one of the takeaways, actually, I think it might have been my doctor, my my PCP who mentioned this to me is like, if you wanna improve your health drastically, like just make it a practice of breathing through your nose. Yes. Like something that simple and straightforward has pretty significant health impacts of like. Like the way that your brain processes breath when it comes through your nose, the way that like, there's more filtering that happens with breath, so the air that gets to your lungs is cleaner. There's just a lot of, um, I haven't read it. I've, I think I actually have it somewhere, but I have not read it yet. Um, I, I should, I should take a look at it. I, I've heard good things about it.  [00:15:01] Jesse Schwamb: At the very least, if you're a Christian, it'll cause you to marvel again. That's how beautifully complex God has made the human body and how it seems entirely impossible that anyone could even logically reasonably conclude that somehow we are just time plus matter, plus chance, and that all these things got worked out. I don't wanna spoil some of the punchline. A part of the book is about this. Breathe through your nose, which you might think was just kind of an innocuous decision. Breathe through your nose, breathe your mouth. How, how different could it be? They actually do an experiment where they plug their noses, the author and somebody else for, uh, several, like 10 days straight. And do all these these things under medical supervision to see what the impact is. And I'll leave you to read it so you can hear that. There's also something fascinating, absolutely fascinating about carbon dioxide and a study that's done where they actually have people inhale a little bit of carbon dioxide and what it does to the body. In other words, like the system that God has put into play to ensure that the body gets the kind of right amount of oxygen that it needs and how it functions when it's given the warning side of carbon dioxide, even when. Your lung capacity and your oxygen, your blood doesn't change. There's a fascinating section on that. So I didn't expect to be this interested in the book and generally I take a little time before I recommend a book. I finished this a couple weeks ago and I'm still thinking about it. So, and I'm trying to put some things into practice, including I try to do some running and for the longest time I just thought, well, when you run, like even at any like moderate speed, like you have to breathe through your mouth, this book challenges some of that. So lo and behold, I went out and started to try just a little bit to see if I could just breathe through my nose. It turns out it's totally possible, like all this time I just thought that was impossible, like God didn't make us that way, and it's actually improving how I feel when I run and the running that I'm able to do. So I am surprised, I, I'm shocked by all this, and it's just as simple as understanding breath. Who would've guessed.  [00:16:56] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. I mean, I've heard it's a great book. I, I, I. It never ceases to amaze that the, the more we look at the human body, the more we look at God's creation, the more we see the fingerprints of our creators. So not, not  [00:17:07] Jesse Schwamb: right.  [00:17:07] Tony Arsenal: Sounds like a great book. I can't recommend it from personal experience, uh, although I've heard very good things.  [00:17:12] Reading Matthew 21 [00:17:12] Tony Arsenal: So, Jesse, I think we should probably just get into it because this is now week three of, uh, one week episode and, uh, we want to wanna dig in and we wanna wrap it up so we can move on to the next best thing out there, which is of course, the parables of Christ. [00:17:26] Jesse Schwamb: Let's get some. So I'm gonna read for us starting in verse 40 because if you've been tracking then you've already been with us through the first part of this parable, and it's notoriously or variously called parable the vine growers, or I kinda like the husband men, just because that's fun to say, and you don't get to drop husband men like very often. But vine dressers, vine growers, vine workers, it's all the same. But here's starting in verse 40. This is after Jesus has already explained the parable. He set it up for them and he's gonna bring for the indictment. So Jesus says, and therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to these vine growers? They said to him, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and he will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons. Jesus said to them, did you never read in the scriptures the stone, which the builders rejected? This has become the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord in his, marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to seize him, they feared the crowds because they were guarding him to be a prophet.  [00:18:48] Irony Blind Leaders [00:18:48] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, that, that last little section here is just such, it's like dripping with such irony,  [00:18:53] Jesse Schwamb: so good  [00:18:54] Tony Arsenal: that like they, they are so blinded by their own, um, I dunno, ambition isn't, maybe isn't even the right word, but something in that, that neighborhood, they're so blinded by their desire to. Maintain their own status quo, their own uh, their own status. That they fear the crowds because the crowds hold them to be a prophet,  [00:19:15] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:19:16] Tony Arsenal: When in reality, like there is a prophet in their midst and much more than a prophet, uh, and they can't see it because of their own blindness. So I'm stoked to get into it. This is such, like we said, this is such a, like on the nose, paril, it's crazy. This is so much like, you know, Nathan's, you are the man kind of parable. Like yes, that's right, except there never is a, you are the man moment for them. They never get it, which is. Stunning. Like I, I, it just sort of is like, I don't even know what to make of that. [00:19:41] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. There is like a wild blindness. I've been thinking about that a lot in our past conversations, but it culminates here. These chief priests and elders, I would say strangely, but I think that this is probably true of all of us, and maybe especially me, perhaps not yet, like perceiving themselves to be the vine growers here in view, they render this verdict of severe justice. It seems like you, you wanna say to them? Like, guys, guys, pull up, hold up a second. Yeah. Take a step back before you overreact here, because you're about to condemn yourselves and in the Greek here, this expression like, miserably destroy these wicked men. Or it gets like this double wretched in our translations. Mostly he will bring those wretches to a wretched end. It's this rhetorical intensification. It's incredible. And I, I think there's at least like two truths here. That come to my mind. One is, we've talked about before, but is in line with what you're saying, that the natural conscience, when not even aware of its own complicity, can still discern the justice of God's judgments. So here are these men who are so prone almost, I think what Calvin says elsewhere, like that we have this hidden impulse to identify with justice. Even when we can't see that we are the ones perpetrating something of injustice, still we can't help but cry out. We can't even help but identify it. And here they. Accurately identify it. And even though they're putting themselves exactly in the cross here, they cannot help but basically cry out that how egregious this behavior is of these vine growers that Jesus has basically, you know, created in this hypothetical environment, even still there, they're filled with rage and the rage gets turned on them. So the Pharisees here, of course, function as this unwitting witness to the righteousness of God's wrath against covenant breakers, even though they, they don't see it.  [00:21:29] Kingdom Transfer Talk [00:21:29] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, the second thing I think that comes to my mind, and maybe this is like more to the point, is that. The verse foreshadows this transfer of the kingdom from the Jewish nation to a new people that would bring forth its fruits, which I realize if I bring that up right now, that we've just committed to like six episodes just on that topic probably. But yeah, but like, we're gonna have to come to it because there's so much here. And the phrase of this, like, let out his vineyard unto other vine growers or husbandman, it does to me like anticipate this calling of the Gentiles and the formation of the Christian Church and in, in this way. It's not to me. The abandonment of the elect, remnant of Israel, but it is like the breaking off of the natural branches and then this engrafting of the wild olive shoots that come through like Allah, Romans 11. So it's, it's not like from one nation to another simply, but from like the carnal seed to a spiritual seed gathered out of all the nations, that that's wild. Right? I, I think that's all in view here. And it's like a kind of a crazy thing to say. It's certainly like a wild thing to say, no pun intended. And I imagine like, unexpected thing to say.  [00:22:38] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:22:40] Supersessionism Clarified [00:22:40] Tony Arsenal: Let's think about that a little bit because I think too, there's, there's almost an element of, um. Man, I'm gonna get a lot of flack for saying this. You're, there's almost like a legitimate replacement theology here, right? Like replacement theology. I got covenant theology, you know, reformed, um, reformed theology often gets slandered as, you know, supersessionism or replacement theology, uh, with this idea that like, it's, it's interest. Uh, you have to have dispensational presuppositions for that phrase to even make sense because like the reformed paradigm is that there is one people of God full stop. And yes, like the identity of the one people of God seems to sort of like morph from the Jewish national people to now like Jews and Gentiles and actually predominantly Gentiles in the scope of like the whole history of the church. But what I mean by this is like, there's a visible church in the Old Testament, in the old, under the old Covenant, and the visible church under the old covenant is the national people of, of Israel. Right. By and large. Right. Um, and there are, there are sort of like Gentile, um, Clingons, not like the Star Trek people, but like gentile, like attachments to that throughout the history of, of Old Testament, um, theology. Um. That visible, that visible identification of this is the people of God being the Jewish people. Uh, these are the people that are the vineyard, the, they're the, the owner or the tenants of the vineyard or the, the visible Jewish people of the geopolitical nation of Israel under the old covenant that does sort of like get superseded by the church in the church age, in the new covenant,  right?  [00:24:24] Tony Arsenal: But where, where Supersessionism or the accusation of Supersessionism goes wrong is that there is this distinction between the visible and invisible church. And that distinction is what prevents us from being like, sort of like true replacement theologians in the way that the, the dispensationalist wanna paint us. So I, I think you're right that there is a lot to say here about the fact that, um, and, and this is where it gets, um. We have to be careful systematically. Right. God, God doesn't have to pivot. He doesn't have like a plan B. It's not like the Gentiles are the plan B, but there is a sense in almost in which the way that this is presented, the way that it appears in the scriptures is actually, yeah, there is almost like this plan B, like there is the geopolitical ethnic people of, of Israel, the Jewish people under the old covenant. And, and they don't do what they're supposed to do. They don't follow the terms of their covenant. They don't accept the kingdom that is bequeathed to them under the terms of the old covenant. And they, they reject that kingdom because of a disobedience. And, and I think what Christ here is narrowing in on is it's not just disobedience, right? It's not sort of like, um, accidental ancillary disobedience. It's not generalized disobedience. It is this sort of like usurpation of God's rightful status as the ruler and king of the nation. That's right. The the people, the, the Pharisees. And the chief priests and the scribes and the Sadducees, they want to be the rulers of the nation. They want to, they, they seem to wanna take the place of God, at least as far as Christ is presenting it. In this, they wanna usurp the kingdom. They want to take the heirs, uh, rightful inheritance, and they want to claim it for themselves. That is not a generalized disobedience, it's a special t type of covenant unfaithfulness that causes God to causes and kind of air quotes that causes God to hand over the kingdom to another people. Right. Partially, I think, uh, we don't need to get into Romans, the Romans 11 stuff, but partially I think because that's actually the way that he's going to ultimately save the Jewish people, right, is by sort of making, making them jealous of the Gentiles. Like there's a, there's a real element of that, that the salvation of the Gentiles is actually for, in some sense is for or unto the salvation of the Jewish people or the, the faithful Jewish remnant that's all here. And, and you can't really get past that in this parable. Um, this is why I think a, a lot of dispensationalist, um, uh, some of the classic dispensational sources would actually see like this, this is not for the Jewish church. This, this is for the Gentiles. This is actually part of the parentheses, um. You know, and, and again, dispensationalist divide all that stuff up differently, but this is a really interesting section for us to talk about that we can't, we can't just gloss over that. [00:27:11] Jesse Schwamb: I certainly don't mean to imply that it's wild because it's unexpected. I think it's wild because interestingly, the Pharisees, the teachers here, they challenge Jesus authority and his response to that is to challenge their covenant faithfulness.  [00:27:24] Tony Arsenal: Right?  [00:27:25] Jesse Schwamb: So it's not just if he turns it around, he uses this opportunity to explain what's going to happen to them as those who are, like you said, were supposed to be representative. And I think critically like the qualifying phrase. That that's using the text here, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. That's like really important because these new vine growers are characterized by their fruitfulness. So this is not like a doctrine of works righteousness, but it's evidential fruit. And that's why, and I had to look this up and the Westminster Confession confession, chapter 16, good works are quote the fruits and evidences of true and lively faith, which I love. I was trying to find that language true and lively faith. So the visible church under that new administration is identified by the fruits of repentance, faith, and obedience worked out by the Holy Spirit. Again, I think that's all that is in view here, that that's a lot to say. But you know, famously, like you've kind of intimated, when we go back to the Old Testament, even we find when the Israelites leave triumphantly from Egypt, that they're accompanied by those outside of Israel. We find that other characters like Grh who continually want to identify with a Yahweh whom God is saving and drawing onto himself and here is kind. Him, Jesus, at least representing as the son of God. That kind of cli climactic view. Speaking from the prophet register again saying, this is what I was saying to Abraham. I said, like from your seed, all these nations in this spiritual sense will be gathered out. So there'll be a single nation as it were in Christ. And even now, I'm telling you, I'm breaking down those boundaries. But I think to your point, importantly Tony, in part because you have failed in the covenant promises and you who were to represent and to heed and to lead, have fallen down. And so now you're gonna trip over this stone and it's going to crush you. And as a result of that, the vine, the vine growers will be, or the vineyard itself will be turned over to those who bear this true and lively fruit.  [00:29:22] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:29:23] Israel Failure Remnant [00:29:23] Tony Arsenal: There's an interesting, um. There's an interesting dynamic here that actually strikes me as kind of similar. It's a little bit more opaque, but similar to, uh, like Joseph in, uh, in Egypt, right when his brothers come and he says, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good. Mm-hmm. There's a, there's an element of here, we've talked about the parables. That's sort of like systematic theology in story form. Um, there's a reality here that it's both true, that God always intended for the kingdom to be expansive and, and to expand beyond the nation of Israel. To be this universal, global lowercase c Catholic, universal church universal in the sense that it's not bound by any particular nation, by any particular geopolitical reality. Um. That's true, but it's also true that the reason, uh, on a sort of like horizontal level that that's true is that Israel failed. Right? It so God always intended for Israel to fail, yet Israel is responsible for the fact that they failed. Yes, that's right. Um, and, and, and again, we, we, we sort of commented on this before, like there are some in our broader reformed circles that turn this into a sort of antisemitism, like a sort of hatred for the Jewish people. And I don't think, I don't think that there's any warrant in scripture for that. In fact, I think scripture speaks strongly against that. Is that, um. Not necessarily because there's any particular unique special affection that God has for Israel, like, like the modern Jewish people, but, but that, like racism in general is prohibited by the Bible. But I think where we do need to be clear though, is that there is a real failure. It's a true, genuine failure on the part of the first century Jewish. Leaders and people, um, with a faithful remnant. Right? There was, um, we're, we're getting, you know, we're in the springtime and we've already had, uh, we've already had discussions about this. We've already done Easter, but like there is always conversations around Palm Sunday of like, are the crowds that are following Jesus into, into town screaming, you know, yelling, Hosanna? Is that the same crowds that are yelling crucify him a couple days later? Um, I tend to think like, no, like actually, like the people who are saying crucified, crucify Christ are probably like the Jews who live in Jerusalem or like the, primarily the religious leaders. There's a whole host of Jewish believers and kind of the hoy pallo, the, the people out in the country that absolutely follow Jesus. Like they follow him as the Messiah. They, they confess him in many cases. They convince him to be, um, they confess him to be God, to to be the savior, to be the, the figure from Daniel seven, the son of man. Um. There's a reality in which the Jewish remnant absolutely recognize Christ and they persist in the church, right? The earliest Christians were all Jews, and you know, there was a few Gentiles along the way, you know, and maybe not even Gentiles like Samaritans. I don't even know if you would call them gentiles. They're kind of this midway point, but in Jewish gentil. But there are people throughout Christ's ministry, right? Cornelius or not Cornelius, the Centurion recognizes that this is the son of God. Like there are people, the s Phoenician woman, there are people who are not part of Israel proper, who even in the, in the midst of Christ's ministry are recognizing him as God and as Messiah and as the savior of the world. But, but by and large, the earliest Christian movement was Jewish people. It was the faithful remnant of, of Israel who recognized that their Messiah had come. That is true. And at the same time. The, probably the majority, and especially the rulers and the leaders of the Israel, you know, the Jewish faith in the first century absolutely rejected him. And this is what I, this is what I think is wild, is I think sometimes we think that, um, the prophecies and the understanding of Christ and what the messiah, who the Messiah was to be and what to expect, we think of those as like super obscured and super hidden until Christ comes and then all of a sudden they're really obvious. Christ doesn't seem to treat them that way. Right? Right. He tells this parable and they rightly identify that, and this is a, this is such a thinly veiled parable. Like this is like, you killed the prophets. You're going to kill me. And there's going to be consequences. Like he practically says that outright. Um. He treats that as like they should obviously know this, right? The, have you never read in the scriptures, the stone, the builder rejected has become the cornerstone, right? This was the lord's doing. It is, and it is marvelous in their eyes that have you never read?  [00:34:06] Decree in Rejection [00:34:06] Tony Arsenal: That is a, that's a rhetorical question with the implied answer of, of course, you've read exactly like he's not, he's not teaching them something that he anticipated is new to them. He maybe is teaching them something that he anticipated they maybe you didn't recognize. But actually I think probably like, uh, there probably were many among them that were like, oh yeah, we are doing this. But then almost like we're powerless to stop themselves from moving forward in that.  [00:34:32] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:34:32] Tony Arsenal: Sort of like wicked plan. [00:34:34] Jesse Schwamb: Right. Yeah. And I think we could extend that as well to say that this rejection of Christ by this Jewish leadership, which of course was a incredible failure, like you're saying, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't an unforeseen tragedy. So just like interestingly in Acts four in his sermon where Peter quotes from the same Old Testament passage about Christ being the cornerstone, you know, it was prophesied long before. And so the doctrine of God's eternal decree, I think finds v vivid illustration even here. This is all the Lord's doing. Yeah. And even the wicked rejection of the Messiah is serving this purpose, this sovereign purpose of God's great exaltation. And so it's fascinating, and we should marvel at the fact that, again, like God means what he says when he says like He uses what is weak to overcome that which is strong, or to embarrass the strong, he uses that which seems foolish. To make the wise themselves, the ones who are actually foolish in the same way.  [00:35:29] Cornerstone Unites Church [00:35:29] Jesse Schwamb: This very stone, which men in their malice cast aside on that day. God is in his wisdom setting as this chief cornerstone. And I love like that idea of this phrase, this head of the corner denoting that amazing preeminence of Christ, that Christ is not merely included in the building of the new Covenant church. He is its chief and constituent stone that joining together both like the Jew and the Gentile, finally into one structure. And that's really, I think to your point, that's the great mystery of the hidden ages from the past. That that's the thing which Christ is bringing to like this grand display, like out on the stage in the open, in front of everybody. He's drawing it up, he's calling it to account. And so in that way, the same Jesus that was rejected by men is in God's account of inestimable value. And that should be like, I think, familiar to most of us because like there a form tradition has always insisted that. The true theology always issues in doxology and the cross and exaltation of Christ are not merely these facts, which we give these intellectual ascent, but we, we confess them as mysteries which provoke us to adoration of who God is. It's the excellency of Christ expounding at length, like the wondrous conjunction of Christ's humiliation and his exaltation, which finds its pattern here, rejected by men, glorified by God.  [00:36:50] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:36:52] Works Covenant Failures [00:36:52] Tony Arsenal: And, and this is, um, we, we commented in our first, uh, episode on this par ball. This is not isolated to just the rulers of Israel at the time of Christ, right? This is in reality, kind of like a reflection of every failure of the covenant of works. In some sense, every failure to hold the covenant of works boils down to an attempt to make oneself, God. Right. This was Adam's failure in the garden. Um, Eve, Eve was the first person to eat the fruit, but Adam, Adam was responsible for that and he, he also ate the fruit and they, they did so in part because they thought it was useful to make them like God and, and in an illegitimate fashion. And they knew it was an illegitimate fashion. It's not as though Adam and Eve suddenly were like, maybe we can eat the fruit. Maybe like we actually are fine to do it. Like they knew it was still forbidden. Right. They did it anyways. And the Pharisees here, um, are in a real attempt. Um, they are trying to take the role of Messiah for the people. They're trying to be the savior of the people in sort of shepherding and guiding them into this like. Ultra legalistic Puritan, like puritanical in the worst sense, um, kind of approach to the law. Um, this is the, the story of Old Testament Israel, right? What is the first thing that the Israelites do? Um, at Mount Sinai? The first thing they do is try to fashion gods so that they have a tame God that they can control and that they can actually be God's over. So I think this is really key and, and this is where it becomes practical for us, is that. I think we always are faced with a choice, right? There's, there's obviously those who are Christ, who the son is set free. He's set free indeed, and they will never not be his people. Like you never become not justified. If you were justified, you always forever more are justified. Justified is a final. It's, it's the future judgment of God's people dragged and dropped into the present and applied. It's the righteousness of Christ applied. So there, there's never a time where that righteousness is like removed or unapplied, but we are constantly faced with a choice as to whether we want to be the kind of people who render our fruit unto the Lord, uh, as the faithful, the sort of the implied faithful tenants that are going to be brought forward when the, the unfaithful tenants are replaced. Or do we wanna be the people that reap wicked fruit and keep for ourselves? And I think that's, that's really the thing. Like we're either gonna rep. Fruit of wickedness, or we're gonna reap fruit of righteousness. And the only thing to do with fruit of righteousness is surrender it to the Lord. But we often are faced with that choice, like, are we gonna reap our own wicked fruit and keep it all to ourselves right, uh, to our own detriment? Or are we gonna go ahead and be the faithful tenants that give the Lord what he deserves?  [00:39:46] Kingdom Transfer Explained [00:39:46] Jesse Schwamb: We're seeing so much of the simplicity of God here that like you and I have said so many times before that his loving kindness, his long suffering ness is his righteousness, is his justice, is his wrath. And so I think it's helpful, again, to remind ourselves that we're, we are talking, or he specifically is speaking of the kingdom of God here. And again referring to this visible administration of the covenant of grace, not to the inward and invisible kingdom of saving grace, which as you just said, can never be lost from those who possess it, which by the way is a really important distinctive of reform theology. There are many that would disagree with that statement, and I think really much to their harm in, in disagreement with the scriptures themselves, this one in particular, but it is this external administration, the privileges, the ordinances, the oracles of God. That is being transferred from the Jewish nation as a corporate body to a new and broader people of God. And because I know that sounds very extreme, I did look up Calvin and his commentary on this and let me read what he says because this is interesting. I think even this could possibly mis be misunderstood. But here's Calvin who can say it better than I. He says, quote by these words, he means that God would deprive the Jews of the honor and the privilege of being his peculiar people and would call the Gentiles that out of them he might form a church end quote. And going back to what you said earlier, I'm with you. I, I. I mean, this is not, I think as some have wrongly concluded, like replacement theology in like a wooden sense. I, I see this still as like this historical redemptive transition from the typological administration of the old covenant to the eschatological fulfillment of the new. And the elect remnant of Israel is not cast off, but the national like typological privileges are being transferred to the Catholic church, gathered from all nations. And in that, I really do see this wonderful confluence of God's loving kindness, his, his fidelity to the promises that he's made and his wrath being manifested all at once. And somehow Jesus, of course, in complete perfection, can bring that all to bear in this tiny little story.  [00:41:51] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And and isn't it just like the master teacher to like, put all of this baked into this? I mean, that's right. We think of this as like a long parable, like I think,  [00:42:02] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:42:02] Tony Arsenal: I think like it's, it's amazing how we think of parables as, you know, like this is a short one. A short one is a couple sentences, a long one is like a half a dozen sentences. Like, and of course like Christ is teaching broader than this. He's teaching more than this. Just, this is what's recorded by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is what Matthews preserved for us.  [00:42:22] Stone Breaks or Crushes [00:42:22] Tony Arsenal: But you're right, there's so much baked into this little parable and I think, um, there's something to be said about this idea of like. Not only do those who smash against the, the rock, the, the cornerstone, those who smash against the rock, like those who who fall on the rock are broken to pieces, but also the rock falls on others and smashes them to pieces. Right? And, and there's something to be said about the fact that, and I'm not exactly sure how I wanna articulate this, but it's only those who like recognize the proper place of the rock and don't either let it fall on them or don't smash themselves against it. You know, we always joke about like running through a wall. Like this is not a wall you're gonna run through. Like you're gonna smash into this wall and it's gonna crush you. And if you are, if you're not properly assigning the cornerstone it's placed, right? The cornerstone is, is the stone that's placed in the foundation of a building that all the other stones find their orientation and their proper alignment based on. [00:43:26] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:43:26] Tony Arsenal: You might think of this sometimes. I've heard this articulated as like the, the arch stone. I think it's a little bit different than that. Um, but it, the, the idea is the same, right? Like there's a stone in an arch. If you think of like a classic Roman arch, you have these piles of stones until you put the final arch stone in. That, in that stone is what makes the arch stable. Until that point, either side can fall, but if you don't properly set that arch stone where it's supposed to be, then the whole thing is gonna crush you. It's gonna fall down on top of you at some point. I think this is a little different. This is the cornerstone of a, this is more like the cornerstone of a building. This is the stone that the rest of the building, building is oriented against and is aligned with. If you get that wrong, then you have a, you have like a crooked wall, a wall that's not set, that's not straight. It's not stable. What this is saying and what this, this prophecy right from, from Psalm one 10, I think I should probably look it up, but I haven't yet. But this prophecy that Christ is referring to this, this prophetic statement in the Psalms that he's assuming the audience is familiar with, right? I think that's a really important point. Like he's not only assuming that they're familiar with it, there's rhetorical force of kind of like, of course you understand this principle that there is a cornerstone coming. There is something or someone who is coming that all other things will be measured against. And if you're either in alignment with this, with this person who is coming or you're out of alignment with reality, this thing is understood by them. It just is so critical and I think like the, the, a lot of the parables don't have explanations built into them. Some of them do. We've talked about some of them. A lot of them don't, this one does, but it's kind of like a really surprising way to explain it. And there's so much, um, the more that I look at this, the more we talk about it, this really is so similar to David and Nathan, right? Right. When with the, the affair with Bathsheba, he is saying to the Pharisees, look, you're the man. Like, you're the one here. You're the guy. You guys are the wicked tenants that are gonna, you've killed the prophets. Right? Um, I'm losing my, my timeline a little bit, but John the Baptist either had been executed or would be executed shortly at this point, right? So like the, the most recent prophet either was already killed or, or Christ knew of course he was going to be killed. Um, he's saying, look, you guys are the ones that are doing this and you're going to kill me. Right. And this is obviously what the prophecy is, that you think you're going to come against the cornerstone, but in reality you're going to shatter yourself upon me. You think you're gonna come against me, I'm going to crush you. And rather than say, you know, as ba, you know, as David does, where he repents, he, he fasts and he, he refuses to eat. He's, he's in mourning over both the loss of his infant, but, but more so over his own sin, I think is the picture the text gives us. Um, he's mourning trying to uh, sort of like reverse God's decision, but there's a genuine repentance to it, right? That's where we get Psalm 51, like creating, clean me a clean heart, oh God, renew a right spirit in me. There's none of that for the Pharisees, there's none of that for the sadist of the chief priests. They just continue to smash themselves against this rock, not recognizing that it's actually the rock that is crushing them. [00:47:05] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, it's, it's a bit like, I'm gonna speak like a little maybe beyond my depth here, but there's a little bit of like that Nathan, like Strategem, and then this is where I'm outside my own experience. And then a little bit like maybe like WWE the rock in terms of like. If you want some come and get some, right? It's a little of both. And of course the passage ends very tragically, well ends humorously by them, you know, saying that at some point they were like, they understood in these parables, again, this is one of three of the same kind of topic of variety, but that Jesus was referring to them, which is funny. You wanna be like, yeah, it took a, took a long enough, I guess, guys, but you finally got it. But then that last sentence of like, they still sought to kill him. So to your point, even after all of this, there wasn't repentance. And we do get these, I think, two very distinct judgements that are depicted here, which you've already kinda led us into this first, like, whoever shall fall on the stone shall be broken. You know, to me, I think that's invoking this idea that in this life, there we are, we can be brought to brokenness through the gospel and to fall upon Christ. And repentance. And faith is to be broken in self, in pride and self-righteous. It's a breaking that does lead to healing. But this second judgment, you know the one, but on whomever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder, grind him to dust, I mean. Man, think about what a vivid image that is. I mean, that's like the more terrible of the two. That that's like the, yeah. Final Es logical judgment of those who persist in unbelief and it, it admits there's like no remedy. So there are only two ways to relate to Christ. You either fall upon him willingly in faith and repentance, which is painful, but it is saving, you know, to have him fall upon us in judgment is final in damning, and so that's what Christ presents here. [00:48:48] Psalm 118 in Context [00:48:48] Jesse Schwamb: It's, it's both of these things and you're right, it is brilliant that he goes to Psalm one 18 even that as a setup, because as you've kind of already said, I love to think, of course that's, can you manner the tone in which this was said to these scribes and Pharisees? Because of course the, the secondary indictment here is like, listen, you guys who like your great pride is that, you know, the scriptures really well. Have you read this part is familiar to you. Yeah. Can you tell me where that is? So like, we, we should go there just, just quickly. This is Psalm one 18 because I think that here again is, as I'm hearing it in context. There are some verses surrounding this that I think we might be surprised that they come right on the heels of this idea of the stone. So just a couple verses. In Psalm one 18 being in verse 22, the stone, which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone. This is from Yahweh. It is marvelous in our eyes. Here's the verses that we might not recognize. Come right after it. This is the day which Yahweh has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Oh, Yahweh, save. Oh, Yahweh, succeed. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of Yahweh. We have blessed you from the house of Yahweh. Yahweh is God, and he has given us light by the festival sacrifice with corns to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I give thanks to you. You are my God, and I exalt you. Give thanks to Yahweh for his good, for his loving kindness endures forever. And so this idea that there's rejoicing in which day, I mean, usually we kinda say that it's like, well, it's a beautiful day out. It's the Lord's day. This is the day that Yahweh is like that. That's true. But also here in particular, it is this blessed day of Yahweh giving the stone, which the builders reject and which has become the chief cornerstone. And that stone is some will run headlong into and shipwreck their lives and others will be crushed underneath it. And guess what? This is the day which Yahweh has made and we're gonna rejoice and be glad in that.  [00:50:41] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:50:43] Mark's Angle on Fear [00:50:43] Tony Arsenal: The other thing I think, you know, we. Should, um, maybe not spend any time on, 'cause we're at like, out, like minute 50 of a 60 minute podcast. But just going to, to Mark's version of this parable real quick. Um, starting in verse, uh, this is chapter 12, verse 12. It says, and they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people for, they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. And the, the main difference here, the reason I'm reading this is Mark chooses a d. Concerning them. The verb is, or the preposition is Perry. So it's kind of like this idea that he was, he was sort of speaking around them. He was talking about them. Mark uses the, the preposition, proce, which is not, um, not against, in like the same, uh, direct sense. We might use the word against. That would be something like Kada. Um, but he's, he's speaking this parable towards them or to them, um, against them. He's, he's directing the parable at them. And this is, this is, we, we commented on this a little bit in the, the first episode here. Um, he is speaking to the crowds. But he's telling the parable about or against or concerning the Pharisees and the scribes, and they perceive this, right. The, the gospels here don't say that the crowds perceive this. Right. And I think that's key. Like the Pharisees basically look at this and say, uh, we better get this under control because he's talking about us. Right, right. Like, I'm just picturing Paul Washer's. I'm not trying to say Paul Washer is a Pharisee, although some people would probably make that connection. But like I'm, I'm just hearing Paul Washer's voice saying like, I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. He's speaking to the Pharisees here. And it's interesting because Matthew associates the, the, uh, Pharisees. Cowardice in acting against Christ, uh, because they fear the crowds and because the crowds believe Christ is a parable or is a prophet Mark associates. And again, both of these things are true, right? This is holy scripture. This is inspired, these are not contradictory accounts. This is facets of the same diamond. Mark associates this with, they fear the crowds. Um, because they had taken him. They, they understood that the parable was being spoken against them, right? So there's this element that the Pharisees are not only understanding that the, the parable is about them, they feared them because the crowds believe that Christ is a prophet and that prophet is speaking this parable against them, right? So like they're, they're recognizing full on that it's only a matter of time before the, the general population, the general people that are listening to Christ recognize that he's overturning. Not only the Pharisees, the entire geopolitical nation of Israel, he's overturning the ethnic based reality, the geopolitical based reality, that God's people have a zip code and that zip code is Jerusalem. That zip code is this little si, this little tract of land the size of like Vermont and New Hampshire in the Mediterranean, like off the Mediterranean Sea. He's overturning that. And the, the Pharisees, the educated people, the, the Sadducees, the chief priests, the rulers, they recognize it's only a matter of time before the people understand what Christ is doing. They, they follow him as a prophet and this is what he's prophesying. And

The Holy Spirit is the implanted hope that continually moves us to live the Christian life, the Way of Jesus. In addition to reconciliation, a section function of this movement is found in our vocation. This Sunday we will be joined by Reverend Rae Huang. She is a community organizer, ordained Presbyterian minister, and actively engaged in Los Angeles politics. We will discuss how her vocational path has always been in response to the Spirit. www.TheLoftLA.org

Does church history hold importance for believers today? Why should Christians look to the past for insight into doctrine instead of looking to Scripture alone? In the second part of his series on the church and the state, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones chastises the arrogance of believers who say church history is not important. In this sermon on Romans 13:1–7 titled “Church and the State (2),” he argues for the wisdom of modern believers' consideration of men and women of history handling difficult questions of their faith. This is particularly enlightening as one considers the relations of church and state. Dr. Lloyd-Jones continues his historical look at these particular relations through consideration of the view that the church and the state are essentially different and distinct. He provides four distinctions to consider: their difference in origin, the object from which they were instituted, the power given to them by God, and the way their functions are carried out. The teachings of Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin are given special attention by Dr. Lloyd-Jones as their beliefs are foundational to the development of the influential Belgic Confession and Westminster Confession. These confessions have direct implications for Presbyterian congregations today. Listen as Dr. Lloyd-Jones expounds on the value of learning from church history as he continues discussing the relations of the church and the state. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/603/29?v=20251111

From the "It Matters" sermon series. Preached by Jody Killingsworth.

Martin Wagner May 17, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL BulletinThank you for listening! Please visit us at www.faith-pca.org. 

Audio Recording Faith Practices Rev. Tim Chang Download Sermon OutlineSpeaker: Rev. Tim ChangSermon Series: FWPSMActs 2:42-47 (ESV)42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.Sermon Outline1. A life of devotion[42] And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.2. A life of sharing[44] And all who believed were together and had all things in common. [45] And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.3. A life of witness[46] And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, [47] praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.Prayer of ConfessionOur gracious God, we confess that the Christian life is full of challenges. There are so many things competing for our devotion, and we are not always committed to you. We have received spiritual blessings and abundant gifts, but instead of sharing, we often hoard. We struggle to bear witness to Jesus openly and hide out of shame and fear. Forgive us for not living in line with who you have called us to be. May the power of Jesus' devotion to us, his generous sharing of all that belonged to him, and his beautiful witness of good news renew us and shape us according to your will.Questions for ReflectionWhat connected with you from the sermon or the passage?Based on this passage, our church emphasizes five practices: fellowship, word, sacraments, prayer, mission. What's the difference between merely valuing these practices and actually being devoted to them?Which of these practices feel most natural to you and which ones need more attention or take more effort on your part?What makes it hard for us to notice the needs of those around us, and perhaps even within our own church?In what ways is the call to generosity easy for you; in what ways is it challenging?The early church seemed to have a Christian identity in both public and private settings. To what degree is your Christian identity on full display?What are the obstacles to having “favor with all people” right now? What do you sense God calling you to do from this passage?

Seventh Sunday of Easter; Sermon based on Ephesians 4:25-5:2 and John 6:35-51. Preached at The First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn (https://linktr.ee/firstchurchbrooklyn). Podcast subscription is available at https://cutt.ly/fpcb-sermons or Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4ccZPt6), Spotify, Amazo....This item belongs to: audio/first-church-brooklyn-sermons.This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, Columbia Peaks, Item Tile, Metadata, PNG, Spectrogram, VBR MP3

Sunday Worship May 17th, 2026   “What’s Necessary” Acts 15:1-21 Rev. Tyler Dirks   Sermon Audio   Sermon Outline: Joy Freedom Reflection Questions: Do you agree that JOY is a necessity? What are some of the particular and primary hallmarks of the Joy of Jesus of Nazareth? How can you practically and personally enter, and […] The post What’s Necessary appeared first on East Charlotte Pres.

[audio mp3="https://cpcpca.org/wp-content/uploads/sermons/2026/05/05-17-2026-Sunday-School.mp3"][/audio] Bible Text: Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 | Pastor: Pastor Josh Anderson | Series: Eccelesiastes

Rev. Dr. Alex Wimberly, Montview's next Installed Co-Pastor

Does church history hold importance for believers today? Why should Christians look to the past for insight into doctrine instead of looking to Scripture alone? In the second part of his series on the church and the state, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones chastises the arrogance of believers who say church history is not important. In this sermon on Romans 13:1–7 titled “Church and the State (2),” he argues for the wisdom of modern believers' consideration of men and women of history handling difficult questions of their faith. This is particularly enlightening as one considers the relations of church and state. Dr. Lloyd-Jones continues his historical look at these particular relations through consideration of the view that the church and the state are essentially different and distinct. He provides four distinctions to consider: their difference in origin, the object from which they were instituted, the power given to them by God, and the way their functions are carried out. The teachings of Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin are given special attention by Dr. Lloyd-Jones as their beliefs are foundational to the development of the influential Belgic Confession and Westminster Confession. These confessions have direct implications for Presbyterian congregations today. Listen as Dr. Lloyd-Jones expounds on the value of learning from church history as he continues discussing the relations of the church and the state. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/603/29?v=20251111

In today's episode, Róisín Ingle is joined by award-winning Northern Irish writer Jan Carson, who has just released her ninth book, Few and Far Between. Set on a fictional archipelago in Lough Neagh, the novel blends history, realism and the surreal, drawing on themes of community, belonging and generational trauma. In this conversation, Carson explains how a historic plan to drain Lough Neagh and create a seventh county in the north, inspired the book. She also reflects on her childhood growing up in a Presbyterian fundamentalist family - where attending church six days a week was the norm - and what her faith means to her now. But first, freelance journalist Kate Lynch is here to discuss some of the biggest stories of the week, including the racial abuse experienced by newly chosen Dublin Rose, Saud Mooge, plus the rise in popularity of Nigel Farage's Reform UK and what the party's policies mean for women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Guada shares how a childhood question about Jesus led her entire family into faith and completely changed the direction of their lives. From Alpha in a small Presbyterian church in Buenos Aires to stories of revival among young people across Argentina, this episode explores the power of community, honest conversations, and how faith can impact far more than just one person. It's a moving story of family, belonging, and discovering God in unexpected ways. Some key takeaways Faith often begins with simple questions and safe spaces to explore them.Strong Christian community can transform not just individuals, but entire families.Gen Z may be skeptical about faith, but many are still deeply open to spiritual conversations.

According to Pew Research, only 51% of self-identified Christians attend church regularly. Pastor Adriel Sanchez is joined by Caleb Keith from 1517 where they both argue that this crisis is not primarily cultural, but theological. Most Christians are simply unaware what the church actually is, what happens there, and why nothing else can replace it. GET YOUR FREE SOLA NEWSPAPER A quarterly print publication featuring articles on theology, the historic creeds and confessions, and reflections for the Christian life, delivered straight to your mailbox. For free. FOLLOW US YouTube | Instagram | X/Twitter | Facebook | Newsletter WHO WE ARE Sola Media serves today's global church by producing resources for reformation grounded in the historic Christian faith. For over thirty-five years, Sola has walked alongside Christians in their faith, pointing away from novelty and ourselves, and toward Christ and his gospel as proclaimed in the Scriptures, articulated in the ancient Christian Creeds, and summarized in the confessions of the Protestant Reformation. Learn more: https://solamedia.org/

Send us Fan MailThis week Greg sat down with Dr. Chuck Baldwin. Chuck is a Pastor, Radio Host, and former Presidential Candidate. They discussed his journey from a Moral Majority Pre-mill Dispensationalist to his current understanding on what he calls "Fulfillment Theology". They discussed the modern national of Israel, who God's Chosen People are, as well as the upcoming midterms and his eschatology. Enjoy! Dominion Wealth Strategists are the only Kingdom minded company that you need to use. Set up a free consultation here today! You need to protect your sword! Beautiful, classic, and one of a kind! Design your bible rebind from Deus Vult today! 10% for all Dead Men listeners with the code "DEADMANWALKING" Covenant Real Estate: "Confidence from Contract to Close" Facebook: Dead Men Walking PodcastYoutube: Dead Men Walking PodcastInstagram: @DeadMenWalkingPodcastTwitter X: @RealDMWPodcastExclusive Content: PubTV App

Joe Clifford's sermon for Sunday, May 10, 2026, at Myers Park Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC. Full sermon manuscripts can be found at myersparkpres.org/manuscripts.

Alan's Soap https://AlansSoaps.com/Todd Honor John's memory and the legacy he created for Ian and Alan with Alan's Artisan Soaps “John's Favorites” bundle.  Get one bar of each of his favorites for only $28.99. Bulwark Capital https://KnowYourRiskPodcast.comRegister now for the FREE “Impact of Energy" live webinar May 21st at 3:30pm Pacific.Renue Healthcare https://Renue.Healthcare/ToddYour journey to a better life starts at Renue Healthcare. Visit https://Renue.Healthcare/Todd Bonefrog https://BonefrogCoffee.com/ToddGet the new limited release, The Sisterhood, created to honor the extraordinary women behind the heroes. Use code TODD at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase and 15% on subscriptions.Episode links:A Really Wild Claim About Sexual Union in Evangelical MarriagesCasual Sex the Christian Way; The evangelical approach to married sex has a lot in common with hookup culture Casual Sex the Christian Way; The evangelical approach to married sex has a lot in common with hookup cultureDid Jesus Clobber People With The Way, The Truth and The Life?"Clobber, clobber, clobber" - Presbyterian pastor (PCUSA) says that 'I am the way, I am the truth and I am the life, no one comes to the Father except through me' is a CLOBBER text that can be dangerous and used to do harm and damage.On Israel, Gaza and Anti-Semitism: Speak Truth in Grace To Our Jewish Friends and FamilyProverbs 27:6 Wounds from a friend can be trusted,    but an enemy multiplies kissesEzekiel 22, a Dramatic Reading  Ezekiel 22, NKJVSins of Jerusalem22 Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 “Now, son of man, will you judge, will you judge the bloody city? Yes, show her all her abominations! 3 Then say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “The city sheds blood in her own midst, that her time may come; and she makes idols within herself to defile herself. 4 You have become guilty by the blood which you have shed, and have defiled yourself with the idols which you have made. You have caused your days to draw near, and have come to the end of your years; therefore I have made you a reproach to the nations, and a mockery to all countries. 5 Those near and those far from you will mock you as [a]infamous and full of tumult.Sexual Sin6 “Look, the princes of Israel: each one has used his [b]power to shed blood in you. 7 In you they have made light of father and mother; in your midst they have oppressed the stranger; in you they have mistreated the [c]fatherless and the widow. 8 You have despised My holy things and profaned My Sabbaths. 9 In you are men who slander to cause bloodshed; in you are those who eat on the mountains; in your midst they commit lewdness. 10 In you men uncover their fathers' nakedness; in you they violate women who are set apart during their impurity. 11 One commits abomination with his neighbor's wife; another lewdly defiles his daughter-in-law; and another in you violates his sister, his father's daughter. 12 In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take usury and increase; you have made profit from your neighbors by extortion, and have forgotten Me,” says the Lord God.

In this powerful episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony and Jesse dive deep into Matthew 21:33-46, examining Jesus's parable of the wicked tenants. The hosts unpack how Christ masterfully draws the Pharisees into pronouncing their own condemnation, revealing not merely theological error but intentional usurpation of God's authority. Through careful exegesis, they explore the shocking setup of the parable—where the landowner does all the work while the tenants contribute nothing—and how this mirrors God's sovereign initiative in salvation. The discussion touches on confession, the value of full-time ministry, and the scandal of rejecting the Messiah despite recognizing His authority. This episode challenges listeners to examine whether they, like the Pharisees, attempt to claim God's work as their own. Key Takeaways God Does All the Verbs: The parable emphasizes that the landowner planted, built, protected, and prepared everything—the tenants contributed nothing yet claimed ownership of the fruit. Self-Pronounced Condemnation: Jesus draws the Pharisees into declaring their own judgment, demonstrating that even the unregenerate conscience bears witness to divine justice (Romans 2). Intentional Usurpation, Not Mere Error: The Pharisees weren't well-intentioned but misguided; they recognized Christ's authority as the heir and deliberately murdered Him to seize His inheritance. The Scandal of Grace: The parable's shocking element is that the landowner prepared everything before leasing the land—far exceeding normal agricultural arrangements and illustrating God's unmerited favor. Ecclesial Support for Ministry: The OPC presbytery's decision to fund a full-time call demonstrates how church structure can honor the ministry of Word and sacrament by freeing ministers from worldly distractions. Particular Repentance Matters: Westminster Confession 15.5 teaches that believers should not content themselves with general repentance but "endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly." The Stone Rejected Becomes Chief: Christ's citation of Psalm 118 reveals that the very rejection by the builders (religious leaders) was God's plan to establish the cornerstone of salvation. Key Concepts God Does All the Verbs The concentration of action verbs attributed solely to the landowner in Matthew 21:33 is theologically significant. The landowner plants, builds, digs, and rents—creating a fully functional, productive vineyard before the tenants ever arrive. This arrangement differs radically from typical first-century agricultural practices, where tenants would lease raw land and develop it themselves, sharing profits with the landowner. Jesus deliberately presents an extraordinary scenario where the tenants receive everything prepared and ready, requiring only stewardship of what already exists. This parallels God's sovereign initiative in election and salvation: believers contribute nothing to their standing before God, receiving instead a fully accomplished redemption. The Pharisees' rebellion wasn't against burdensome requirements but against simply acknowledging God's rightful ownership of what He alone created. Intentional Usurpation, Not Mere Error The hosts challenge the common sympathetic reading of the Pharisees as well-intentioned legalists who simply got sidetracked. Instead, verse 38 reveals the tenants explicitly recognize the son as heir and plot to murder him to "seize his inheritance." This isn't accidental rejection but calculated rebellion. The Pharisees weren't confused about Jesus's identity or authority—they understood precisely who He claimed to be and deliberately chose to destroy Him rather than submit. This interpretation carries significant weight for understanding the nature of unbelief: it's not primarily intellectual confusion but volitional rebellion. The religious leaders didn't need more evidence or clearer teaching; they needed transformed hearts. This same dynamic appears whenever humans recognize divine truth yet choose self-sovereignty over submission to God's rightful claim on their lives. The Scandal of Grace The parable begins with a scandalous premise that would have startled Jesus's original audience. Unlike normal tenant farming arrangements where landowners simply provided land in exchange for a share of whatever the tenants produced through their own labor, this landowner invests everything. He doesn't just own the property—he plants the vineyard, constructs the protective wall, digs the wine press for production, and builds the watchtower for defense. The tenants receive a turnkey operation requiring minimal effort. This extravagant preparation mirrors God's unmerited favor toward Israel and, by extension, the church. God didn't merely create humanity and wait to see what we would produce; He established covenants, sent prophets, preserved His Word, and ultimately sent His Son—all before requiring any response. The only "payment" demanded is acknowledging His ownership of what He created. The parable thus exposes the absurdity and ingratitude of claiming God's work as our own achievement. Memorable Quotes God does all the verbs. All of the verbs are done by the landowner. There is nothing expected of these tenants—they really add nothing to the landowner's land. Christ is not painting the Pharisees as well-intentioned but ultimately wrong. He's painting them as usurpers who recognize the proper authority and rather than submitting to it, they're going to reject that authority and try to take it for their own. Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man's duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly. (Westminster Confession 15.5) Transcript Welcome to episode 491 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:01:12] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother.  [00:01:17] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother.  [00:01:18] Parable of Tenants [00:01:18] Jesse Schwamb: So picture this, Tony, your landlord. You've built the perfect vineyard. We're talking wall watchtower, wine, press, the works like what everybody says. Everybody knows you need all those things. You've got it all set up, and then you hand the keys to some tenants. You take a long trip, you go enjoy yourself. And when the harvest rolls around, you send your servants to collect the rent. And shockingly, your tenants, they beat. Stone. Another, the kill a third. So naturally you think, you know what? I'll fix this. Lemme just send more people. That's obviously the problem. There's some kind of just profound misunderstanding about what's going on here and about our relationship in this business. And then when that doesn't work, you send your son now loved ones. If this were a business strategy, we would already be calling hr. But of course it's not a business strategy, it's a parable. And Jesus is telling it to the very people about to prove the parable true. So welcome back to the Reformed Brotherhood because we're in Matthew Chapter 21 and we're gonna be actually getting all the way into the parable of the Vine growers where the patience of God looks, I would say, to almost anybody else, to humanize at least almost reckless until you realize that's exactly the point. So yeah, grab your beverage of choice, grab your Bible, pull the car over, will you? Because this is gonna get real and we're going to reason together. But before we do all of that, let's do a little affirming with or denying against, what do you got?  [00:02:41] Inside Baseball Affirmation [00:02:41] Tony Arsenal: So this is a sort of inside baseball, uh, affirmation. Um, I'm not sharing anything, although it may feel like I'm sharing something that is private and like, uh, like confidential. It's not No, this is good. Um, so I had the opportunity to visit. Um, my presbytery, um, for those who are listeners of the show or people who like, have been with us a long time, um, I was part of a Baptist church. Uh, I've always kind of been a Presbyterian at heart, but, um, our church closed, uh, a little over a year and a half ago now. And, um, uh, I've joined an OPC congregation in membership now. We've been members there for about a year. And, um, so I've been visiting Presbytery, which is the, the meeting of all of the leadership of all of the churches. So we won't do a polity breakdown here, but basically like, it's, it's the regional meeting. It's the regional business meeting or church meeting for a group of churches in the OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And so a lot of the meetings, you know, have the normal kind of business type stuff. You have reports from different committee committees and stuff. Um.  [00:03:48] Presbytery Call Debate [00:03:48] Tony Arsenal: Where this is affirmation is coming in here is at this most recent presbytery meeting, um, was pretty heavy on, um, licensing or, or, uh, not licensing on approving men who had received a call to formal ministry within the presbytery. And so in the OPC, and I would imagine that other Presbyterian bodies are not like super different, although I'm sure there's some variation in the OPC. Um, when a church intends to extend a call to a pastor, to a teaching elder, um, to a minister, they must have the call, which is. Is both theological but is also eminently practical. Like the call is a physical piece of paper that details, you know, what the pay is, how much vacation time. So it's kind of a combination between like a theological call and also a contract. Um, the presbytery has to approve that call. And so at this most recent one, there was a couple calls that were more or less uncontroversial. There was no question about them, and they were approved pretty quickly. But there was one call, um, one call to ministry that took, I, I, I didn't time it, but it was probably like four or five hours of debate and discussion in various fashion in order to get to a point where the presbytery could approve the call. So this was a call to a minister who is being called part-time, which is unusual in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Um, the OPC uh, acknowledges the fact that bivocational tent making ministry is sometimes a necessity, but really views the ministry of the word in sacrament as something that should not have. Distractions. And actually our book of church order talks about, doesn't use the word distraction, I think, but it talks about a, a properly ordered call to a full-time minister includes phrasing that the congregation promises to compensate them in a way that allows them to be free of worldly burdens and cares. And I might have not, not have gotten that wording exactly right. But that's the idea. And so this call was. Explicitly, um, not a full-time call it, they actually took the language out of promising to pay him in a way that he's able to ignore or to not be distracted by worldly care. And that was intentional, but there was a lot of question in discussion at presbytery level about the fact that the call did not include the phrase or the wording of part-time or bivocational. So the conversation started out of like, can this call be modified to include that? So it's explicitly known in this man's call that his calling is part-time, which is both theological, to make sure that the call is properly formatted, but also like very practical that the congregation should acknowledge explicitly that they recognize that this person is not, not going to be putting, you know, 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week towards this position. [00:06:34] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:06:34] Tony Arsenal: Um. What I'm affirming is where it got to, right? So there was lots of discussion about that. There was some finagling about the retirement package. The OPC recommends that a, a minister be given a retirement contribution of no less than 5% a year of his salaried package. Um, which there's a couple line items that go into that, but 5%, and this was a little bit less than that. And this is what I'm affirming and this, I, I don't know that this is a super widespread thing that would happen all across the, um, the OPC, but it happened in the presbytery of New York and New England this past week, and it's just amazing. And I just, I just want to lay it out there and then I want to hear your reaction. [00:07:13] Funding Full Time Ministry [00:07:13] Tony Arsenal: And I, I wanna hear your reaction as the son of a minister who labored his entire adult, more or less, his entire adult career in ministry, working two or three additional jobs on top of his ministry, the presbytery decided. That because it did not like the idea of a part-time minister. They didn't think that was appropriate. They didn't think that that was good or that that was really the right goal. The presbytery allocated, I'm not gonna say the figures 'cause they're not super germane, but allocated a significant amount of money to be dis to be dispersed to the church for the next three years in order to take what was a part-time call and enable it to become a full-time call. [00:07:54] Jesse Schwamb: Wow.  [00:07:54] Tony Arsenal: And so there are a lot of, there are a lot of church bodies that would say, yeah, we don't love the idea of bi-vocational ministry. You know, we really think it's ideal that a minister could be full-time. Um, they may even put some, some theological freight behind that. Um, I have never encountered a body, um. That was willing to put a sizable amount of money towards essentially supplementing a part-time call to make it full-time. Um, this was just amazing to me, and the candidate was there. I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but I would love to talk to him about what he felt. I, I can just imagine the phone call to his wife who was not, not at presbytery, but to his wife, following the outcome of this to be like, you are never gonna believe what just happened. Right? This is a family who was intending to move across country. Right. He's currently a student at Westminster, California in seminary, uh, California, Westminster Seminary in California, finishing his M Div. They're planning a cross country move into a part-time position where she's probably gonna have to find a job, and then also he's gonna have to find a part-time job. He had the ability to call her on the break and be like, you're never gonna guess what just happened? You're never gonna,  [00:09:09] Jesse Schwamb: it's wild.  [00:09:09] Tony Arsenal: Uh, sorry, I'm getting a little emotional here. You're never going to. Believe how faithful God is in this. Right. So I'm interested to hear your reaction to that as the son of a, of a try and quad at times Quad vocational. Yeah,  [00:09:23] Jesse Schwamb: for sure.  [00:09:23] Tony Arsenal: Minister who labored his entire, more or less, his entire adult career, um, working full-time in a call as a part-time, part-time minister. You know, like that's a, that's a crazy situation. So I'm just affirming that again, I don't know how common that kind of thing is in the OPC. I don't wanna make it seem like that's the norm. Um, I actually get the sense that this is probably not the norm, but it was amazing to see and it made me in intensely like. Proud in the right way of being a part of this broader body that would, would so emphasize and so value the ministry of the word and the sacrament, and the importance of a man being able to dedicate himself to that without distraction. That they would put forward this amount of money and this kind of money. They had no reason to do so. And there's no real direct benefit to the presbytery for doing this. I mean, there's an indirect benefit of like not having a church with a part-time minister, but like there's no direct benefit to this. There's no direct return on investments that's gonna come out of this. Um, it was pretty amazing to see. It was, it was, it was super encouraging.  [00:10:28] Jesse Schwamb: That is really encouraging. I, I think it's, there's no doubt that for the called pastor, their heart is in the ministry of the word. That's what they want to be doing. They wanna be doing it all the time and as much time as they possibly can, and they wanna be able to have all of their intentional focus on it. So I. I'm excited for that guy. I mean, that's just an incredible blessing to go in hoping for funding, essentially for a part-time role and to basically be told, no, no, no, no, that's, that's not enough. We want you to be committed to this fully as we know your heart is committed. As we validated that call.  [00:11:00] Why Structure Matters [00:11:00] Jesse Schwamb: I do love being a part of churches, well, lemme say it this way. There is, I think, a benefit of being part of congregations that have like a wide resource network that has like appropriate hierarchy and structure and that can be one of them. I've seen something similar in the Christian Missionary Alliance, which is the church that I'm in, not exactly the same, but I've seen some surprising allocations of resources where they basically said, you know, this is important. Like, it even trumps we're, we're gonna. Allocate or resource something so that this can move forward because it is important in a way that was like better than the person who was bringing it before them could have hoped for. Yeah. And uh, suddenly it's as if everything aligned. And it was really in part because there was this structure to come alongside, to validate as you're saying, and then to authenticate and then again to resource assets that could be used. There's, there's something to be said for that interdependency where there is kind of this hierarchical structure in which all that's happening at a level where things are codified. And again, like there's a structure and a way in which we move through those decisions to make sure that they suit the objective of the entire movement. So I guess there's nothing I'll say, but that's a beautiful thing, isn't it?  [00:12:14] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:12:15] Generosity in Action [00:12:15] Tony Arsenal: It was, it was, it was cool because it was like this, it was like this real. Actualization of the principle of outdoing one another and showing honor. Yeah, sure. Because you know, like the initial debate was like, Hey, you know, I'm not sure we can approve this call because the, the OPCs guidelines tell us not to approve a call that has less than 5% of the retirement benefit. And there was a lot of discussion of like, well, the presbytery can't modify the call, but we don't wanna delay this guy coming in and like, we don't wanna delay his ordination, his installation. And so the initial proposal was a, a. What feels like a large amount of money to me. But after I understood more about the, the budget of what's going on in, in the presbytery was actually a very small amount of money. Started with a very tiny, very modest proposal of basically like supplementing the retirement fund to make sure that like we could, they, I say we, like, I was part of this, I was just observing, but to supplement the retirement fund in a way that allowed the church to still proceed with the call as written, but still also make sure that this person had the appropriate retirement fund. And then that just basically was like, there would be some instruction given to the church that like, you've gotta bump this up in the next budget cycle. Like you've gotta get to the 5%. That's, that's the expectation. It went from that. And like I said, I won't give you the specific numbers, but one of the presbyters and I, I'm, I, um, I, I've known this presbyter from a distance for quite a long time and, and I have an immense amount of respect for him. He stood up and he's like, well, if we're gonna give X, why don't we just give 10 times X instead? And then actually, like the discussion was like, well, is, are we sure that 10 times X is even the right amount? Why don't we have this particular group meet over the lunch break and figure out whether that's the right number and then come back after lunch and we'll vote on it. And then they came back after lunch and it was actually a number that was even greater than 10 times X. So it was like this exercise in like. This very small proposal that was still imminently generous, right? The presbytery has no obligation to do this. There's no obligation from any of the presbyters to stand up and say like, we should. We should supplement this fund. They would've been well within their right, and no one would've looked, I think. I think some people would've been frustrated by it, but I don't think anyone would've looked sideways at it or thought it was sinful. If the presbytery just said like, we can't approve this call. You guys are gonna have to come back with it and we'll vote on it at the next presbytery. Like that would've been problematic. This, this kind of poor guy who's coming outta seminary, his call and his beginning of employment would've been delayed, but like. That would've been good and orderly, but instead they were like, one, we don't want this pulpit to stay empty longer. We don't wanna disadvantage this guy who's just getting done with seminary. We want him to get started. We don't wanna discourage him. So here's a small proposal, a very modest amount of money that we can put forward for this purpose. And then it was like, let's just keep seeing how much closer to a real full-time call we can get. And they finally came back and said like, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this in a wise fashion. They structured it. So like the first year he gets more, the second year he gets a little bit less. The third year the church gets a little bit less with the idea that like each year the church should be adjusting their budget to compensate and get this guy to that with the, the hope that like with a full-time minister, they're able to grow their congregation to the point where they can support a full-time minister. So it was just this really cool, super encouraging exercise. And what I loved about it is the only real debate that was going on was about do we need to do more? There was no one being like, wait a second, why are we, why are we putting more money to this? The whole thing was like, is this actually enough to accomplish what we think God wants to do with this person's call? Because if, if God is truly calling this man to this, this particular church, and we believe that he is. Then what do we as a, as a people of God need to do to enable that call to look like what we actually believe calls to ministry are supposed to look like, which is a full-time call to ministry that is undistracted by the cares of the world. What do we need to do? The answer in this case was like, I think we need to put a sizable amount of money to it. Um, it's a, I mean, and again. I'm not gonna say it on the air. It was not a small chunk of change. Um, it was, it was a, it was a large amount of money that was devoted to this cause and that just goes to show how much this body values the importance of a full-time minister of the word, so. [00:16:50] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:16:51] OPC Love and Recommendation [00:16:51] Tony Arsenal: That's enough about that. I, I could gush about how proud I am to be a part of this body and how encouraged I am and how amazing it was and how awesome this, this guy, how, how much this guy must be thanking God for the providence and like, this is the last thing. I'll say this, this young man younger than me, I think he's graduating seminary. I saw him across the room. He looks like he's probably in his mid twenties, right? Young guy. He's got a wife doesn't have kids yet coming into this ministry, not only is he coming into this ministry, but as a Presbyterian minister, when he's installed as the minister of this church. He will be joining this body of presbyters as the, as his brothers like. He is not a member of the local church. He's a member of the presbytery, which is the regional church. So now he's coming into this fully supported by his brothers in the presbytery that he saw go to the mat to make sure he was properly taken care of, that the congregation was not unintentionally taking advantage of his labor, but also that he knows that all of these men are willing to do what they need to do to make sure that his ministry is successful and edifies the church like that is. Uh, I don't want to gush on Presbyterianism too much, but like that is Presbyterianism at peak form, right? This is the body of elders making sure that every church in the region, even the ones they're not directly ministering in, has what it needs to succeed and to honor God and to do what needs to happen. So I'm affirming the presbytery of New York and New England and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Um, I have been so blessed by knowing many of these presbyters. I've been so blessed by being a part of the congregation that I am. There are lots of really great churches and really great denominations out there. If you are looking for a church and there is an OPC congregation in your area, absolutely go check it out. I know it feels stuffy sometimes, and I will admit, like sometimes it feels a little bit overly traditional in terms of like just the vibe of the congregation,  [00:18:52] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:18:52] Tony Arsenal: But press past that because I don't think, I don't think you will find, um. You may find lots of congregations that are as faithful. I don't think you're gonna find many that are more faithful than your average OPC congregation. So I could be wrong. I just, I just love the OPC. I just really, really love it. So that's my affirmation. What do you got for us, Jesse?  [00:19:18] Denial Catholic Confession Math [00:19:18] Jesse Schwamb: I think I got denial, which is maybe a little bit unusual for me. [00:19:21] Tony Arsenal: As long as you're not denying the OPCI think we're fine.  [00:19:23] Jesse Schwamb: No, it's, it's not, it is church related and I, I'll try to keep it short 'cause I think I can make this way longer than it, it probably should be, but lemme think how to phrase this. So, I don't know with a devil negative, I guess when I'm a denying against is maybe not enough confession by your own standard. So the, I'm gonna try to make this so brief. I, I just happened to be out with my wife this afternoon and we had to run errands. We got stuck in traffic and this gave me longer than usual to sit in front of our. Very local and very large Catholic church. So I happen to be looking at their sign. It's a very large congregation. I've been actually been in this one on a couple of occasions for funerals. So not only do I know its size and scope, but again, if you get, if you get on this road at the wrong time on the Lord's day, you're gonna be stuck for a long time because there are so many people that attend. I say that because I noticed on the sign that there were three times for mass on the Lord's Day. So that also says something about the number of people coming through. And then on the sign though, underneath it said for confessions, go to our website. Mm-hmm. So I was like, man, I gotta lick this up because I can't tell if they're telling me I can confess on the website or if it's go to the website for the times. And I said to my wife, only half jokingly, if I can confess online, I'm gonna confess something. So I went to, I went to the website and, and sure enough it was almost disappointingly. It was just the times.  [00:20:45] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:20:46] Jesse Schwamb: Here's what I've found interesting, which just launched me into this like deep rabbit hole. There were three times for confession. Two of those times were just a half an hour, and the third time was an hour. So, uh, what I did was I went through, actually, I think what they had on there was, was three full hours a week. It was a little bit confusing, but I think it was three full hours. Now I think about it. So I went back, I just couldn't help myself, Tony. So I started to think, alright, let's say. I think it's fair to assume  [00:21:15] Tony Arsenal: math, Jesse is kicking in right now. Yes. You're gonna calculate how many minutes per, per person is what you're doing. I'm thinking, ah,  [00:21:22] Jesse Schwamb: yeah, it's something like that. So what I thought was, I don't think it's, uh, I was gonna be conservative. I wanna be fair. I wanna be fair. So, and now we should say like, I think most people realize that the Catholic understanding of confession and the Protestant one is, is very different. The Catholic sacrament of confession is the right through which Catholics are gonna confess their sins to a priest receive absolution, and it's gonna restore the relationship with God in the church. And, and they're gonna believe that the priest acts as a person of Christ and is bound by the seal of confession and an absolute kind of obligation. Uh, of course never to reveal what was disclosed during that process. So, by the way, the website that I went to, lovely instructions. I mean, I was like, wow. I was reading it to my wife who was, uh, not familiar with this at all, and she was like, they can make you do stuff. And I was like, well, yeah. I mean, obviously like there's, there's a portion of this where there's contrition or penant penance. It could be a prayer, it could be act of charity, like all kinds of stuff. So I went back and I thought. I don't think it's unreasonable that there's 350 persons that would say, let's say an average, uh, that would wanna take part of confession. Now, let's say that they did that at, at least monthly, just once a month. And, and I don't know how people's conviction is on that, but I'm gonna say conservatively once a month. Let's say that, and I don't think this is unreasonable, Tony, but you tell me. Let's say you're, you're trucking, you're moving through confession. Let's say it's five minutes a piece. So we're up to 1,750 minutes, uh, per month. That's the demand on the priest because I was, I was looking at this time and I was thinking something is strange here to me, so. That was the demand then, and I'll spare you the other math, which could be very long and un uninteresting. I'm coming up with, you'd need 2.24, two and a quarter priests, which of course you can't have a quarter priests or a quarter person for any reason. So you'd hire, you'd hire three priests, which satisfy the demand if, and the major assumptions here, that is like everybody can't show up at the same time. Obviously, I'm assuming that like everybody has their own time, they're spreading it out. So everybody gets the confession, but it's just five minutes. And I, I have no idea. I mean, if you're a Luther, that's certainly not sufficient time.  [00:23:20] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:23:20] Jesse Schwamb: And you would need three priests. Now here's the thing that I just kind of backed into that, besides like three being like, okay, that, that's, you would need three priests just to satisfy this congregation. If they're confessing for five minutes, once per month. Uh, by the way, if you said, well, half the congregation is going to go weekly, uh, then you, you would double the number of priests you need to 5.98 or six. But here's, here's the bottom line for me. This is why the denial comes in about maybe not enough, is. If you were just to distill that down to like, if you could have one priest cover that time, that there's a demand for like 779.4 hours, or excuse me, minutes of confession, that priest would only be allocating approximately like seven and a half percent of their working hours, their work toward handling confession. This seems like not enough confession given the standards of confession in the Catholic church. And again, I know that I'm, I'm now allocating that to one priest and I just told everybody you need three. That's true. So if you had these three now, if you hired three just to meet the demand, that would only be about like three and a half or a little under three and a half percent of their combined time. So the denial is Catholics, I think, unless I'm way off in some of my assumptions here, you might not be confessing enough by your own standards because  [00:24:33] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:24:34] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, that seems like not enough time.  [00:24:38] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:24:39] Ritual Faithfulness Explained [00:24:39] Tony Arsenal: I mean, I think, um. I don't want to be too bombastic here, but I think,  [00:24:46] Jesse Schwamb: I think I already started this on this  [00:24:48] Tony Arsenal: path. Maybe this, maybe this isn't all that bombastic. Um, because this is so much about ritual and actually I say this is gonna sound really, we, we go, but trying to think from the Roman Catholic perspective, it's actually not, and I'll I'll tell you a brief story, uh, to explain it. Um, a lot of Roman Catholics are just going through the motions. [00:25:13] Jesse Schwamb: That's true.  [00:25:14] Tony Arsenal: But the point, the, the, the point of contention actually is that going through the motions is valuable for the Roman Catholic, right? So I, I knew this, uh, this young woman when I was in college who was a Roman Catholic, and we had many discussions about, about the differences between Protestantism and and Roman Catholicism. And what I came to understand is that going to mass for her. Itself was an act of faith. And so for the Roman Catholic, the concept of, of faith is different than the concept that Protestants operate under. So for the Roman Catholic who, um, goes to mass, even when they feel like they're, like, when they think they're just going through the motions, going through the motions is itself the act of faith. And that's because for most of Roman Catholics, most of Roman Catholicism, faith really equals faithfulness, right? So, so doing the act is the act of faithfulness. Doing the act is faith. Where for the Protestant, like faith is about belief and trust and knowledge. Like it's, it's an. Not entirely intellectual, but it's, it's an inward thing for the Roman Catholic faith is an out is primarily an outward thing. It's what you do, it's how you act. It's faith formed in love. It's faith formed in charity.  [00:26:36] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:26:37] Tony Arsenal: So I think most Roman Catholics going to obligatory confession first. I think once a month is probably like, probably more frequent than most Roman Catholics go to mass or go to confession. Um, I thought I read a stat that it was like every six months is, is pretty average and I think that's what's required by the church maybe even once a year is, is required by the church. Um, I think like most Roman Catholics go into the, the confessional booth and like father forgive me for I've sinned. It's been such and such a number of days since my last confession. Right. And they may bring up a couple particular things that they've done and, and then I think the priest commonly absolves them of all of their sins. Like, almost like in an omnibus fashion and then prescribes their acts of penance, which is it, it like, honestly, it's probably things they should already be doing as a faithful Catholic saying Hail Marys and doing our fathers and acts of charity and things like that. So I think your math is probably right. [00:27:39] Protestant Repentance Particular [00:27:39] Tony Arsenal: I think your, your theory that more confession is probably like, I'm gonna read this from, uh, the Westminster confession, just to, just to say it here, is, this is chapter 15, which is titled of Repentance Under Life. And this is, uh, this is section five or paragraph five. It says, men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but is every man's duty to endeavor, to repent of his particular sins, particularly. And I think that's just such a beautifully phrased sentence like. Not only is it like potent theologically, but like, it just, it just feels good, like in terms of like the English language to repent of your particular sins, particularly. And like the idea is yes, Protestant reform, Christians affirm a general repentance from sin, right? We repent of our sin before the father, uh, as a result of our, of our coming to faith in Christ. And as part of our sanctification, we mortify our sin and we, Viv we are vivified by the spirit and repentance falls in that ongoing sanctification process. And there is this general repentance of like, I repent of the fact that I'm a sinner and that I commit sins, but there is this element in the reformed faith of like, I should be confessing to God. And I think by extension, like we should be confessing to our fellow Christians, our particular sins, our individual sins, and we should be doing that on particular occasion. And I think like. The Luther style confession of like going into the confessor and confessing like every particular sin. Particularly I think most Roman Catholic priests would, priests. Priests would probably have the same reaction Tobits did where he was like, get outta here. Like, come on dude. Like just go live your life and like deal with it. I think that's probably the reaction most Catholic priests would have. But yeah, I think you're right. Like if we're really talking about like. Five, five minutes of confession once a month and that somehow having some sort of spiritual efficacy. I'm not sure I buy that math. Like I think you're, you're probably spot on.  [00:29:47] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:29:47] Confession Hours Oddities [00:29:47] Jesse Schwamb: I just was curious about how many priests would be required and then the allocation of the duties. By the way, you are right. So I, because I had to check on this, the, the fourth letter in council of 1215 does say that the church requires confession of any grave or mortal sins at least once a year. But the church, yeah, strongly encourages more frequent confession as a spiritual practice, even for, of course, like the venial or the less serious sins in their eyes. So yeah, my thought here was just that. I think it's actually undervalued by way of the math. Like the, as the kids say, the math just isn't math thing for me on this one. But I was more curious about, since this is one of the seven sacraments, even if you just said like, well, it should have at least one seven of the allocation. That's like, what? Like something like 14%. And so this is, um, almost half of that. I just found it a little bit, a little bit odd and yeah, I think you'd have to be, uh, so in other words, when I looked at the, basically, here's the bottom line. When I looked at the hours for confession one, there were weird times and uh, two, I was like, that doesn't seem like enough hours. Like, it was just more like that. Like how that's like saying like, Hey, the post office is open three hours a week, and by the way, one of those hours is from seven to eight o'clock on Friday. Like they had some hours. One hour just on Friday was like, I guess that's the way you wanna start your weekend is like, let's get all of this off my chest. Yeah. And, and do it. Right. And the last thing I'll say by the way, is you're correct. When you look at the instruction they give you, and this is common of course, toward the end, when they say like, here's how you like wrap up your part. Actually everybody should go read, go to the local, local Catholic church website and read the instructions. 'cause in some ways they're just interesting and kind of, um, I don't wanna say funny 'cause I'm not making fun. I'm just saying like, they have to give you instruction if you've never done it before. And so most of us are not really probably familiar with the process and they give you explicit instruction and toward the end it's like, here's how you kinda like hang up the call with the priest. And it's like you said, you know, these are my sins and all others, would you be willing to forgive? So you're right. Right. They just kinda wrap them all up because it's sins of omission, sense of commission, it's all to be together. But I, I wonder, you gotta think there's people in there that are like. The priests are like, okay, man, just yeah. Wrap, come on, wrap, wrap it up.  [00:31:55] Confession Timing Talk [00:31:55] Jesse Schwamb: And other people that come in are just like, you know, forgive me father. And uh, lastly to your point, when they give you instruction about how you should start, of course you're always to signify how long it's been since your last confession. Right. Confession. And they say parenthetically, like, reference the days, weeks, months, or years. So you're right. There are gonna be people that probably do it very frequently and probably people who do it infrequently still, I would say I just couldn't believe for a church this large, that there was just three hours a week.  [00:32:21] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:32:21] Jesse Schwamb: For everybody else.  [00:32:22] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:32:23] Vance and Papal Authority [00:32:23] Tony Arsenal: This leads me to two very brief sub, uh, denials slash affirmations. Uh, I don't know if you saw this, um, this is not a political statement, right? I, I have lots of feelings and thoughts about the current administration and I think most of my feelings and thoughts would surprise. Everybody. But I thought it was hilarious because JD Vance, who is a Roman Catholic, uh, confessed Roman Catholic part of the Roman Catholic Church, uh, he ha I, I'm not sure if I'm affirming or denying this, there was this funny, uh, funny exchange. I think he was at doing like a, doing like a TPU, I don't know, speech. He was doing a speech at some conservative event and he said something like, I think that the Pope should be more careful when he makes theological statements. I'm wanna be like, do you understand what the pope is in your religion? That was one of my sub denials. Uh, I don't remember what the other one is, so it must not have been that important. It'll come back to me at the worst possible moment and I will try very hard not to interrupt our show for it, but I probably will fail.  [00:33:25] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:33:25] Reading Matthew 21 [00:33:25] Jesse Schwamb: Listen, we, we gotta get to some scripture because. We're, we're doing this old school style where we take like half the time and just talk about affirmations. It's true in house. It's true. Which is great fun. But let's, let's get back to Matthew 21. And I, I know we did this last time, but I am gonna rock through the passage 'cause of course, that's the best part of any of our discussion, is actually hearing from, from the Holy Spirit through the scripture, uh, which he's given to us. So this is, uh, Matthew 21, starting in verse 33. And you're gonna hear the, the whole thing right here. Uh, this is Jesus speaking. Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey. Now, when the high risk time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine growers to receive his fruit, and the vine growers took his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Again, he sent another group of slaves larger than the first, and they did the same thing to them. But afterward he sent his son to them saying they will respect my son. But when the vine growers saw the sun, they said among themselves, this is the heir. Come let us kill him and seize his inheritance, and they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine growers? They said to him, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons. Jesus said to them, did you ever read in the scriptures the stone, which the builders rejected? This has become the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls in the stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to seize him, they feared the crowds because they're regarding him to be a prophet. [00:35:28] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:35:30] Pharisees Condemn Themselves [00:35:30] Tony Arsenal: This is like a super heavy parable. Right. And we talked a lot last week about how like the point of this parable is not necessarily to try to instruct the Pharisees or the Sadducees. Like it's not to instruct the people who were going to reject Christ, uh, the, the builders who would reject the cornerstone. It's really a parable to teach those. Who are observing this process happening. But I think it's, I, I think it's really interesting just listening to you read this and reading through it, and I guess this is a question I haven't asked and I, I need to study a little bit more. It's crazy to me in verse 41, um, Christ seems the, the, the, um, Matthew seems to say here, and maybe I need to do a little bit more Greek study, so bear with me and, and have grace if I'm wrong here. Matthew seems to say that like Christ asks the people he's speaking to, the Pharisees he's speaking to, what is he gonna do to these people? And the Pharisees answer, he's gonna put those wretches to a miserable death.  [00:36:36] Jesse Schwamb: Right?  [00:36:37] Tony Arsenal: Like the people listening to this parable understand the outcome, like they understand the. The consequence that the, the, the vineyard owner or the vineyard tenant tenants are facing based on their lack of faithfulness to the covenant. To me, that is like a really striking part of this parable. And, and it's not even like the parable proper, but like the striking element of the context of this is that nobody listening to this parable, including the Pharisees that this parable has basically spoken against, nobody fails to see the gravity of the consequence of rejecting God's emissary, like rejecting the Messiah. That to me is like a really, I dunno, paradigmatic. Portion of this that I think we need to grapple with. This is not an unclear, an unclear outcome. This is not, this is not masked or vague or OPA opaque. Like everybody understands, the people who reject the Messiah are going to face dire and eternal consequences for that act. [00:37:48] Jesse Schwamb: That does make this really interesting, doesn't it? Because it's not just entirely like Romans one adventures or even Romans two. It's that this is what Jesus does and he does it in a profound way that's not trickery like I think kinda like you're saying like the lead up to this isn't as if he's even leading the witness. He's making it very clear, all like the parameters of the story and the characters involved and what should be the proper judgment. And it's not as if like they start saying, they're like, oh, we shouldn't say anything more like we, we plead the fifth because it's gonna condemn ourselves. He draws his audience in to producing and pronouncing like their own sentence. It's very much like, I think I mentioned this last time, the prophet Nathan and David, isn't it? It's the exact same. Yeah. And the verdict is unanswerable, like even in its own terms. These other, like these other vine growers, prefigures of course like the inclusion of the Gentiles and the apostolic office. But I like that what Jesus does here, even before he gets to that point, is he extorts from them an acknowledgement of the punishment which awaited them. And so in this way there's like, I think the Puritans use this passage a lot actually to demonstrate that the natural conscience even of like the unregenerate, still bears witness to divine justice. That's Romans two. Like they, they can't get out from underneath it and Jesus isn't using any trickery on them to get them to say this thing. They are compelled in their own way, even being unregenerate to, like you said, even as they're rejecting the Messiah to recognize that punishment is due these characters in the story, even as they perceive at the end that they are those characters. [00:39:21] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:39:22] Jesse Schwamb: Saying we'll receive the judgment.  [00:39:24] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:39:25] Usurpers Not Misguided [00:39:25] Tony Arsenal: And I think too, like, um, this is kind of one of those chicken or the egg scenarios, right? Like Christ is both recognizing the intention of their heart as well as prophesying. And, and not just prophesying, but like inception level prophesying the, the outcome of the intention of their heart. And so like, again, like we've, we spent a whole week kind of like leading into the parable and now we spent a whole week, we're gonna spend a whole week again kind of leading into the parable. This is such a deep parable, and that like Christ is not just laying bare. The fact that the, the people who were going to reject him were doing so out of this sort of like attempt and intention of usurping the kingdom of God for their own purposes. I think that brings a layer to this that we don't often appreciate in. Christ's interaction with the Pharisees. I think sometimes, and maybe this is because I just listened to an episode of where Matt Whitman on the 10 minute Bible hour talked about this. I think sometimes we actually have a tendency to sort of be sympathetic to the Pharisees where we think, you know, they were, they were just trying to obey God's law and they got a little sideways on it and you know, they were putting these boundaries in place, but they were doing it in this sort of like misguided attempt to protect the people. Christ actually here seems to contradict that in that the comparison he's making is not to a, a well-intentioned group of people who just get it wrong, but he's painting the Pharisees, the, the religious leaders, the Sadducees, the chief priests. He's painting them as these usurpers who recognize the proper authority of right. The master and his emissaries and ultimately of his son, they recognize this proper authority and rather than submitting to it and submitting to the covenant obligations that they, they already actually agreed to, instead of doing that, they're going to reject that authority and try to take it for their own right. It's not just that they do the wrong thing, it's that they recognize the heir, which is Christ. They recognize this heir and they kill him to try to take his place. That is a really heavy element of this parable. Christ is not painting. Um, the, the, the Pharisees here, the, the religious leaders. He's not painting them as um, well-intentioned, but ultimately wrong, which is I think a lot of times, and I think there's reason to do this right. I'm not being overly critical and I've done this, I've actually done this myself, and I think there's some. Space for it. Like the Pharisees were wrong, but they were wrong, kind of in the right direction sometimes. Um, Christ is not really on board with that, at least in this parable. Right. This isn't about them thinking that the heir was a threat, and so killing the threat in, you know, inadvertently this is them absolutely seeing who the hair, who the heir is, and intentionally deciding to reject that heir and to murder him and to try to take his inheritance. Mm-hmm. That's an affront to not only the heir who they murder, but an affront to the owner of the vineyard himself, which of course in this parable is figured to be God the father primarily. But God in sort of general terms, like the whole Godhead, um, with Christ as the second Adam has, as his representative, as his heir. This is a really heavy parable and I think where this comes into play for us in our own Christian life is. Are there times where we. Sort of do the same thing in refusing to, maybe it's tie into your denial a little bit. Like refusing to acknowledge our own sinfulness, refusing to acknowledge the ways that God has provided for us. Um, do we at times look at what we have and lay claim to it as though it is our own inheritance that we've taken? Um, right. Do we kind of crucify the son of God anew in, in refusing to repent of our sins particularly? I dunno. I think those are some open questions for us to kind of explore as we dig into this a bit more. [00:43:54] Jesse Schwamb: And that may relate as well to, well eventually at some point, I dunno, like 2040, get to like the parable of the talents. There's some similarity there with a little bit, right? You're saying? I think you're right.  [00:44:06] God Does All the Verbs [00:44:06] Jesse Schwamb: And where I think we can anchor some of that is in those first couple of verses. I'm really always impressed by really the number of action verbs that are packed within, like that just initial statement of Jesus explaining the situation. [00:44:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:44:19] Jesse Schwamb: So he sets it all up and he's saying there's a planting that goes on, this landowner puts up a wall, digs a wine press. Builds a tower and then RINs it. So there's all these like amazing things being done, all this action verb. And I, I think in part why he comes against the Pharisees so hard in the same way that we're looking at like the parable that, uh, the, uh, talents for instance of saying like, what did you do with that was entrusted to you was like this great treasure which Christ has entrusted or God has entrusted to his people, which is, is the gospel essentially is, is all a prophetic witness, is like the truth of who God is and his revelation of himself. And so I think. The first thing we gotta see in those verbs is that there's this emphasis that the vineyard was God's sovereign creation. You know, he plants it, he chose it, he established it. Israel didn't plant herself. She was planted. And that sovereign initiative is foundational, I think in, like you're saying, the parables indictment, because these vine growers, they don't possess anything that they did not receive. Right. You know, they did not find a vineyard already planted, but God himself made it from the wilderness that all his glory, all the glory might be his. So. I think it's helpful for us to observe that the church is always the planting of the Lord and that no congregation flourishes that is not first planted by God. And so there is a major offense here when those who are to care for it, who know, like you're saying, that they ought to care for it, who understand something about the hierarchy and the way it has been entrusted to them. Not to only break that covenant, but then seek to try to usurp the power in the roles of those whom they should be, quite frankly, in our own language, like under shepherds too. And so it starts with all, all those verbs. Like I think we could probably spend a. A lot of times just speaking about what does it mean? Why? Why is there all this explicit in particular language about the fact that there's a hedge and there's a press besides just these are part in piece mail or part and parcel of what it means to have a vineyard, apparently, but that they're all part of this narrative of God talking about how he protects and cares for his people and sets them in a place and chooses them and is particular about the construction and does so with great volition and authority and care and concern and creative ability. And then again, you have those who are meant there to do the very job that he's entrusted them with. And not only are they not doing that, and of course you're right. Jesus elsewhere, comes in, comes in hot, right, with a Pharisees saying like, listen, you set burdens on people's backs that you yourselves cannot lift. You're twice as in the hell as anybody else, and that's who you are. Yeah. It's not just hypocrisy, but you're literally setting people up to fail in this. So you can see how you're right. It's not just like, guys, I appreciate that. Like you wanted to set up some additional boundaries and maybe you took it a little bit too far. This parable is just scorched earth. It's, it's nuclear. Yeah.  [00:47:10] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:47:11] Scandalous Vineyard Setup [00:47:11] Tony Arsenal: And you know, I think, um, we are obviously gonna spend another week on this 'cause we still have not really addressed a single verse in this parable. I, I think like a lot of ink has been spilled on explaining sort of like the feal agricultural arrangements of this passage. What it represents. M my understanding is. A typical arrangement would be that a, a landowner would basically just lease out land and the tenants would be responsible for the planting, for the development. Right. And the, the, the landowner would essentially just collect a portion of whatever they produce. Right. This parable is actually taking this a step further. Exactly. That it's not as though the landowner just says like, all right, you can use this land. Right. And I own the land, so I get a portion of the pro, the profit. He's actually done all the work. Yes. And all that. The, all that the, the tenants need to do essentially is reap the harvest and then provide the portion of the harvest that belongs to the landowner, and so there is a greater investment. Of the landowner into this land than would be expected. We've commented in the past about how a lot of times the, the parables start on sort of a premise of shock. Like there's a, there's an element of the setup of the, of the parable where the audience would kind of like sit back and gasp or kind of be like, wait a second. Like that's not normal. Right. In the parable of the, the, um, lost son, it was the idea that like the son demanded his inheritance. And that wasn't the shocking part. The shocking part was that the father just granted it. Right. Or, um, the lost sheep, like the, there's actually a sort of a shocking element to the fact that like the, the land, the like sheep owner would just go get this other sheep. So we've, we've commented on there's kind of like. There's sort of like a scandalous setup. The scandalous setup in this is not that the land has been leased to tenants, right? It's that the land has been prepared for the tenants before it was leased out in the first place. And I think that's something we might miss if we read over this too quickly, is. The landowner has prepared everything for these, these tenants.  [00:49:30] Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  [00:49:31] Tony Arsenal: So the, the, at the, the punchline of the parable where they refuse to acknowledge the sovereignty of, um, sovereignty and maybe a lowercase s in the, in the context of the parable, they refuse to acknowledge the sovereignty and the rightful claim of the tenant or of the landowner on the, the profit of the land. And sort of like highlighter emphasized by the fact that they actually didn't do any of the work. There's a certain kind of like Amer, like American rugged individualism where we're kind of like, yeah, like if I planted all the crops, then it's kind of lame that this guy's coming in expecting to take a portion of it, right? Like, yeah, I guess he owns the land, so maybe he gets a little piece of it, but like, who does he think he is? All of that already is already short circuited. Like I. The, these tenants are not actually, um, portrayed as doing anything in this parable. That's right. Like they just lease the land. They, they, um, and leased is not really like the right. The right word, the, the Greek word is omi, which is like he gave over the land to them. Um, when we say leased, we have this idea that like the tenants pay to use the land and then like part of their contract is that whatever profits they reap, uh, off the land goes back to the, to the landowner. This is really more like the landowner graciously allowed them to live on this land, and the only payment he required was that they would eventually provide him part of the profit back. Like he's planted the land, he's put up the fence around it. He dug the wine press so that they could make a product out of it. He built the tower so it would be defended. Yes. And he gave it over to them essentially just to like live on until it was time for the harvest. And all he is asking for is basically like, alright, so this is my land. I've planted the vineyards, the profit is mine to have. And so when the time came for him to come claim that that's where they have now rejected him. Yes. That's where they've now said like, I know you did all the work and really graciously allowed us to live in this land, but we're gonna keep all of it for ourselves. That's the scandal of this. That's what I think like the original audience would've set up and like, wait a second here. Like, hold on. They didn't even plant the vineyards themselves. They didn't even build the tower themselves. That's really the force of this that I think we miss when we, when we overemphasize, trying to think through like what the original agricultural arrangements were. 'cause this is painted. Very different than what the original arrangements would've been typical for. Like this is a different scenario and I think intentionally so,  [00:52:09] Jesse Schwamb: and we need those words like rented, at least in English, to help us understand that it didn't belong to them. It wasn't a gift, right? It wasn't as if like it was just turned over in the sense that it belongs to you now do with it what you will. And it's very clear in the passage one, like you said, that the landowner does all those things. So it was a, you know, he completely set it up. I mean, this is just such a beautiful, I think, depiction of the hold of prophetic, you know, understanding of God's word here, but it's very clear that says the, he sent his slaves to the vine growers to receive his fruit. So you're right. The scandal is that they're like, well, obviously. They need to give him his fruits, like  [00:52:48] Tony Arsenal: right.  [00:52:48] Jesse Schwamb: It was all set up before he left on this long journey. He then turned it over to them to care for, and that was really all that they were supposed to do. They had no role in this. And so it does like lead us in into this weird space where it's like, well, well what, what did the Pharisees think they were trying to do themselves? What does actually Jesus commenting on, on their own, like licit on their own initiative here, is he basically saying that not only are they not respecting his sovereignty, but they were trying to claim for themselves what only rightly belongs to God that even their position right. Society in culture as their representatives, God himself, they wanted to take that over for themselves, which he does bring that condemnation upon them in other parts of the scripture. So again, this is really hot. I think it's a, it's both heat and light, but there's no doubt that there's fire to this, right? Because it's a direct indictment that God the father set all of this up. You yourselves are on rented property, but guess what? Even the property that you've rented, I'm not exacting a tax from you as if like you have put forward and grown or supplied or created some kind of profitable outcome here. And I just want a piece of that. He's not even talking about tithing in that sense. What he's basically saying is, none of this belongs to you. Like how? Right? How dare you? None of this is yours. I set all of this up and in fact, because you've done so poor poorly at this, I'm gonna take it away from you and give it to those who actually produce fruit and guess what's gonna be the Gentiles? So it's, there's a wild. Amounts of condemnation packed into a very small story.  [00:54:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. It really is.  [00:54:22] Tenants Add Nothing [00:54:22] Tony Arsenal: Um, there is nothing expected of these tenants. Right. There's no contract, like there's no terms, they, they really add nothing to the, the landowner's land, except I guess maybe they're the ones harvesting these, this fruit. Right. But even that's not explicit in the parable.  [00:54:43] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly.  [00:54:43] Tony Arsenal: Right. Right. He, he does all just to steal your thunder, like he does all the verbs. Yes. All of the ves are done by the landowner.  [00:54:50] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Right  [00:54:51] Tony Arsenal: on. There is an implication that the, the tenants are somehow like the ones harvesting this, or they're the ones producing the wine, I guess, in the wine vat or the wine press. But at the end of the day. A normal tenant landowner agreement would be, I'm, you're, first of all, you're probably gonna pay me to use this land, right? You're paying me to use this land, and the way you pay me is you're gonna plant the, the gr the crop. You're gonna harvest it. You're gonna make the produce, and all I'm gonna do is let you live on this land. I'm gonna take the pro, like the profit, you're gonna pay me outta that profit. There is nothing asked or expected of these, th

In this powerful episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony and Jesse dive deep into Matthew 21:33-46, examining Jesus's parable of the wicked tenants. The hosts unpack how Christ masterfully draws the Pharisees into pronouncing their own condemnation, revealing not merely theological error but intentional usurpation of God's authority. Through careful exegesis, they explore the shocking setup of the parable—where the landowner does all the work while the tenants contribute nothing—and how this mirrors God's sovereign initiative in salvation. The discussion touches on confession, the value of full-time ministry, and the scandal of rejecting the Messiah despite recognizing His authority. This episode challenges listeners to examine whether they, like the Pharisees, attempt to claim God's work as their own. Key Takeaways God Does All the Verbs: The parable emphasizes that the landowner planted, built, protected, and prepared everything—the tenants contributed nothing yet claimed ownership of the fruit. Self-Pronounced Condemnation: Jesus draws the Pharisees into declaring their own judgment, demonstrating that even the unregenerate conscience bears witness to divine justice (Romans 2). Intentional Usurpation, Not Mere Error: The Pharisees weren't well-intentioned but misguided; they recognized Christ's authority as the heir and deliberately murdered Him to seize His inheritance. The Scandal of Grace: The parable's shocking element is that the landowner prepared everything before leasing the land—far exceeding normal agricultural arrangements and illustrating God's unmerited favor. Ecclesial Support for Ministry: The OPC presbytery's decision to fund a full-time call demonstrates how church structure can honor the ministry of Word and sacrament by freeing ministers from worldly distractions. Particular Repentance Matters: Westminster Confession 15.5 teaches that believers should not content themselves with general repentance but "endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly." The Stone Rejected Becomes Chief: Christ's citation of Psalm 118 reveals that the very rejection by the builders (religious leaders) was God's plan to establish the cornerstone of salvation. Key Concepts God Does All the Verbs The concentration of action verbs attributed solely to the landowner in Matthew 21:33 is theologically significant. The landowner plants, builds, digs, and rents—creating a fully functional, productive vineyard before the tenants ever arrive. This arrangement differs radically from typical first-century agricultural practices, where tenants would lease raw land and develop it themselves, sharing profits with the landowner. Jesus deliberately presents an extraordinary scenario where the tenants receive everything prepared and ready, requiring only stewardship of what already exists. This parallels God's sovereign initiative in election and salvation: believers contribute nothing to their standing before God, receiving instead a fully accomplished redemption. The Pharisees' rebellion wasn't against burdensome requirements but against simply acknowledging God's rightful ownership of what He alone created. Intentional Usurpation, Not Mere Error The hosts challenge the common sympathetic reading of the Pharisees as well-intentioned legalists who simply got sidetracked. Instead, verse 38 reveals the tenants explicitly recognize the son as heir and plot to murder him to "seize his inheritance." This isn't accidental rejection but calculated rebellion. The Pharisees weren't confused about Jesus's identity or authority—they understood precisely who He claimed to be and deliberately chose to destroy Him rather than submit. This interpretation carries significant weight for understanding the nature of unbelief: it's not primarily intellectual confusion but volitional rebellion. The religious leaders didn't need more evidence or clearer teaching; they needed transformed hearts. This same dynamic appears whenever humans recognize divine truth yet choose self-sovereignty over submission to God's rightful claim on their lives. The Scandal of Grace The parable begins with a scandalous premise that would have startled Jesus's original audience. Unlike normal tenant farming arrangements where landowners simply provided land in exchange for a share of whatever the tenants produced through their own labor, this landowner invests everything. He doesn't just own the property—he plants the vineyard, constructs the protective wall, digs the wine press for production, and builds the watchtower for defense. The tenants receive a turnkey operation requiring minimal effort. This extravagant preparation mirrors God's unmerited favor toward Israel and, by extension, the church. God didn't merely create humanity and wait to see what we would produce; He established covenants, sent prophets, preserved His Word, and ultimately sent His Son—all before requiring any response. The only "payment" demanded is acknowledging His ownership of what He created. The parable thus exposes the absurdity and ingratitude of claiming God's work as our own achievement. Memorable Quotes God does all the verbs. All of the verbs are done by the landowner. There is nothing expected of these tenants—they really add nothing to the landowner's land. Christ is not painting the Pharisees as well-intentioned but ultimately wrong. He's painting them as usurpers who recognize the proper authority and rather than submitting to it, they're going to reject that authority and try to take it for their own. Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man's duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly. (Westminster Confession 15.5) Transcript Welcome to episode 491 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:01:12] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother.  [00:01:17] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother.  [00:01:18] Parable of Tenants [00:01:18] Jesse Schwamb: So picture this, Tony, your landlord. You've built the perfect vineyard. We're talking wall watchtower, wine, press, the works like what everybody says. Everybody knows you need all those things. You've got it all set up, and then you hand the keys to some tenants. You take a long trip, you go enjoy yourself. And when the harvest rolls around, you send your servants to collect the rent. And shockingly, your tenants, they beat. Stone. Another, the kill a third. So naturally you think, you know what? I'll fix this. Lemme just send more people. That's obviously the problem. There's some kind of just profound misunderstanding about what's going on here and about our relationship in this business. And then when that doesn't work, you send your son now loved ones. If this were a business strategy, we would already be calling hr. But of course it's not a business strategy, it's a parable. And Jesus is telling it to the very people about to prove the parable true. So welcome back to the Reformed Brotherhood because we're in Matthew Chapter 21 and we're gonna be actually getting all the way into the parable of the Vine growers where the patience of God looks, I would say, to almost anybody else, to humanize at least almost reckless until you realize that's exactly the point. So yeah, grab your beverage of choice, grab your Bible, pull the car over, will you? Because this is gonna get real and we're going to reason together. But before we do all of that, let's do a little affirming with or denying against, what do you got?  [00:02:41] Inside Baseball Affirmation [00:02:41] Tony Arsenal: So this is a sort of inside baseball, uh, affirmation. Um, I'm not sharing anything, although it may feel like I'm sharing something that is private and like, uh, like confidential. It's not No, this is good. Um, so I had the opportunity to visit. Um, my presbytery, um, for those who are listeners of the show or people who like, have been with us a long time, um, I was part of a Baptist church. Uh, I've always kind of been a Presbyterian at heart, but, um, our church closed, uh, a little over a year and a half ago now. And, um, uh, I've joined an OPC congregation in membership now. We've been members there for about a year. And, um, so I've been visiting Presbytery, which is the, the meeting of all of the leadership of all of the churches. So we won't do a polity breakdown here, but basically like, it's, it's the regional meeting. It's the regional business meeting or church meeting for a group of churches in the OPC, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And so a lot of the meetings, you know, have the normal kind of business type stuff. You have reports from different committee committees and stuff. Um.  [00:03:48] Presbytery Call Debate [00:03:48] Tony Arsenal: Where this is affirmation is coming in here is at this most recent presbytery meeting, um, was pretty heavy on, um, licensing or, or, uh, not licensing on approving men who had received a call to formal ministry within the presbytery. And so in the OPC, and I would imagine that other Presbyterian bodies are not like super different, although I'm sure there's some variation in the OPC. Um, when a church intends to extend a call to a pastor, to a teaching elder, um, to a minister, they must have the call, which is. Is both theological but is also eminently practical. Like the call is a physical piece of paper that details, you know, what the pay is, how much vacation time. So it's kind of a combination between like a theological call and also a contract. Um, the presbytery has to approve that call. And so at this most recent one, there was a couple calls that were more or less uncontroversial. There was no question about them, and they were approved pretty quickly. But there was one call, um, one call to ministry that took, I, I, I didn't time it, but it was probably like four or five hours of debate and discussion in various fashion in order to get to a point where the presbytery could approve the call. So this was a call to a minister who is being called part-time, which is unusual in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Um, the OPC uh, acknowledges the fact that bivocational tent making ministry is sometimes a necessity, but really views the ministry of the word in sacrament as something that should not have. Distractions. And actually our book of church order talks about, doesn't use the word distraction, I think, but it talks about a, a properly ordered call to a full-time minister includes phrasing that the congregation promises to compensate them in a way that allows them to be free of worldly burdens and cares. And I might have not, not have gotten that wording exactly right. But that's the idea. And so this call was. Explicitly, um, not a full-time call it, they actually took the language out of promising to pay him in a way that he's able to ignore or to not be distracted by worldly care. And that was intentional, but there was a lot of question in discussion at presbytery level about the fact that the call did not include the phrase or the wording of part-time or bivocational. So the conversation started out of like, can this call be modified to include that? So it's explicitly known in this man's call that his calling is part-time, which is both theological, to make sure that the call is properly formatted, but also like very practical that the congregation should acknowledge explicitly that they recognize that this person is not, not going to be putting, you know, 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week towards this position. [00:06:34] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:06:34] Tony Arsenal: Um. What I'm affirming is where it got to, right? So there was lots of discussion about that. There was some finagling about the retirement package. The OPC recommends that a, a minister be given a retirement contribution of no less than 5% a year of his salaried package. Um, which there's a couple line items that go into that, but 5%, and this was a little bit less than that. And this is what I'm affirming and this, I, I don't know that this is a super widespread thing that would happen all across the, um, the OPC, but it happened in the presbytery of New York and New England this past week, and it's just amazing. And I just, I just want to lay it out there and then I want to hear your reaction. [00:07:13] Funding Full Time Ministry [00:07:13] Tony Arsenal: And I, I wanna hear your reaction as the son of a minister who labored his entire adult, more or less, his entire adult career in ministry, working two or three additional jobs on top of his ministry, the presbytery decided. That because it did not like the idea of a part-time minister. They didn't think that was appropriate. They didn't think that that was good or that that was really the right goal. The presbytery allocated, I'm not gonna say the figures 'cause they're not super germane, but allocated a significant amount of money to be dis to be dispersed to the church for the next three years in order to take what was a part-time call and enable it to become a full-time call. [00:07:54] Jesse Schwamb: Wow.  [00:07:54] Tony Arsenal: And so there are a lot of, there are a lot of church bodies that would say, yeah, we don't love the idea of bi-vocational ministry. You know, we really think it's ideal that a minister could be full-time. Um, they may even put some, some theological freight behind that. Um, I have never encountered a body, um. That was willing to put a sizable amount of money towards essentially supplementing a part-time call to make it full-time. Um, this was just amazing to me, and the candidate was there. I didn't get a chance to talk to him, but I would love to talk to him about what he felt. I, I can just imagine the phone call to his wife who was not, not at presbytery, but to his wife, following the outcome of this to be like, you are never gonna believe what just happened. Right? This is a family who was intending to move across country. Right. He's currently a student at Westminster, California in seminary, uh, California, Westminster Seminary in California, finishing his M Div. They're planning a cross country move into a part-time position where she's probably gonna have to find a job, and then also he's gonna have to find a part-time job. He had the ability to call her on the break and be like, you're never gonna guess what just happened? You're never gonna,  [00:09:09] Jesse Schwamb: it's wild.  [00:09:09] Tony Arsenal: Uh, sorry, I'm getting a little emotional here. You're never going to. Believe how faithful God is in this. Right. So I'm interested to hear your reaction to that as the son of a, of a try and quad at times Quad vocational. Yeah,  [00:09:23] Jesse Schwamb: for sure.  [00:09:23] Tony Arsenal: Minister who labored his entire, more or less, his entire adult career, um, working full-time in a call as a part-time, part-time minister. You know, like that's a, that's a crazy situation. So I'm just affirming that again, I don't know how common that kind of thing is in the OPC. I don't wanna make it seem like that's the norm. Um, I actually get the sense that this is probably not the norm, but it was amazing to see and it made me in intensely like. Proud in the right way of being a part of this broader body that would, would so emphasize and so value the ministry of the word and the sacrament, and the importance of a man being able to dedicate himself to that without distraction. That they would put forward this amount of money and this kind of money. They had no reason to do so. And there's no real direct benefit to the presbytery for doing this. I mean, there's an indirect benefit of like not having a church with a part-time minister, but like there's no direct benefit to this. There's no direct return on investments that's gonna come out of this. Um, it was pretty amazing to see. It was, it was, it was super encouraging.  [00:10:28] Jesse Schwamb: That is really encouraging. I, I think it's, there's no doubt that for the called pastor, their heart is in the ministry of the word. That's what they want to be doing. They wanna be doing it all the time and as much time as they possibly can, and they wanna be able to have all of their intentional focus on it. So I. I'm excited for that guy. I mean, that's just an incredible blessing to go in hoping for funding, essentially for a part-time role and to basically be told, no, no, no, no, that's, that's not enough. We want you to be committed to this fully as we know your heart is committed. As we validated that call.  [00:11:00] Why Structure Matters [00:11:00] Jesse Schwamb: I do love being a part of churches, well, lemme say it this way. There is, I think, a benefit of being part of congregations that have like a wide resource network that has like appropriate hierarchy and structure and that can be one of them. I've seen something similar in the Christian Missionary Alliance, which is the church that I'm in, not exactly the same, but I've seen some surprising allocations of resources where they basically said, you know, this is important. Like, it even trumps we're, we're gonna. Allocate or resource something so that this can move forward because it is important in a way that was like better than the person who was bringing it before them could have hoped for. Yeah. And uh, suddenly it's as if everything aligned. And it was really in part because there was this structure to come alongside, to validate as you're saying, and then to authenticate and then again to resource assets that could be used. There's, there's something to be said for that interdependency where there is kind of this hierarchical structure in which all that's happening at a level where things are codified. And again, like there's a structure and a way in which we move through those decisions to make sure that they suit the objective of the entire movement. So I guess there's nothing I'll say, but that's a beautiful thing, isn't it?  [00:12:14] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:12:15] Generosity in Action [00:12:15] Tony Arsenal: It was, it was, it was cool because it was like this, it was like this real. Actualization of the principle of outdoing one another and showing honor. Yeah, sure. Because you know, like the initial debate was like, Hey, you know, I'm not sure we can approve this call because the, the OPCs guidelines tell us not to approve a call that has less than 5% of the retirement benefit. And there was a lot of discussion of like, well, the presbytery can't modify the call, but we don't wanna delay this guy coming in and like, we don't wanna delay his ordination, his installation. And so the initial proposal was a, a. What feels like a large amount of money to me. But after I understood more about the, the budget of what's going on in, in the presbytery was actually a very small amount of money. Started with a very tiny, very modest proposal of basically like supplementing the retirement fund to make sure that like we could, they, I say we, like, I was part of this, I was just observing, but to supplement the retirement fund in a way that allowed the church to still proceed with the call as written, but still also make sure that this person had the appropriate retirement fund. And then that just basically was like, there would be some instruction given to the church that like, you've gotta bump this up in the next budget cycle. Like you've gotta get to the 5%. That's, that's the expectation. It went from that. And like I said, I won't give you the specific numbers, but one of the presbyters and I, I'm, I, um, I, I've known this presbyter from a distance for quite a long time and, and I have an immense amount of respect for him. He stood up and he's like, well, if we're gonna give X, why don't we just give 10 times X instead? And then actually, like the discussion was like, well, is, are we sure that 10 times X is even the right amount? Why don't we have this particular group meet over the lunch break and figure out whether that's the right number and then come back after lunch and we'll vote on it. And then they came back after lunch and it was actually a number that was even greater than 10 times X. So it was like this exercise in like. This very small proposal that was still imminently generous, right? The presbytery has no obligation to do this. There's no obligation from any of the presbyters to stand up and say like, we should. We should supplement this fund. They would've been well within their right, and no one would've looked, I think. I think some people would've been frustrated by it, but I don't think anyone would've looked sideways at it or thought it was sinful. If the presbytery just said like, we can't approve this call. You guys are gonna have to come back with it and we'll vote on it at the next presbytery. Like that would've been problematic. This, this kind of poor guy who's coming outta seminary, his call and his beginning of employment would've been delayed, but like. That would've been good and orderly, but instead they were like, one, we don't want this pulpit to stay empty longer. We don't wanna disadvantage this guy who's just getting done with seminary. We want him to get started. We don't wanna discourage him. So here's a small proposal, a very modest amount of money that we can put forward for this purpose. And then it was like, let's just keep seeing how much closer to a real full-time call we can get. And they finally came back and said like, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this in a wise fashion. They structured it. So like the first year he gets more, the second year he gets a little bit less. The third year the church gets a little bit less with the idea that like each year the church should be adjusting their budget to compensate and get this guy to that with the, the hope that like with a full-time minister, they're able to grow their congregation to the point where they can support a full-time minister. So it was just this really cool, super encouraging exercise. And what I loved about it is the only real debate that was going on was about do we need to do more? There was no one being like, wait a second, why are we, why are we putting more money to this? The whole thing was like, is this actually enough to accomplish what we think God wants to do with this person's call? Because if, if God is truly calling this man to this, this particular church, and we believe that he is. Then what do we as a, as a people of God need to do to enable that call to look like what we actually believe calls to ministry are supposed to look like, which is a full-time call to ministry that is undistracted by the cares of the world. What do we need to do? The answer in this case was like, I think we need to put a sizable amount of money to it. Um, it's a, I mean, and again. I'm not gonna say it on the air. It was not a small chunk of change. Um, it was, it was a, it was a large amount of money that was devoted to this cause and that just goes to show how much this body values the importance of a full-time minister of the word, so. [00:16:50] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:16:51] OPC Love and Recommendation [00:16:51] Tony Arsenal: That's enough about that. I, I could gush about how proud I am to be a part of this body and how encouraged I am and how amazing it was and how awesome this, this guy, how, how much this guy must be thanking God for the providence and like, this is the last thing. I'll say this, this young man younger than me, I think he's graduating seminary. I saw him across the room. He looks like he's probably in his mid twenties, right? Young guy. He's got a wife doesn't have kids yet coming into this ministry, not only is he coming into this ministry, but as a Presbyterian minister, when he's installed as the minister of this church. He will be joining this body of presbyters as the, as his brothers like. He is not a member of the local church. He's a member of the presbytery, which is the regional church. So now he's coming into this fully supported by his brothers in the presbytery that he saw go to the mat to make sure he was properly taken care of, that the congregation was not unintentionally taking advantage of his labor, but also that he knows that all of these men are willing to do what they need to do to make sure that his ministry is successful and edifies the church like that is. Uh, I don't want to gush on Presbyterianism too much, but like that is Presbyterianism at peak form, right? This is the body of elders making sure that every church in the region, even the ones they're not directly ministering in, has what it needs to succeed and to honor God and to do what needs to happen. So I'm affirming the presbytery of New York and New England and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Um, I have been so blessed by knowing many of these presbyters. I've been so blessed by being a part of the congregation that I am. There are lots of really great churches and really great denominations out there. If you are looking for a church and there is an OPC congregation in your area, absolutely go check it out. I know it feels stuffy sometimes, and I will admit, like sometimes it feels a little bit overly traditional in terms of like just the vibe of the congregation,  [00:18:52] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:18:52] Tony Arsenal: But press past that because I don't think, I don't think you will find, um. You may find lots of congregations that are as faithful. I don't think you're gonna find many that are more faithful than your average OPC congregation. So I could be wrong. I just, I just love the OPC. I just really, really love it. So that's my affirmation. What do you got for us, Jesse?  [00:19:18] Denial Catholic Confession Math [00:19:18] Jesse Schwamb: I think I got denial, which is maybe a little bit unusual for me. [00:19:21] Tony Arsenal: As long as you're not denying the OPCI think we're fine.  [00:19:23] Jesse Schwamb: No, it's, it's not, it is church related and I, I'll try to keep it short 'cause I think I can make this way longer than it, it probably should be, but lemme think how to phrase this. So, I don't know with a devil negative, I guess when I'm a denying against is maybe not enough confession by your own standard. So the, I'm gonna try to make this so brief. I, I just happened to be out with my wife this afternoon and we had to run errands. We got stuck in traffic and this gave me longer than usual to sit in front of our. Very local and very large Catholic church. So I happen to be looking at their sign. It's a very large congregation. I've been actually been in this one on a couple of occasions for funerals. So not only do I know its size and scope, but again, if you get, if you get on this road at the wrong time on the Lord's day, you're gonna be stuck for a long time because there are so many people that attend. I say that because I noticed on the sign that there were three times for mass on the Lord's Day. So that also says something about the number of people coming through. And then on the sign though, underneath it said for confessions, go to our website. Mm-hmm. So I was like, man, I gotta lick this up because I can't tell if they're telling me I can confess on the website or if it's go to the website for the times. And I said to my wife, only half jokingly, if I can confess online, I'm gonna confess something. So I went to, I went to the website and, and sure enough it was almost disappointingly. It was just the times.  [00:20:45] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:20:46] Jesse Schwamb: Here's what I've found interesting, which just launched me into this like deep rabbit hole. There were three times for confession. Two of those times were just a half an hour, and the third time was an hour. So, uh, what I did was I went through, actually, I think what they had on there was, was three full hours a week. It was a little bit confusing, but I think it was three full hours. Now I think about it. So I went back, I just couldn't help myself, Tony. So I started to think, alright, let's say. I think it's fair to assume  [00:21:15] Tony Arsenal: math, Jesse is kicking in right now. Yes. You're gonna calculate how many minutes per, per person is what you're doing. I'm thinking, ah,  [00:21:22] Jesse Schwamb: yeah, it's something like that. So what I thought was, I don't think it's, uh, I was gonna be conservative. I wanna be fair. I wanna be fair. So, and now we should say like, I think most people realize that the Catholic understanding of confession and the Protestant one is, is very different. The Catholic sacrament of confession is the right through which Catholics are gonna confess their sins to a priest receive absolution, and it's gonna restore the relationship with God in the church. And, and they're gonna believe that the priest acts as a person of Christ and is bound by the seal of confession and an absolute kind of obligation. Uh, of course never to reveal what was disclosed during that process. So, by the way, the website that I went to, lovely instructions. I mean, I was like, wow. I was reading it to my wife who was, uh, not familiar with this at all, and she was like, they can make you do stuff. And I was like, well, yeah. I mean, obviously like there's, there's a portion of this where there's contrition or penant penance. It could be a prayer, it could be act of charity, like all kinds of stuff. So I went back and I thought. I don't think it's unreasonable that there's 350 persons that would say, let's say an average, uh, that would wanna take part of confession. Now, let's say that they did that at, at least monthly, just once a month. And, and I don't know how people's conviction is on that, but I'm gonna say conservatively once a month. Let's say that, and I don't think this is unreasonable, Tony, but you tell me. Let's say you're, you're trucking, you're moving through confession. Let's say it's five minutes a piece. So we're up to 1,750 minutes, uh, per month. That's the demand on the priest because I was, I was looking at this time and I was thinking something is strange here to me, so. That was the demand then, and I'll spare you the other math, which could be very long and un uninteresting. I'm coming up with, you'd need 2.24, two and a quarter priests, which of course you can't have a quarter priests or a quarter person for any reason. So you'd hire, you'd hire three priests, which satisfy the demand if, and the major assumptions here, that is like everybody can't show up at the same time. Obviously, I'm assuming that like everybody has their own time, they're spreading it out. So everybody gets the confession, but it's just five minutes. And I, I have no idea. I mean, if you're a Luther, that's certainly not sufficient time.  [00:23:20] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:23:20] Jesse Schwamb: And you would need three priests. Now here's the thing that I just kind of backed into that, besides like three being like, okay, that, that's, you would need three priests just to satisfy this congregation. If they're confessing for five minutes, once per month. Uh, by the way, if you said, well, half the congregation is going to go weekly, uh, then you, you would double the number of priests you need to 5.98 or six. But here's, here's the bottom line for me. This is why the denial comes in about maybe not enough, is. If you were just to distill that down to like, if you could have one priest cover that time, that there's a demand for like 779.4 hours, or excuse me, minutes of confession, that priest would only be allocating approximately like seven and a half percent of their working hours, their work toward handling confession. This seems like not enough confession given the standards of confession in the Catholic church. And again, I know that I'm, I'm now allocating that to one priest and I just told everybody you need three. That's true. So if you had these three now, if you hired three just to meet the demand, that would only be about like three and a half or a little under three and a half percent of their combined time. So the denial is Catholics, I think, unless I'm way off in some of my assumptions here, you might not be confessing enough by your own standards because  [00:24:33] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:24:34] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, that seems like not enough time.  [00:24:38] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:24:39] Ritual Faithfulness Explained [00:24:39] Tony Arsenal: I mean, I think, um. I don't want to be too bombastic here, but I think,  [00:24:46] Jesse Schwamb: I think I already started this on this  [00:24:48] Tony Arsenal: path. Maybe this, maybe this isn't all that bombastic. Um, because this is so much about ritual and actually I say this is gonna sound really, we, we go, but trying to think from the Roman Catholic perspective, it's actually not, and I'll I'll tell you a brief story, uh, to explain it. Um, a lot of Roman Catholics are just going through the motions. [00:25:13] Jesse Schwamb: That's true.  [00:25:14] Tony Arsenal: But the point, the, the, the point of contention actually is that going through the motions is valuable for the Roman Catholic, right? So I, I knew this, uh, this young woman when I was in college who was a Roman Catholic, and we had many discussions about, about the differences between Protestantism and and Roman Catholicism. And what I came to understand is that going to mass for her. Itself was an act of faith. And so for the Roman Catholic, the concept of, of faith is different than the concept that Protestants operate under. So for the Roman Catholic who, um, goes to mass, even when they feel like they're, like, when they think they're just going through the motions, going through the motions is itself the act of faith. And that's because for most of Roman Catholics, most of Roman Catholicism, faith really equals faithfulness, right? So, so doing the act is the act of faithfulness. Doing the act is faith. Where for the Protestant, like faith is about belief and trust and knowledge. Like it's, it's an. Not entirely intellectual, but it's, it's an inward thing for the Roman Catholic faith is an out is primarily an outward thing. It's what you do, it's how you act. It's faith formed in love. It's faith formed in charity.  [00:26:36] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:26:37] Tony Arsenal: So I think most Roman Catholics going to obligatory confession first. I think once a month is probably like, probably more frequent than most Roman Catholics go to mass or go to confession. Um, I thought I read a stat that it was like every six months is, is pretty average and I think that's what's required by the church maybe even once a year is, is required by the church. Um, I think like most Roman Catholics go into the, the confessional booth and like father forgive me for I've sinned. It's been such and such a number of days since my last confession. Right. And they may bring up a couple particular things that they've done and, and then I think the priest commonly absolves them of all of their sins. Like, almost like in an omnibus fashion and then prescribes their acts of penance, which is it, it like, honestly, it's probably things they should already be doing as a faithful Catholic saying Hail Marys and doing our fathers and acts of charity and things like that. So I think your math is probably right. [00:27:39] Protestant Repentance Particular [00:27:39] Tony Arsenal: I think your, your theory that more confession is probably like, I'm gonna read this from, uh, the Westminster confession, just to, just to say it here, is, this is chapter 15, which is titled of Repentance Under Life. And this is, uh, this is section five or paragraph five. It says, men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but is every man's duty to endeavor, to repent of his particular sins, particularly. And I think that's just such a beautifully phrased sentence like. Not only is it like potent theologically, but like, it just, it just feels good, like in terms of like the English language to repent of your particular sins, particularly. And like the idea is yes, Protestant reform, Christians affirm a general repentance from sin, right? We repent of our sin before the father, uh, as a result of our, of our coming to faith in Christ. And as part of our sanctification, we mortify our sin and we, Viv we are vivified by the spirit and repentance falls in that ongoing sanctification process. And there is this general repentance of like, I repent of the fact that I'm a sinner and that I commit sins, but there is this element in the reformed faith of like, I should be confessing to God. And I think by extension, like we should be confessing to our fellow Christians, our particular sins, our individual sins, and we should be doing that on particular occasion. And I think like. The Luther style confession of like going into the confessor and confessing like every particular sin. Particularly I think most Roman Catholic priests would, priests. Priests would probably have the same reaction Tobits did where he was like, get outta here. Like, come on dude. Like just go live your life and like deal with it. I think that's probably the reaction most Catholic priests would have. But yeah, I think you're right. Like if we're really talking about like. Five, five minutes of confession once a month and that somehow having some sort of spiritual efficacy. I'm not sure I buy that math. Like I think you're, you're probably spot on.  [00:29:47] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:29:47] Confession Hours Oddities [00:29:47] Jesse Schwamb: I just was curious about how many priests would be required and then the allocation of the duties. By the way, you are right. So I, because I had to check on this, the, the fourth letter in council of 1215 does say that the church requires confession of any grave or mortal sins at least once a year. But the church, yeah, strongly encourages more frequent confession as a spiritual practice, even for, of course, like the venial or the less serious sins in their eyes. So yeah, my thought here was just that. I think it's actually undervalued by way of the math. Like the, as the kids say, the math just isn't math thing for me on this one. But I was more curious about, since this is one of the seven sacraments, even if you just said like, well, it should have at least one seven of the allocation. That's like, what? Like something like 14%. And so this is, um, almost half of that. I just found it a little bit, a little bit odd and yeah, I think you'd have to be, uh, so in other words, when I looked at the, basically, here's the bottom line. When I looked at the hours for confession one, there were weird times and uh, two, I was like, that doesn't seem like enough hours. Like, it was just more like that. Like how that's like saying like, Hey, the post office is open three hours a week, and by the way, one of those hours is from seven to eight o'clock on Friday. Like they had some hours. One hour just on Friday was like, I guess that's the way you wanna start your weekend is like, let's get all of this off my chest. Yeah. And, and do it. Right. And the last thing I'll say by the way, is you're correct. When you look at the instruction they give you, and this is common of course, toward the end, when they say like, here's how you like wrap up your part. Actually everybody should go read, go to the local, local Catholic church website and read the instructions. 'cause in some ways they're just interesting and kind of, um, I don't wanna say funny 'cause I'm not making fun. I'm just saying like, they have to give you instruction if you've never done it before. And so most of us are not really probably familiar with the process and they give you explicit instruction and toward the end it's like, here's how you kinda like hang up the call with the priest. And it's like you said, you know, these are my sins and all others, would you be willing to forgive? So you're right. Right. They just kinda wrap them all up because it's sins of omission, sense of commission, it's all to be together. But I, I wonder, you gotta think there's people in there that are like. The priests are like, okay, man, just yeah. Wrap, come on, wrap, wrap it up.  [00:31:55] Confession Timing Talk [00:31:55] Jesse Schwamb: And other people that come in are just like, you know, forgive me father. And uh, lastly to your point, when they give you instruction about how you should start, of course you're always to signify how long it's been since your last confession. Right. Confession. And they say parenthetically, like, reference the days, weeks, months, or years. So you're right. There are gonna be people that probably do it very frequently and probably people who do it infrequently still, I would say I just couldn't believe for a church this large, that there was just three hours a week.  [00:32:21] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:32:21] Jesse Schwamb: For everybody else.  [00:32:22] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:32:23] Vance and Papal Authority [00:32:23] Tony Arsenal: This leads me to two very brief sub, uh, denials slash affirmations. Uh, I don't know if you saw this, um, this is not a political statement, right? I, I have lots of feelings and thoughts about the current administration and I think most of my feelings and thoughts would surprise. Everybody. But I thought it was hilarious because JD Vance, who is a Roman Catholic, uh, confessed Roman Catholic part of the Roman Catholic Church, uh, he ha I, I'm not sure if I'm affirming or denying this, there was this funny, uh, funny exchange. I think he was at doing like a, doing like a TPU, I don't know, speech. He was doing a speech at some conservative event and he said something like, I think that the Pope should be more careful when he makes theological statements. I'm wanna be like, do you understand what the pope is in your religion? That was one of my sub denials. Uh, I don't remember what the other one is, so it must not have been that important. It'll come back to me at the worst possible moment and I will try very hard not to interrupt our show for it, but I probably will fail.  [00:33:25] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah.  [00:33:25] Reading Matthew 21 [00:33:25] Jesse Schwamb: Listen, we, we gotta get to some scripture because. We're, we're doing this old school style where we take like half the time and just talk about affirmations. It's true in house. It's true. Which is great fun. But let's, let's get back to Matthew 21. And I, I know we did this last time, but I am gonna rock through the passage 'cause of course, that's the best part of any of our discussion, is actually hearing from, from the Holy Spirit through the scripture, uh, which he's given to us. So this is, uh, Matthew 21, starting in verse 33. And you're gonna hear the, the whole thing right here. Uh, this is Jesus speaking. Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard and put a wall around it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey. Now, when the high risk time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine growers to receive his fruit, and the vine growers took his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Again, he sent another group of slaves larger than the first, and they did the same thing to them. But afterward he sent his son to them saying they will respect my son. But when the vine growers saw the sun, they said among themselves, this is the heir. Come let us kill him and seize his inheritance, and they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine growers? They said to him, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons. Jesus said to them, did you ever read in the scriptures the stone, which the builders rejected? This has become the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls in the stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to seize him, they feared the crowds because they're regarding him to be a prophet. [00:35:28] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:35:30] Pharisees Condemn Themselves [00:35:30] Tony Arsenal: This is like a super heavy parable. Right. And we talked a lot last week about how like the point of this parable is not necessarily to try to instruct the Pharisees or the Sadducees. Like it's not to instruct the people who were going to reject Christ, uh, the, the builders who would reject the cornerstone. It's really a parable to teach those. Who are observing this process happening. But I think it's, I, I think it's really interesting just listening to you read this and reading through it, and I guess this is a question I haven't asked and I, I need to study a little bit more. It's crazy to me in verse 41, um, Christ seems the, the, the, um, Matthew seems to say here, and maybe I need to do a little bit more Greek study, so bear with me and, and have grace if I'm wrong here. Matthew seems to say that like Christ asks the people he's speaking to, the Pharisees he's speaking to, what is he gonna do to these people? And the Pharisees answer, he's gonna put those wretches to a miserable death.  [00:36:36] Jesse Schwamb: Right?  [00:36:37] Tony Arsenal: Like the people listening to this parable understand the outcome, like they understand the. The consequence that the, the, the vineyard owner or the vineyard tenant tenants are facing based on their lack of faithfulness to the covenant. To me, that is like a really striking part of this parable. And, and it's not even like the parable proper, but like the striking element of the context of this is that nobody listening to this parable, including the Pharisees that this parable has basically spoken against, nobody fails to see the gravity of the consequence of rejecting God's emissary, like rejecting the Messiah. That to me is like a really, I dunno, paradigmatic. Portion of this that I think we need to grapple with. This is not an unclear, an unclear outcome. This is not, this is not masked or vague or OPA opaque. Like everybody understands, the people who reject the Messiah are going to face dire and eternal consequences for that act. [00:37:48] Jesse Schwamb: That does make this really interesting, doesn't it? Because it's not just entirely like Romans one adventures or even Romans two. It's that this is what Jesus does and he does it in a profound way that's not trickery like I think kinda like you're saying like the lead up to this isn't as if he's even leading the witness. He's making it very clear, all like the parameters of the story and the characters involved and what should be the proper judgment. And it's not as if like they start saying, they're like, oh, we shouldn't say anything more like we, we plead the fifth because it's gonna condemn ourselves. He draws his audience in to producing and pronouncing like their own sentence. It's very much like, I think I mentioned this last time, the prophet Nathan and David, isn't it? It's the exact same. Yeah. And the verdict is unanswerable, like even in its own terms. These other, like these other vine growers, prefigures of course like the inclusion of the Gentiles and the apostolic office. But I like that what Jesus does here, even before he gets to that point, is he extorts from them an acknowledgement of the punishment which awaited them. And so in this way there's like, I think the Puritans use this passage a lot actually to demonstrate that the natural conscience even of like the unregenerate, still bears witness to divine justice. That's Romans two. Like they, they can't get out from underneath it and Jesus isn't using any trickery on them to get them to say this thing. They are compelled in their own way, even being unregenerate to, like you said, even as they're rejecting the Messiah to recognize that punishment is due these characters in the story, even as they perceive at the end that they are those characters. [00:39:21] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:39:22] Jesse Schwamb: Saying we'll receive the judgment.  [00:39:24] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:39:25] Usurpers Not Misguided [00:39:25] Tony Arsenal: And I think too, like, um, this is kind of one of those chicken or the egg scenarios, right? Like Christ is both recognizing the intention of their heart as well as prophesying. And, and not just prophesying, but like inception level prophesying the, the outcome of the intention of their heart. And so like, again, like we've, we spent a whole week kind of like leading into the parable and now we spent a whole week, we're gonna spend a whole week again kind of leading into the parable. This is such a deep parable, and that like Christ is not just laying bare. The fact that the, the people who were going to reject him were doing so out of this sort of like attempt and intention of usurping the kingdom of God for their own purposes. I think that brings a layer to this that we don't often appreciate in. Christ's interaction with the Pharisees. I think sometimes, and maybe this is because I just listened to an episode of where Matt Whitman on the 10 minute Bible hour talked about this. I think sometimes we actually have a tendency to sort of be sympathetic to the Pharisees where we think, you know, they were, they were just trying to obey God's law and they got a little sideways on it and you know, they were putting these boundaries in place, but they were doing it in this sort of like misguided attempt to protect the people. Christ actually here seems to contradict that in that the comparison he's making is not to a, a well-intentioned group of people who just get it wrong, but he's painting the Pharisees, the, the religious leaders, the Sadducees, the chief priests. He's painting them as these usurpers who recognize the proper authority of right. The master and his emissaries and ultimately of his son, they recognize this proper authority and rather than submitting to it and submitting to the covenant obligations that they, they already actually agreed to, instead of doing that, they're going to reject that authority and try to take it for their own right. It's not just that they do the wrong thing, it's that they recognize the heir, which is Christ. They recognize this heir and they kill him to try to take his place. That is a really heavy element of this parable. Christ is not painting. Um, the, the, the Pharisees here, the, the religious leaders. He's not painting them as um, well-intentioned, but ultimately wrong, which is I think a lot of times, and I think there's reason to do this right. I'm not being overly critical and I've done this, I've actually done this myself, and I think there's some. Space for it. Like the Pharisees were wrong, but they were wrong, kind of in the right direction sometimes. Um, Christ is not really on board with that, at least in this parable. Right. This isn't about them thinking that the heir was a threat, and so killing the threat in, you know, inadvertently this is them absolutely seeing who the hair, who the heir is, and intentionally deciding to reject that heir and to murder him and to try to take his inheritance. Mm-hmm. That's an affront to not only the heir who they murder, but an affront to the owner of the vineyard himself, which of course in this parable is figured to be God the father primarily. But God in sort of general terms, like the whole Godhead, um, with Christ as the second Adam has, as his representative, as his heir. This is a really heavy parable and I think where this comes into play for us in our own Christian life is. Are there times where we. Sort of do the same thing in refusing to, maybe it's tie into your denial a little bit. Like refusing to acknowledge our own sinfulness, refusing to acknowledge the ways that God has provided for us. Um, do we at times look at what we have and lay claim to it as though it is our own inheritance that we've taken? Um, right. Do we kind of crucify the son of God anew in, in refusing to repent of our sins particularly? I dunno. I think those are some open questions for us to kind of explore as we dig into this a bit more. [00:43:54] Jesse Schwamb: And that may relate as well to, well eventually at some point, I dunno, like 2040, get to like the parable of the talents. There's some similarity there with a little bit, right? You're saying? I think you're right.  [00:44:06] God Does All the Verbs [00:44:06] Jesse Schwamb: And where I think we can anchor some of that is in those first couple of verses. I'm really always impressed by really the number of action verbs that are packed within, like that just initial statement of Jesus explaining the situation. [00:44:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:44:19] Jesse Schwamb: So he sets it all up and he's saying there's a planting that goes on, this landowner puts up a wall, digs a wine press. Builds a tower and then RINs it. So there's all these like amazing things being done, all this action verb. And I, I think in part why he comes against the Pharisees so hard in the same way that we're looking at like the parable that, uh, the, uh, talents for instance of saying like, what did you do with that was entrusted to you was like this great treasure which Christ has entrusted or God has entrusted to his people, which is, is the gospel essentially is, is all a prophetic witness, is like the truth of who God is and his revelation of himself. And so I think. The first thing we gotta see in those verbs is that there's this emphasis that the vineyard was God's sovereign creation. You know, he plants it, he chose it, he established it. Israel didn't plant herself. She was planted. And that sovereign initiative is foundational, I think in, like you're saying, the parables indictment, because these vine growers, they don't possess anything that they did not receive. Right. You know, they did not find a vineyard already planted, but God himself made it from the wilderness that all his glory, all the glory might be his. So. I think it's helpful for us to observe that the church is always the planting of the Lord and that no congregation flourishes that is not first planted by God. And so there is a major offense here when those who are to care for it, who know, like you're saying, that they ought to care for it, who understand something about the hierarchy and the way it has been entrusted to them. Not to only break that covenant, but then seek to try to usurp the power in the roles of those whom they should be, quite frankly, in our own language, like under shepherds too. And so it starts with all, all those verbs. Like I think we could probably spend a. A lot of times just speaking about what does it mean? Why? Why is there all this explicit in particular language about the fact that there's a hedge and there's a press besides just these are part in piece mail or part and parcel of what it means to have a vineyard, apparently, but that they're all part of this narrative of God talking about how he protects and cares for his people and sets them in a place and chooses them and is particular about the construction and does so with great volition and authority and care and concern and creative ability. And then again, you have those who are meant there to do the very job that he's entrusted them with. And not only are they not doing that, and of course you're right. Jesus elsewhere, comes in, comes in hot, right, with a Pharisees saying like, listen, you set burdens on people's backs that you yourselves cannot lift. You're twice as in the hell as anybody else, and that's who you are. Yeah. It's not just hypocrisy, but you're literally setting people up to fail in this. So you can see how you're right. It's not just like, guys, I appreciate that. Like you wanted to set up some additional boundaries and maybe you took it a little bit too far. This parable is just scorched earth. It's, it's nuclear. Yeah.  [00:47:10] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:47:11] Scandalous Vineyard Setup [00:47:11] Tony Arsenal: And you know, I think, um, we are obviously gonna spend another week on this 'cause we still have not really addressed a single verse in this parable. I, I think like a lot of ink has been spilled on explaining sort of like the feal agricultural arrangements of this passage. What it represents. M my understanding is. A typical arrangement would be that a, a landowner would basically just lease out land and the tenants would be responsible for the planting, for the development. Right. And the, the, the landowner would essentially just collect a portion of whatever they produce. Right. This parable is actually taking this a step further. Exactly. That it's not as though the landowner just says like, all right, you can use this land. Right. And I own the land, so I get a portion of the pro, the profit. He's actually done all the work. Yes. And all that. The, all that the, the tenants need to do essentially is reap the harvest and then provide the portion of the harvest that belongs to the landowner, and so there is a greater investment. Of the landowner into this land than would be expected. We've commented in the past about how a lot of times the, the parables start on sort of a premise of shock. Like there's a, there's an element of the setup of the, of the parable where the audience would kind of like sit back and gasp or kind of be like, wait a second. Like that's not normal. Right. In the parable of the, the, um, lost son, it was the idea that like the son demanded his inheritance. And that wasn't the shocking part. The shocking part was that the father just granted it. Right. Or, um, the lost sheep, like the, there's actually a sort of a shocking element to the fact that like the, the land, the like sheep owner would just go get this other sheep. So we've, we've commented on there's kind of like. There's sort of like a scandalous setup. The scandalous setup in this is not that the land has been leased to tenants, right? It's that the land has been prepared for the tenants before it was leased out in the first place. And I think that's something we might miss if we read over this too quickly, is. The landowner has prepared everything for these, these tenants.  [00:49:30] Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  [00:49:31] Tony Arsenal: So the, the, at the, the punchline of the parable where they refuse to acknowledge the sovereignty of, um, sovereignty and maybe a lowercase s in the, in the context of the parable, they refuse to acknowledge the sovereignty and the rightful claim of the tenant or of the landowner on the, the profit of the land. And sort of like highlighter emphasized by the fact that they actually didn't do any of the work. There's a certain kind of like Amer, like American rugged individualism where we're kind of like, yeah, like if I planted all the crops, then it's kind of lame that this guy's coming in expecting to take a portion of it, right? Like, yeah, I guess he owns the land, so maybe he gets a little piece of it, but like, who does he think he is? All of that already is already short circuited. Like I. The, these tenants are not actually, um, portrayed as doing anything in this parable. That's right. Like they just lease the land. They, they, um, and leased is not really like the right. The right word, the, the Greek word is omi, which is like he gave over the land to them. Um, when we say leased, we have this idea that like the tenants pay to use the land and then like part of their contract is that whatever profits they reap, uh, off the land goes back to the, to the landowner. This is really more like the landowner graciously allowed them to live on this land, and the only payment he required was that they would eventually provide him part of the profit back. Like he's planted the land, he's put up the fence around it. He dug the wine press so that they could make a product out of it. He built the tower so it would be defended. Yes. And he gave it over to them essentially just to like live on until it was time for the harvest. And all he is asking for is basically like, alright, so this is my land. I've planted the vineyards, the profit is mine to have. And so when the time came for him to come claim that that's where they have now rejected him. Yes. That's where they've now said like, I know you did all the work and really graciously allowed us to live in this land, but we're gonna keep all of it for ourselves. That's the scandal of this. That's what I think like the original audience would've set up and like, wait a second here. Like, hold on. They didn't even plant the vineyards themselves. They didn't even build the tower themselves. That's really the force of this that I think we miss when we, when we overemphasize, trying to think through like what the original agricultural arrangements were. 'cause this is painted. Very different than what the original arrangements would've been typical for. Like this is a different scenario and I think intentionally so,  [00:52:09] Jesse Schwamb: and we need those words like rented, at least in English, to help us understand that it didn't belong to them. It wasn't a gift, right? It wasn't as if like it was just turned over in the sense that it belongs to you now do with it what you will. And it's very clear in the passage one, like you said, that the landowner does all those things. So it was a, you know, he completely set it up. I mean, this is just such a beautiful, I think, depiction of the hold of prophetic, you know, understanding of God's word here, but it's very clear that says the, he sent his slaves to the vine growers to receive his fruit. So you're right. The scandal is that they're like, well, obviously. They need to give him his fruits, like  [00:52:48] Tony Arsenal: right.  [00:52:48] Jesse Schwamb: It was all set up before he left on this long journey. He then turned it over to them to care for, and that was really all that they were supposed to do. They had no role in this. And so it does like lead us in into this weird space where it's like, well, well what, what did the Pharisees think they were trying to do themselves? What does actually Jesus commenting on, on their own, like licit on their own initiative here, is he basically saying that not only are they not respecting his sovereignty, but they were trying to claim for themselves what only rightly belongs to God that even their position right. Society in culture as their representatives, God himself, they wanted to take that over for themselves, which he does bring that condemnation upon them in other parts of the scripture. So again, this is really hot. I think it's a, it's both heat and light, but there's no doubt that there's fire to this, right? Because it's a direct indictment that God the father set all of this up. You yourselves are on rented property, but guess what? Even the property that you've rented, I'm not exacting a tax from you as if like you have put forward and grown or supplied or created some kind of profitable outcome here. And I just want a piece of that. He's not even talking about tithing in that sense. What he's basically saying is, none of this belongs to you. Like how? Right? How dare you? None of this is yours. I set all of this up and in fact, because you've done so poor poorly at this, I'm gonna take it away from you and give it to those who actually produce fruit and guess what's gonna be the Gentiles? So it's, there's a wild. Amounts of condemnation packed into a very small story.  [00:54:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. It really is.  [00:54:22] Tenants Add Nothing [00:54:22] Tony Arsenal: Um, there is nothing expected of these tenants. Right. There's no contract, like there's no terms, they, they really add nothing to the, the landowner's land, except I guess maybe they're the ones harvesting these, this fruit. Right. But even that's not explicit in the parable.  [00:54:43] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly.  [00:54:43] Tony Arsenal: Right. Right. He, he does all just to steal your thunder, like he does all the verbs. Yes. All of the ves are done by the landowner.  [00:54:50] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Right  [00:54:51] Tony Arsenal: on. There is an implication that the, the tenants are somehow like the ones harvesting this, or they're the ones producing the wine, I guess, in the wine vat or the wine press. But at the end of the day. A normal tenant landowner agreement would be, I'm, you're, first of all, you're probably gonna pay me to use this land, right? You're paying me to use this land, and the way you pay me is you're gonna plant the, the gr the crop. You're gonna harvest it. You're gonna make the produce, and all I'm gonna do is let you live on this land. I'm gonna take the pro, like the profit, you're gonna pay me outta that profit. There is nothing asked or expected of these, th

Imagine a new believer looking for a church in the yellow pages. He will see names like Presbyterian, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostal, Lutheran. Episcopal, and perhaps a few others. He ,might wonder, which is the right church? Much confusion has arisen because people fail to distinguish between the organized, institutional churches and the Church founded by the Lord Jesus Christ made up of His genuine followers. Do you know the difference between the churches and the Church? To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/791/29?v=20251111

From the "It Matters" sermon series. Preached by Jody Killingsworth.

Jason Sterling May 10, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL BulletinThank you for listening! Please visit us at www.faith-pca.org. 

Kim Song Ju, the man who would become Kim Il Sung, was born to devout Presbyterian parents. Billy Graham's wife was born to christian missionaries in China and went to high school in Pyongyang. American protestants once spread the gospel in northwest Korea and found fertile ground for their gospel message. Kim listened, learned, and used those teachings to shape a cult of personality that rules North Korea to this day.On this episode of Angry Planet I'm joined by Wall Street Journal China bureau chief Jonathan Cheng to talk about his new book Korean Messiah. Cheng's work is an exploration of the origins of North Korea and Kim's deep ties to American Christianity.ShareAngry Planet as dress rehearsalBilly Graham in the Hermit Kingdom19th century Protestant missionaries in KoreaPresbyterians in the untamed northwestUntangling the history of a self-made godkingThe Kim Song Ju nativityWomen without namesAttending church during the Fire and Fury periodThe Soviet eraLeading from beyond the graveKim bombs his first public appearanceBuy Korean MessiahSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Camden Bucey welcomes David T. Irving, President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, for a rich conversation on Irving's dissertation, Mississippi's Greatest Minister: A Historical Study of Cornelius W. Grafton's 61-Year Pastorate, 1873–1934. Before turning to Grafton, they discuss Irving's recent transition into seminary leadership and the growing pastoral shortage across confessional Presbyterian churches, reflecting on the need for prayer, training, and laborers for Christ's harvest. The heart of the episode explores the life and ministry of Cornelius W. Grafton, a remarkable Mississippi Presbyterian pastor whose decades of quiet faithfulness, denominational leadership, educational labor, and pastoral endurance left a deep mark on church life in the American South. Camden and David consider why Grafton has been largely overlooked, what his ministry reveals about ordinary pastoral faithfulness, and how his life still instructs ministers and churches today. Watch on YouTube Chapters 00:08 Introduction and guest welcome 01:09 Mississippi's Greatest Minister and today's topic 02:03 RTS Jackson update and the pastoral shortage 08:20 David Irving's connection to Mississippi and Cornelius W. Grafton 14:06 Why Grafton has been overlooked in church history 18:14 Grafton's early religious life and spiritual maturation 23:58 Education, pastoral formation, and early ministry 29:33 Union Church, rural ministry, and a sixty-one-year pastorate 36:46 Grafton's preaching, pastoral rhythms, and churchmanship 43:18 Denominational leadership, education, and public influence 49:19 Grafton as historian and the unpublished history of Mississippi Presbyterianism 54:03 Lessons from Grafton's life and ministry today 59:09 Closing remarks and upcoming Reformed Forum events Resources Mentioned David T. Irving, Mississippi's Greatest Minister: A Historical Study of Cornelius W. Grafton's 61-Year Pastorate, 1873–1934 Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson Reformed Academy Reformed Forum events Participants: Camden Bucey, David T. Irving

GoVols247's Ben McKee is joined by former Vols pitcher Will Heflin on the latest Diamond Vols Podcast to recap Tennessee baseball's midweek win over Presbyterian ... and also preview this weekend's series against No. 4 Texas that the Vols really need to win. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Corporate prayer and national repentance have shaped history, and Scripture like Jonah 3:10 reveals how God responds when people turn to Him together. Praying as a nation isn’t symbolic—it’s a powerful, biblical practice that invites God’s mercy, guidance, and restoration. This devotional highlights how God has consistently responded to unified, humble prayer—from the city of Nineveh to moments in American history. When people come together, set aside differences, and seek God collectively, it reflects dependence on Him rather than self-sufficiency. National prayer isn’t about politics or performance—it’s about hearts aligning with God, turning from sin, and trusting Him to lead, heal, and sustain a nation. Just as individuals are called to pray, communities and countries are invited to do the same. Highlights God responds to corporate prayer and genuine repentance Biblical examples show entire cities and nations turning to God together Unity in prayer reflects humility and dependence on God National prayer invites God’s mercy, healing, and direction Spiritual battles require spiritual responses—not just physical solutions Setting aside differences for prayer strengthens collective faith Do you want to listen ad-free? When you join Crosswalk Plus, you gain access to exclusive, in-depth Bible study guides, devotionals, sound biblical advice, and daily encouragement from trusted pastors and authors—resources designed to strengthen your faith and equip you to live it out boldly. PLUS ad free podcasts! Sign Up Today! Full Transcript Below: Why Praying As a Nation Matters to God By Lynette Kittle Bible Reading: “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened.” - Jonah 3:10 As America celebrates 250 years as a nation, some ask, does it matter if our nation prays together on the National Day of Prayer? Does God even pay attention to or hear us when we pray corporately as a nation? The answer is “yes”: it matters to God, and we can be assured of this because the Bible provides plenty of evidence that He often calls us to corporate prayer for a city or a nation. Most of us are familiar with the well-known biblical passage 2 Chronicles 7:14, which says, “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” As in the story of Jonah and the wicked city of Nineveh, God called for the entire city to pray and repent, and even the animals were included in the city’s prayer, fasting, and repentance. As Jonah 3:4-8 describes, God led an entire city to repentance through corporate prayer: “Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, ‘Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.’ The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from His fierce anger so that we will not perish.” In Jonah 3:10, we read of God’s gracious response to their corporate prayer: He relented rather than sending destruction. Likewise, looking back at America’s Founders, we see that they recognized the importance of corporate prayer and that establishing a nation’s future doesn’t just involve fighting a physical battle for victory, but also a spiritual one. They demonstrated this when they officially met and came together for the first time on September 7, 1774, as the Continental Congress of the United States, opening with prayer and the reading of Psalm 35 by Rev. Jacob Duché, which begins with, “Contend, Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me.” This was no easy feat, either, as the outspoken members had to set aside their denominational differences to pray together, uniting members who were Congregationalists, Anglicans, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, Baptists, Lutherans, Puritans, and Presbyterians, coming together to overlook their differences, joining in one accord, praying for a common goal. American Conservative radio talk-show host and writer, Dennis Prager, explains, “Ultimately, they wanted people to be free to practice their religion and relate to God in their own way. They all knew God is the source of liberty.” Providence Forum Executive Director Dr. Jerry Newcombe points out how historians find in George Washington’s writings and actions during the Revolutionary War that he relied heavily on prayer, believing that with the tremendous odds set against them, victory could only come with God’s help. As well, “The Great Awakening absolutely helped the cause of independence,” writes Newcombe. “Even before the Great Awakening, the ministers, especially the ones from New England, helped shape the thinking of the Colonists as to their God-given rights.” Christian historians believe the spread of “The Great Awakening” across the colonies greatly influenced and strengthened Patriot leaders leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, during which prayer and fasting played a critical role in helping America establish its freedom. In Miracles in American History, author, historian, and speaker William J. Federer writes about the many national calls to prayer leading up to and throughout the formation of the United States of America. Intersecting Faith & Life:Are you planning to join our nation in praying for God’s divine guidance and protection over our country? If not, consider praying with millions of believers across our land who will be praying together during this year’s 250th Anniversary, National Day of Prayer. Further Reading:A Prayer to Take Part in Our Nation’s National Day of Prayer Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.