Podcasts about scottish presbyterians

What is the origin of the "devil's advocate"? What are the benefits of assigning someone to that role? It has been noted in Scottish Presbyterian polity that a unanimous decision has not been sufficiently debated. In other words, either the issue was trivial, the presbyters were apathetic, or no one stepped up to elevate the debate by serving as the devil's advocate. Tim and Andrew encourage listeners to learn how to think, not just what to think. We must guide our children to know how to argue respectfully, anticipate objections, understand their opponents' arguments, and recognize and resist groupthink. Tim draws on his experience as the moderator of a church session and discusses how these principles come into play during elder board meetings. Here's something worth remembering when you are tempted to dismiss Robert's Rules of Order: procedural rules for assembly arguments exist to protect the minority's voice and the majority's will.***Out of Our Minds Podcast: Pastors Who Say What They Think. For the love of Christ and His Church.Out of Our Minds is a production of New Geneva Academy. Are you interested in preparing for ordained ministry with pastors? Have a desire to grow in your knowledge and fear of God? Apply at www.newgenevaacademy.com.Master of DivinityBachelor of DivinityCertificate in Bible & TheologyGroundwork: The Victory of Christ & The Great ConversationIntro and outro music is Psalm of the King, Psalm 21 by My Soul Among Lions.Out of Our Minds audio, artwork, episode descriptions, and notes are property of New Geneva Academy and Warhorn Media, published with permission by Transistor, Inc. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

2 Corinthians 4:1-6 Please remain standing for the reading of God's Word. By the way, a couple of you have recently asked why we stand for the sermon text and not the Old and New Testament readings. I would definitely like us to stand for all of them, just like the people did in Nehemiah 8 when the Word was read. However, we already stand and sit a lot in our service, as you know. So, consider our standing for the sermon text as a representative standing for all our readings. We stand in reverence to God's Word. Hear now God's Word, 2 Corinthians 4:1-6. Reading Prayer “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Maybe you've heard that phrase before. It dates back to 1871. David Livingstone had left Scotland 30 years earlier to travel to Africa. He went there with the London Mission Society and he travelled all over central and southern Africa. But in the late-1860s Livingstone had gone missing. Many presumed he had died. So, a man named Henry Morgan Stanly was sent out to find him. Stanley searched for months. And on November 10, 1871, in modern-day Tanzania, he finally found the missionary. Stanly simply said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” It's hard to overestimate the impact that Livingstone had on Africa. Not only was he a Christian missionary but also a doctor and an explorer. He desired to put an end to slavery. He opened doors of trade in many places and emphasized education. As a doctor, he helped promote helpful practices to treat and prevent diseases.  But most importantly, Livingstone brought the Gospel to central and southern Africa. As he travelled, he would learn the different languages of the people he met. He would translate portions of the Bible for them. He would teach the 10 commandments and the love of God in Christ. However, despite all his work and ministry, Livingstone did not experience fruit from his labors. No, in fact, by some accounts, he only witnessed one convert to Christ. One. In 1871, when Stanly urged Livingstone to return to England, he responded, "Oh, when will Christ's holy Gospel enter into this dark region?” Livingstone yearned to see the light of Christ in Africa. Now, if you were in Livingstone's situation, how would you feel and what would you do? If you had dedicated 30 years of your life testifying to Jesus' life and the cross and his resurrection but God had not seen fit to turn hearts to him, how would it affect you? I'm sure, like Livingstone, it would weigh on you. And of course, it is not a theoretical question. Every one of us has family and friends who don't believe. Who maybe are even cynical or hostile to the message. Maybe that is you? Maybe you're here today because of family or friends, but your heart is very skeptical. If that is you, as you listen today, be thinking about two things. ·      First, yes, your family or friends who believe in Jesus do want you to know and believe in him. But think about this. If you believed in something that you thought truly answered life's deepest questions, would you not want your friends and family to know and believe? Questions of existence, meaning, morality, life, and death. Yes, I think you would. If you truly believed something that important, you would want to share it out of love. It's something to think about. ·      Second, be thinking about what is preventing you from believing. Is there a deep-down reason that you are skeptical? If so, try to listen anew to the message of Christ. Maybe there something new to hear. I mention that to be sensitive. These verses are written to believers in Christ. And in part, they speak about people who do not believe. I don't want you to feel ignored or dismissed. Going back to Livingstone. I have no idea if he ever compared his situation to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. But if you were to pick a chapter in the Bible that describes Livingstone's situation best, it would be 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Really, the whole chapter. But in particular verses 1-6. What I mean is that 2 Corinthians 4:1-6 is about faithfulness to ministry and mission. It's about remaining true to Christ even when the message is rejected. Livingstone faithfully continued in his ministry even though the hearts of those to whom he was ministering to were closed. In fact, Livingstone was a Scottish Presbyterian… that means he believed in God's sovereignty in salvation. And with that confidence, he persevered. Livingstone knew that God is the one who changes hearts and minds. It is God who shines his light of knowledge and glory. Despite the burden of seeing little response, yet he pressed on in faithfulness. As we work through these verses, I think you will see the parallels to Livingstone's ministry. We have three main points this morning. You'll see those on the sermon notes page. Point 1. Do not lose heart - that is verses 1-2 and 5. Point 2. Because of veiled and deceived hearts (verses 3-4) Point 3. For it is God who shines his Gospel light on hearts (verse 6) Let me put that together. (1) Do not lose heart (2) because of veiled and deceived hearts (3) for it is God who shines his Gospel light on hearts 1. Do not lose heart (4:1-2, 5) As we get into this, let me first remind you of a couple of related things that the apostle Paul has already written. Back in chapter 2 he wrote that we are the aroma of Christ. That aroma is one that will lead to life for those being saved. But it is also the aroma of death to those who do not believe. Some will believe and some will reject. That same theme is continued in chapter 3. Remember from last week, the old covenant has been fulfilled in the new. The glory of the old is gone, because the new covenant in Christ has come. However, many hearts are still veiled. And that veil, as Paul says, is only lifted by Christ through his Spirit. When Paul begins chapter 4 with the word “therefore” he is referring to the fact that many will hear but not hear. Many hearts will be veiled. The aroma will not be pleasing but the opposite. He says in verse 1, “Therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God.” That ministry, as a reminder, is the ministry of the new covenant. It's proclaiming Christ. And in that ministry, Paul continues, “we do not lose heart.” As I mentioned, when you believe something deeply, you, of course, desire others, especially those you love, to also believe.  You want them to know the love of God in Christ. You want them to see the hope and forgiveness and mercy of God. But often, they do not. Paul is not saying we shouldn't continue to long and desire others to believe. Rather Paul is saying that we should not lose our motivation and our focus in our ministry. “Do not lose heart.” And essentially the next 5 verses explain why and give a word of warning. L me ask. What temptations do you experience when your words seem to have no impact? A couple come to my mind. Sometimes I feel like a failure. Sometimes I'm tempted to want to stop. But what about this temptation: are you tempted to change the message? If the message doesn't appear to have any effect, are you tempted to want to change it so that it will? That is what was happening in Corinth. We get a clear sense of that in verse 2. Paul says, “we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word.” Paul's opponents were changing the message. They were tampering with God's word. The message was no longer the message. They reverted to whatever methods and messages would work. Do you remember that phrase “peddler” at the end of chapter 2? That is what was happening. They were saying whatever they thought the people wanted to hear so that people would respond. They wanted to get a sale, so to speak, and they were using disgraceful ways. Now, we're not told exactly what their distorted message was, but based on what Paul says elsewhere in 2 Corinthians, it undermined truth faith. For example, in chapter 11 verse 4, Paul warned, “For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” To some extent the church was putting up with a different Jesus, a different Spirit, or a different gospel. It's a great temptation. There are difficult things in the message of Christ. Because of that, we are tempted to change part of the message, or even more common, leave things out. Like leaving out God's wrath or the need for repentance. But when you leave out the reality of our sin and God's hatred of it because of his holiness and justice, you are undermining the Gospel message. You are removing the cross from Christianity. Let me also add, when you remove the wrath of God against sin and the sinner, you also remove the love of God. The amazing depth of God's love offered in Jesus comes because of the real gravity of God's condemnation. If you remove God's wrath, you remove God's love. I was reminded of a well-known quote from Richard Niebuhr, which I think I've quoted before. “A God without wrath brings men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a ministry of a Christ without a cross.” It's no longer the message of Christ. Now, we do other things today to pervert the message of the Gospel. We turn Christianity into social reform and not salvation. Or Christianity becomes an agenda-based message of liberation or justice. To be sure, justice is critically important. God loves justice and hates oppression. But, as we learned last year in our Proverbs study those things need to be understood through the lens of what God has defined as good and right and true. So then, what is the central message of Jesus Christ? It is this: the need for all humanity to be reconciled to God. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. All are condemned. But God, because of the great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in our sin, God made us alive together with Christ. And he accomplished that through the perfect and ultimate sacrifice for sin on the cross and through the hope of the resurrection. The only way to receive that reconciliation is by faith when we see our sin, when we grieve because of it, and give our life to him. The word “gospel” there in verse 3 means good news. That is the Gospel message. In verse 2, Paul says that instead of tampering with God's word, they proclaim it, as he puts it, “the open statement of the truth.” Paul and those with him were not not hiding or manipulating anything in the message. And look at verse 5, Paul affirms that they are proclaiming the central message. He says, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.” Unlike his opponents who were exalting themselves, Paul and Timothy and the others were humbly exalting Jesus. The word “Lord” implies that Jesus Christ is the sovereign one. He's the risen king. He is to be the Lord of our lives. So do not lose heart. And do not practice underhanded ways or distort the message. Rather, be faithful to God's Word. 2. Because of veiled and deceived hearts (4:3-4) That brings us to Point #2. Do not lose heart… because of veiled and deceived hearts. Listen again to verse 3 and the first part of 4. Paul writes, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world [in other words, the devil] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” We get the sense from verses 3 and 4 that Paul's detractors questioned his legitimacy because of a lack of effectiveness. In other words, they were saying “Paul's message was not working and the proof is that people weren't responding.” To be sure, there were many who did respond. But there were also many who didn't. To go back to David Livingstone for a moment. He also was critiqued because of a perceived ineffectiveness. In fact, there was a group in Britan who critiqued him because his message was outdated. He needed, as they said, a “new” message and he needed an expanded message. His problem was his approach. That's similar to the critiques against Paul. Paul's response here is very important. The message is not being responded to… not because there's a problem with the message. No, rather, the message is not being responded to because of veiled hearts. And that veiling is because the god of this world (lowercase “g” god) has deceived. It's very tempting to think that we are responsible to remove the veil… That we are the responsible ones when the veil is not removed. But to say it again, our responsibility is to be faithful to the message. And, just to be sure, we need to listen well. We need to be thoughtful and loving in our response. But we should not compromise the truth of Christ. Again, I want to be sensitive if you are here and you put yourself in the category of unbelief. Let me ask, why is your heart hard to this message? What is the reason, the veil that lies over it? Would you be willing to ask the Lord to remove that veil? Would you be willing to reexamine your heart and reconsider the message? Every single one of us was blind at one point – I'm using that word blind from verse 4. We were blind for many reasons. It all goes back to our unbelief and selfishness. Back when God created man, it was Satan who deceived. The devil questioned God's authority. He questioned God's moral command. And Adam and Eve in their sin, they replaced God who had been the center of their lives, with themselves. And from that point on, all of mankind was blinded. And what are we blinded from in our unbelief? We are blinded from seeing God's remedy to restoring our relationship with him. We are blinded from seeing Christ. That is exactly how Paul describes the blindness brought on by Satan. Second half of verse 4. Satan has, it says, “keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Satan is called the great deceiver. But there is one who is greater than him. 3. For it is God who shines his Gospel light on hearts (4:6) And that brings us to point #3. So, do not lose heart because of veiled and deceived hearts. Why? For it is God who shines his Gospel light on hearts. Verse 6 is the climax in these verses. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Did you notice the shift in the object of the sentence? It shifts from third person plural to first person plural. Paul had been talking about the veiled hearts of others. He now talks about his own heart and Timothy's heart. God “has shown in our hearts.” He has shown his light. The reference to shining light in darkness refers all the way back to the creation account. We read it earlier from Genesis 1. The very God who created all things, who created all things ex nihilo - out of nothing – created light. In fact, his very first act of creation was to create light in darkness… because he is the God of light. He illuminates all things. He sees all and nothing is hidden from his sight. He is the one who has shone his light in our hearts. Do you see what this is saying? Because God is the all-powerful creator God, there is no heart whom he cannot penetrate with his light. And the testimony of that truth is his work in us. The one true God who in creation shone the light of his truth in the whole of the universe is the same one doing a work of re-creation in our hearts. He is illuminating the light of the knowledge of his glory in us. And that light which illuminates hearts is the light of Christ. By the way, the idea of light is found all throughout the Scriptures. Light symbolizes God's glory (which is referenced here). Light refers to God's truth like the reference here to the knowledge of God. Light also refers to God's presence and his holiness and his guidance. All those references are fulfilled in the light of Christ. That's how verse 6 ends… “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” …the presence and fullness of the revealed son of God. For Paul, this is not something theoretical. No, for him, it was deeply personal. His heart had been veiled. So much so that not only did he reject Jesus, but Paul hated him and hated those who loved Jesus. But Paul was confronted by the light of Christ. For him, it was a literal light. Paul was physically blinded, but the veil over his heart was removed… and Paul could truly see. He fell to his knees. Jesus asked, why Paul are you persecuting me? And Paul then acknowledged him as Lord. God is the one who did it. Paul's spiritual blindness was removed by God. He is the one who shines his light on hearts. Perhaps the transformation in your heart didn't seem as radical. Perhaps over time the Lord lifted it. Perhaps you remember the very day and hour that the veil was removed. Or perhaps God is removing it even now. God is the only one who can shine the light of his knowledge and his glory on our hearts. We don't lose heart because we know that God is at work in hearts. We just don't know how and when and on whom he will shine his Gospel light. Conclusion David Livingstone died on May 1, 1873 while still in Africa – it was only two years after meeting Stanley. His body was found next to his bed in a position of prayer. And do you know what they did? They buried Livingstone's heart in Africa. He loved the people there. And they brought his body back to England where he was buried in Westminster Abby. In his lifetime, Livingstone saw very little response to his efforts. Despite the veil over so many hearts, yet he was faithful to shine the light of Christ. Little did he know at the time, but God was at work in Africa. After Livingstone died, God saw fit to use Livingstone's labors in a tremendous ways. Even in the decade after his death, the veil was lifted on thousands and thousands who turned to Christ. Even more, through Livingstone's work and expeditions, the door was opened to more missions work. Today, hundreds of millions of Christians can trace their spiritual legacy back to Livingstone. In our lifetime, we may or may not see what God is doing, but we can have hope because he is the God of light. May we not lose heart. May we not tamper with the message. Instead, may we trust in the God of light, to shine the light of Christ.

Send us a textWere the cessationists of the Protestant Reformation the same as those today? Ryan Denton, a Presbyterian minister and church planter, suggests that modern cessationism differs significantly from the cessationism of the Protestant Reformation. Denton argues, through historical examination, that many Protestant Reformers, particularly the Scottish Presbyterians, experienced supernatural power. Leaders such as George Wishart, John Knox, Alexander Peden, and Samuel Rutherford believed in gifts like prophecy, healing, and more. Tune in to discover how the Reformers were more open to the gifts of the Spirit than many in today's cessationist movement.

John-William Noble is Pastor of Grace Baptist Church Aberdeen, which he planted in 2019. John-William is the founder of two Christian schools, a Reformed Baptist publisher called Parrēsia and the author of two books. In this episode he discusses a key mistake made by Scottish Presbyterians, which ultimately lead to Scotland's secularizatiom, and Europe's decline as a whole.Watch all of our videos and subscribe to our channel for the latest content >HereHere

John-William Noble is a pastor of Grace Baptist Church Aberdeen, which he planted in 2019. John-William is the founder of two christian schools, a Reformed Baptist publisher and the author of two books. In this episode he discusses the major mistake of Scottish Presbyterians that lead to the ultimate secularization in Scotland, as well as the decline of Christianity overall in Europe.

John-William Noble is a pastor of Grace Baptist Church Aberdeen, which he planted in 2019. John-William is the founder of two christian schools, a Reformed Baptist publisher and the author of two books. In this episode he discusses the major mistake of Scottish Presbyterians that lead to the ultimate secularization in Scotland, as well as the decline of Christianity overall in Europe.

In this profound episode, Jonathan is joined by esteemed theologian and author Michael Horton to discuss his latest book, "Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us." In a world teetering on the brink of chaos—from unsettling politics to the lingering effects of the global pandemic—Horton's book offers not a typical self-help guide but a deep theological exploration of how a proper fear of God can liberate us from our myriad earthly fears.Dr. Horton, Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, explains what it truly means to fear God—both biblically and theologically—and how this reverential fear can effectively drive out fears of the future, others, and even death itself.Throughout the episode, Dr. Horton discusses the different types of fears that plague our society—from cultural anxieties to personal struggles—and how these stem from a lack of genuine fear of God. He emphasizes confronting our earthly fears with the hope found in Christ, rooted in the Gospel, and the shift from self-preservation to a Christ-focused life.This episode is a humbling, thought-provoking, and hope-igniting journey that challenges listeners to replace false securities with the profound joy of knowing Christ, who commands us, "Do not be afraid." Join us as we explore how cultivating a healthy fear of God can recover our sanity in these turbulent times.To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 249: Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us: Michael Horton.  [00:01] Jonathan: My very special guest is Mike Horton. He is a professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California, and he is the author of many books, including The Christian Faith Ordinary and Core Christianity. He also hosts the White Horse Inn radio program. He lives with his wife, Lisa, and their four children in Escondido, California, and it looks like he's on his back patio,  having a conversation with me and being very gracious with his time. Mike Horton, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.[00:45] Michael: Thank you, Jonathan.[00:50] Jonathan: I do thank you for your time. Now Mike, I've read your books, I have subscribed and I do recommend all of our listeners subscribe to the White Horse Inn. If you could just give us a quick, whirlwind tour of your story, we can talk a little bit about the podcast and some of your books as we progress through the interview.[01:19] Michael: Well, thank you, Jonathan. Yeah, I was raised in a Christian home and came to understand the doctrines of grace partly through my older brother. Kind of had my own little, not little, my own Romans revolution and then started digging deeper into Church history and theology and biblical studies, and eventually went to Biola University, Westminster California, then to Oxford for doctoral studies and then post-doc at Yale and came back to teach at my alma mater and have been here for 25 years. Blessed to be able to have a hand, with my colleagues, in training pastors; pastors training pastors.[02:17] Jonathan: I've been a recipient of many of the students of Westminster Seminary who taught me at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, and I've been really blessed by your work. You've got a very jovial, friendly, California vibe to you, but when you speak, you're like a double-edged sword. It's so penetrating. And I think there could be a theological issue that I've been struggling with for months and you'll say it so concisely in a few sentences, and I'll think, Where was that when I needed that?[03:09] Michael: You're too kind. Thank you.[03:11] Jonathan: Tell us a little bit about the White Horse Inn. It has been on for something like thirty years.[03:17] Michael: Yeah, thirty-plus, almost thirty-five years now. It has been such a fun thing. I've learned so much from my colleagues on the program. I still learn from the new team. We produce a magazine, too, Modern Reformation Magazine, which is really—I encourage people to subscribe to that. It's a good digest of topical theology related to culture. The umbrella organization is called Sola Media, and one of the things that we do that I'm so excited about being a part of is called Theo Global, where we host theological conversations (like we do on the White Horse Inn) between Baptist, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican traditions and bring people together from a particular region. So we've been doing it for eleven years in India and also almost that long in Nigeria or in Kenya, in Nairobi. And then also Cairo for the Middle East. We just did one in Thailand that Pakistanis and Indians were able to come to, because they're not able usually to see each other. And then we are, Lord willing, starting another one in Southeast Asia, probably Singapore.So these have been so rich. Out of them are coming, a series of theology books from the global church to the global church. And so instead of having just regional theologies or theologies that pretend that they're not culturally contextual, we want to hear the voices of people from different locations testifying to the same Gospel, and that's just really been lots of fun.[05:42] Jonathan: Well, having ministered near that area of the world in Australia, you're right, there can be a disconnect between the cultures. We read each other's books and that sort of thing, and those are Western cultures, but I think we miss out on hearing about what is happening in Southeast Asia, Because they do face similar obstacles but also some quite different. As one of the points of your book is, there is still the one true God and the one Gospel that reaches across those cultures and reaches across so many of those things that we would consider barriers. And I think that's wonderful. I pray the Lord would bless that.[06:30] Michael: Thank you. One of the things I find, Jonathan, is there is a sweet unity around the Gospel that binds us when I go to these other places. Wherever I am in the world, I don't feel like I'm a stranger because I'm with my brothers and sisters. I wish I felt the same way in America. It's very different here.[06:51] Jonathan: Yeah, I was going to say it's interesting that what you're doing is you're unifying and uniting across denominations, across cultural things, and yet that's working almost in the opposite direction of where we see things here, which is there's division within denominations; there's division within small regions. You're undoing what is happening on a bigger scale in some of the Western parts. It's exciting to hear that's not happening everywhere, that there's actually some unification taking place and that's encouraging. And I know that's going to be an aspect of what we talk about in our conversation about one of your new books.Now, I know that you had some health issues with your heart a couple of years ago. Maybe for some of our audience who didn't know or having heard any updates, are you healthy?[07:54] Michael: Thanks for asking. Yes, what it was was a valve that just exploded in my heart, so it was an emergency open-heart surgery. But they said—they know my arteries and my heart better than anybody, they said, you'll die of something, but it won't be of heart disease. You have a good heart; you have good arteries; this was just a fluke.[08:24] Jonathan: Unbelievable.[08:25] Michael: So—yeah. I'm fully recovered. They said I could go bungee jumping again if I want to.[08:32] Jonathan: Again. I'm glad that you were already doing that—I picked up your book a while ago and I've been wanting to have you on the podcast ever since reading it. And the book is called Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us. And my goodness, what a perfect title for everything we see. Give us a little bit of the reason for writing and the timing of the book.[09:18] Michael: Well, it had been percolating for years now, actually. I wrote a book many years ago called Beyond Culture Wars: Is America a Mission Field or a Battlefield? And this is in a similar vein, but really in light of the fears that really divide us today. And the center used to be the Bible, the Gospel, getting the Gospel right and getting the Gospel out. We have our doctrinal differences across the evangelical mainstream, but basically we had different political views and those political views didn't divide between brothers and sisters and churches.And what I've seen lately has just been like a food fight in a cafeteria, and political issues and social issues raised to the level of the Trinity. And it's like, okay, well, we can argue about that over coffee, but we don't bring it into the church. That used to be kind of how people thought about things. These things are important, but they're not as important as our unity in Christ. But I hear people attacking pastors, pastors attacking their flock, back and forth over these issues. And I think people don't get this heated over the doctrine of election or justification or the Trinity. Does it suggest that these issues are deeper in our hearts than the truth of Christianity, so what really binds us?And I looked at it and I said what really binds us is salvation, what we think we're saved from. If we think we're saved from the people over there who are threatening our values, or the people over there who are different from us ethnically, or the people over there who have a different view of economics and social justice? What are we really afraid of? What are our ultimate fears? And I argue that we have all these secondary fears. The real fear deep down, the mother of all fears, is the fear of death. And none of the solutions that can be offered by FOX or CNN, there is no solution to that. But we have it. Why isn't that on our dashboard as central, getting it right and getting it out?[13:01] Jonathan: In the book you cast a broad net in kind of what you've just said up here, picking out a few of the issues that you're seeing so much division over. But then you lay out some of the theological framework to reorientate your reader to where fear should rightly be placed. And it's away from the fear of one another and having a right fear of God.And you use the word sublime in the book, which I found really helpful as an aspect of God. I wonder if you could give us a little bit of explanation and walk that out for us.[13:52] Michael: Sure. I love that word. Sublime is really, I think, what we're talking about when we talk about the fear of God. Some people will say, “Well, it's not really fear. It's reverence, awe.” Fear is a big part of it, but it's a kind of fear that attracts. Think of what happens if you've ever stood at the mouth of a volcano, looking over it, watching the lava flow. Or I live in Southern California, so we have fires, and there's a kind of weird attraction to going to the fire and seeing it. Or you're out on the ocean and you're terrified. A squall comes up you're afraid, but you're also kind of your heart is racing not just because you're afraid, but also because you're kind of in awe of what's happening. In awe of the waves.God, you know whenever an angel shows up in the Bible, an emissary of God, what's the first thing? You know the number-one commandment throughout Scripture? The number-one command is “Be not afraid.” Because when even the mailman of God shows up, people are terrified.[15:31] Jonathan: Yeah, or Moses's face is a little too bright.[15:36] Michael: Yeah. Hey, put a napkin over that or something… That's what, really, is the basis for all sublime events, encounters that we have is really the fear of God. And so it's … A Jewish writer, John Levinson, puts it well. He says, “In the Hebrew Scriptures God beckons with one hand and repels with the other.”So there's a kind of don't get too close. Even Jesus in His Resurrection, “Don't touch me. I'm different.” God is different from us. And that sense of awe, of majesty, of even terror. Think of the disciples in the boat with Jesus. They were afraid of the storm, and then Jesus calmed the storm and they were afraid of Jesus. Who is this who has control over the winds and the waves? They were terrified. And that's the kind of Who is this? What am I dealing with here? The kind of shock and awe, the surprise is something that is missing, I think, from a lot of our experience as Christians today.[17:11] Jonathan: Well, and I know in the book we've seen a lot of the statistical evidence that comes in support of what you've just said, which shows that evangelical Christians really don't know what they believe. They have a complete misunderstanding of God, of the nature of Christ, of their roles.[17:51] Michael: If the fear of God is not the beginning of our wisdom, then something else will be. We'll fear something else. We will fear other people who are different from us and we'll fear cancer, we'll fear losing our job, we'll fear environmental collapse and catastrophe, we'll fear these other people taking over. It's not that those … that there aren't legitimate concerns of a political and social and cultural nature. But we have a disordered fear. And if we have disordered fears, we have disordered loves.God is not only the source of our greatest fear, legitimate fear; He's also the only one who conquers our fears and says, “Welcome home, prodigal. Welcome home, here's the feast.”[19:22] Jonathan: And deals with our, as you refer to it, the mother of all fears.[19:27] Michael: Death. We're dying. In California, people aren't allowed to die; they pass away; and we put these cemeteries out, far away from view, or we turn them into parks and things. And it used to be every time you walked into a church there would be headstones, and it reminded you as you walked in why you're going in there. The Gospel is for dying people, and we're all on that road. And so the question is, How do we face death? … How is that ultimate anxiety relieved? We mourn, but not as those who have no hope. So what does that mean for my daily life now? I could be twelve years old and I'm dying. I could be eighty and I'm dying. So what … Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the dying and the resurrection of the dead and being attached to Jesus so that what He is in His humanity right now, glorified, we will be. Let's talk about that. That's a lot better than anything on CNN or FOX.[21:00] Jonathan: I love it. I think in the book you tell the story of when you went to a debate with, I might be messing this up, but I think it was with an atheist and you sort of said, “Yep. Great. Can I talk about Jesus now” and kind of put him off, and he sort of like, “I wasn't prepared to debate that.”[21:22] Michael: Yeah. This was years ago. Bill Nye the Science Nye.[21:24] Jonathan: Bill Nigh, that's right.[21:25] Michael: He was talking about how religion is based on false fears and so they develop myths and so forth.[21:37] Jonathan: And you were like, “Well, that's true.”[21:39] Michael: Yeah. I don't disagree; that's a pretty fair analysis of religions. I guess you'd have to take one by one and analyze it, but as a generalization, now can I talk about Jesus and His Resurrection? Let's keep getting back to the main business here.[21:59] Jonathan: The main issue. Yeah. In the book you draw this distinction between naturalistic and hyper supernatural, but then you sort of carve out this third option of ordinary. Can we talk a little bit about that and how we see that playing out in our world today, particularly in the Church?[22:23] Michael: Sure. Often what you see today is a naturalism underwriting the progressive agenda and John Lennon's “Imagine.” On the right, you tend to have a hyper supernaturalism wedded to a conservative agenda. And so what do I mean by that? Well, a naturalistic worldview says, of course, God isn't involved. If God exists, then He's not involved in this world. He didn't create it, it's self-evolving and so forth.A hyper-supernatural worldview says that God works miraculous. You know, to say that God did it means it's a miracle.[23:34] Jonathan: Yeah.[23:35] Michael: Whereas in the Bible God does all sorts of things. Mostly, He doesn't perform miracles. What about all the times when we cut our finger and it heals after a week? What about that? What about a child [who] has a brain bleed in NICU and it resolves in 24 hours. How about those? Those aren't miracles. People say, “the miracle of childbirth.” There's no miracle of childbirth; it's just a spectacular example of God's providence. That's part of our problem is we're looking for God only in the spectacular, only in the extraordinary, only in places where we can point to and say, “Oh, God did that.”So we can't explain how somebody recovered from cancer; we say, “Well, God did it, not the doctors.”[24:46] Jonathan: Right.[24:47] Michael: Well, how about God did it and the doctors did it. God did it through the doctors.[24:52] Jonathan: How much control does God have here?[24:55] Michael: Right. He has control of everything. It's not just supernatural events; it's not just miracles. God's in control of every second, every breath. Every breath that you and I take is under His dominion.[25:11] Jonathan: That's right. He holds all things together. You know, I hear that phrase a lot, “That was a God thing. That was a God thing,” and I always have to stop and say to them, “Everything is a God thing.” I mean, conversations. The fact that your brain works. The ability to read. The ability to understand and reason. It's like I hate when you get that narrow scope, as you're saying. We've lost the sublime. We've lost an understanding of how much—you know, it's almost a deistic view that, you know, God sort of—[25:42] Michael: Yes![25:43] Jonathan: He's put some things in place and then He occasionally steps in and—[25:47] Michael: That's why I argue that actually naturalism and hyper supernaturalism unintentionally conspire with each other against Christianity—[25:57] Jonathan: Right.[25:58] Michael: —you know because, you know, we get to the place where we don't see God in our ordinary, everyday existence, but only in these punctuated events, and we've got to raise things. I think we do a lot of pretending. We pretend that things that have an ordinary explanation are miracles because we have to have God in our life. These large swaths of our lives where there are no miracles are upheld by God's marvelous providence.[26:40] Jonathan: Right. Amen to that. In the book, one of the fears you mentioned is fear of losing your job. And I think in the book you helpfully distinguish between calling and vocation or job and helping us understand and distinguish the two things. I wonder if we can talk a little bit of bringing clarity to that, because we're longing for something to put our identity in. Is it a football club? Is it a university? We're currently, I don't know when this will air, but we're in the middle of March Madness. Who did you pick? What's your university? What's your background?And vocation is very much one of those things we can put our identity in, and yet I think you talk about the ultimate and the penultimate between calling and vocation. I wonder if you could bring some clarity to that, and then we'll turn to some of the practical outworkings of the division we see after that.[27:53] Michael: Yeah. Well, one of the things I try to maintain throughout the book is, look, the things I'm talking about are not unimportant. They are legitimate fears. There is a legitimate anxiety. The question is, where do we go with that? But yes, let's affirm it. It's real, it's a deal, but penultimate not ultimate.For example, if I am in a circle of people I've never met before, we're having breakfast, and I ask them, “Tell me about yourself,” very ordinarily they'll say, “Well, I'm a dentist. I'm a …”Now okay, there's an example. That is part of our identity. Vocation is a gift of God; it's a calling. So to say, you know, we shouldn't place our identity in our vocations, well, not ultimately. That's the problem. It's a part of our identity, just like being a father is part of my identity. That's a calling. And we have to realize, as Luther said, we have many callings, many vocations during our life. We're parents, we're spouses, we're children, we are extended family members, we're dentists, and cleaning movie theaters. We have all kinds of callings/vocations. Sometimes we have a vocation to suffer, to carry a cross. Sometimes we have a vocation to be a friend. We have lots of vocations, and keeping them in balance is very important.Keeping them penultimate, not ultimate, is my point. My ultimate identity is chosen, redeemed, justified, being sanctified, will be glorified, in union with Christ. That's my identity and that's really who I am. Paul talks about himself as if he's almost collapsed into Jesus. His identity is so bound up with Christ that he can even say his suffering is something he glories in because it shares in Christ's suffering. That's my identity; that's where I really find who I am. The other stuff is not just stuff I do, that turns it back into a job. It is part of my identity, but it's penultimate, not ultimate.[30:57] Jonathan: Well, as we said at the beginning, we see division in so many different places. We're, of course, as you know, we're in another election year, and that—fear is going to be used as a … it's going to be weaponized this year, particularly this year, in America. And we have an international audience, so I want to be sensitive, but I know that internationally also they see a lot of American news as well. I think you talk about how, in the book, two sides to the fear coin. You mention both in the book. One side, fear is easily exploited as a motivator. On the other, fear is a weak motivator in the long term. Why is that? Let's kind of unpack that a little bit.[32:07] Michael: Yeah. I use the analogy of deer who are … there is this fight or flight that God gave us and the animals as well. It's purely instinctual, instinctive. You don't … Whether you're a deer or a human being, you don't really think about, you don't contemplate, you don't calculate, you don't explore what … You have a car coming towards you, you flee. You get out of its way if you can. But what happens is—That's adrenaline. That adrenaline rush is just a marvelous gift of God's providence. The problem is what would happen is deer had this disease of constantly being afraid, every crack of brush of another deer drove them wild running in fear? That's what I see us doing now, and what happens is it works in the short term. If you're going to cynically use fear to get a herd of people to do what you want them to do, that might work in the short term, but long term, people can't live like that. Long term, people actually become cynical. They won't participate at all. They'll just turn it off because “I've had this scare a thousand times and I'm not going to have it anymore. I'm tired of it.” It just runs out.And that's what I think a lot of people are feeling right now with American politics. So I'm not an analyst of American politics by any stretch of the imagination; I'm simply looking at it on the pastoral side. What is driving us to be like the deer in the headlights every five minutes? And it's exhausting us.[34:33] Jonathan: Yeah.[34:34] Michael: Each side whipping up the other side against each other. If I don't win this election, dot, dot, dot. If the other person wins the election, dot, dot, dot. It's apocalypse not. I especially find offensive any use of God or the Bible or Christ for that fear. Anyone who does that, particularly cynical leaders who don't even go to church, aren't professing Christians really, but they use the lingo to gain the nomination of particular groups. When Christians participate in that, they carry crosses to the U.S. Capitol to storm it and talk about hanging the vice president, and they're carrying crosses with Bible verses, this is the sort of thing that must just aggravate our Lord and Savior whose name is taken in vain.And yeah, is that a critique especially of evangelical political conservatives? Yes, it is. Because they are my brothers and sisters closest to me. The secularists aren't really invoking the name of Jesus and Bible verses and carrying crosses. I'm more worried about evangelicals distorting the gospel than I am about who wins this next election.[36:54] Jonathan: What is that doing to your testimony to those people who don't know the Lord? What message is it giving them?[37:10] Michael: That Christianity is about power.[37:11] Jonathan: Right, exactly.[37:12] Michael: It's not about a cross with God who has all power becoming flesh being spat upon and then being crucified upon a cross, bleeding for our sins. It's about basically choosing Caesar over Jesus, making Pilate our hero rather than Jesus.[37:45] Jonathan: I found that chapter, I can't remember if it's the Christian nationalism chapter or the one before, but it was really helpful the way that you walked out American history in a way that probably a lot of the readers might say, “I don't know if I understood that.” Or “I don't know if I fully understood Thomas Jefferson and his letter to the Danbury Baptist Church in Connecticut.” Understanding separation of church and state, understanding like how we got to where we are and the creating of even thinking between the British … French revolution and those different paths that were laid out before us. And even just understanding our own history and how we got to where we are, I think a lot of it is just cast as Christian nation. And I found it helpful the way you distinguish that.Because I hear this a lot in the church in terms of America being the new Israel, are there blessings that have come with certain things? Sure, fine. Our Constitution is well put together. I love the history of Witherspoon, the Scottish Presbyterian, and you can see some of that in the language that comes out through the Constitution. Again, I think it's helpful to have your historical understanding rather than this reinterpretation that we have now that it's, as you said, it's this feeling like someone's come in and taken this from us. And now, to use the title of your other book, now we're at war, right? It's not a mission field, it's a battlefield. We're fighting for the honor of our country. And all that's done is create us and them division and a lack of clarity and a lack of what we're called to in a mission sense as Christians. Where was I going with that? Who knows? Anyway, I found it helpful.[40:10] Michael: You said it better. Preach it, brother.[40:16] Jonathan: Just random thoughts. Just reading your books and regurgitating it to the people. So later on in the book you sort of walk us through the areas where division has come in. So we have Christian nationalism has certainly seeped into churches. Then you have some really helpful, short chapters with issues with LGBTQ+ community, cancel culture, racism. Let's just kind of walk through some of these and help Christians who are listening to this who are saying, I thought this was the right way to handle that situation but you're saying something else. Let's kind of walk through maybe even just one or two of those. Again, you had a really great illustration under your LGBTQ+ chapter of the young man whose family had sent him to you and you were pastoring him and what happened with all that. If you could tell us a little bit about that, just to help kind of encapsulate what we're talking about here.[41:35] Michael: Sure, this brother struggling with homosexuality, his dad was on the board of a prominent evangelical organization, and his pastor had told him that we basically don't want your influence in the church, so he was considering leaving the faith. But then he read Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, a book I wrote a long time ago, and came out to work at our organization as just a pretext for just hanging out and shepherding this guy. He became a part of our church and a lot of people looked after him and we got a lot back from him.He went back home, and his pastor said that all this reformed teaching he was getting was heresy and so forth, and no, you've lost your salvation. Romans says that He gave them over to a depraved mind. So he committed suicide and …So what is it? Why do you do stuff like that? Well, you do it out of bad theology, to be sure, but also out of fear. There are a lot of churches that just don't want to deal with it. They don't want to have this problem. They don't want to say that they have people in their congregation who are really, really suffering. If you're a secularist, you don't suffer from homosexuality. You don't suffer with gender dysphoria. Only Christians do. And only Christians suffer with greed and envy and malice and other sins that are listed in these same sin lists in the New Testament. You don't lose your salvation over those.The key is repentance, right? We're called to a life of repentance. Whatever our tendencies are towards particular sins, we're all corrupt in heart. We're sinners and we're sinned against and we are in a sin-cursed world. And so where do we go with that fear? And then once that fear is solved objectively in Christ, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God. That's an objective fact. With that now as an objective fact, how do I respond to this brother or sister who's justified just as I am, and who is being sanctified just as I am, but has propensity toward a particular sin that I think is particularly serious, particularly great? How do I love this person? How do I respond to this person?John Calvin said a pastor needs to learn how to have two voices: one for the sheep and one for the wolves. And what I've seen in some very close cases to my own experience, what I've seen sometimes is pastors confusing the sheep for wolves and treating them as apostates or as people who, you know, if you really were a Christian, you wouldn't be suffering with that. Well, they're not saying, “I have a right to this sin.” They're not saying that it's okay. That's why they're struggling with it—and they're struggling with it in your church.So one of the surveys, actually a couple of the surveys concluded that about 80 percent of people in the LGBTQ+ community were raised in conservative Roman Catholic or Protestant churches.[46:39] Jonathan: Give that statistic again because I think we need to hear it again.[46:42] Michael: I don't know exact, it's in the 80s, 80 percent.[46:46] Jonathan: Over 80 percent.[46:49] Michael: Right. And what's even more striking is the same percentage said that they would come back to church, even if they didn't change their rules, but listened to them and cared for them. That's what I found amazing. I was glad that they asked … they added in that survey even if they didn't change their beliefs but they were kind and they listened and they cared for me.So if I'm fearful, here again the adrenaline, the deer in the headlights, that's a gift God gave us for fleeing something that is imminently threatening. This is not imminently threatening. If I come to understand that, then I'm not a deer in the headlights; instead, my brother or sister, my friend, parent, I'm someone who is looking out for the best of this person and now I can actually get ahold of myself and think and make judgments and articulate things. And ask questions and get information. That's a big part of it. It's not all spiritual. People are suffering from mental health disorders, and that's physical, that's brain chemistry. All kinds of things.People are suffering from sins that have been committed against them in the past. A lot of this is very complicated, and it's not all that person's direct fault. Again, we're all sinners, sinned against, and live in a sin-cursed world. And all those factors play into what we have to consider when we're not the deer in the headlights but can sit down with people over a long time, be willing to walk with them over a long time, be willing to read up on things, ask them questions, we're that interested in them and understanding what they're going through, understanding their pain. It's like if they have cancer we'd be at their house with casseroles, but if they have these things, you know … So let's … fear of the Lord drives out the fears of everyone and everything else. This is the beginning of wisdom.[48:52] Jonathan: Exactly. Well, I think we could probably have this conversation for probably another four more hours, which we might do just because we're having so many technical difficulties. You know, I can't recommend this book enough. Mike Horton, Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us. I told my team I want to re-air this as we get closer to November so that we can all be reminded once again of what we're called to. Mike, what are you working on at the moment?[50:35] Michael: I've been kind of obsessive compulsive about a project, three volumes with Eerdmans. First volume is coming out in May, titled Shaman and Sage. This is a very different project. It's the history of spiritual not religious. Where does this come from? You have this divine self within trying to break out of all constraints. And so I trace it all the way back to ancient Greece and to the Renaissance. And then the second volume, Renaissance to the scientific revolution. And then the third volume is covering Romanticism to the present.[51:31] Jonathan: Oprah.[51:32] Michael: Exactly.[51:35] Jonathan: That's going to be a massive help for believers, because that's the one we see a lot in those statistics. Yeah, I hear that from quite a few people, spiritual but not religious, or whatever the phrase is. But well, Mike Horton, it's been such a privilege. I'm so grateful for your time and coming on to Candid Conversations and sharing with us.[52:10] Michael: Jonathan, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.[52:14] Jonathan: Thank you, brother.  

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

How does Robert Louis Stevenson's engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity (Edinburgh UP, 2023) re-orients the intellectual biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by presenting him in the distinctive cultural environment of the Pacific. The book argues that Stevenson was religiously literate within a Scottish Presbyterian tradition and therefore well placed to grasp with subtlety the breadth and dynamics of a Christianized Pacific culture. It considers his legacy with respect to issues of indigenous sovereignty and agency and positions him within an important and wide-ranging modern debate about inculturation, defined as the emergence of Christianity from within a particular culture rather than imposed on it from outside. Through this study of a major Scottish writer, the book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. L. Michael Ratnapalan is Associate Professor of History at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. He has published widely on modern intellectual and cultural history, with a focus on Britain's interactions with the wider world. Joseph Gaines can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Irish lawmakers are currently debating a bill on hate speech. The aim is to update 35 year old legislation that the Irish Justice Minister has called “ineffective”. A spate of anti-immigration protests in the country are said to have a pronounced Islamophobic focus. We speak to an academic to explore Ireland's relationship with issues of racism and immigration. South African soprano Golda Schultz talks about her role as Madeleine Lidoine in the opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites, which depicts the powerful and moving true story of 16 nuns executed in 1794. It is currently being staged at Glyndebourne. She describes how the role has strengthened her own Catholic faith. The Church of Scotland will have to close hundreds of its churches in the next few years and this isn't just a problem for Scottish Presbyterians, who now have twice as many buildings as they have ministers. Across the UK, six thousand churches and chapels have closed in the past decade. William Crawley speaks to the Reverend David Cameron, Convenor of the Assembly Trustees, and to Sir Philip Rutnam, Chair of the National Churches Trust. Prsenter: William Crawley Editor: Jonathan Hallewell & Tim Pemberton Producers: Bara'atu Ibrahim & Linda Walker Production Coordinator: David Baguley Studio Managers: Sharon Hughes & Simon Highfield

The Scottish Presbyterian, John Knox, influenced the 16th century Reformation more than people realize. Take a listen to learn about his influence and why John Knox still matters in the 21st century.

Theonomy & Classical Reformed Christian Nationalism: A Modest Proposal Introduction The conversation swirling around Christian Nationalism, the classical liberal order, and how Christians ought to think about particular policy proposals continues apace. These issues are in play with the current push for “school choice” and Education Savings Accounts, and they are in play with Senator Josh Hawley’s recent proposal to ban social media use for children under 16. To which I tweeted out: “Yikes. No. This is the kind of folly that conservatives propose in the name of "the common good" that gives me the creeping fantods. This is why Kuyper's sphere sovereignty and old fashioned theonomy are so necessary. God has not established the state/power of the sword to raise/train our children. Same goes for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. As soon as you start letting the civil magistrate act like your mom, you will only get more of the Karen State that we currently have.” And that seems to have stirred the waters. At this point, I’m hoping I’ve stirred the waters of Bethsaida and not something more shark infested, but that remains to be seen. Part of the fun of the last few weeks was the honor of having Timon Cline on CrossPolitic, and we had a great time debating and discussing the differences between theonomy and what I think he and others would call classical reformed political theology – although I’m still not convinced that they are that far apart. Meanwhile, other conversations have continued behind the scenes with friendly critics of theonomy. And then we had the follow up honor of talking to David Bahnsen about his misgivings surrounding the “Christian Nationalism” conversation and his preference for the “classical liberal order.” Some related factors are that sometimes advocates of “classical liberal order” *sound* a bit cavalier about our current cultural moment, and some, like David French, seem to have sold the whole farm to the leftists in the name of his version of the “classical liberal order” which seems to be code for “surrendering slowly.” But David Bahnsen insists that is not at all what he means or thinks. He envisions an explicitly Christian public square, but he is concerned not to make the civil sphere the central or primary actor in such an endeavor. The role of the Church and the family also need to be reinvigorated and reinforced, otherwise, you have a semi-conservative version of the current regime. And to his credit, there are some in the Reformed Christian Nationalism conversation that think it’s perfectly reasonable for Josh Hawley to propose age limits for social media, and others have suggested taking over the public schools and turning them into explicitly Christian schools funded by tax dollars and run by departments of education. All of which, I repeat, gives me the creeping fantods. Warm Theonomic Fuzzies The old Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians and Genevans who first sought reinvigorate civil magistrates under the spell of Papist supremacy (hence the name “magisterial” Reformers) affirmed that the specific civil laws of old Israel had expired with that particular state, except for the “general equity thereof.” While many modern Reformed types have concluded that this means something akin to “cute metaphors and warm fuzzy feelings,” the actual authors of the Westminster Confession and their immediate heirs functioned as though the Old Testament civil laws had a lot more to teach us than that. The fact that the early American colonies had Sabbath civil laws and blasphemy laws and laws prohibiting sodomy and adultery and fornication and divorce, tell you that they understood “general equity” as including the eternal moral and ethical principles resident in those civil laws and penalties. Now first off I want to emphasize that I think we need to have this conversation. And by “this conversation,” I mean, I think we need to have those of you steeped in the Reformed political tradition talking with those of us who are more steeped in the biblical studies and theonomy. Some of us need to be reading Franciscus Junius and some us need to be reading Rushdoony. I really appreciated the olive branch of sorts from Stephen Wolfe on this topic (his article on “Classical Reformed Theonomy”), and I also really appreciated Bahnsen’s demeanor toward the whole thing as well. Look, we’ve got men in lingerie twerking in front of little kids in public parks and libraries; I think this is the moment for us to work together, not splinter into a million pieces because we didn’t get exactly what we wanted. So first, off, I want to issue a general invite to anyone interested in recovering a truly Christian America to join the conversation in good faith. The leftist progressives rally around their common hatred of our Lord and His people, and they are frequently able to get more done together because of that shared hatred than conservatives because we throw elbows and knife one another in the back in the name of truth and morality and justice. Look, if you want to see drag queens banned from the public square, and our nation submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you are most welcome to the table, even if our philosophical categories and methodologies are different. Let’s talk. Let’s work together. Let’s spar, debate, and brainstorm. A Chastened Classical Reformed Theonomy And toward that end, I want to propose one way of pushing the conversation forward. One trusted and friendly critic of theonomy lamented theonomy because biblical law, he said, simply doesn’t have enough substance to fill out a complete law code or public policy system. And I don’t have any problem acknowledging that we need more than what is written in Scripture. As the Westminster Confession says, “Nevertheless we acknowledge… that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and the government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed” (WCF 1.6). While this is primarily addressing the worship of God and the government of the church, I would argue that those activities that are “common to human actions and societies” would include the rational ordering of public policy and civil government, and therefore, those arrangements are to be “according to the general rules of the Word,” but must also “be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence.” So here’s a practical question for my “classical Reformed” brothers: Since I believe that we agree that wherever Scripture establishes transcendent morality or universal principles of justice, those principles are universally binding on all societies and governments, regardless of time or place, can we agree that since we are Reformed and Protestant, those principles are “First Principles?” In other words, Sola Scriptura (understood rightly) applies here as much as anywhere else. Sola Scriptura does not mean that Scripture is the only authority, but rather, it means that Scripture is the only ultimate and infallible authority. Tradition, creeds, common law, parents, and pastors all play true authoritative roles in the life of Christians and Christian society. Nevertheless, the First Principles of Scripture are foundational, and wherever any other true authority bumps up against one of them, Scripture always wins. Are we on the same page so far? Now here’s the proposal: I propose that we agree that wherever Scripture speaks on matters of universal morality and justice, those principles be nailed into the ground with enormous steel stakes (yuge ones). At that point, I would be happy to concede that all by itself, those general principles of justice are not enough to build out a modern civil law code, but since we are Protestants, we are agreed that whatever else ought to go into that law code, it must be deduced from those principles by good and necessary consequence, according to the light of nature and reason, and be consistent with them. Now this might be where I run into trouble with critics of theonomy, but as a fiercely loyal Protestant, I also want to insist on a sort of regulative principle of power. Since all power is derived from God (Rom. 13), all power is wielded by His blessing and in submission to His ultimate power or else it is wielded in defiance of His blessing and power. Furthermore, this fits with what the Confession says regarding worship, that what is clearly stated must be explicitly obeyed, and whatever else is necessary for a flourishing society must be deduced from those principles and the light of nature. This need not be taken as tight-shoed regulative principle, but simply, as my old seminary professor, Hughes Oliphant Old, like to say, it must be “according to Scripture,” obedient to the commands and consistent with its principles and examples. A Few Stakes in the Ground What follows is certainly not an exhaustive list, but this will do for a start. First, while I do believe that civil government was instituted before the Fall and would have developed as families filled the earth, organizing society with a body of customary laws to maximize their good (deciding which side of the road to drive on, for example), the primary postlapsarian instruction and picture we are given of civil justice in the Bible captured well in the paintings and statues of Lady Justice: she is blind (or blindfolded), holding balances in one hand, and a sword in the other. This accords with the repeated instructions to the judges, “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s…” (Dt. 1:17). Justice requires diligent inquiry, but that inquiry is primarily for the purpose of putting all the facts in the scales of justice. While justice requires wisdom, it is not primarily a “creative” task. The judgment of justice is God’s. Diligent inquiry puts all the facts that we have in the scales, and it is the job of civil magistrates to deliver verdicts of equity, which is primarily punitive (as indicated by the sword). Now when I said that Josh Hawley ought not be leading the way in banning teenagers from social media since that is family/parental jurisdiction, some friends pointed out that the Bible on one occasion refers to magistrates as nursing fathers and mothers (Is. 49:23). And so it does. But that one image (which we should not abandon) cannot be made the normative image without doing great damage to the rest of Scripture. The key question of course is: how are civil magistrates to be faithful fathers and mothers? The answer is: by doing justice according to God’s law. Isaiah 49:23 is no more a defense of Social Security, Medicare, and government schools than is Paul’s description of himself as a father default permission for him to tell parents which breakfast cereal is right for their kids. The church is the household and family of God, but that doesn’t mean that the church is the first line of defense for widows. Paul insists that a man that doesn’t provide for his own family is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:7). These natural affections, natural obligations remain firmly in place, including then the fact that the civil magistrate has no role in health, welfare, and education, unless you simply mean the role of punishing criminals and cheering churches and families on in their tasks. Another stake to drive into the ground is the most basic principle of biblical justice: the lex talionis: “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Ex. 21:24-25). A number of case laws are laid out in the biblical law that give is a lot of information about how this principle is to play out (e.g. slaves that are struck and lose an eye or tooth must be set free). Related is the principle of restitution: a thief caught stealing must return double (Ex. 22:4). Because what he sought to do his neighbor ought to be done to him to restore balance to the scales of society. If the theft is of a particularly great value, perhaps including the ability of a man/business to do his productive labor, or if the stolen item has been sold for profit that restitution may be increased to four or five-fold (Ex. 22:1). The penalties in the Mosaic law should also be taken seriously, and they should be understood as maximum penalties. The only required death penalty is for murder (Gen. 9). Related to this is the principle that only civil magistrates have the power of the sword, and so church and family government may not execute criminals or heretics. This is part of the glory of Dt. 21:18-19 regarding the rebellious son. In some ancient societies, a father claimed the right to execute his own children, but God’s law forbids it. Perhaps a pagan father might have even argued “from nature” that since he had brought the life into the world, it was his to adjudicate, but God’s law prohibits it. The law provides that the family government may appeal to the civil government for adjudication and potential capital punishment. But notice that until an actual crime has been committed, the civil magistrate has no jurisdiction, and the civil magistrate is only involved upon appeal from the family government. This would be one such biblical principle that would render Sen. Hawley’s proposed social media legislation null and void. One of the most often cited laws in the Old Testament for explaining the continuing relevance or “general equity” of Mosaic law is Dt. 22:8: “When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.” On the one hand, this certainly is an extension of the sixth commandment forbidding murder, and it certainly establishes the notion of liability for negligent homicide or battery. The general equity of this law would be rightly applied to people who refuse to put a fence around their swimming pool or a deep pit or their upstairs balcony (and arguably, reckless driving): if someone falls and dies or is injured, the home owner/driver can be held negligently liable. And the overarching principle is certainly the duty of all to take reasonable precautions to protect and preserve life. At the same time, some want to reason from this principle that health and building codes are therefore a reasonable application of this justice. But while it would certainly be a “sin” to act in high-handed negligent ways, it was not a “crime.” The lex talionis principle requires that actual harm be measured for appropriate penalties to be exacted. But if a man built a balcony and refused to build a railing or drove recklessly through town, he may very well be in sin, but until actual damages have occurred, what penalty would truly be “eye for eye?” We also shouldn’t underestimate the power and influence of the family and church governments and their related communities. Not every problem must be solved with guns and fines. Many problems should be solved by community pressures and influence. Conclusion The fear of the classical reformed Christian Nationalist types is that “the classical liberal order” is code for more liberalism, more false offers of a seat at the table of a neutral public square, and defeatism and apathy, but let us be done with all offers of neutrality, secularism, and the like. Jesus is Lord of the public square, and the Great Commission requires us to preach and make disciples of all the nations. So America must confess that Jesus is Lord formally, and our laws must reflect is eternal law, as derived from Scripture and nature and reason, but with Scripture firmly ensconced as the Chief authority. On the other hand, my friends of the theonomic Kuyperian classical order flavor are understandably nervous that if we do not firmly root our “Christian order” in Rutherford’s axiom, that the Lex really is Rex, and that justice and the “common good” must be grounded in God’s Special Revelation in Scripture, then in the name of “the tradition” and “the common good” and “reason” and the “light of nature” we will end up right back where are, a Machiavellian power grab that happens to have Christian symbols and phrases attached to it. It's true that the “classical liberal order” guys sometimes sound like power is only icky and bad, but in our determination to take responsibility for this mess of country, we must have clearly defined limits to that power. And it’s also true that sometimes the Christian Nationalists sound like they would be willing to do anything to punch the liberals and score points. But tyranny is still tyranny even you try to defend it in the name of “the common good.” The “common good” is whatever God says it is, and nothing else. And if God has given the authority and power to wield, then we should not be afraid of it. We should take it up with boldness and joy in the name of Christ.

Thomas Boston (17 March 1676 – 20 May 1732) was a Scottish Presbyterian church leader, theologian and philosopher. Boston was successively schoolmaster at Glencairn, and minister of Simprin in Berwickshire, and Ettrick in Selkirkshire. In addition to his best-known work, The Fourfold State, one of the religious classics of Scotland, he wrote an original little book, The Crook in the Lot, and a learned treatise on the Hebrew points. He also took a leading part in the Courts of the Church in what was known as the "Marrow Controversy," regarding the merits of an English work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which he defended against the attacks of the "Moderate" party in the Church. Boston, if unduly introspective, was a man of singular piety and amiability. His autobiography is an interesting record of Scottish life, full of sincerity and tenderness, and not devoid of humorous touches, intentional and otherwise

While the English Book of Common Prayer had early use in Scotland, it is a fixed liturgy, providing a range of fixed prayers and detailed tables of fixed lessons. It is therefore not easy to compare it with the Directory. However, the Directory does very much follow the Book of Common Order used in Scotland from 1564, which derived from Knox's Forme of Prayers used in the English Congregation in Geneva. This book affords discretion in the wording of the prayers and no fixed lectionary.--The Directory was produced by a parliamentary subcommittee among the Westminster divines. The chair of the subcommittee was Stephen Marshall. Other members included Thomas Young, Herbert Palmer, and Charles Herle. Representing the Independents were Philip Nye and Thomas Goodwin, and representing the Scottish Presbyterians were Alexander Henderson, Robert Baillie, George Gillespie, and Samuel Rutherford. The text appears to be in the style of Nye's writing. from the wiki article

Pay tributes to Scottish Presbyterian missionaries 向蘇格蘭宣教士們致敬。 本集節目有： ✅ Taiwanese idiom "to sell duck eggs" means something else. 賣鴨蛋的不是在賣鴨蛋； ✅ How to Make Dundee Cake 丹迪水果蛋糕的做法； ✅ Whisky or Whiskey 威士忌的英文名； ✅ Dr. David Landsborough & Rev Campbell N. Moody 蘭大衛醫生和梅監霧牧師。

Gene Clyatt returns for a third installment of English Reformation history. Gene was first on with me in August of last year, where he talked about the early days of the English Reformation under Henry the 8th and Bishop Thomas Cranmer. In the May episode this year, Gene returned to talk about England under Queen Elizabeth I. For this episode, we recap a little bit of the previous two, and get into King James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England. Gene shares a bit about how James became king, and then gets into the Gunpowder Plot, which happened on November 5th, 1605, and was the inspiration behind this being the November episode. Outline of the Discussion When Elizabeth I died in 1603, her closest relative was King James VI of Scotland. Thus he became King James I of England. James was born in 1566; the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. James had become King of Scotland at 13 months old. James was raised by Scottish Presbyterian tutors as a staunch Protestant. However, as he grew, he came to dislike the Presbyterian Church because they were distanced from the Crown of Scotland. While he later came to like the Anglican Church (being it's head once he was crowned King of England,) he was probably not a true believer. In 1589, at age 23, he married 14-year-old Anne, princess of Denmark. Anne's father was a Protestant, and it was presumed she was too, but she later converted to Catholicism. In 1601, Elizabeth is sickly, and her Secretary of State - Robert Cecil - began preparing James to be King of England. Elizabeth dies on March 24, 1603. Messages are sent to James, and he departs Edinburgh on April 5. He arrived in London on May 7th. He had taken his time, stopping off to meet with various lords along the way. In 1605, a plot was concocted to kill the king and all of Parliament, and establish a Catholic monarchy. This followed a string of four major plots by Roman Catholics to attempt to take out Elizabeth. James had a way about him whereby he would lead people to believe he was on their side on various issues without ever stating so explicitly. He had Catholics believing he would relax various restrictions enacted following the plots against Elizabeth I. When this didn't materialize, many Catholics saw it as reneging on a promise made (which was never actually explicitly made.) The plot was to blow up Parliament during opening ceremonies, while both Houses were present, as would be the King. Furthermore, the plot was to kidnap the 9-year-old Princess, marry her off to a Catholic Lord, and rule England through her. Guy Fawkes was recruited as the explosives expert. He has the added benefit of being relatively unknown around London. The cellars under the palace of Winchester were available for rent. Lord Thomas Percy rented a unit under where the throne room was located and packed it with 36 barrels of gunpowder. On November 3rd, a Catholic member of Parliament received an anonymous letter warning him not to go to Parliament for opening ceremonies. He was suspicious, and gave the letter to Robert Cecil. The plot, and the gunpowder is discovered and thwarted. This brought Catholic plots against the English throne to an end. Gene ties Guy Fawkes Day to Halloween, and the practice of trick or treat, in the American colonies. We wrap up with a brief preview of the Witch Trials, which will be the subject of the October 2023 episode, then end on a very short section on the King James Bible. Related Episodes Gene Clyatt: The Early English Reformation Gene Clyatt: The English Reformation under Elizabeth I Fred Butler: Halloween

RMC22 Breakout 3-Jonathan Master--In 19th century Scotland, the Lord raised up a group of remarkable men who had robust theological commitments and a zeal to see Christ proclaimed among the nations at any cost. We need men and women like that today and this session aims to apply their example to our contemporary context.--RADIUS CONFERENCE 2023 is June 28-29, 2023 at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, John MacArthur, Costi Hinn, Brooks Buser, Chad Vegas and others will be speaking.-https---www.radiusinternational.org-missiology-conference---Follow us on Instagram- https---www.instagram.com-radius-international--Find us on Twitter- https---twitter.com-radiusint-Like Our Facebook- https---www.facebook.com-RadiusInternational-Visit us on at- https---www.radiusinternational.org--Sign up for the Radius Report- https---www.radiusinternational.org--RadiusReport---RMC22 -Missiology -GreatCommission

RMC22 Breakout 3-Jonathan Master--In 19th century Scotland, the Lord raised up a group of remarkable men who had robust theological commitments and a zeal to see Christ proclaimed among the nations at any cost. We need men and women like that today and this session aims to apply their example to our contemporary context.--RADIUS CONFERENCE 2023 is June 28-29, 2023 at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, John MacArthur, Costi Hinn, Brooks Buser, Chad Vegas and others will be speaking.-https---www.radiusinternational.org-missiology-conference---Follow us on Instagram- https---www.instagram.com-radius-international--Find us on Twitter- https---twitter.com-radiusint-Like Our Facebook- https---www.facebook.com-RadiusInternational-Visit us on at- https---www.radiusinternational.org--Sign up for the Radius Report- https---www.radiusinternational.org--RadiusReport---RMC22 -Missiology -GreatCommission

A new MP3 sermon from Radius International is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Breakout 3 Scottish Presbyterian Missions, Past & Present Subtitle: RMC22 Speaker: Jonathan Master Broadcaster: Radius International Event: Sunday Service Date: 6/29/2022 Length: 50 min.

RMC22 Breakout 3Jonathan MasterIn 19th century Scotland, the Lord raised up a group of remarkable men who had robust theological commitments and a zeal to see Christ proclaimed among the nations at any cost. We need men and women like that today and this session aims to apply their example to our contemporary context.RADIUS CONFERENCE 2023 is June 28-29, 2023 at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, John MacArthur, Costi Hinn, Brooks Buser, Chad Vegas and others will be speaking.https://www.radiusinternational.org/missiology-conference/Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radius_international/Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/radiusintLike Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RadiusInternationalVisit us on at: https://www.radiusinternational.org/Sign up for the Radius Report: https://www.radiusinternational.org/#RadiusReport#RMC22 #Missiology #GreatCommission

RMC22 Breakout 3Jonathan MasterIn 19th century Scotland, the Lord raised up a group of remarkable men who had robust theological commitments and a zeal to see Christ proclaimed among the nations at any cost. We need men and women like that today and this session aims to apply their example to our contemporary context.RADIUS CONFERENCE 2023 is June 28-29, 2023 at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, John MacArthur, Costi Hinn, Brooks Buser, Chad Vegas and others will be speaking.https://www.radiusinternational.org/missiology-conference/Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radius_international/Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/radiusintLike Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RadiusInternationalVisit us on at: https://www.radiusinternational.org/Sign up for the Radius Report: https://www.radiusinternational.org/#RadiusReport#RMC22 #Missiology #GreatCommission

Saint Athanasius ChurchContra Mundum SwaggerVideo VersionFeller of Trees Blog (Transcript)

After three weeks of looking at Old Testament accounts of God's nearness—what we would call “revival” today—John Snyder and Steve Crampton begin this week to examine a historical revival mentioned earlier in the series. This revival took place in Scotland in the 17th century. Before it began, a group of Scottish Presbyterians ministers came together for their annual session. They saw the need for revival in their land, so they assigned men to preach. However, the focus of their sermons was not to be the evil of the land or the rebellion of that nation against God: they were to lead this group of ministers in repentance for their own sins. In this episode, John and Steve discuss the importance of being a repenter who preaches repentance. And this need isn't just for pastors—it is for every person whom God has entrusted with spiritual influence over others. You may be a Sunday school teacher, a parent, or a Christian with a little brother or sister. If you are a Christian and a leader, pay close attention to the example of these ministers and lead the way of repentance. The Fulfilling of Scripture by Robert Fleming: https://www.amazon.com/Fulfilling-Scripture-Robert-Fleming/dp/1362156655 The Works of Jonathan Edwards: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/collected-workssets/the-works-of-jonathan-edwards/ Causes of the Lord's Wrath Against Scotland: https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2016/5/13/causes-of-the-lords-wrath-against-scotland Words to Winners of Souls: https://prpbooks.com/book/words-to-winners-of-souls

William Braford is most well known today as the man who served as the second governor of Plymouth Colony, leaving Europe for Virginia in 1620 aboard the Mayflower. Prior to this infamous voyage, Bradford was an Englishman whose life overlapped that of William Shakespeare, having been born in Yorkshire, England, when Shakespeare was 26 years old. There's no evidence to suggest Shakespeare knew Bradford personally, but the life of William Bradford shines a light on a huge aspect of Shakespeare's life: the presence and subsequent response to religious extremism in England. Queen Elizabeth restored Protestantism to England in 1559, along with requirements that everyone attend Protestant Church services. Many religious groups refused, moving to underground church services that were decidedly illegal in England. One of the people who attended such services was a young William Bradford. Relations with religious groups in England remained a tense tightwire act across two monarchs of Shakespeare's life, a situation we can see reflected in Shakespeare's Puritan character named Malvolio in Twelfth Night. The character is publicly humiliated while simultaneously painted as someone with whom we can sympathize. The duality of the character itself is a powerful reflection of the sentiments of England at the start of the 17th century. Efforts like the publication of the King James Bible in 1609 attempted to find a common ground with the Puritans, but peace could not be found, with arrests of religious dissenters increasing under James I and leading ultimately to groups like Bradford and the Pilgrims, leaving England entirely in the early 1600s. Here today to help us explore the life of William Bradford, explain the distinction between Puritans and Pilgrims, as well as the reality of religious extremists like the Anabaptists and Scottish Presbyterians, going on in England during Shakespeare's lifetime is our guests, and direct descendants of William Bradford himself, David and Aaron Bradford.

When we study court in Shakespeare history the phrase “appeared at court” or “performed at court” frequently gets used to describe what Shakespeare was doing at various points of his life. However, the overlap between “court” legally (as in, where you go for a legal trial) and the social phenomenon of Renaissance England where the monarch gathered their “court” together can make it hard to know what it means to go to court. This week we've set out to rectify this gap in knowledge with our guest, Natalie Mears, who is here to share her research into Courts, Courtiers, and Culture in Tudor England, an article which she published in The Historical Journal back in 2003. In that paper, Natalie cites a play by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville called Gorboduc that was performed in 1561-1562 at court, and that play is an example of how performances were used to not only comment on events of the day by the performers (similar to what you might think of today as an editorial cartoon) but in the case of Gorboduc, the play commented directly to Elizabeth I to try and influence her decision to marry and to comment on Robert Dudley as a potential candidate. Natalie's work goes on to cite sermons selected by James VI and I to scold the Scottish Presbyterians at Hampton Court in 1606, as well as a sermon by Edward Dering in 1570 that “lambasted the Queen” for perceived failures at political reform. These examples have us wondering if the instances of Shakespeare appearing at court were more than just event entertainment. Were plays like Shakespeare's similar political weapons in the same way as Gorboduc? Would Shakespeare's plays have been brought to court for their power to influence politics and if so, does that explain why Shakespeare wrote so frequently about political issues?  Natalie Mears joins us today to answer some of these questions about Shakespeare and Court Life

Can Reformed Women be Ordained Deacons? | Show Notes Are ordained Deaconesses compatible with historic Christian orthodoxy? Complementarians insist not, egalitarians insist, yes! A recently published book, by Medieval Historian and Baptist egalitarian, Beth Allison Barr claims that women were most definitely ordained as deacons and that patriarchalist church leaders today are unjustly barring women from being ordained. Join me, Kerry Baldwin, with Deaconess Melissa DeGroot, as we dare to think about the ordination of Women Deacons. Guest: Melissa DeGroot, Deaconess, LCMS (Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod Melissa DeGroot is a certified and consecrated deaconess in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. She studied Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN. She served at the seminary in recruitment and formation, then later with the Synod as a Writer/Researcher for the LCMS Deaconess Department based out of St. Louis, MO. She has been a contributor to blogs: He Remembers The Barren and The Lutheran Witness. She was a weekly guest on KFUO radio's bible study segment. DeGroot has also written articles pertaining to theology, women's roles and the vocation of Deaconess in The Lutheran Witness, Higher Things Magazine, and For The Life of The World. She has also written and contributed to two books, He Remembers the Barren (both editions) by Katie Schuermann, and Never Forsaken: God's Mercy in the Midst of Miscarriage by Dcs. Kathryn Ziegler. Melissa currently resides in Rio Rancho, New Mexico with her husband, son and dog, and has recently tried her hand at putting up shiplap. While DIY-ing has seemingly taken over her life, she prefers reading, hiking and cooking. And good conversation! Ordination Lutheran & Presbyterian Augsburg Confession and Westminster Confession, Compared (Relevant Sections) VII. Of the Church | XXV. Of the Church VIII. What the Church is | XXVI. Of the Communion of Saints XIV. Of Ecclesiastical Order | I. Of Holy Scripture XV. Of Ecclesiastical Usages | XXX. Of Church Censures XXI: Worship of the Saints | XXI. Of Religious Worship Baptist Baptist Faith & Practice - On the Church "The biblical teaching about women in ministry is not about ordination because Southern Baptists do not believe in ordination or a clerical class. There is an argument that says, “A woman can do everything a non-ordained man can do.” The problem with that is that we are Baptists and have no theology of ordination whatsoever. For that reason, we have to understand that the pastoral office and pastoral function are the same thing." - Al Mohler, 10 Points of Complementarianism Three strains of Reformed and Presbyterian Confessions The Dutch Reformed hold the “Three Forms of Unity” (3FU) which encompass the Belgic Confession (1561), The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Canons of Dort (1619). The Swiss Reformed have the Second Helvetic Confession (1566). The Scottish Presbyterians hold to the Westminster Confessions - WCF (1647) and Shorter (1647) and Larger (1648) Catechisms. The Westminster Confession also has a revised American version (1788) which denounced Establishmentarianism (the idea that the church should run the civil government). Later, in 1689, came the London Baptist Confession, which is essentially a Baptist version of the Westminster. NOTE: There is/was a “new” strain of “Reformed” theology that became popular through John Piper, John MacArthur, and others. Piper later dubbed this “New Calvinism.” I and many other Calvinist/Presbyterians reject this “New Calvinism” as not being Reformed. So we distinguish ourselves as "Old School" Presbyterians. Another term that shouldn't be confused with “New Calvinism” is “neocalvinism” which was a historical resurgence of the Dutch Reformed tradition through Abraham Kuyper. John Piper is responsible for both “New Calvinism” (2014) and the Danver's Statement (1987) and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (1988). His “12 Points of New Calvinism” has “Complementarianism” as a cornerstone tenant, among other tenants I find questionable. Vocation Luther on Vocation by Gustaf Wingren God at Work by Gene Edward Veith The Reformation on Vocation by D. G. Hart Resources on Deaconesses in Church History Deaconesses: An Historical Study by Aime Georges Martimort Deacons and Deaconesses Through the Centuries by Jeannine E. Olson A Historical and Biblical Examination of Women Deacons by Brian Schwertly OPC Report of the Committee on Women in Church Office  Phoebe Was a Deaconess, but She Was Not Ordained by Gregory E. Reynolds Additional Resources of Interest Images of the Spirit by Meredith Kline Women in the Church – A Redemptive Historical Approach by Pastor Todd Bordow What is Feminism in Simple Terms? | Dare to Think MEMBERS ONLY CONTENT Full (uncut) Interview with Deaconess Melissa DeGroot (56 minutes) In the uncut version, we also discuss hierarchy, authoritarianism in the church, and a woman's Christian liberty. To listen to the whole interview, you must be one of my monthly members.  Become a Member! Mereliberty.com/membership Follow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mereliberty/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MereLiberty Minds: https://www.minds.com/KerryBaldwin/ Locals: https://mereliberty.locals.com  

Charles I tried desperately to assimilate the Scottish Presbyterian kirk with the English Anglican church, when he introduced a new Common Prayer Book to Scotland in 1637 an Edinburgh woman called Jenny Geddes famously reacted by throwing her stool at the Dean of St Giles Cathedral's head - by stool I mean what she was sat on, she wasn't throwing handfuls of shite at the guy. The result of Charles's constant meddling in Scotland's religion was the National Covenant signed at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh in February 1638, the Covenant was sent around the country and pretty soon acquired more signatures than is required to send something to the EU post-Brexit

Building Octo Members - a content based community with Lee Robertson - MAF269 This week let's talk about Octo Members, an app based content community for financial services professionals. My guest is one of the founders of Octo Members, Lee Robertson. And this is episode 269 of the Marketing and Finance Podcast. We chat about Lee's history as an wealth manager and financial adviser The spark behind the developmentof Octo Members Why Octo Members is an app based community How Lee and the team put together content for Octo How the community has embraced virtual events during the pandemic Who is Lee Robertson? Lee is a multi-award-winning wealth manager and self-confessed Scottish Presbyterian workaholic. He was previously founder and former CEO of Investment Quorum and one of the advisory communities best known and most well respected figures. A former serviceman and Past Master of the Guild of Entrepreneurs, and the driving force behind Octo. Links and Show Notes. For links to the books and apps mentioned, please visit http://rogeredwards.co.uk/MAF (http://rogeredwards.co.uk/MAF) for the show notes. What is the Marketing and Finance (MAF) Podcast? This podcast is all about keeping marketing simple and all things finance. I’m Roger Edwards, a professional speaker and consultant from Edinburgh. Talk to me if you want to cut the complexity and the BS from your marketing strategy. The MAF Podcast is a 30-minute radio show you download from http://rogeredwards.co.uk/MAF (http://rogeredwards.co.uk/MAF), iTunes or Spotify. Each week you'll hear interviews with business experts, marketers, entrepreneurs and journalists. Interviews to listen to in the car, on the train or on the treadmill. Or even in the bath! We talk about: How you can grow your business using content marketing and social media How you can keep your Marketing strategy and communications simple Topics, issues, products and business models from the world of finance You’ll take away one or two big ideas that you can apply to your business. So, you can keep marketing your business to keep growing your business. Please subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes and I’d be grateful if you would leave a review. http://rogeredwards.co.uk/itunes (http://rogeredwards.co.uk/itunes). Fancy Appearing on the Show? Would you be interested in appearing on the MAF Podcast? Have you an exciting marketing or finance story to tell? Do you fancy drawing out some inspirational ideas that MAF listeners can take away to use in their own businesses? Do please contact me if you want to get involved. http://rogeredwards.co.uk/ (http://rogeredwards.co.uk)

A new MP3 sermon from Partick Free Church of Scotland (Cont) is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Churches & Christian Unity in Scottish Presbyterian History Subtitle: Free Church School in Theology Speaker: Pastor Iain Murray Broadcaster: Partick Free Church of Scotland (Cont) Event: Conference Date: 4/1/2021 Length: 61 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Partick Free Church of Scotland (Cont) is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Churches & Christian Unity in Scottish Presbyterian History Subtitle: Free Church School in Theology Speaker: Pastor Iain Murray Broadcaster: Partick Free Church of Scotland (Cont) Event: Conference Date: 4/1/2021 Length: 61 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Partick Free Church of Scotland (Cont) is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Churches & Christian Unity in Scottish Presbyterian History Subtitle: School in Theology Archive Speaker: Pastor Iain Murray Broadcaster: Partick Free Church of Scotland (Cont) Event: Conference Date: 4/1/2021 Length: 61 min.

Recorded in September 2000

As a child Lorraine sat on her uncle’s knee watching the television series MASH and eating vanilla ice cream flavored with creme de menthe. Her parents, one Scottish Presbyterian and one Irish Catholic, regularly invited their respected clergy over for dinner and hospitable conversation across religious lines. Not surprising she grew up with an interest in the depth of the Christian spiritual tradition. She studying philosophy and ethics at Dominica College University in Ottawa. It was here that the depth of Christian thinking about the spiritual life was opened to her. Building on her initial intellectual formation she went on to do her Master and Doctorate degrees with a research program on trauma and healing, on “moral injury”, the undoing of one’s sense of character, on guilt and forgiveness., on being both a victim and victimizer.  Since the common psychiatric models have been largely ineffective with returning soldiers she has worked at finding the healing waters that spring from the continuous work on the spiritual life at the heart of Christian understanding.     

REFLECTION QUOTES “He is short-sighted who looks only on the path he treads and the wall on which he leans.” ~ Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American writer, poet, visual artist and philosopher “The secret formula of the saints: When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.” ~ Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), a Scottish Presbyterian pastor, theologian and author “Lament isn't the opposite of praise. Lament is a path to praise…” ~ Julius Kim, contemporary author, pastor, professor, and current president of The Gospel Coalition “Lament is the transition between pain and promise. It is the path from heartbreak to hope.” ~ Mark Vroegop, contemporary author and pastor “Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God.” ~ J.I. Packer (1929-present), a British-born Canadian Christian theologian and professor “A story is precisely the sort of thing that cannot be understood till you have heard the whole of it.” ~ C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), British writer and lay theologian “There are basically two ways to read the Bible — as a book of law, or as a book of promise. Our natural religious psychology wants to read the Bible as law… Every page [in the Bible], most deeply understood, shines forth as a promise of grace to sinners in Christ.” ~ Ray Ortlund, contemporary author and pastor “God is a covenant-making, covenant-remembering, covenant-keeping God!” ~ Sinclair Ferguson (1948-present), Scottish author, pastor and professor SERMON PASSAGE Psalm 105:1-15, 42-45 (ESV) 1 Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! 2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! 4 Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually! 5 Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered, 6 O offspring of Abraham, his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones! 7 He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. 8 He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, 9 the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, 10 which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, 11 saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.” 12 When they were few in number, of little account, and sojourners in it, 13 wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, 14 he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, 15 saying, “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!” 42 For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham, his servant. 43 So he brought his people out with joy, his chosen ones with singing. 44 And he gave them the lands of the nations, and they took possession of the fruit of the peoples' toil, 45 that they might keep his statutes and observe his laws. Praise the Lord!

31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. 1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1, ESV This is the word of the Lord. When we become accustomed to a certain level of independence in life, it can be very difficult to give up that independence for the sake of someone else. You know when we were first born, we don't have any independence. We rely on our parents and other caregivers for all of our needs in life. As we grow up little by little, we become more and more independent. First to feed ourselves, and then to walk, and then as we're older maybe we can go out and play at a neighbor's house or a friend's house or something like that. As we get older, we're maybe entrusted to go different places on our own or we get the keys to mom and dad's car or something like that. When we go off to college there's a maybe a new level of independence. I remember for me when I went off to seminary across the country in Birmingham, Alabama it was a very new sense of independence. I was completely separated from everyone I knew. My whole life up to that point and had a growing series of growing and independence. Then I fell in love and I was happy to trade all of that independence to get married. But when we have become accustomed to a certain level of independence it can sometimes be hard to give up that independence for the sake of someone else. Not that I didn't want to, but I remember in the first week of marriage that suddenly it came into my mind that I should go do something and I was headed out the door of our apartment, about to the door about to leave, and I realized oh I'm married now I'm not independent I have to talk to someone else before I make these kinds of decisions. Then when we had our first child, I remember we suddenly realized we had taken for granted the ability to just get up and leave and go somewhere as two adults who can buckle ourselves into our car. We had to get a diaper bag and make sure it wasn't during nap time. Again, when you become accustomed to a certain level of independence it can be difficult to give that up. Now once again all of us are wrestling with this as we're in the middle of this quarantine shut now. We've been accustomed to going where we want and doing what we want. For some of us the shutdown of this has been much more difficult in losing our jobs or difficult situations like that. There are some major hardships going on as all of us are called the sacrifice to make sure that we can hopefully stop the spread of this virus from reaching people who this will kill. This is a terrible virus, some people are. Even younger people are starting to die without underlying health conditions. So, for the sake of these people we are giving things up. As hard as this is, the Bible tells us that there is a more difficult independence to give up. You see as much as we might have to sacrifice sort of some external things in our lives right now what the scriptures say is that it is much harder to give up our independence of our own lives, internally spiritually, to give up not just the things around us but actually our own hearts to be transformed to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is a very hard thing. We need a new heart that's transformed from the inside out. So we have to ask the question, how does this happen? How do we become new people who don't live for ourselves in any respect, but live for the glory of God and for the good of our neighbor? Well our big idea from our passage today is this be imitators of Christ. Paul gives us two principles and then a command as we're going to see. 1. We are to seek the glory of God 2. We are to seek the good of our neighbor 3. Imitate the example of Christ We are to Seek the Glory of God Paul writes this again in verse 31 he says, “so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Now before we get into what exactly he's telling us to do in whatever situation he has in mind, we probably should start at the very end of this verse to ask the question what does it mean to do anything or to do something or even to do all things to the glory of God? What does that mean? When we talk about doing something to the glory of God, we are asking whether what we are doing will bring honor, praise, and worship to him. Whether we are doing this thing in a spirit of love and admiration to him and whether the action that we were doing with will bring about in others trust and worship and obedience to God. If that's happening, that's what it means to live our lives to the glory of God. So, Paul says that whether we eat or drink, we should do that to the glory of God. This verse 31 serves as a something of a summary of everything that Paul has been telling us in chapter 10. If we remember our journey through chapter 10, if you've been a part of us through that sermon series, in the first twenty-two verses Paul is arguing about why it is important that believers never become part of an idolatrous worship service and eat sacrifices in the midst of those pagan idolatrous worship services. Paul says that's not just a matter of eating food but it's to participate in idolatry. If we did that, if we participated in idolatry, that would not be to the glory of God. So, whether we eat or drink, we've got to do it to the glory of God. It's forbidden an idolatrous worship service. Then in verses 23 through 30 Paul talks about what to do in the context of the church where there may be these weaker believers whose consciences do not completely understand their liberties. So, if you're in that, if you're eating a meal of meats that may have once been sacrificed to an idol but now is sold in the meat markets, well that's fine. It's no longer in participation in an idolatrous worship service. If the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, so this meat once it's just sold commonly is fine for you to eat. However, if there is a Christian there whose conscience is weak, who's bothered by that, maybe that brings up memories of pagan idolatrous worship in his or her own life, well rather than trampling over their consciences you should refrain from eating. Why? Well because that would not bring glory to God for you to treat your brothers and sisters in Christ in that way. Wo whether we eat or whether we drink Paul is saying all of this should be done to the glory of God. But notice that in verse 31 this isn't just a matter of eating or drinking, he says whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. If you've been reading as 1st Corinthians really from chapter 8 and then chapter 9 and then chapter 10 and are wondering, “Okay so how does this apply to me? I mean I'm not in a context where I'm commonly coming into a fellowship or even friendship or relationships with people who are involved in idolatrous worship services. This doesn't apply to me does it?” Well here's what Paul says ,he says this is sort of a principle. It's a historic reality, this is the immediate situation, but it goes beyond just this issue of eating food sacrificed to idols. This covers all of our lives. You know everything that we do we should be doing everything to the glory of God. This is why we confess in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the very first question, that our chief end, the reason for which we were created is, to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Everything we do, all of our lives, is for the sake of the glory of God. So how does that apply to us? Well, we'll come back to that when we come back to the applications at the end of the service. In verse 31 Paul is reminding us of what Jesus called the first of the two greatest commandments. You may remember in Matthew chapter 22 when a teacher of the law came to Jesus and said, “teacher which is the greatest commandment of the law?” Jesus responded by saying this in Matthew 22: 37-38, 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. Matthew 22: 37-38, ESV After the first commandment, Jesus didn't just stop there. I mean theoretically you could say that well everything is to the glory of God and that should cover everything, right? Well Jesus says it's important to add a second commandment in the law Matthew 22:39-40, Jesus adds this 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:39-40, ESV In other words, all of the Bible is essentially a summary, a commentary, on these two commandments; love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in one way or another is saying one of those two messages. Also, by what Jesus was saying and what Paul goes on to in verses 32 to 33, is to say look at what seeking the glory of God, of doing all things to the glory of God, will mean. Think of how it will affect the things in our direct relationship to him. As Bill said in the liturgy this morning, we come into his presence in the way that he has prescribed to us. Some of these affect the way that we worship but other things affect the relationships that we have with one another. You cannot glorify God if you are not loving and seeking the good of your neighbor. So, our first principle was seek the glory of God. Seek the Good of Our Neighbor Now in verses 32 and 33 we come to this in principle seek the good of our neighbor. Paul writes in verse 32 this, “give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the Church of God.” I will stop there, kind of in mid-sentence, but at the end of this first verse of this section, now by distinguishing Jews and Gentiles or Jews and Greeks from the Church of God, Paul probably means unbelieving Jews and Greeks versus the believing Church of God. So unbelieving Jews and Greeks, Paul says don't do anything that will cause unnecessary offence to them or be devoid of offense to them. Also, for the believing church when you come into the context of the church, don't offend them either. Now Paul has said something very similar at the end of the last chapter in in 1st Corinthians chapter 9, there he said to the Jews in verse starting in verse 22, 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. 1 Corinthians 9:20-22, ESV He says, ” To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law.” Then he starts talking about Gentiles he says, “ To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.” Then he goes on to talk about the church he says, “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” Well Paul was saying there is, look if you're in the context of Jews be devoid of offense to them, you don't have to insist upon eating ceremonially unclean foods or doing ceremonially unclean things that will just set up unnecessary barriers between your relationship and them. That will inhibit your ability to win them to Christ. What about to the Greeks? Well don't insist that everything they do conforms to Jewish ceremonial food laws or any other ceremonial laws. You don't need to do that because in Christ those ceremonial laws have been abolished. They filled their purpose and it doesn't matter to us one way or another so you don't have to give offense, you can simply build relationships with Jews and Greeks on their terms according to whatever works for them in these issues that are of non-essential importance. Then when it comes to the Church of God, don't violate the consciences of weaker Christians who may not understand the full extent of their Christian liberty. You don't have to give offense in these cases. If your goal is to build them up, don't cause offense in these unnecessary areas. Why does Paul say this why is this so important? Why is this such an important principle? Well, Paul goes on to explain himself in verse 33 he says here, here's why I say not to give offense. He says, “just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.” Seeking the glory of God is the ultimate end, the ultimate goal of our lives. But what Paul is saying is that seeking the advantage of our neighbor that they may be saved is the primary means to the end. It's not that Paul is saying we should be people pleasers who are addicted to the approval of others. It's not that he's saying that we should fear other people and worry about whether they like us or not. We are seeking their ultimate advantage, their ultimate good, that they may be saved. If we remember Paul had said the same thing just a few verses earlier in chapter 10:23-24 he said, 23 “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. 24 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 Seek the good of your neighbor by being careful to avoid unnecessary offense that will put barriers between us and our neighbors. So that we have the ability to build them up in the gospel, to seek their good by removing those barriers. That's what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves, to see their true lasting an eternal good. So, Paul now has given us a summary a paraphrase of different words to summarize what Jesus elsewhere expressed is the two greatest Commandments, to love God and to love our neighbor. In these first three verses of our section, verses 31 through 33, Paul has told us what to do. But now in 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul tells us whom we should imitate, the example that we should have now. As a note verse 1 of chapter 11 probably belongs better with chapter 10. Paul was not the one who made the divisions of verses and chapters, those came much later. Most of the time the chapter divisions in our Bibles are very reliable in terms of summarizing the organization of the material of the Bible. But every once in a while, and this would be an example of that, we find a verse that's sort of moved out of its context. Here verse one does not belong with the rest of chapter 11, but 11:1 really belongs as the last verse of chapter 10. So just to say that we'll then move on to talk about this verse. Imitate the Example of Christ As we get to our third point, imitate the example of Christ, Paul says here something that sounds a little bit jarring at first. He says be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. Now I don't know too many of us who would go around saying that. It sounds a little bold to put it mildly. How could any sinner tell another sinner that you should imitate me? Why not tell someone you should imitate Christ directly, that's something we can all agree with. Paul has a couple of reasons for saying this. The first reason is that Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians that he's practicing what he's preaching. These aren't just theoretical concepts for him, ideas that are swirling around in his head that he thinks other people should do. No, Paul is saying you can look at my life, I am doing this and imitate me as I am an imitator of Christ. The second issue is that Paul is not telling the Corinthians to imitate him in every respect. Rather he's telling them to imitate him to the extent that he is an imitator of Christ. Paul is pointing beyond himself here, he's not the ultimate example and he knows it. He doesn't want them to look to him as the final example. He said I want you to look at my example and to imitate my example not as the ultimate end of what you're trying to accomplish, but as an example of someone else who is imitating Christ. What I'm hoping to get you to do, Paul is saying, is that we will work together to imitate Christ together. I want to learn from you, you need to learn from me. We should work together and have the humility to together learn from one another as we both seek to imitate Christ. Now the theme of imitating Christ is something Paul addresses actually at a couple of points in Ephesians chapter 5. Paul writes in verses 1 and 2, Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:1-2, ESV How do we imitate God well? By walking in love as Christ loved us, love for our neighbor, and offering ourselves as a sacrifice. Not in the way that Christ did, as an atoning sacrifice for sin, but as a sacrifice where we are seeking to obey God and sacrificing ourselves as living offerings to God. Love for God, love for people; that's what it means to be an imitator of God. We see the same thing come up in Philippians 2:5 Paul says, “5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” Philippians 2:5 What's that mind, what's that mindset? Well Jesus emptied himself by taking the form of a servant for the glory of God and for the good of his people. Paul is saying we should have that mindset too; to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Paul says imitate me as I am seeking to follow, as an imitator of Christ, what should we do with this. Paul is giving us a fairly simple doctrine here. These are the great commandments and the ultimate illustration of the great commandments illustrated in the person of Jesus, for our imitation. Application Well there are three applications to consider today. 1. First fix your eyes on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now as we talk about imitating Christ it's so important that we avoid a misunderstanding. We are not saying that Jesus was a really good example, that we could probably take a few tips from him. That if we just picked up a couple of pointers from his life, well we'd really be able to start living more like him. Now we do need to imitate an example, but we can't start first by trying to imitate him directly. Rather the Scriptures tell us to fix our eyes on Jesus as he is revealed in the Bible, and as we see him there. The better we see him, as the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see him for who he is, we realize not, “oh this will be easy, I'll just put a few tips into place to change my life”. No, the more we see Jesus we see how far short we fall from his example. We see that we are sinful while he is righteous. We are selfish while he is self-sacrificing. We are unholy while he is holy. We are defiled and polluted while he is pure. We are rebellious while he is obedient. We are arrogant while he is humble. The first part of imitating Christ is to recognize our great need of him. We realize that we cannot imitate him direct on our own, in our own strength, apart from him. So, we confess our sins to him, we seek his forgiveness, we cry out to him knowing that we can't fix ourselves to be imitators of Christ unless he intervenes to give us that power and ability. We need him to cleanse us, by his own blood, from our unrighteousness. We need to ask that he would make us new from the inside out so that we may imitate him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you see how far short you fall from this example as you look at Christ? Do you despair in the knowledge that you cannot reach him by the high, infinitely high, standard that he has set? That's the first step toward salvation from this despair as you realize the great gap between you and our perfect, holy, spotless, blameless, Savior Jesus Christ. The first step is to repent from your sin and everything that keeps you and separates you from him, to repent of that and look to Jesus Christ in faith. Trusting that what he has done for you at the cross and at his resurrection is enough for your salvation. Trusting that you could never do enough to imitate him well enough to rise to his level. Now in this I want to also offer a warning. If you don't see that you fall infinitely short of the glory of Jesus Christ, you may not be converted. Friend take a closer look if you don't think there's that big of a gap. Take a closer look both at Christ as he's revealed in the Bible and at yourself. Repent of your pride, stop making excuses, stop seeking to justify yourself. Instead turn from your sin and turn to Christ for salvation. He is willing and able to save sinners who know and feel their need of him. So, number one fix your eyes on the person work of Jesus Christ, that's where it all starts. 2. Seek the glory of God in whatever you do. Now first off, obviously this means that we must do whatever God explicitly instructs us to do in his word; confessing our sin as he commands us to do, glorify him. Believing the gospel as he commands us to do glorifies him. Obeying God by faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit glorifies him as he commands us to do. Now this part may go without saying, we should do whatever God commands us to do. Which means that Paul probably has more in mind as it applies to our lives. When Paul says whatever you do, do all to the glory of God he includes not just the explicit commandments that God has given us, but he includes everything and that is things that God has not explicitly commanded one way or another. So, this command has particular importance, and this is the whole context of how what Paul has been talking about has particularly importance for our Christian liberty. So, this would include partially matters of conscience, which politicians should I vote for, how should I educate my children, what music may I listen to, what television shows or movies may I watch, should I smoke tobacco or drink alcohol in moderation. Well in all of these issues, even if we have liberty, our criterion for evaluation is not whether I want to do these things, whether I would find joy and pleasure and satisfaction in these things; our criterion is does this bring glory to God. That's what we have to evaluate, that's what we have to ask ourselves. Not only matters of conscience, but also matters of stewardship. How do we use the time we've been given, especially now that most of us have a tremendous more amount of time since all of our activities have been shut down while we are on quarantine? How should we use that time? How should we use our talents, our abilities, our energies? How should we invest our treasures? Now God hasn't given us a page of the scripture that tells us exactly how to budget our time, our talents, our treasures. All of these are a matter of our stewardship. So in evaluating how we should invest the gifts that God has given us we can't just say, what do I want, what would be satisfying for me? We have to ask what will bring glory to God. This is a matter of reflection and a matter of prayer. Does this line up with God's Word as a whole, even if there are no specific commandment one way or another? Am I doing this in faith? Remember Romans 14:23, “for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” When we ask these questions, study the scripture, compare our lives to the picture, we get in the Bible a picture of what it looks like to love God and to love people, especially in the image of Jesus Christ; in his person, in his work. Then we need to ask God to give us eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand by the power of his spirit how we should apply these things in our lives. So, number two, seek the glory of God in whatever you do. 3. The third and final application is this we need to seek the good of our neighbor in whatever we do. Now I want to look at this point from a couple of different vantage points. The first is by means of an illustration. On the news right now, if you've been paying attention to that, there's a debate going on about what counts as an essential service and what counts as a non-essential service. People are trying to argue that their particular services are essential or not. There was actually a video game company in malls and things like that, that sold video games. They tried to argue for a long time that they didn't need to be shut down, because in a time like this video games are essential. Well eventually they got shut down. So, there's this constant discussion about what's essential and what's non-essential. We recognize there are some things that are essential. If we shut down grocery stores, well that would mean that people may not be able to find a way to eat. Those were essential to life. But there are other services that wouldn't necessarily cause serious harm to shut down, but nevertheless hurt. Not harm but hurt; that's sort of the dividing line we're trying to work out. Well I use that illustration to tell you to think about the non-essential aspects of your life. Think about how you spend those time, talents, and treasures. Think about your personal convictions, as deeply as you feel them, about the debatable aspects of Christianity. Here's my question are you willing to sacrifice the non-essential liberties in your life for the good of your neighbor? So that you might not put up barriers between you and getting the gospel to your neighbor. So that your neighbor might be saved, or your neighbor might not be torn down, but rather built up in the gospel. Are you considering certain liberties in your life as essential services when the Bible does not put them in that category? Are we talking about giving something up for the good of a neighbor that would harm you, or if you're really honest with yourself would it only hurt? Would it be a sacrifice? What we're called to do is all things the good of our neighbor. That's the first way of looking at it. The second way is in asking this question. Consider your discipleship in following Christ as a whole, would you be willing to tell someone else be an imitator of me as I am of Christ? I'm not asking if you would be willing to hold yourself up as the ultimate example, like follow me in every respect. I'm asking would you be willing to tell someone else to imitate Christ alongside of you? Which would mean that you're acknowledging that as someone who's still imitating Christ and hasn't matched imitation of Christ, then I have to have the humility to learn from you even as you learn from me. Are you willing to tell someone to be an imitator of me as I am of Christ? If you're not willing to tell someone that, to encourage someone in their discipleship by asking them look at your discipleship, then I want to ask what needs to change about your life so that you can. Are you, if you're unwilling to make that change in your life, really seeking the glory of God in whatever you do? If you're unwilling to make that change in your life, are you really seeking the good of your neighbor in whatever you do? Well if you realize you fall short of this, come back to the gospel. The good news is that Jesus Christ died and rose again to conform us to his image. Take your eyes off of yourself, whether looking at yourself fills you with pride, it shouldn't but if it does, or whether looking at yourself leads you to despair so that you think you're hopeless, you're not. Take your eyes off of yourself and look to Christ. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a 19th century Scottish Presbyterian pastor, once said for every look you take it yourself, take 10 looks to Christ. Gazing at Jesus Christ, the one whom we are called to imitate, not only shows us how far we are from him, but it's the act of gazing at Jesus Christ the scriptures tell us is what transforms us. Paul explains this in 2nd Corinthians 3:18, he's talking about gazing upon Jesus in the word, by the power of the Spirit. He says, 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV Fix your eyes upon Jesus, contemplate, get your mind around, study his goodness, and his glory and, his grace. Pray that God would cultivate the desire for Jesus in your heart and continue taking him by faith. Turn to him again and again and again and then, by the grace of God, seek to lead others to do the same. This is how we glorify God, this is how we seek the good of our neighbor, and this is how we imitate Christ; by fixing our eyes on him. Brothers and sisters let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask during this time that you would help us to use our lives well to steward our lives wisely and to do all things for the glory of God and for the good of our neighbor that we might be conformed to the image of Christ from the inside out. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the bonds that Scottish Presbyterians made between themselves and their monarchs in the 16th and 17th Centuries, to maintain their form of worship. These covenants bound James VI of Scotland to support Presbyterians yet when he became James I he was also expected to support episcopacy. That tension came to a head under Charles I who found himself on the losing side of a war with the Covenanters, who later supported Parliament before backing the future Charles II after he had pledged to support them. Once in power, Charles II failed to deliver the religious settlement the Covenanters wanted, and set about repressing them violently. Those who refused to renounce the covenants were persecuted in what became known as The Killing Times, as reflected in the image above. With Roger Mason Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews Laura Stewart Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of York And Scott Spurlock Professor of Scottish and Early Modern Christianities at the University of Glasgow Producer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the bonds that Scottish Presbyterians made between themselves and their monarchs in the 16th and 17th Centuries, to maintain their form of worship. These covenants bound James VI of Scotland to support Presbyterians yet when he became James I he was also expected to support episcopacy. That tension came to a head under Charles I who found himself on the losing side of a war with the Covenanters, who later supported Parliament before backing the future Charles II after he had pledged to support them. Once in power, Charles II failed to deliver the religious settlement the Covenanters wanted, and set about repressing them violently. Those who refused to renounce the covenants were persecuted in what became known as The Killing Times, as reflected in the image above. With Roger Mason Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews Laura Stewart Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of York And Scott Spurlock Professor of Scottish and Early Modern Christianities at the University of Glasgow Producer: Simon Tillotson

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the bonds that Scottish Presbyterians made between themselves and their monarchs in the 16th and 17th Centuries, to maintain their form of worship. These covenants bound James VI of Scotland to support Presbyterians yet when he became James I he was also expected to support episcopacy. That tension came to a head under Charles I who found himself on the losing side of a war with the Covenanters, who later supported Parliament before backing the future Charles II after he had pledged to support them. Once in power, Charles II failed to deliver the religious settlement the Covenanters wanted, and set about repressing them violently. Those who refused to renounce the covenants were persecuted in what became known as The Killing Times, as reflected in the image above. With Roger Mason Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews Laura Stewart Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of York And Scott Spurlock Professor of Scottish and Early Modern Christianities at the University of Glasgow Producer: Simon Tillotson

Why do we have pensions schemes? How did first pension fund come into existence in the 1700s? What did Bernoulli and Scottish Presbyterian priests have to do with it? How can I save $1500 this year with Empower?   ... We explain like i'm five!   Thank you to Empower, the sponsor of today's episode. For more info about Empower, visit: empower.me/ELI5   Help more people fund us by leaving a rating on iTunes.   Thank you to the r/explainlikeimfive community as always. This podcast also referenced several blogs and articles including the Sapiens Book, Legacy Trust and Life Insurance KZ. To the ELI5 community that has supported us so far, thanks for all your feedback and comments. Join us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/eli5ThePodcast/ or send us an e-mail: ELI5ThePodcast@gmail.com

In 1646, when King Charles 1 realised he had lost the English Civil War, he fled north from Oxford and surrendered himself to the Scottish Presbyterian army who kept him prisoner in Newcastle, when they were occupying that city.  Alexander Henderson was presented with an opportunity to try to persuade King Charles to consent to the reformation of the English Church and the establishment of Presbyterianism in England. Matthew Vogan is in Newcastle to explain more.  To find out more about Alexander Henderon's writing and insights into Christ, visit the Blog of Alexander Henderson at ReformationScotland.org To dig deeper, visit ScotlandsForgottenHistory.com https://www.reformationscotland.org/blog/alexander-henderson/

42 BC Marcus Junius Brutus, a leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar, dies by suicide after his defeat at the second battle of Philippi. Two years before, Brutus had joined Gaius Cassius Longinus in the plot against the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, believing he was striking a blow for the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of Caesar's assassination was to plunge the Roman world into a new round of civil wars, with the Republican forces of Brutus and Cassius vying for supremacy against Octavian and Mark Antony. After being defeated by Antony at a battle in Philippi, Greece, in October 42 B.C., Cassius killed himself. On October 23, Brutus' army was crushed by Octavian and Antony at a second encounter at Philippi, and Brutus took his own life. Antony and Octavian soon turned against each other, and in 27 B.C. the Roman Republic was lost forever with the ascendance of Octavian as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome. 1641 Irish Rebellion of 1641 starts as an attempted coup d'état by Irish Catholic gentry, who tried to seize control of the English administration in Ireland to force concessions for Catholics. The coup failed and the rebellion developed into an ethnic conflict between the Gaelic Irish and old English Catholics on one side, and both ethnically English Protestants and Scottish/Presbyterian planters on the other. This began a conflict known as the Irish Confederate Wars. The Irish Confederate Wars, also called the Eleven Years' War would end in English victory and a crushing of Irish Catholic power in Ireland that would last for nearly two centuries. The death toll of the conflict was huge. William Petty, a Cromwellian who conducted the first scientific land and demographic survey of Ireland in the 1650s, concluded that at least 400,000 people and maybe as many as 620,000 had died in Ireland between 1641 and 1653. The true figure may well be lower given Petty's outmoded methodology, but the lowest suggested is about 200,000. It is estimated that about two thirds of the deaths were civilian; at the time of the conflict, the population of Ireland stood at around 1.5 million people, putting casualties at around 1/5 - 1/3 of the total population. 1983 A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. A terrorist plowed his bomb-laden truck through three guard posts, a barbed-wire fence, and into the lobby of the Marines Corps headquarters in Beirut, where he detonated a massive bomb, killing 241 marine, navy, and army personnel. The bomb, which was made of a sophisticated explosive enhanced by gas, had an explosive power equivalent to 18,000 pounds of dynamite. 2002 About 50 Chechen rebels storm a Moscow theater, taking up to 700 people hostage during a sold-out performance of a popular musical.The second act of the musical “Nord Ost” was just beginning at the Moscow Ball-Bearing Plant's Palace of Culture when an armed man walked onstage and fired a machine gun into the air. The terrorists—including a number of women with explosives strapped to their bodies—identified themselves as members of the Chechen Army. They had one demand: that Russian military forces begin an immediate and complete withdrawal from Chechnya, the war-torn region located north of the Caucasus Mountains. The siege lasted for about 3 days and ended after Russian security forces released a chemical gas in the theater. All of the rebels and about 170 hostages died during the siege.

Pastor Schwertley finishes James Begg's theological work on worship in the Scottish Presbyterian church.

Pastor Schwertley continues reading from James Begg on worship in the Scottish-Presbyterian church. He discusses many things ranging from instruments in worship to church polity.

How does theology relate to the economy? On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols looks at the life and thought of Adam Smith, Scottish Presbyterian and founder of modern economics. Read the transcript: https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/adam-smith/

I. Gray Area Battle Zone I'd like to ask that you turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 8. As we look this morning, we'll be looking at the first half of the chapter, although I had the whole chapter read. And I am just so thankful for the word of God, I'm thankful for the privilege I have to minister the word of God. I thank you for its unchanging nature. The Bible gives absolutes. It gives unequivocal dos and don'ts, never changes, they're the same in every generation. You can look at the Ten Commandments that forbid certain things with no questions at all. We don't have to wonder about it. Such as worshipping other gods, or worshipping idols. Taking the name of the Lord in vain. Murder, adultery, theft, false testimony, coveting, these things are forever and all times unequivocally forbidden for us as Christians. We don't have to wonder about it. And there are other things not mentioned in the Ten Commandments that are also similarly forbidden for us as Christians. We shouldn't wonder, we don't need to wonder what the Bible teaches about fornication, about drunkenness, about materialism, about laziness or carnal anger, arguing and complaining. The Bible is very clear about these sins. The Bible also commands certain things clearly. Not just forbidden, but telling us that there are some things we must do. We must love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. These things are unequivocal. We must read the Bible, feed on the word of God, and pray continually, pray every day. We should care for the poor and needy, we should share the Gospel with those in our lives that are lost. So those things are clear as well. What is clearly forbidden, and what is clearly commanded. There is no doubt whatsoever about these things. We just need to obey them by the Spirit. There's no debate about them. However, not everything is like that in the Christian life. There are gray areas, or debatable issues in daily life practice. There are things that Christians have struggled over, and debated over, and divided over. And these gray areas can become a battle zone between Christians. Now, I have to support that assertion from Scripture. Is there such a category as debatable issues in the Christian life? One pastor that I know and respect tends to see everything, everything black and white. There's no equivocal issues with him. There are no gray areas. And years ago there was a famous slogan in church history, which came out of the... I think the religious wars in Germany, as Protestants and Catholics were battling, and so this slogan came out, and it was this: "In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty and in all things, charity." That was that slogan. Well it turns out that that saying was painted on the side of the church vans when this pastor I have in mind came and began his ministry. And he had them painted over. "There are no non-essentials" he said. So I think that's fascinating. I think it's actually important for us to see a kind of a hierarchy of certainty of truth. That there actually are core doctrinal issues we have absolute conviction about. And then it goes out from there. And the Bible itself has an entire chapter devoted to debatable issues. Romans chapter 14. Romans 14:1 says, "Accept him whose faith is weak without passing judgment on disputable matters." Disputable matters. So the whole chapter, Romans 14 is devoted to the proper resolution of these kinds of gray areas that are going to come up in Christian churches, in the Christian life. Disputable matters, doubtful issues, there are different translations. So Romans 14 in particular, I think, addresses issues that would've divided Jewish Christians from Gentile Christians. So the Roman Church was a combination church, Jewish Christians, Gentile Christians coming together to try to do local church life and there would be issues that would arise between them as the Gospel is spreading rapidly throughout the Roman world after the Jewish diaspora, they had been scattered from the Promised Land, and they were all over the Greco-Roman world. They had certain habits and patterns tied to the Old Covenant, and they'd been doing those for years. And so then the Gospel came along, and won some to Christ from both the Jewish community and from the Gentile community, and they had to come together and do church together, and so there would be issues. And these issues were sharp, and the debates were vigorous. Probably the most significant issue was, do the Gentile converts to Christ need to be circumcised and required to obey the ceremonial law of Moses in order to be saved? We have an entire book of the Bible, the Book of Galatians, devoted to answering that: Absolutely not. That the Gentile Christians do not need to be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses in order to be saved. We have a whole chapter in the Book of Acts, Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, which sought to resolve these kinds of issues. And so the Jerusalem Council came up with certain kind of dos and don'ts, practical rules of the road, to enable Jews and Gentiles together to get along, and to love one another, and to resolve certain things. And so they came up with a list of certain things that had to be addressed, and they did that. Present-Day Examples of Debatable Issues So, we have our own debatable issues, too. There are certain things in our lives that we're going to struggle over. Maybe some of them are like what they struggled over back then. For example, Sabbath Day regulations, or what you can and can't do on a Sunday. That's been difficult historically for certain Christian communities to resolve. Can we go to a restaurant on Sunday, can we play sports on a Sunday? You remember Chariots of Fire, how Eric Liddell didn't feel that he had the freedom to run on a Sunday. He came out of the Scottish Presbyterian background, and that was a very strong Sabbatarian background. But others have a freer approach to the Lord's day, and so there are debates. Then there's alcohol. Christians have frequently divided over the issue of alcohol. Some Christians completely abstain from drinking any fermented beverage, whereas other Christians feel freedom to partake in moderation. All Christians, Biblical Christians, reject drunkenness and drinking to affect your behavior morally. But the question is, can we partake in smaller, more measured doses? So, that's been an issue. Generally, a lot of these debatable issues come over the question of worldliness, what is worldly, what isn't. And so, engaging in the world, world's culture, what kind of movies you watch or don't watch, what kind of music you listen to or you refuse to listen to. I remember early in my Christian life, there were discussions in our campus ministry about whether it was right to listen to Christian rock music or not, or even secular rock, there'd be divisions about that. Nowadays, more recently, there's been discussions about the propriety of Christian rap. Christians have struggled with the kind of movies they'll watch and the movies that they would allow their children to watch, and those convictions might be different than another family, and that kind of comes to a head when there's sleepovers. So, there's all kinds of interesting discussions between the families and what kind of movies they will or won't allow their kids to watch. And that can be difficult. Then, there's social media. As we involve ourselves in Instagram and Snapchat and I don't know what's trendy or... Really, I'm not even going to try. I don't know what's in these days. Facebook. There, I said it. All of those things. I don't partake, I've never been on Facebook, but others... Can we get involved? Twitter, which just tends to defile many that get involved. That's another topic for another day, but just the ongoing debates are incredible. You want to know the kind of things that Christians wrangle over, Twitter is the place where they seem to be doing it. Then, there's clothing, the kind of clothing that we can or can't wear. I think, especially for women, there's a struggle, a desire to be pure, but there's certain prohibitions in the New Testament about braided hair and wearing gold jewels and fine clothes and how do you do that. But then, just parents, as they have kids growing up, want their kids to dress, want their children, their daughters to dress in way that honors and glorifies God. Then, there's the topic of education for children. Public school or government school education versus homeschooling versus private school. There's all kinds of debates and discussions about giving your children over to education or retaining it, the debates that go on with that. Even politics. This most recent Presidential election was very divisive within the Evangelical world, as the parties were very polarized, and Christians were talking like, "The lesser of two evils" or "Holding your nose and voting," others like, "No, I won't do that. I can only vote for an individual I actually could believe in, even if the person's not electable," all kinds of debates. And I'm sure I'm stirring you up. You want to know what you think about all these things. "I want an answer, I want answers on all of this." Well, I'm just saying, there are these debatable issues. And so, for me, as a preacher, knowing that Paul is going to devote three full chapters, friends, to meat sacrificed to idols, and you're thinking, "Not a problem for us." You're thinking you're going to get three chapters off, especially given the choppy waters we've been sailing through the last number of chapters. And I will confess that I had similar feelings of ease and comfort, having made it through finally some of the issues that we've been through. But not at all, all Scripture is God-breathed and useful. And these debatable issues keep coming up. John MacArthur, one preacher that I respect and have listened to, he talked about how, early in... When he first came to Christ, he was out in the Southern California scene, and they did a lot of beach outreaches and did a lot of things like that, and they had bonfires and that. It was part of that Jesus movement that happened out there. But one thing they were adamant about was tobacco, the abuse of tobacco, and that it was just absolutely defiling to the body. But then, he, his first ministry preaching was in a tobacco-growing area in the South, in the Bible Belt. And those people were adamant against mixed bathing, that you would never, ever have young men and women together at a pool party, or something like that. And so, there were these issues, but they had different convictions, it seems, on tobacco use. Charles Spurgeon, speaking of tobacco use, was fond of a cigar from time to time. And he actually preached a sermon at Metropolitan Tabernacle on the danger of little sins as little foxes that ruin the vineyard. Well, there was a well-known American preacher that was there, kind of a guest of honor, Dr. George Pentecost, that was his name, and he was invited to speak a few words to the congregation. And he got up and launched in vigorously on the dangers of tobacco smoking, which Spurgeon hadn't brought up at all in his sermon on little sins that ruin the vineyard. So he goes on and he was thankful, Dr. Pentecost was thankful that God had delivered him from such a wretched and vile habit. Well, it was Spurgeon's home church and he got the final word, as he will do. And he got up and he said, "I just need to say that I just don't believe that smoking tobacco is a sin, and frankly, before I go to bed this very night, I'm going to enjoy a cigar to the glory of God." And that became a slogan tied to him, "Enjoying a cigar to the glory of God." Someone once asked him, "How much do you know if you're smoking too much?" He said, "If you ever see me ever smoking more than one cigar at exactly the same time, you'll know that I've crossed the line." Now, of course, in Spurgeon's day, the doctors, the physicians, didn't have the same sense of understanding of what tobacco does to the body that we do today, so things have become a little bit clearer. But there are still debatable issues, and we need some rules of the road in a local church. We need to know how we navigate so we don't drive each other crazy, and so we can come to holiness and unity on these things. II. Corinthian Context: Meat Sacrificed to Idols So, the context here, as I've mentioned, is meat sacrificed to idols. Look at chapter 8 verse 1, "Now about food sacrificed to idols." So, Paul is in a section of the Epistle in which he is bringing up issues that they have raised with him in their letters to him. So, he's addressing their issues, they'd asked him. And as I said, for three chapters, 1 Corinthians 8, 9 and 10, all three of those are under the auspices of answering this question, this issue of meat sacrificed to idols. And let me give you the principle I'm going to give you again and again over the next number of times that we look at 1 Corinthians, God willing, and that is, you have freedoms, you have privileges, you have rights, fine. But love limits liberty. Love limits liberty, the exercise of your freedom. So we're going to see this theme again and again, but just let's lodge it in our minds. Love limits your freedoms, the exercise of your freedoms. Meat and the Pagan Religions Alright, so let's look at the Corinthian context, and try to understand what they were going through. The context there was pagan religion, the background of paganism, of pagan religion there in Corinth. The Greeks, like the Romans, were polytheistic. They believed in many gods and goddesses, and these gods and goddesses had different areas of jurisdiction, kind of like a massive government agency, where you have the Bureau of this, and Bureau of that, etcetera. So these gods and goddesses would run different parts of everyday life. And so there would be a god of love, a god of war, a god of the harvest, a god of family life, of relationships, of everything, all kinds of things. Cities even had patron gods and goddesses. Like Athens, the city of Athens, had Athena, the goddess of wisdom as their patron deity. She would protect the city, so they believed. They worshiped these gods and goddesses at different shrines and temples. And when they did that, they frequently used animal sacrifice, just like the Jews did, animal sacrifice. And the meat from the sacrifice would be divided into three portions. One portion would be burned up as an offering to the deity. A second portion would be taken by the priest pretty much as his fee. Now, he wouldn't need all the meats that he would receive in a day, so he had a cottage industry of bringing the meat sacrificed to idols to the marketplace where it would be sold after it had been an offer to a god or goddess. And he would receive some of his income from that meat. And the third portion would be taken home by the worshiper himself to eat with his family. Keep in mind, there was no refrigeration back then. And so this is how the people would eat meat. And so this would set up the issue. All of this meat had been offered to a god or goddess by the time that it was going to be eaten. Now beyond their polytheism, the Greeks also believed in many demons, evil spirits, who could light on meat like flies, spiritually. And the only way the meat could be cleansed was if it was offered, properly offered, to a god or goddess. Now their paganism, as I've said, extended to every area of life. So there would be continual requirements for offerings. And people lived in perpetual fear of offending one god or goddess or another. So it was just a regular part of life with these offerings to the gods. The Gospel Came to Corinth Now, the Gospel came to Corinth through the ministry of the apostle Paul, and a number of individuals were rescued out of satanic darkness into the beautiful light of the Gospel. So the Corinthian Christians had been recently rescued from this pagan lifestyle, this wicked pagan lifestyle, and they had fresh memories of their habits at the temple. And this included as I've mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6, temple prostitution. So not only would they be eating meat, but there would also be sexual immorality connected with their worship of the gods and goddesses. And so this wicked, this dark corrupt lifestyle was a thing of their recent past. They had just been converted out of all of that. Not only that, the paganism was woven into every aspect of their social life horizontally with people that lived in their city. So if they were going to befriend other people, Christians, I mean, befriending non-Christians and they would... The non-Christians, the pagans, would have them over for dinner almost certainly they would serve them meat that had been sacrificed to idols. And so the question the Corinthians are asking is, "What do we do about all this? How can we understand that?" At social times like that you could well imagine if the Christians were to abstain entirely or bring their own dinner to someone else's house, how offensive that would be. And so, it was just difficult to know how to live. Now beyond this and very relevant to the text we're looking at today, some more mature, more advanced Corinthian Christians, more doctrinally advanced, had come to a solid orthodox understanding of idolatry and all of this whole system, and had just kind of graduated beyond being concerned about this. And they were flaunting their freedoms. They like meat, they eat meat, which didn't bother them, and they did not understand what effect they as the more advanced or the more mature, the mentors, the leaders in the church were having on the younger Christians. So Paul has to write this section and address this. III. “We All Possess Knowledge” Now he begins in verse 1, look at it with me. He says: "Now about food sacrificed to idols, we know that we all possess knowledge." So he's speaking to the knowledgeable Christians, the more doctrinally mature Christians. I'm not just going to call them mature because there's a deficiency in their sanctification, but he's addressing the more knowledgeable Christians. He said, "We know that we all possess knowledge." They have the right theology, but they're living it out in the wrong way. Well, what knowledge did they have? Look at verses 4-6: "So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." So what knowledge did they have? Well, first of all, we know that idols don't really exist spiritually. There's no actual spiritual reality connected with the idol itself. Verse 4, "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one." So these Corinthian Christians have fully accepted Paul's doctrine that there is one and only one God, and that the idols that have been made by craftsmen are just physical things, there's nothing there. The gods and goddesses aren't in the idol, there's nothing to them, they're just chunks of matter. The Jews have known this, or should have known it at least for centuries. In Psalm 115:4-8, it says, "Their idols are silver and gold made by the hands of men. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see, they have ears, but cannot hear. Noses, but they cannot smell, they have hands but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk. Nor can they utter sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them and so will all who trust in them." Idols Don’t Really Exist Spiritually So this is the first point we could say that Paul says, "We know, we know this about idols." And the more mature Christians have their theology right, so they're knowledgeable about this. And these more mature, so to speak, Christians can walk through the marketplace or walk through the temple grounds even and look around and say, "This whole thing is emptiness. There's nothing here, the idols are nothing." They knew that. And they could just walk through as though they had a bubble of protection around them, because they knew there's nothing to it. There is One God and Only One God Secondly, we know that there is one God and there is only one God. So not only are the idols nothing, we know this, there is one God and there is only one God, that's more important than the physical idols. Far more important. There is a God who exists, who made heaven and earth, this one God wants to have a relationship with us. He loves us, He created us and wants to have a relationship with us. He yearns after us and He is a Holy God, this God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all, this one God that exists. And this one God, the Scripture reveals, is a jealous God, He will not allow us to worship other gods, and goddesses. He's forbidden all idolatry. He is spirit. You cannot make any representation of this one God. So all material representations of this one true God are false and misleading. It says in Deuteronomy 5:8-9, "The Lord God said to His people 'You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything, in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or the waters below, you shall not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.'" The Many Gods of the Gentiles are So-Called Gods... Not Real At All Thirdly, we know, what do we know Paul? Well, we know therefore that the many gods and goddesses of the Gentiles are just so-called gods, they're just gods and so-called lords in the heavenly realms. They're in name only, they don't really exist. Look at verse 5 and 6, "For even if there are so-called gods," right there in the Greek text, they're named gods. You could put like quotation marks around it, "whether in Heaven or on Earth, as indeed there are many so-called gods and many so-called lords, yet for us there is but one God." So it's not a syncretism thing where we're taking the God of the Jews, and adding Him to the pantheon of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. None of them exist actually, none of them. So the various names of the gods and goddesses that these Greeks were very familiar with such as Zeus, Hera and Hermes, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, Aries and all the rest, they don't exist, and all of the stories attached to their doings are just myths, they're just made up, they're fiction. So these gods and goddesses don't really exist. Now, it's important to hold in mind, we're not going to develop it today, but I want you to hold this in mind. Paul does assert that there is a demonic presence behind all of this. We need to keep that in mind. There actually is a real spiritual presence behind the false religions of the world. In chapter 10, verse 20, he said, "The sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons." So demons are god and goddess impersonators and have, from time to time, been permitted by the true God to do supernatural things to mislead people into false religions. I think that's true, and it's going to be even worse at the end of the world with the antichrist. We'll get to that in another time, we've already talked about it in the past. The Physical World in Which We Live Was Created by God... Including the Food We Eat Fourthly, we know that the physical world that we live in was created by God, including the food that we eat, was created good by God. Look at Verse 6, "For us there is but one God, the Father from whom all things came and for whom we live, and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live." So this is the theology, Paul's taking the opportunity to teach true theology. There is one God, the Father, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the maker of all things visible and invisible, and from Him we derive our existence. As he said to the Athenians, "In Him, we live and move and have our being." And for Him, all things exist, we exist for His pleasure and for His glory. And He made all physical things, in Genesis 1 He made everything physical and called it good, very good. And for us, there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made all things, and through whom we live. So in a marvelous, mysterious inter-trinitarian partnership, God the Creator created all things for Himself, and He did that through Jesus, that Jesus is the Word through whom all things were made. And without Him, nothing was made that has been made. And it is in Jesus, who is God's final Word to the human race, it says that God the Father has spoken to us by His Son through whom He made the universe. So, Jesus is the Word of God by which God the Creator made all things Meat is Also Created by God Now, this includes the meat, so the meat is just meat, that's all it is, it's just meat. And what that means is the meat cannot catch a spiritual virus. Now, it can catch other types of things, it's a different matter. But in terms of the actual meat you're not going to have any spiritual problem eating meat, meat is just meat, it's all it is. Now, we all know this, Jesus declared all foods clean, while He was still alive. So what that meant is for the Jews, all of those dietary regulations have been fulfilled in Christ. They've been obsolete. So Jewish Christians can eat pork, they can eat anything that they want, anything that they desire. And so all foods have been declared clean. You remember how Peter was getting ready to go preach the Gospel to the gentile Cornelius, and God sent him a vision of a sheet, let down from heaven, with all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles, and birds of the air, all kinds, and a voice came from heaven saying, "Get up Peter, kill and eat." And Peter as he always tended to do said, "Surely not, Lord." Bad idea, don't say, "Never Lord" Alright? . When the Lord tells you to do something, just do it. But that was Peter, he did it four times, Never Lord, Never Lord, that's just him. Even after Pentecost, he's still doing that, "Surely not Lord, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." And the voice spoke from heaven a second time. "Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean." So, all foods are clean, so meat's just meat and all foods are clean. IV. Loveless Knowledge Puffs Up Alright, so that's the knowledge that Paul says we all have. That's the orthodox doctrine. But now he's going to talk about knowledge. Look again at verse 1. "Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies or love builds up." It's not enough to just know orthodox doctrine, you have to go beyond that, you have to unite your doctrine with love, you have to unite your doctrine with obedience. Jesus said, "You know these things, you'll be blessed if you do them." You can't like the Book of James be somebody who hears the word and doesn't obey. So he's talking about knowledge. Now, you need to understand, Paul's not against knowledge at all. Everywhere he went, home base for his ministry was pouring out biblical knowledge, scriptural knowledge. He taught everyone the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, that's what he did, he wrote the Book of Romans, think about that. He was not against doctrine or knowledge, he was all in favor. All he would say is that knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. It's not enough, you have to go beyond it. Knowledge must be supplemented by love. If all you have is knowledge, you don't move out into loving your neighbor as yourself, then it's a dead end and you just acquired all of that knowledge to puff yourself up, to make yourself arrogant, to feel superior to other people, and knowledge can do that. Paul later in this same epistle will somewhat rebuke the Corinthians concerning this matter of love, of knowledge without love. 1 Corinthians 13:2, "If I have the gift of prophecy, and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, but if I have not love, I am nothing." He's very clear about that. So these Corinthians were flaunting their freedoms based on their accurate doctrinal knowledge and they were forgetting the effect that it was having on others, weaker Christians who are not ready to handle those freedoms. The Corinthian’s Knowledge Was Woefully Inadequate Now, look at verse two, their knowledge actually was woefully inadequate. "The man who thinks he knows something, does not yet know as he ought to know." That's quite a statement, isn't it? If you think you know something, you don't know anything. So that's amazing. Honestly, at one sense it really should be true. The more you know, the more you know that you don't know. Does that make sense? Maybe I should say it again slower. No, don't do that, that will be worse. The more you know, the more you know that you don't know, what do I mean by that? I'm saying it's an ignorant person who thinks that he or she has a subject mastered. I remember years ago, we homeschooled our kids, and years ago, one of our kids, won't say his name... But anyway, one of our kids years and years ago, finished his first unit of Math and said to me, as I came home from work, "Daddy, I know everything there is to know about Math." Well, having gone to MIT, an engineer and all that, I knew that he didn't. And I knew that he had a long journey, and that Math is pretty much, as far as I know, an infinite railroad track that everybody gets off at some point. But I didn't want to crush him, I said, "Oh, that's wonderful, good for you." And that's what you do as a dad. I remember when I was a student at MIT, one of my jobs was inspecting fire extinguishers and I was brought down into the basement of the Humanities library, just one of eight major libraries there at MIT. I think between Harvard and MIT they might have 90% of the Library of Congress there in terms of volumes. But they didn't have the space for everything, so they had a discard stack down there in the basement. And there were more books discarded from the Humanities library than I even knew possibly could exist. And I'm walking through there, and I saw some book and just being a curious sort, I pulled it off the shelf, and it was in the Humanities library, so it was some kind of humanities study of a subject I knew, I didn't even know existed. And it was 500 pages long and someone therefore was an expert at something I knew nothing about. And not only that, this expert was now obsolete, there was a better expert upstairs, and I realized that as far as my eyes could see down in that subterranean basement, there are books just like that. So, education is basically, you're moving from unknowing ignorance, to knowing ignorance. The more you go on, the more you find out what you don't know. But actually, let's get more specific than about just general knowledge. Let's talk about knowledge of God. If you're impressed with your own knowledge of theology, you don't really know God very well. You don't know God very well. And as a matter of fact, God can, if He were gracious to you, move out and humble you. You remember the end of the book of Job? Do you remember when God begins speaking to Job after all of that wisdom, that Job's been pouring out? Job's a very wise man. Remember how God begins, starts in with Job, speaking to him out of the whirlwind? "Who is this that darkens wisdom by speaking words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man, strengthen yourself and I will speak to you. Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation?" And He goes on like that for chapters. So God, with His infinite knowledge, His omniscience, has the ability to humble us. The better we know God, we understand the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And knowledge of the Holy, the Holy One, is understanding. So our knowledge of God really ought to humble us. Remember how Job answered Him? He said to God at the end, he said, "You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel by speaking words without knowledge?' Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things that were too wonderful for me. You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak, I will question you, and you shall answer me'. My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you, and therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." That's what really knowing God will lead you to, to being humble. But apart from that, your education in Theology, your education in any subject will make you arrogant, it will puff you up. What's really more important than how much, whether you know God or how much you know God, is the question, will God know you on Judgment Day? That's the real question, isn't it? You know, in Matthew 7, Jesus said, "Many will say to Me on Judgment Day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.'" Now He knew them very well, He knew all about them, but He didn't know them. And so Paul says, "The man who loves God is known by God." So let me just stop and say, is that true of you as you listen to my sermon, do you know that Christ knows you? Have you trusted in Christ as your Lord and Savior? Have you come to Christ as Andrew did, and as Darian did? Have you come to Christ and repented of your sins, and asked Him to be your Savior? Have you found forgiveness of sins? That's the knowledge, that Christ will own you as His own because you have come to Him through faith, and trusted in Him. That's what's more important. Now for us who have made that commitment, we have to go beyond just mere doctrinal knowledge. Our church, I think, is a very knowledgeable church doctrinally, and I fear that there might be some of you that need to hear, "Knowledge puffs up but love builds up." I think you need to hear it, I know I need to hear it. It's not enough to just be sharp doctrinally, have all the right answers. The question is, are we loving horizontally to people around us in our lives? Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies or builds up. Now, these Christians had been flaunting their freedoms. And they were forgetting the effect that it was having on other people. The new converts had overpowering memories of their recent lives as pagans. They remembered all the times worshipping the gods and goddesses, feeding on the meat, even indulging in sexual immorality, these were fresh bitter memories for them. And only recently had their consciences been cleansed through faith in Christ. They thought they could never feel like this, clean, pure, but now as they're getting involved in church life, there's some people further along than them, that are leaders in the church that are just doing whatever they want with this meat issue. And they're going, they're walking right into the marketplace and eating whatever, going even into the temple, it didn't matter to them. And they were flaunting their freedoms. And so Paul says, in verse 7, "Not everyone possesses this knowledge," not everyone really understands it like they need to know. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food, they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol. And since their conscience is weak, it is defiled, they cannot eat that food with a clear conscience. And yet they eat anyway. And Paul says, your brother, for whom Christ died, is devastated by your knowledge. So in the upcoming weeks, beginning next week, we're going to develop more of this concept. But the basic idea here is, do not flaunt your freedoms, be mindful of who's watching, who's around when it comes to the exercise of your Christian freedoms. V. Applications Let's talk about some applications. I mentioned just a moment ago how grateful I am that our church is so characterized by strong biblical knowledge, for the most part. I think it would be good for us to be humbled about that, for us to realize that if we think we know anything, we don't really know as we ought to know. Our knowledge should make us humble. I'm not saying don't pursue knowledge. The answer isn't read less Bible, read less theology, that's not the answer. The question is, are we combining our right doctrinal knowledge with obedience? Are we doing the things He's told us to do, and are we combining it with love for others? Are we building up the edifice of the body of Christ? Some Basic Rules of the Road: Questions to Ask Yourself About Any Habit (from John MacArthur) Now, in terms of these debatable issues, I was listening to a sermon by John MacArthur, and he does a phenomenal job on all of these questions. And I want to just borrow from him, some practical advice that I found helpful and I'll just get out of the way and let him teach us. On basic rules of the road, questions to ask yourself about any habit in which you're indulging. First of all, the question of excess, all of these begin with the letter E. Excess, is this habit hurting my walk with Christ? Am I addicted, am I doing it to excess, or is it baggage that God wants me to cut out of my life? Is it a weight that the author to Hebrews would call on me to lay aside, so I can run the race with endurance? Is this an excess in my life, this freedom? Secondly, Expedience. Is this thing that I'm doing actually helpful for building up the body of Christ? Is it useful, is it beneficial, is it helpful? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:23, "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient," or beneficial... Expedient. Thirdly, emulation. In doing this, am I imitating what I see in Christ? It's somewhat like the question, "What would Jesus do?" Can I see Jesus doing this habit pattern that I'm indulging in? 1 John 2:6, it says, "Whoever claims to live in Him [Christ] must walk as Jesus did." So, emulation, in doing this, that I'm doing, am I emulating Jesus? Fourthly, evangelism. Will this habit, this practice in my life, enhance my witness to onlooking non-Christians? Will this habit actually help my testimony or will it hinder it? Will this help me lead people to Christ or will it actually hinder me? Colossians 4:5 says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders, making the most of every opportunity." Outsiders are watching, would you feel comfortable, outsiders watching you, as you do this action or this habit? Fifth, Edification. Will this action or habit build up other Christians who might see me do it? Will they be made stronger by imitating me, watching me? 1 Corinthians 10:23, "All things are lawful, but not all things edify." Six, exaltation. Does this action glorify God? Can I actually offer this activity up in thankfulness to God, with a clear conscience? 1 Corinthians 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God." And then finally, example. Would I feel comfortable if my children or a new disciple, a convert that I'm having the privilege to disciple, emulated or imitated me? Am I setting a good example here? Or would I want to say to some degree, "Do as I say, not as I do"? So I think those are seven very helpful principles. Let's close in prayer.

This week on Theology on the Go, our host, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. William VanDoodewaard. Dr. VanDoodewaard is Professor of Church History at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He has held appointments as Visiting Research Fellow in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast and Visiting Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary for his ongoing work in the history of biblical interpretation. Prior to coming to PRTS, Dr. VanDoodewaard taught at Patrick Henry Col­lege, near Washington, D.C., and at Huntington University in Indiana. He has written for Books & Culture, The Journal of British Studies, Themelios, Puritan Reformed Journal, Westminster Theological Journal, and online at The Gospel Coalition and Reformation21. He is also a contributor to a number of books, and the author of two: The Quest for the Historical Adam and The Marrow Controversy and Seceder Tradition. Dr. VanDoodewaard is an ordained minister who has served as a church planter; he worships with his family at Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Today Dr. Master is going to talk with Dr. Vandoodewaard about the Marrow Controversy.  This controversy was not only important to Scottish Presbyterians in the 18th century but it has lasting relevance in the church to this day.  So, grab that cup of coffee and join us at the table! Just for listening, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals would like to give you a free resource. If you would like to win a copy of The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters by Sinclair B. Ferguson go to ReformedResources.org!      

(Note - Audio quality improves after 2 minutes)  An inspiring call to humility in Christian service and renewed compassion for those without Christ. This timeless classic by Horatius Bonar, Scottish Presbyterian, offers spiritual, heart-searching counsel to all believers, especially ministers of the gospel. Though written over a century ago, these words are as timely and convicting today as when first delivered. They represent a gripping challenge to put aside all that interferes with the ministry of the gospel to labor urgently and "be spent" for Christ. Drawing from Owen, Baxter, McCheyne, Edwards, and others, Bonar summons us to faith, zeal, and love for lost souls. He warns of "the tragedy of a barren ministry" and gives special attention to the need for ministerial confession of sin, quoting extensively from an extraordinarily moving public confession by the ministers. Book to download - [Download not found] Bonar's message is timeless, exposing our modern weakness in evangelism We have been carnal and unspiritual. The tone of our life has been low and earthly. Associating too much and too intimately with the world, we have in a great measure become accustomed to its ways. Hence our spiritual tastes have been vitiated, our consciences blunted, and that sensitive tenderness of feeling has worn off and given place to an amount of callousness of which we once, in fresher days, believed ourselves incapable. We have been selfish. We have shrunk from toil, difficulty, and endurance. We have counted only our lives and our temporal ease and comfort dear unto us. We have sought to please ourselves. We have been worldly and covetous. We have not presented ourselves unto God as "living sacrifices," laying ourselves, our lives, our substance, our time, our strength, our faculties, and our all, upon His altar. We seem altogether to have lost sight of this self-sacrificing principle on which even as Christians, but much more as ministers, we are called upon to act. We have had little idea of anything like sacrifice at all. Up to the point where a sacrifice was demanded, we may have been willing to go, but there we stood; counting it unnecessary, perhaps calling it imprudent and unadvised, to proceed further. Yet ought not the life of every Christian, especially of every minister, to be a life of self-sacrifice and self-denial throughout, even as was the life of Him who "pleased not himself"? We have been slothful. We have been sparing of our toil. We have not endured hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We have not sought to gather up the fragments of our time, that not a moment might be thrown idly or unprofitably away. Precious hours and days have been wasted in sloth, in idle company, in pleasure, in idle or worthless reading, that might have been devoted to the closet, the study, the pulpit or the meeting! Indolence, self-indulgence, fickleness, flesh-pleasing, has eaten like a canker into our ministry, arresting the blessing and marring our success. We have manifested but little of the unwearied, self-denying love with which, as shepherds, we ought to have watched over the flocks committed to our care. We have fed ourselves, and not the flock. We have dealt deceitfully with God, whose servants we profess to be. We have been cold. Even when diligent, how little warmth and glow! The whole soul is not poured into the duty, and hence it wears too often the repulsive air of 'routine' and 'form'. We do not speak and act like men in earnest. Our words are feeble, even when sound and true; our looks are careless, even when our words are weighty; and our tones betray the apathy which both words and looks disguise. Love is lacking, deep love, and love strong as death, and love such as made Jeremiah weep in secret places. In preaching and visiting, in counseling and reproving, what formality, what coldness, how little tenderness and affection! We have been timid.

(Note - Audio quality improves after 2 minutes)  An inspiring call to humility in Christian service and renewed compassion for those without Christ. This timeless classic by Horatius Bonar, Scottish Presbyterian, offers spiritual, heart-searching counsel to all believers, especially ministers of the gospel. Though written over a century ago, these words are as timely and convicting today as when first delivered. They represent a gripping challenge to put aside all that interferes with the ministry of the gospel to labor urgently and "be spent" for Christ. Drawing from Owen, Baxter, McCheyne, Edwards, and others, Bonar summons us to faith, zeal, and love for lost souls. He warns of "the tragedy of a barren ministry" and gives special attention to the need for ministerial confession of sin, quoting extensively from an extraordinarily moving public confession by the ministers. Book to download - [Download not found] Bonar's message is timeless, exposing our modern weakness in evangelism We have been carnal and unspiritual. The tone of our life has been low and earthly. Associating too much and too intimately with the world, we have in a great measure become accustomed to its ways. Hence our spiritual tastes have been vitiated, our consciences blunted, and that sensitive tenderness of feeling has worn off and given place to an amount of callousness of which we once, in fresher days, believed ourselves incapable. We have been selfish. We have shrunk from toil, difficulty, and endurance. We have counted only our lives and our temporal ease and comfort dear unto us. We have sought to please ourselves. We have been worldly and covetous. We have not presented ourselves unto God as "living sacrifices," laying ourselves, our lives, our substance, our time, our strength, our faculties, and our all, upon His altar. We seem altogether to have lost sight of this self-sacrificing principle on which even as Christians, but much more as ministers, we are called upon to act. We have had little idea of anything like sacrifice at all. Up to the point where a sacrifice was demanded, we may have been willing to go, but there we stood; counting it unnecessary, perhaps calling it imprudent and unadvised, to proceed further. Yet ought not the life of every Christian, especially of every minister, to be a life of self-sacrifice and self-denial throughout, even as was the life of Him who "pleased not himself"? We have been slothful. We have been sparing of our toil. We have not endured hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. We have not sought to gather up the fragments of our time, that not a moment might be thrown idly or unprofitably away. Precious hours and days have been wasted in sloth, in idle company, in pleasure, in idle or worthless reading, that might have been devoted to the closet, the study, the pulpit or the meeting! Indolence, self-indulgence, fickleness, flesh-pleasing, has eaten like a canker into our ministry, arresting the blessing and marring our success. We have manifested but little of the unwearied, self-denying love with which, as shepherds, we ought to have watched over the flocks committed to our care. We have fed ourselves, and not the flock. We have dealt deceitfully with God, whose servants we profess to be. We have been cold. Even when diligent, how little warmth and glow! The whole soul is not poured into the duty, and hence it wears too often the repulsive air of 'routine' and 'form'. We do not speak and act like men in earnest. Our words are feeble, even when sound and true; our looks are careless, even when our words are weighty; and our tones betray the apathy which both words and looks disguise. Love is lacking, deep love, and love strong as death, and love such as made Jeremiah weep in secret places. In preaching and visiting, in counseling and reproving, what formality, what coldness, how little tenderness and affection! We have been timid.

Hugh: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou. My guest today has been a really wonderful friend. She knows how to write the right message. The first time I met Cheryl Snapp Conner, she interviewed me. The next thing I knew, there was this article about me online on Forbes. She understood what I do. When people asked me what I did, I just sent them to that article because in one hour, she got it. We have an important topic to talk about today. Instead of wasting time telling you today about Cheryl, she is sitting in her office today in Salt Lake City, SnappConner PR. Cheryl, welcome. Cheryl: Thank you. Happy to be here, Hugh. Hugh: I have all kinds of people on this interview series, and I am going to ask you the same question I asked them. What makes you qualified to talk about this topic? Tell me what the topic is. How are we going to tell people what this subject is? Cheryl: We are going to talk about communications, which is essentially everything. I am an expert in communications. It's how I make my career. What a fortunate thing. It was only my minor in college. Most people are not aware of that. I had a different major topic. It was the minor that saved my career bacon. I thank my entire career and every gray hair I have earned in the field of communications. It matters. It is what has been essential to my career, how I have supported my family, and how we have developed our business. It is the core of every business. I have been an advocate and proponent of what we call thought leadership communication. From the very core, it was not always known or understood. Even in the earliest days of technology, where I got my career start, it was vital. If you think about those early technology products, they did not have an audience. There were IT people who attempted to communicate to each other, but that was only so useful. In fact, the very reason I was hired by my first technology job—actually second, I was an editor for IBM—but Novell, the leader that premiered local area networking, had a concept in place called networking of PCs. People who needed it or could benefit from it didn't know what it was. I was specifically chosen as someone who could communicate well and didn't understand a thing about technology so I wouldn't have lost my ability to talk about these topics in a way that the general public could grasp and understand. Press releases, not that helpful. Feeds and feeds of something people don't care about or know about anyway is not going to help. We began by telling the stories of real businesses: law offices, medical practices, education organizations. What do you do? What was the problem? What were your choices? The kind of things you tell your best friend. As you make this decision, who did you have to convince? How much did it cost? If you did this over again, what would you do better next time? Those are meaningful discussions, and that helped. The same is true for every company since. Every entrepreneur has a topic. They have things they are experts in that others could be very pleased to know about. Hugh: I invite people to go to Forbes and search Cheryl Snapp Conner. You have a whole series in this entrepreneur channel. Those articles are just so helpful. You really helped me understand what communication is all about, especially with words. You talk about being outside of the technology so you could talk about it differently. Our audience is social entrepreneurs. They are running a business, and we are so intimate with everything that we don't know how to tell people about it. It seems silly, but we don't. It's the same thing with churches and synagogues and local charities. We do great stuff, but the world doesn't know about it. You are sitting in SnappConner PR. Is it snappconner.com? Cheryl: Yes, snappconner.com. But if you just Google my name, you will find it quite easily. Hugh: You have a team of highly skilled entrepreneurs. You are strategically placed in a very nice facility, a very good, warm, friendly workplace. I was quite impressed with you and your staff when I visited last week. There is also a gap between the professional agency that does it for you and how to raise the bar on creating our own. That is a passion for you: helping all those people who are out there and don't need a full-time agency as they aren't ready for one. Content University. Cheryl: The legions of entrepreneurs, particularly social entrepreneurs, shouldn't hire an agency, as they can't afford it yet. But they do need a bit of savvy. If they do what they can that is free or very low-cost, that is what they should do for as long as they possibly can. Get the help where it is truly needed. Don't over-spend. That applies to every entrepreneur. Too many will either ignore communications and PR entirely because they feel like they will do that when they become profitable, and then they never do. Or they make mistakes that are just costly or hard to recover from. Or they go whole hog and spend way too much money on the wrong things. That is a waste in another way. In part, it is a waste of the impact you could have had if you used the investment more frugally and with more savvy in the first place. Hugh: Well put. These leaders run a charity like a community foundation or a purpose-based charity; they run a church or a synagogue; or they have a small business. We are thinking outside the box. We are doing something innovative. People need to know either to buy from us or to be volunteers or donors for our organization. What is the single most important thing to learn about developing and publishing content to make sure that their vision is really clear? Cheryl: I am so glad you asked. There is one thing, but that one thing has two components. One is to really pan down your message and understand it yourself, to verbalize it in the best way possible before you begin. If you think about it, your messaging—and I have a template that I provide free of charge for anyone who'd like it—if you have the best words possible to express what you do and the value proposition for those who should participate, that is a big key. Do that first. If you are in the press two or three places, you have probably moved the needle right there so long as those places are credible and the message is consistent. If your message was random or, heaven forbid, conflicting in those places, you could have done a negative to yourself. Think about how frustrating it is for someone to be in my chair and ask, “Hugh Ballou, what do you do?” And if you paused and said, “If you have an hour, I could tell you. Anything less than that and I would be selling it short because it has so many facets,” you'd be absolutely right, and I'd be absolutely annoyed. I would not be able to walk away and write that article. I would say, “Figure it out. Come back and send me a note when you've got it figured out.” Having that message clear, which we have a template for, and—this is the golden rule of communications—think about your readers, your listeners first. So many people just can't get over this author's ego. It's my voice, it's my persona. I need to be true in my authentic voice. Nobody cares what you dreamed about on your motorcycle trip, even if it was inspiring, or your innermost thoughts about Martin Luther King. Yes, again, inspiring, but your readers care about what's urgent and high-priority to them. That could be that they want to make difference in an area you are passionate about. Okay, tell them how. Give them something to grasp on. Give them something they can do, something they can know, and a way for them to get on board that is not a hard sell but an invitation that allows them to go as far as they'd like. Another aspect of getting over that ego is thinking about where it should appear. Maybe your ego and your credibility would be well-served if you are an author for Forbes. That is great, but the people who say, “I need that. What's it going to take? Hook a fella up. Make that introduction because I need the credibility of the masthead next to my name. I need that marketing megaphone.” That is the very reason that publication would flee from your presence. They are not there to provide you with a marketing megaphone; they are there to serve their readers, just as you should be. So yes, maybe several articles, like the one you gave the interview to me for. That is an anchor. That is a great thing. For the bulk of your communication, put it somewhere where people can more readily engage with you on LinkedIn or Medium, where legally and appropriately you can put a full italicized paragraph (so you are not misleading people that it is a part of your article) that lets them know what they can do next to reach you, engage with you, and subscribe. Plus, people who get onto those platforms are ready for a dialogue. They didn't have to go register for a profile on a magazine where they are kind of semi-nervous or embarrassed and their comment is likely to be, “Nice article. Thank you.” They are ready to engage in a dialogue, and they are more than halfway down the path to getting on board and actually doing something with you. There is a gentleman I wrote about recently. You can find my article about him; his name is Benjamin P. Hardy. Hugh: I saw that one. Cheryl: One of the three most-read writers on Medium. 50,000 subscribers that he gained in a period of 16 months. He made some mistakes in that process, which he was open about. That is key, too, that he was authentic about it. What he did and how he did it, he gave me in this interview. That is gold information. Golden information. One of the things he said is while he has been published in Fortune, Business Insider, and Huffington Post, that is not where he got his subscribership. 99+% came from Medium. Isn't that interesting? Hugh: Fascinating. I heard a couple of things there. One being a Scottish Presbyterian, I heard the word “free.” Could you send me the link? Or send them to where they can download the document. Also, I heard “consistency.” That is something we as entrepreneurs are not very good about. If we want people to buy our product or service, or we want donors to stay donors and raise our donations, we need to be sending them consistent content about what is happening. I encourage leaders who are building organizations to have what I call “advocates,” people who are so important that you send them updates. They are successful people who are in a position to connect you to other successful people. They need information. We call that top-of-mind marketing. They remember you because you stayed in touch. Cheryl: I call that influencer marketing. Hugh: I love it. Cheryl: Those advocates have power; it's exponential. Everybody wins. They win if they share valued information, and if you are the conduit of that, everybody gains. Hugh: What we talked about in my interview in 2013, I reframe leadership as influence. People think that a conductor is a dictator. We cannot influence people with a little white stick, but you can influence them, too. Leadership is influence. Being able to articulate that in words is a great gift. This is so helpful, thank you. How do we measure results? We send stuff out, and it just goes out there. How do we know it's working? Cheryl: There are multiple metrics. In the final analysis, it's going to be the growth or success of the program. But to know where I am specifically getting my best return for the efforts I am making, there are multiple things you could consider. One would be increasing subscribership. In the case of Benjamin Hardy, he noted that even when he was getting 10,000 new subscribers a week, a lot of them were passive participants who were interested and compelled by what he had to say, but that was the extent of it. So he developed a process. First of all, he recognized that when he had a really viral, home-run article come out, several hundred thousand people would be hitting his website. He said that his website sucked, he was not prepared, and he had no way to gather in the traction. Now he has learned. Instead of sending people direct to his homepage, he sends people to a landing page that says, Here is how to subscribe. If you do, you can have my free e-book. His e-book is really good: Slipstream Time Hacking. He put a lot of thought and energy into that book. It is high value. Give something of high value when people subscribe so they are compelled. In his case, he sends people five email notes in sequence after they have subscribed, describing five of the principles he considers important for productivity. On the sixth mailing, he sends them an invitation to purchase his first product. It is an intro course that is $19. It teaches his seven productivity principles but does so in a high-level way. It's not like he is giving away a store of everything he could provide. It is high-level, but it is high-value. People get on board and have purchased something. Now he has an active, engaged audience that he knows. For example, he is a big proponent of the principles of Stephen R. Covey. Those were an influence for the most viral article he wrote. While he doesn't have a business or an agenda yet, he knows that he will, and he knows that it is a foregone conclusion that he will need to write, so he is honing those abilities. He is 28 years old for one thing. With that massive audience that he has amassed, those who have subscribed and those who have purchased something, whatever book he introduces next is ordained to be an instant best-seller.  Imagine what you could do with that level of influence. What kind of change could you enact with that power behind you? Hugh: When I work with people building out these enterprises, we redefine leadership as influence. Underneath that is building relationship. I will also tell them that underneath communication is building relationship. What you have just described is him building relationship with a tribe of people. Cheryl: He has. Hugh: We tend to want to rush and get to the sale rather than creating value for people. That is what I heard you say in that. He has created some unique value for people who are now poised on the edge of their seats for the next piece. Cheryl: Another influencer, Dean Graziosi, is in the area of real estate. But there is social entrepreneurship in some of his thinking and some of his offerings. His motto, which I love is, “Provide insane value.” Insane value, isn't that cool. Because he has been successful in doing that, he has attracted people. It's inevitable. When you get that much traction, there are going to be a few vocal people who disagree, who have a bad day and need a hug, or maybe who are just plain turkeys. He says never to ignore that vocal minority. Listen to them. While it is painful, what is the kernel of what they said that maybe you should learn from? Consider that. Consider the source, but also consider that maybe there was a kernel of a message in there that you really did need to hear. That is a little humbling, but important as well. Hugh: I like to go another step and have dialogue with them. Sometimes it's not the words that is the meaning, but something behind the words. Understanding building relationship and value in that communication. Cheryl: Sometimes they just want to be heard. They know that you heard them, that you cared, that you listened. Maybe that's enough. Often it is. Hugh: You don't have to debate the issue. Just say, “Thank you.” Getting over ourselves, as you said earlier, not everybody is going to hear us the same way, and that is so helpful. You mentioned earlier thought leadership. Digging deeper, what separates that? Do organizations have more than one thought leader? Cheryl: That term maybe is jargon to some, but the term “expert source” is another. “Influencer” is another that everybody understands. Thought leadership would mean that you are somebody with authority who is regarded, who has a following that respect and anticipate and listen to what you say. In fact, there is good reason for there to be multiple thought leaders in an organization. For one, suppose there is only one thought leader, who is the CEO, and the CEO leaves or makes a misstep. Think about that. If there are multiple employees, there is another name for that kind of phenomena that not everyone understands, but I think it is powerful: the term is “employee advocacy.” Yes, if there are people in your organization that not only are allowed, but also are invited or compelled to join with you, they gain authority and skills that make them promotable, and they are magnifying your message in a way you could not achieve on your own. I have told this story a few times, but I think it bears retelling. A Salt Lake organization had a successful IPO. A new Global Vice President of Communications comes in who is a powerful woman. She observes around her that her sales VPs were publishing on LinkedIn unbeknownst to anyone; they had gone rogue. Not because they were trying to be rebellious, but because it was working. They were gaining sales. Imagine how much better and safer that could be, now that they have SEC requirements to think about. But if they are given the ammunition to keep their brand and message consistent, it saves them the work of having to reinvent every wheel to decide what they are going to write about and share. One individual I so admire is John Bowen. He works with financial coaches. He conducts an extensive study every six months so the people he councils and teaches are not having to think, “You have taught me what to do. I need to think of a topic.” It's handed to them. It's golden. Now they are walking within the brand, but they are creating their own influence, those power relationships, in a very effective way. There is research currently that shows brand advertising. If you see me holding a Diet Coke, you would think I like Diet Coke, and you'd be right. That is not as effective as account selling, where you have a relationship with an individual or there is an environment of trust that is a head start of what you want to do next with that individual. Foster that, and foster as much of it as you can. It's also a reputation protection. If that message is told consistently by multiple people, and you will understand this, there is a polyphonic sound that occurs. There is an orchestra of outcome, not a lone voice. That is powerful. If somebody makes a mistake, we are human, and gets into a reputational mess, you are better protected that way because the whole organization and message did not come down on the back of one flawed individual. Hugh: You have a symphony or choir of high-performing individuals, which you nurture. That is why I have reinvented leadership because what we have been taught is not working, is not right. You have time constraints today, but I wanted to talk about Content University, your passion behind that, and content marketing. Cheryl: We developed a program. The editor I wrote for for four-and-a-half years at Forbes, when Forbes moved headquarters, he took the jump into entrepreneurship and joined my team. He developed with us a curriculum. It's not a lengthy curriculum; it's ten lessons. My thought was: How could we put Tom Post in a box and provide that kind of counseling to everyone because they can't afford it? We made it affordable. That program, which we have on a video book, online, and workshops with people, be it either in person or via Zoom as well, is $1,000. Thought leadership in a box. Every person or organization can manage that. It is honestly less than the price of one article you would engage with an agency to write for you, let alone get it published. Most people can complete that training in ten hours or less. We do provide some direct coaching with them to help make sure they succeed. At the end of that, not only have they completed an exam that gives them our certification—we are working with Hugh to see if we can get an Advanced Continuing Education credit for as many verticals as possible—and a completed publish-worthy article that we would help that individual publish if needed so that they know what to do with it. Even as valuable as a great piece of writing is what to do with it to advance your vision, your mission, your business. That is available and low-cost. The last thing is our Snappington Post newsletter. Any of our columns or website will tell you how to subscribe to that. It's free. That word you love. You just have to subscribe to it. It won't over-burden you. Every other week, we will send you an email of the articles we have created of value. We are going to start to add to that the best of Content University, the best writing that comes out of our constituent base. Hugh: That's great. We just don't know how to tell our story. That is priceless. Contentuniversity.com? Cheryl: Yes. Or Content U. Either way. Hugh: Cheryl, as we wrap up here, I want to invite you to give people a tip that is going to help them revise or rethink their whole communication strategy. But first, it's snappconner.com or contentuniversity.com or contentu.com. Cheryl's articles can also be found in SynerVision's Nonprofit Performance 360 Magazine and lots of other places that are important on the web. Google her name and you will see some amazing articles. Just a few that she has referred to are important to learn from, but there are many more. As we wrap up this great interview, I am inspired and want to go write something. As we wrap up this interview, what is a tip you like to leave people with? What do you like to tell people so they can go out and do something different? Give them a good tip. Cheryl: You can do it. One of my favorite writers I met on LinkedIn, Chris Spurvey, 14 months ago had never written a thing in his life. Nothing. He became a best-selling writer of a self-published book. In the first 30 days, which was in last December, he sold 10,000 copies of his book himself. It's Time to Sell by Chris Spurvey. Follow his story. I wish I could say he was a Content University graduate, but he intuitively discovered the principles and used them. He writes and shares freely how he did that. You can do it. If he can do it, you can do it. Hugh: Cheryl, you are wonderful and amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your tips and your time today. Cheryl: Thank you, Hugh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hugh: Hey, this is Hugh Ballou. My guest today is Gaydon Leavitt. His friends call him G. G, I hope I can call you that. I am your friend, right? Gaydon: Absolutely. Hugh: I met G recently, and I was just blown away by the level of his expertise in marketing and the level of the programs he has to offer those of us who are social entrepreneurs. We are working in a vacuum sometimes, and we think everybody ought to clamor to our door. But we really have not developed a marketing strategy to attract those people to the value that we have. G, welcome today. Gaydon: Thank you for having me. Hugh: We have a very dedicated group of social entrepreneurs who are changing the world. We don't have a corporate job by choice because we have a value proposition that is just awesome. But we are stuck. Tell us a little more about your background. Why is it that you are qualified to talk to us about marketing? I know, but give us a little snapshot for people that are listening today. Gaydon: Marketing is the only thing I have ever done. There's that. I worked at Ford doing the digital agency movement. This was in 2004-2006; this was before social media if you can imagine. At that time, I was really in charge of building an Internet department, getting CRM up and running. That was back before CRM was common. Everyone knows what a CRM is these days usually. Hugh: Tell us what that stands for. Gaydon: Customer Relationship Management software. Hugh: Is that Ford Motor Company? Gaydon: Yeah. This was at a regional group of dealerships. I was working for them and basically getting infrastructure in place. The punchline is that I did that for long enough—CRM, website, search engines, all that stuff. I was at the forefront of that. Once I got it set up for them, I knew that everyone else needed it. I started a digital agency. Back then, it wasn't called a digital agency, but now it is. These days, digital agencies are really commonplace. A lot of companies do websites, search engine optimization, and social media. I was at the forefront of all that. Most people who know my background know that the real driver for what I'm doing is always being on the bleeding edge of the market, the innovation side of the market. When it comes to marketing, I am always looking for where it's going and try to steal ahead. Hugh: Let me get this straight. You do things that work in real life. This is not just theory? Gaydon: Not at all. To give you an idea, I started my company January 1, 2007. It was actually January 2 because the city office wasn't open January 1. The point is, 2007 was not the greatest year to start a business, it turns out. 2008 rolled in, the recession took its toll, but I grew our company 235% four years in a row. We did 700 client engagements, well over a million dollars. We were having a ball. We were having a good time. What happens was through the middle of a recession and growth, I became one of the top people in my field in the West, as it were, certainly in our state, which is the marketing capital of the universe. In 2012, I woke up. After having done strategy and digital services for 700 customers, I had really curated a case study. The 700-business case study. I knew what was going on because I was knee-deep in strategic marketing relationships with these 700 businesses. What I did was I compiled the data as it were. I put together the things that I knew were a problem. I knew people were missing. I did what I called root-cause analysis. This goes back to theory of constraints and other things I studied. I did a root-cause analysis to figure out what are the real problems in the SBM or small entrepreneurship space. What are they doing wrong? Who are they hiring? Why are they hiring them? Why are the engagements working? Why are they not working? What happened in 2012 was I wrote a plan to solve those problems. Between then and now, I have stopped those digital services and really dedicated myself to solving the problems I have found. Hugh: I do a one-day leadership empowerment symposium in one city every month. I am coming to your neighborhood, but I haven't put it on the schedule yet. But I find there are common things: leader burnout. They are doing way too much. They don't even have time to think about marketing. Their board is underfunctioning, their staff is not functioning at the level it should, and they are not making the revenue that they need to achieve their vision. You have done this real-life work, which matches with what I'm seeing. We are talking to the leaders of these movements. These people have great ideas. What is the leadership decision? Why shouldn't someone just hire someone to do marketing and then forget about it? What do leaders need to know about marketing in order to make an intelligent decision about getting someone like you engaged for their enterprise? Gaydon: The first thing they need to know is that hiring a marketing agency and then turning your back—in other words, outsourcing and allocating your responsibility to grow your organization—doesn't work. Nine times out of ten, it just does not work. The phrase we like to use is: You cannot outsource what you have given yourself the responsibility to do. The first question you need to ask is: Who is wearing the CRO or the CMO hat? CRO is Chief Revenue Officer. CMO is Chief Marketing Officer. The point is, somebody has that hat on right this second. Who has that hat? What I am saying in no uncertain terms is if you give that hat to someone who does not work at your company or is dedicated to that function and you give it to an outsource provider… I am not saying you can't bring in a part-time CMO or CRO that serves that purpose that is technically a 1099. That's fine; that can work. To hand it to an agency and think they will run the growth of your company the way you want it to is fallacious at best. So who wears the CRO hat? If that person is defined, the next question is: Do they have the skills to play the role? I like to follow that up with a little bit of philosophy. At the end of the day, Peter Truckers' quote rings in my ears, and it should ring in everyone's ears who is listening to this call. “The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. All the rest are costs.” The spirit of what he is trying to say is the purpose of the enterprise is to gain a customer. Marketing's job is to gain a customer. I use customer loosely. We are talking customer, client, patient, donor, whatever it means. I'll use customer loosely. The point is that is the purpose of your enterprise. If you have a social enterprise and the purpose of it is not to make a profit, that's fine. This isn't capitalism necessarily for you. But you will never change the world with your social entrepreneurship if you can't make money. You can't accomplish your mission without the cash, and you can't get the cash without the marketing. We say marketing in academic terms. Marketing is the process by which we take what we have to the market. It's not advertising, it's not PR, and it's not sales. It's the holism of all of that. How are you going to get what you have to the audience you want to have it? The science of that is really the spirit of what I do. It's your responsibility unless you have given it to somebody else. In that case, we are talking to that person. But the conversation needs to have a place where the buck stops. Somebody is wearing the hat. That's where I start. Hugh: You have distinguished a number of different things. For 30 years, I have worked with charities doing my vision of strategic planning, which I call a solution map. Where do you want to be, and how are you going to get there? A traditional component is the same components for normal companies, but it is modified for charities. Part of it is realizing that nonprofit is a tax classification, not a philosophy. The other one is to build into this marketing strategy, which is not an area of my expertise. That is part of why we are talking today. I do have other collaborators in experts and sales and PR. People tend to confuse all of those things. You have distinguished what those are. You highlighted a really important leadership paradigm. It's the piece of delegation. People who are leaders think they know about delegation. Here, do this and they forget it. That's not delegation. There is a mentoring piece that goes with that. There is a championing piece. There is an accountability installation. There is a follow-up piece, which is way different than micro-managing. Whether you are hiring someone internally or externally, I would like to add that I agree with all of that. We still as leaders want to define the outcomes, and then we work with whomever it is for them to tell us what the metrics are and the tactics we are going to use to get there. We as a leader still nurture and approve that. If we are not engaged at any level as a leader, that is a problem. The trick is not to overfunction and to find someone gifted and to be engaged enough so that we can tweak it. Who knows more about our vision than us? Who understands the outcomes more than us? We as leaders are not clear on the outcomes, and we are not clear on how to delegate or manage a process. How do you feel about that? Gaydon: I totally agree. From the context of marketing, I see the problems that you are talking about but from the marketing angle. That's the lens that I view things from because that is my subject matter of expertise. Let me make this real tactical for you, Hugh. Once we define who that CRO/CMO is, and for those of you who are listening, you just felt a tremendous responsibility realizing that that hat is on your head. If that is the case, I want to relieve you because that is the first step: realizing that it is your responsibility. Once you know that, the good news is that the case study I was talking about, with 700 businesses, here is what we found. The CRO/CMO position should be a strategic one. Customer acquisition, donor acquisition, whatever you want to call it, marketing departments function best when there is a strategic person whose responsibility is strategy and high-level decision making. When there is someone who is not charge of strategy and is operational, they are in the weeds. The good news is if you are wearing the CMO hat today, you can do that responsibility with as little as 20-30 minutes a week. Hugh:  That's awesome. Gaydon: I have engineered a system for that. I am not saying it's easy. It took me a long time to build something. But the punchline is that you don't need to be overwhelmed by the responsibility. You just need to take it seriously. I have built what some people call the CMO's toolkit to enable that person who is playing the CMO role part-time as it were because they are wearing ten other hats to do that job well. The mistake people make in my world, and I don't know if it adapts itself to the other areas that you focus on, is they think of the CMO as the end-all be-all. They don't think of them as the strategic outlet. They think of them as strategy, execution, the kitchen sink. The CMO should not be in the weeds communicating with every single vendor, trying to figure out all the details, editing the site, writing all the copy. That is not what CMOs should be doing. The mistake people make is they think they need marketing, so they think they can hire a CMO. Maybe I can hire a marketing manager. That person inherently has skills. Marketing is too broad to give it to someone and expect them to do all of it. You have to get more intelligent about that hire, that function. Whether you are hiring or not is really irrelevant. The function of that role is really what we are talking about. Strategy versus implementation or management, those are two different things. When I am looking for a marketing manager, someone to work under a CMO, I look for an ops person, someone who is operationally savvy. This is someone who never lets anything fall through the cracks. They are super OCD. They never show up late. You know the type, right? They are not the person who you peg as a marketing person. They are more of an executive assistant who happens to understand the marketing strategy well enough to take it to execution. Those are the best marketing managers. The punchline is if you have one of those people, and it was your responsibility to be the CMO, all you have to do is a 30-minute-a-week meeting with a marketing manager who knows how to run marketing, who knows how to do all the tactics. I don't mean tactics from the perspective of a marketing manager as a copywriter or a programmer or a designer. Those are functions you need to hire out. Outsource those effectively to the right programmer, to the right price. Live with the consequence. Have the marketing manager do all of that. There is a system. It's almost like you were getting into human capital hierarchy. That is probably pretty similar to what you are talking about. Hugh: It is. I spent 40 years as a musical conductor, and the image on the podcast is me in my tails. It's Orchestrating Success. What you just defined is orchestrating success. I would hire the best players. I hired members of the Atlanta Symphony when I was in Atlanta who were very skilled. They were also union members. Downbeats when you start, and two hours later, you get paid for a two-hour gig, and they are either leaving or you are paying overtime. My job as a leader is to define the results and make the most out of them. You don't micro-manage them. You don't hire the best oboe player and tell him how to play the oboe. You do tell him what you want and you do shape the process. I bet most people haven't even thought about a CMO, that it hasn't even entered their consciousness. To have the best oboe player who knows how to play the oboe, well, they need the music. Maybe it's not music you wrote. Maybe there is a sketch or some improvisatory piece. It might be jazz. But we have a very rigid structure. We have a very clear outcome, and we know where we are going. It's my job as a leader. It's pool leadership; it's bringing the best out of all of these distinct players. Here is the barrier. “I can't afford that” is going to be the number one objection. How do you respond to a leader's comment of, “That sounds great, but I can't afford that”? Gaydon: It's interesting that you would say that because people call me a marketing scientist, and I get accused of being a mathematician because so much of what I do is the mathematics behind the customer acquisition system. In your world, it might be a client or a donor. It doesn't matter what the nomenclature is, but you need to know the mathematics of your business. If we think of nonprofits in a nonprofit sort of way, they don't really thrive. If we think of them as businesses, they can thrive. Business economics, venture capitalists call it unit economics, and for this purpose, I would call it acquisition economics. You need to know your acquisition economics. You need to know what a donor or a customer is worth to your business. When you know that number, you can reverse engineer yourself. To say you can't afford it is saying I got a blindfold on and don't know mathematics well enough to know what I can spend to acquire more donors and customers, etc. You have to take the blindfold off, expose yourself to the mathematics, and understand that this is a business and it is based on math and it's really simple. Dollars in, dollars out. In the marketing world, it's customers in, acquisition cost out. In other words, how much am I willing to pay to get a customer knowing how much they are going to pay me to be a customer? The multiple between what they are worth to you and what you are willing to pay to get them is where the magic is. That is where the private equity firms focus their energy. That is what venture capitalists want to know before they acquire a big company. In your world, it's probably not any different. You may just have not audited before. But you have an acquisition cost right now. You have a marketing budget right now. You have a CMO right now. You may just not have defined it that way. Hugh: The social entrepreneurs are the COE, the Chief of Everything. Part of that is their problem. They are trying to be experts in everything, and they are trying to pinch pennies. I am a recovering Scottish Presbyterian. I am just as guilty as anybody. We know how to bend a penny. But there is a practical side to this when we need to find really good people and get out of the way. The reason we don't have money to do that is because our marketing sucks. The client acquisition of the church or the synagogue would be members or community foundations. We want to have members. Those members are our local charities. They are members in mission. They are members in servant leaders in the community. I abolished the word “volunteer” when I worked with organizations like that because it is a different dumbing-down mindset. We are leaders in action. Reframing the thinking, even though we are a nonprofit—like I said, it is not a philosophy, it is a tax clarification—it is a tax-exempt charity, it is a social benefit organization. We don't treat our systems as important as our mission is. Our mission has got to make a huge difference. We dumb down on the money part. With charities, we want to save the whales; we don't care about money. Wait a minute. You are going to build a car, but you haven't learned to drive it, and you haven't put gas in it. How is it going to go anywhere? We need to be good stewards on all the resources, including the cash flow. We can't achieve our mission without the fuel in the car, which is your cash flow. Churches tend to backpedal on that. Sales is evangelism in the church. I told you I grew up as a Scottish Presbyterian. The old joke is when you cross a Presbyterian with a Jehovah's Witness, what you get is someone who knocks on the door with nothing to say. Most of us don't even knock on the door. I'm not cutting out any particular sect. But there is a pattern of knocking on the door and marketing your message, which is what they do in that denomination. But we don't do that very well. We are closed in on this enclave. We are not a cloister or a monastery. Rethinking how we do church and charities and enterprise as a small business owner is where I live. This series of recordings is about leadership paradigms. What you have just uncovered is a huge paradigm. It's taking it off my plate, finding someone competent, and working with them to let them do what we need to have done. Part of it is getting out of the way, and the other part of this is how to select a good marketing person. Part of my work is working with leaders selecting the right team, whether they are board members, staff, or people like you and me who provide goods and services for this organization. If somebody is selecting a marketing expert, even for a CMO or higher, what are the questions they should ask? Gaydon: The question I always ask: Who is in charge of growing the business? In a smaller organization, that is usually easy to answer, whomever that is. May I make two comments before I get to your question? Hugh: Absolutely. Gaydon: The question you have to ask yourself is this: Do you actually have a growth goal for the organization? Is that even the topic of conversation? Are we trying to grow membership at our church? That is an example. If that is the case, this is the next question you ask yourself: What would it mean if I were to hit that target? I don't know what that target is. That is on your plate. Did I hit that target last year? If I did, that's great. How much did you hope it would have grown last year? My guess is if I grew last year, it probably didn't grow as much as you wanted it to. If it didn't grow last year, are you willing to do anything to solve the problem? If you're not willing to do anything to solve that problem, there isn't really a lot of what we are talking about that it is going to be able to solve. So I'm going to say anecdotally that you want to grow membership 10%. For those of you who are listening carefully, you may want to think, “Man, what would it mean for me to grow membership by 10% this year? What would it mean for me to grow membership 10% this month?” I grow businesses up to 235% a year. I know what it means to grow the business over 10% per month. It's a big deal. You have to ask yourself whether that is actually a goal for you, a realistic target for you, and if you actually want to do it. But it does cost some money. The investment will be worth it. Hugh: Let me comment on your comment before you answer the question. May I? Gaydon: Please. Hugh: If somebody is going through my strategy process, somebody is going to go through my goals. We tend to run around and do a lot of stuff as entrepreneurs. We implement tactics in the absence of an overall strategy, which is what we do with marketing as well. We try this and try this and try this, and it didn't work. I say to people, “I tried to exercise one day last year and it didn't work, so I stopped.” There is this limited experiment that is also we are doing the tactic piece. What you are talking about is a very important leadership paradigm. Have a plan. Sorry, that is a commercial for me. If you do your strategy, you will know what your end goals are. That is a great question. I wanted to affirm that question. Let me stop interrupting you. Gaydon: I love it. I'll be honest. If you don't have a growth goal, or if growth is not at the top of your priority list, then they don't need me. They probably need you, but they don't need me. I'm the growth guy. I'm the profitable growth guy. If you do want growth, there is so much data that I have in doing this for 12 years in a case study environment as a marketing scientist figuring out all the reasons why it didn't work. I know why it didn't work, Hugh. That's the punchline. They could hand me that case study and say, “This is what I did. Tell me why it didn't work.” Within two minutes, I will know why it didn't work. A little golden nugget is if you have been in this space long enough, 90% of marketing activities that fail fail not because of the medium or the tactic of choice. What most people think is, “I tried radio. It didn't work. Radio must not work for me, my business, my industry, my geographics, whatever.” The reality is, the magic is never in the medium; it's always in the message. If you are writing something down, write that down: The magic is never in the medium; the magic is in the message. The message is an overly simplified way to say the magic is in your entire marketing infrastructure that leads to the message the person hears. I'm not saying go out and rewrite a message a million times. I'm saying the message is born of your audience itself. If you don't target the audience and segment it well enough, that is your first mistake that will come out in the message. Another thing is your drivers. What is your audience motivated by? What are their problems? What keeps them up at night staring at the ceiling wondering how they are going to solve this? What are their hot buttons? Knowing the audience, their desires, motivations, drivers, etc., really leaves you to say, “Okay, if I understand that audience, let's keep looking externally and figure out if there is anything about the industry, its competition, its solution alternatives, and other things at play that might affect my ability to speak to them on that level and get them to want to join me in my mission, my quest, and my social entrepreneurship in the purpose of my company.” There might be competitors at bay who can beat you on price and other things. You have to look at those. Once you define that audience, those industry drivers, those competitive drivers, you start to look internally. Who are we? How are we going to prove our viability to this particular audience? How are we going to position ourselves to that audience? Are we the Lexus in the market? Are we the Toyota in the market? Are we the Scion in the market? Are we the Smartcar in the market? Are we the Tesla in the market? Who are we? If it's a church and about membership, it's still relevant. Everybody is positioned. You are positioned relative to the competitors and the space, and you are positioned in relation to the things that differentiate you that you can message to. When you look at audience and drivers and competition and how that leads to positioning and differentiation, eventually, if you go through the whole process, that frankly I have codified, you get to the message. Nine times out of ten, the marketing activity fails because of that message. It's not because of the person who you hired to write the message is incompetent as a writer. It's usually because you are not competent as a strategist. Hugh: I love it. Of course I think you are brilliant. That's great. Say this again. It was profound. Gaydon: The reality is, the magic is in the message, not in the medium. The message is failing not because the writer who wrote it is incompetent, but because the strategist who was behind it is incompetent. Hugh: It would occur to me that if you got 700-something clients in the recession and you grew your business exponentially in the recession, that you understand marketing. You understand how this client acquisition thing works. Any of us in any of these institutions need critical mass to do what we are doing, and we need to continually grow it because we are growing our vision, which is usually way bigger than we can achieve. We are visionaries. Several people who are entrepreneurs say, “Do all of you suffer from insanity?” I say, “Heck no, we enjoy it.” It's a way of life. You are one of us, so I just put us in the same bucket. We are individuals; however, the very things that drive us are also the thorns in our side. Our assets are our liabilities. We don't want to participate in this corporate structure; however, we need the discipline of working within structure in order to let the full creativity of our vision materialize. We tend to poo-poo the discipline and system parts of it because we want the freedom of our entrepreneur. As a musician, I know this. Once we got the music, once we have rehearsed it, once we have done all the hard work, then we are free to be creative. There is a pathway to creating the strategy, which you so eloquently articulated. There is a discipline part of this. As you said earlier, there is work in this. There is no easy button. I tell people that there is no easy button in the work I do, but there is an easier button. When people try to do it themselves, it takes way longer and we make it way harder and they spend a whole lot of money, especially money they don't have, and they don't have time, so they have to go redo stuff. This is all great stuff. The question was: If somebody is going to hire a marketing specialist internally or externally to advise a plan to help them take their brand to the market, what are the questions they should ask? Gaydon: That's a hard question to answer because of the levels that we are talking about it on. In the context of you are the CMO/CRO, the person listening to this, the first question you need to ask… Hugh: The person listening is going to be the top leader in the organization, and they are going to be bringing in a marketing person. How do they qualify that person, whether it is internal, external, or using a service like yours? How do you know it's going to be the right fit for your organization? We are talking about smaller organizations here. Gaydon: I'm making the assumption, Hugh, that these are small enough organizations that we are talking about here that they are not going to hire that CMO. Correct me if I'm wrong. They are wearing the hat. Anecdotally, I have to help them wear that responsibility or hat well. I'm going to take the next five minutes to figure out how to do that better. They are not going to shell out the four, six, or eight thousand dollars a month to bring in the right marketing ninja, right? I hate to say ninja because samurais are probably more tough than ninjas, right? Hugh: I think the majority of people fit the category you've described. If you educate them on that piece, it would lead them to enough revenue to hire the person you've described. Gaydon: Exactly. The cadence of this usually looks like you are wearing the CMO hat because you haven't given it to anyone else yet. Once you grow the company to a certain point, you can, which is brilliant because you really want to be the leader, and you probably don't want to wear the CMO hat long-term. Under the guise of you are wearing the hat, and you are not about to give it to anyone else soon, the first question you need to ask yourself is: Do I know how to write a strategy? I codified a process by which you just use an iPad and peg-leg your way in. I will stop using pirate analogies. You really don't need to be a samurai. I don't mean this to be a commercial at all. If you ask yourself how do I write a marketing plan, and you don't have a step-by-step process, you will write a bad one. That is what this comes down to. It is just too complicated of a subject. Do you feel comfortable writing an enterprise-level strategy to grow a business if you don't have any training on the subject? That sounds ludicrous. That would be like me trying to train a dog. I know nothing about pets and animals. I chase mountain lions for fun in the back country in the hopes they will eat me. That is my preferred way to die; I want to get eaten by a mountain lion. The problem is, I can't find one, dang it. The point is: If you are wearing that hat, you have to know how to write a strategy. If you wrote a strategy that works, that is really engineered for profitable growth, that you are confident and clear on, now the next question you ask is really important. Now you want to say who can be in the weeds on this thing? Who can manage this strategy on a day-to-day perspective in terms of all the deliverables? You don't necessarily need to hire a full-time person to do that, but let's call that person the marketing manager. The first question I would ask is: Do you have the ability to hire a full-time or part-time marketing manager to do all the dirty work so that you can continue to be the leader, and you can put on your CMO hat for just 30 minutes a week? If you can do that, here is what I recommend you do in terms of asking questions around hiring a marketing manager. You basically put up a job description for an executive assistant. Sounds counter-intuitive. If you ask for a marketing person, here is what you are going to get. You are going to get a yellow personality that is a little bit ADD, super creative, will have a ton of ideas and no follow-through. That's what you want. Don't post a job anywhere that says “Hiring marketing…” People will hear that. What you want to do is post a job that says to the effect of, “Looking for an executive assistant,” and then say, “Skills need to include operational efficiencies, doing things on budget, doing things on time, not letting things fall through the cracks.” Then what you do is as you interview the executive assistants, you will find one or two that has a little bit of marketing experience. That is your golden goose. That person will say, “I'm really good at operational stuff, making sure nothing falls through the cracks. But actually I like marketing.” It's your perfect hire. If you don't want to do all that, we can talk later, and we can talk on another podcast where I can point them to part-time marketing managers who are certified marketing managers that you don't have to train or look for or hire. You can just turnkey, boom. A couple grand a month, and they are in your organization helping you out. Most of them work remotely. The point is you can outsource that function. You are really just hiring a 1099 person. That is the real possibility. The next level underneath this marketing manager who gets everything done is this specialist, the tactician, the copywriter, the designer, the programmer, the person who has that subject matter expertise that is so specific that you need to bring them in to do that specific job. A really common thing is someone to administer the CRM. Let's say we are using InfusionSoft or something like that. InfusionSoft is really complicated. You probably should not administer it yourself. Maybe your marketing manager will have those skills, but probably not. So it might make sense to find somebody who has very specific skills administering InfusionSoft that you can pay an hourly rate to whenever you need them. The same goes for your graphic designers, your logo people, your website people, your hosting people, your programming people, a data scientist, YouTube experts, LinkedIn experts, anything. What I am teaching you to do here is outsource effectively while insourcing effectively. What all your insourcing is is the responsibility you already have. It's that responsibility you haven't given anyone else yet. While not changing the scenario, you are changing the paradigm with which you look at it. But you can insource without adding a bunch of costs by just assuming the responsibility to write the strategy. You can definitely insource a marketing manager or hire a 1099. You can outsource effectively by finding specialists. What people do, Hugh, and I know you have seen this, is they get opportunistic. Think of a continuum. On one end is opportunist, and on the other end is strategist. The opposite of a strategist is an opportunist; the opposite of an opportunist is a strategist. The number one plague in small business is we get opportunistic. I know that resonates with you because you teach leadership. What an opportunist does outside of marketing is they say, “We need to grow. Let's go find someone to do that.” They hire an agency and turn over the car keys, the wallet, the house, and everything and say, “Run it for me.” It doesn't work. I can prove to you that it doesn't work. More than that, some of them will say, “I don't know if that's the right idea. We should hire a CMO.” Then they make the decision of thinking the CMO is some deity of marketing, and they can do the strategy, manage the execution, do the execution, do the reporting, report to themselves, and be accountable all at the same time. How opportunistic does that sound? Yet people do it all the time. I ask people, “Who is running point on marketing?” “Our CMO.” “What does he do?” “Everything.” “Wait, hold on, everything?” Then I interview the CMO, and the CMO says, “Gee, the reason why I don't dare tell this to the CEO, and the reason I can't do my job, is because I am writing copy, and I am doing design, and I am managing vendors, and I am looking for proposals, and I am managing our events, and I am writing the strategy, and I am editing the strategy, and I am doing the reports.” All you did by hiring that CMO is duplicating your problem of having too many hats on someone else. Hugh: Oh that is so spot-on. I talk to people every day that that fits. You have come back to a lot of the themes without even knowing that I teach. My whole paradigm is to reframe leadership as a pathway to profit. This series is converting a passion to profit. You have just tagged a lot of the major leadership decisions that lead organizations to generate recurrable income. Managing that becomes profit. Nonprofits need profit. It's not for profit; we don't distribute it individually. But we have to be in the black to achieve our vision and mission. I think we have given people a lot to chew on today. I think we can probably talk for hours on these topics. How do people find you and your company? Gaydon: I'm not terribly hard to find. My company is called Savavo. G Leavitt or Gaydon Leavitt. If they are really looking for something to take from here forward, I recommend we put up a freebie for your audience to go to marketingsequence.com/ballou. What I have there is a five-part video training course that essentially gives you the basics of how to start to formulate the strategy. If you go there, you will see the videos that will walk you through sequentially, and I think it will help your audience go on the right trajectory. Hugh: That's generous. Marketingsequence.com/ballou. G, you have demonstrated a much higher level of competency than other people I have spoken with. I think you hit a sore spot for 4-12 million companies that are stuck. I find that one very good leadership trait is making a decision to get out of your comfort zone and do something different with different results. Your marketing sucks. You have heard Jeff Magee that says, “SUC is halfway to success.” We don't get there because we suck. We don't get there because we are not getting out of our comfort zone and making intelligent leadership decisions that are going to lead us to that profit. That is a generous offer. As we pull this to a close, do you have a parting thought for the audience to think about? Gaydon: I'm glad you asked that because I think people tend to get hung up if they don't feel comfortable building a strategy or even spending a dollar to build a strategy. I think the best thing I could give them is the who we are platform. I'll illustrate this for you right now. This is a tool you can use to immediately improve your pitch, your messaging, and your ability to get a donor, a patient, or a customer immediately using a challenge you are already using. So I will give you mine in hopes you can model mine and create your own. I will give you the four or five steps that are part of this model. It goes something like this: I believe marketing is the reason businesses fail and the reason they succeed. I also believe it is the only way they will grow properly. At the rate at which a company or organization is growing is directly related to the marketing acumen, knowledge, or skills and the infrastructure that organization has. I also believe that marketing is a science, not an art, not a lottery, not a crapshoot. You are not at the casino. It's a process. If you know the process, you could have success with it. Do not think of it as a science. I believe it as a process. Because I believe all of these things, my mission and purpose as an organization, as an entrepreneur, as someone who is trying to provide value to the world, is to turn marketing into a science and into a predictable, followable, learnable, masterable process for people. We believe we are doing that. The benefit to that process is clarity, confidence, and ultimately return on investment. It creates ROI. It creates bigger companies, faster companies, and better companies. The question that I have for you is: How clear are you about how to turn your marketing into predictable, profitable process? Hugh: Gaydon Leavitt, very well-spoken. Thank you for sharing your intellectual property with my listeners today. Hope you have a great day. I look forward to the next conversation. Gaydon: Thank you so much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode's got a bit of holiday sparkle! Lisa Louise Cooke welcomes Genealogy Gems Book Club author and Victorian lifestyle expert Sarah Chrisman to the show to talk about Victorian holiday traditions, some of which may still live on in your own life. Following that conversation, Lisa shares a fun description of Victorian-era scrapbooking: how it's different than today's scrapbooking hobby but also how it reminds her of modern social media. More episode highlights: Three success stories from Genealogy Gems listeners: a Google search with great results, a brick-wall busting marriage record and yet another YouTube find for family history (people keep telling us about those!). Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard chimes in with what she likes so far about MyHeritage's new DNA testing service. An internationally-themed German research conference and a makeover for the Scotland's People website. NEWS: GERMAN-AMERICAN GENEALOGY PARTNERSHIP CONFERENCE First-ever German-American Genealogy Partnership Conference: Minneapolis, MN, July 28-30, 2017. 70 presentations over 3 full days on the theme,  “CONNECTIONS: International. Cultural. Personal” Topics will include major German-speaking regions; social networking opportunities each day for those with common interests in specific regions For the full scoop, at and click “2017 GAGP Conference”   by Jim Beidler. to purchase the book and use coupon code GENEALOGYGEMS15 to save an extra 15% through 12/31/ 16, which even works if the book is on sale. NEWS: SCOTLAND'S PEOPLE The newly-relaunched website has several exciting new features: Mobile-friendly web design and an enhanced search function; A  option for searching indexed records by name and an  for specific types of records; Free access to several records indexes; More than 150,000 baptism entries from Scottish Presbyterian churches (other than the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland) have been added and more are coming, as well as marriages and burials; More types of records held by National Records of Scotland are coming, including records of kirk sessions and other church courts; Explore the site for free, including handy for using Scottish records such as statutory records, church registers and census returns. MAILBOX: GOOGLE SEARCH SUCCESS STORY From Joan: “I used one of the handy hints from your presentation at the South Orange County California Genealogical Society's all day seminar in Mission Viejo, CA. I entered some of my common named ancestors, used the quotes, added a time frame and included some key words, like locations. Most of what I found were my own queries and posts. That shows it works!.... One thing I was amazed at was a multi-page article I found: ‘The Lincoln Kinsman,' written in 1938. It included a lot of information on the Bush family [which is another of her family lines]. The article even included what I think is my ancestor Hannah Bush Radley.”  (Click or on the image above to see a copy of “The Lincoln Kinsman” at Internet Archive.) Listen to a free 2-part series on cold-calling distant relatives or others as part of your genealogy research: “ podcast, episodes 14 and 15.” BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users: A handy cheat sheet with 14 tips from that series on cold-contacting distant relatives. It's updated with brand-new suggestions, including ways to find potential relatives' names during the research process. The and is only $2.99 for . MAILBOX: VONDA BLOGS A MARRIAGE RECORD DISCOVERY that inspired her discovery Vonda's blog post on her discovery: MAILBOX: YOUTUBE SUCCESS STORY Gay entered “Freeport Texas history” in YouTube and found historical newsreel footage of the opening ceremony of a local water treatment plant. She and the women in her family were seated on the front row. Here's a screenshot from that footage: maybe this is a stylish young Gay in sunglasses? (.) Lisa's book has an entire chapter on discovering family history gems such as these on YouTube. More tips and success stories on using YouTube to find your family history in moving pictures:   Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends . From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. By the end of 2016, RootsMagic expects to be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you'll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.     Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems. Learn more at .   INTERVIEW: VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS WITH SARAH CHRISMAN Sarah Chrisman lives her life every day as if it's the Victorian era. Her clothing, household, pastimes, chores and more all reflect the time period. Listen as Lisa and Sarah talk about the Victorian Christmas tree; gift-giving, crafts, decorating and things that might surprise us about holiday celebrations during that time. Books by Sarah Chrisman: , a memoir Sarah's everyday life. The Book Club interview in December will focus mainly on this book. ; ; : A Victorian Cycling Club Romance. This is from her series of light-hearted historical fiction set in an era she knows well! Sarah Chrisman joins me again later this month on to talk about what it's like to live every day like it's the late 1800s. Don't miss it! Not a Premium member? to learn more about the perks of membership!   Legacy Tree Genealogists provides expert genealogy research service that works with your research goals, budget and schedule. The Legacy Tree Discovery package offers 3.5 hours of preliminary analysis and research recommendations: a great choice if you've hit a brick wall in your research and could use some expert guidance. to learn more. GENEALOGY GEMS EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Go to and use coupon code SAVE100 with your purchase of research services.     is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. : it's free to get started.         GEM: VICTORIAN SCRAPBOOKING The Victorians coined the phrase “scrapbooking:” they literally pasted paper scraps into books. As an embellishment, those who could afford to bought “relief scraps,” such as the ones shown here. These were like the precursors of modern sticker sheets or die cuts, printed just for the scrapbooking hobby. You could buy colorful images of everything from flowers or children to animals, or angels or Father Christmas. These images were raised or embossed on the paper, which is why they called them reliefs. Relief scraps could be used as embellishments around other items on scrapbook pages, but sometimes they were the only decoration on a page, arranged in pretty patterns. This describes quote “a Sunday Scrap-book…as a source of almost unlimited pleasure and profit to children who can read and write.”   DNA WITH DIAHAN, Your DNA Guide I don't think there is any dispute that the four major online resources for genealogy include Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Find My Past, and My Heritage. Of those four, only Ancestry.com has attempted any real integration of DNA test results into traditional genealogy. That is, until recently. On May 19, 2016 that they will be adding a DNA matching service to their offering, and then on November 7th announced they would be conducting DNA tests themselves. Now, MyHeritage has enjoyed partnerships with 23andMe and Family Tree DNA for quite some time now, but those partnerships have been woefully underutilized and are little more than an affiliate service, where MyHeritage provides a discounted rate to test at those companies. There is no question that the launch of DNA Heritage fully into the genetic genealogy market is exciting news. In fact, it is something I have been pushing for – we absolutely need someone to challenge AncestryDNA. Competition is good.  In September they began to provide matching results for individuals who had uploaded their results. As of today, uploading your results is still free, so if you have been thinking about it, you may want to take advantage sooner rather than later. As expected, the matches are only as good as the depth of the database, and it is early in the game, so their database is small, but even now we can get an idea of what to expect from MyHeritage as they take their first steps into genetic genealogy. One of the most exciting elements of their November 7th announcement is their development of a Founder Population project where they have handpicked individuals to represent their reference population for calculating ethnicities. They plan to launch with 25 population groups, but will likely increase to 100 in a fairly short amount of time. This is a far more advanced ethnicity report than is currently offered anywhere else. After you have figured out how to download your raw data from your testing company  (see my instructions here: ), and then managed to add it to My Heritage (you have to add a family tree to MyHeritage to do this, see further instructions in their May press release), and waited the requisite time to process, you will receive a notice that you have new DNA matches. For a full review of the features and ins and outs of where to click and what to look at, please refer to the . As for my favorite features, I like how they list all the possible relationships that make sense between you and your match taking into account multiple factors like your age, gender, and your genetics instead of a simple, generic range like 2nd-4th cousins. The accompanying chart that visually shows you all possible relationships is also very helpful. You can access it by clicking on the little question mark icon next to the relationship suggestions. I like that these suggestions remind us that our genetic relationships have different genealogical interpretations. Meaning that genetically, a 2nd cousin once removed, a first cousin twice removed, and a second cousin, all fall within a similar genetic range and it is impossible to determine your exact relationship based on the genetics alone. I also like that they are providing all three genetic descriptors of your relationship: total amount of shared DNA, how many segments are shared, and the size of the longest piece of shared DNA. While this more of an intermediate to advanced piece of your results, it can be important as your relationship analysis becomes more involved. One unique claim made by MyHeritage in their press release about their matching feature addresses a main concern that genetic genealogists have: the lack of pedigree information provided by their matches. MyHeritage claims that 95% of their DNA samples have pedigrees attached. That is remarkable! However, from my own quick calculation of my matches, the number with pedigrees is more like 60%. They also indicated that they will soon be doing a bit of pedigree analysis for you by providing a list of shared surnames and locations between you and your match based on the pedigrees you have both submitted. This will certainly be a welcome addition. According to the November 9th Q and A they haven't decided yet if the ethnicity features will be available to those who only transfer, and they hint at many more features they have in the works that may only be offered to those who purchase their test. In short, the is currently functioning much like the top three genetic genealogy sites (Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23andMe) and like the free tool Gedmatch, offers a meeting place for those who have been tested at one company to meet those who have tested at another, with the added bonus of a promise of new features on the horizon. PROFILE AMERICA: A DICKENSENIAN TALE PRODUCTION CREDITS Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer Sunny Morton, Editor Amie Tennant, Content Contributor Vienna Thomas, Audio Editor Lacey Cooke, Additional Production Support

Hugh: Hey, this is Hugh Ballou. My guest today is Gaydon Leavitt. His friends call him G. G, I hope I can call you that. I am your friend, right? Gaydon: Absolutely. Hugh: I met G recently, and I was just blown away by the level of his expertise in marketing and the level of the programs he has to offer those of us who are social entrepreneurs. We are working in a vacuum sometimes, and we think everybody ought to clamor to our door. But we really have not developed a marketing strategy to attract those people to the value that we have. G, welcome today. Gaydon: Thank you for having me. Hugh: We have a very dedicated group of social entrepreneurs who are changing the world. We don’t have a corporate job by choice because we have a value proposition that is just awesome. But we are stuck. Tell us a little more about your background. Why is it that you are qualified to talk to us about marketing? I know, but give us a little snapshot for people that are listening today. Gaydon: Marketing is the only thing I have ever done. There’s that. I worked at Ford doing the digital agency movement. This was in 2004-2006; this was before social media if you can imagine. At that time, I was really in charge of building an Internet department, getting CRM up and running. That was back before CRM was common. Everyone knows what a CRM is these days usually. Hugh: Tell us what that stands for. Gaydon: Customer Relationship Management software. Hugh: Is that Ford Motor Company? Gaydon: Yeah. This was at a regional group of dealerships. I was working for them and basically getting infrastructure in place. The punchline is that I did that for long enough—CRM, website, search engines, all that stuff. I was at the forefront of that. Once I got it set up for them, I knew that everyone else needed it. I started a digital agency. Back then, it wasn’t called a digital agency, but now it is. These days, digital agencies are really commonplace. A lot of companies do websites, search engine optimization, and social media. I was at the forefront of all that. Most people who know my background know that the real driver for what I’m doing is always being on the bleeding edge of the market, the innovation side of the market. When it comes to marketing, I am always looking for where it’s going and try to steal ahead. Hugh: Let me get this straight. You do things that work in real life. This is not just theory? Gaydon: Not at all. To give you an idea, I started my company January 1, 2007. It was actually January 2 because the city office wasn’t open January 1. The point is, 2007 was not the greatest year to start a business, it turns out. 2008 rolled in, the recession took its toll, but I grew our company 235% four years in a row. We did 700 client engagements, well over a million dollars. We were having a ball. We were having a good time. What happens was through the middle of a recession and growth, I became one of the top people in my field in the West, as it were, certainly in our state, which is the marketing capital of the universe. In 2012, I woke up. After having done strategy and digital services for 700 customers, I had really curated a case study. The 700-business case study. I knew what was going on because I was knee-deep in strategic marketing relationships with these 700 businesses. What I did was I compiled the data as it were. I put together the things that I knew were a problem. I knew people were missing. I did what I called root-cause analysis. This goes back to theory of constraints and other things I studied. I did a root-cause analysis to figure out what are the real problems in the SBM or small entrepreneurship space. What are they doing wrong? Who are they hiring? Why are they hiring them? Why are the engagements working? Why are they not working? What happened in 2012 was I wrote a plan to solve those problems. Between then and now, I have stopped those digital services and really dedicated myself to solving the problems I have found. Hugh: I do a one-day leadership empowerment symposium in one city every month. I am coming to your neighborhood, but I haven’t put it on the schedule yet. But I find there are common things: leader burnout. They are doing way too much. They don’t even have time to think about marketing. Their board is underfunctioning, their staff is not functioning at the level it should, and they are not making the revenue that they need to achieve their vision. You have done this real-life work, which matches with what I’m seeing. We are talking to the leaders of these movements. These people have great ideas. What is the leadership decision? Why shouldn’t someone just hire someone to do marketing and then forget about it? What do leaders need to know about marketing in order to make an intelligent decision about getting someone like you engaged for their enterprise? Gaydon: The first thing they need to know is that hiring a marketing agency and then turning your back—in other words, outsourcing and allocating your responsibility to grow your organization—doesn’t work. Nine times out of ten, it just does not work. The phrase we like to use is: You cannot outsource what you have given yourself the responsibility to do. The first question you need to ask is: Who is wearing the CRO or the CMO hat? CRO is Chief Revenue Officer. CMO is Chief Marketing Officer. The point is, somebody has that hat on right this second. Who has that hat? What I am saying in no uncertain terms is if you give that hat to someone who does not work at your company or is dedicated to that function and you give it to an outsource provider… I am not saying you can’t bring in a part-time CMO or CRO that serves that purpose that is technically a 1099. That’s fine; that can work. To hand it to an agency and think they will run the growth of your company the way you want it to is fallacious at best. So who wears the CRO hat? If that person is defined, the next question is: Do they have the skills to play the role? I like to follow that up with a little bit of philosophy. At the end of the day, Peter Truckers’ quote rings in my ears, and it should ring in everyone’s ears who is listening to this call. “The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation. All the rest are costs.” The spirit of what he is trying to say is the purpose of the enterprise is to gain a customer. Marketing’s job is to gain a customer. I use customer loosely. We are talking customer, client, patient, donor, whatever it means. I’ll use customer loosely. The point is that is the purpose of your enterprise. If you have a social enterprise and the purpose of it is not to make a profit, that’s fine. This isn’t capitalism necessarily for you. But you will never change the world with your social entrepreneurship if you can’t make money. You can’t accomplish your mission without the cash, and you can’t get the cash without the marketing. We say marketing in academic terms. Marketing is the process by which we take what we have to the market. It’s not advertising, it’s not PR, and it’s not sales. It’s the holism of all of that. How are you going to get what you have to the audience you want to have it? The science of that is really the spirit of what I do. It’s your responsibility unless you have given it to somebody else. In that case, we are talking to that person. But the conversation needs to have a place where the buck stops. Somebody is wearing the hat. That’s where I start. Hugh: You have distinguished a number of different things. For 30 years, I have worked with charities doing my vision of strategic planning, which I call a solution map. Where do you want to be, and how are you going to get there? A traditional component is the same components for normal companies, but it is modified for charities. Part of it is realizing that nonprofit is a tax classification, not a philosophy. The other one is to build into this marketing strategy, which is not an area of my expertise. That is part of why we are talking today. I do have other collaborators in experts and sales and PR. People tend to confuse all of those things. You have distinguished what those are. You highlighted a really important leadership paradigm. It’s the piece of delegation. People who are leaders think they know about delegation. Here, do this and they forget it. That’s not delegation. There is a mentoring piece that goes with that. There is a championing piece. There is an accountability installation. There is a follow-up piece, which is way different than micro-managing. Whether you are hiring someone internally or externally, I would like to add that I agree with all of that. We still as leaders want to define the outcomes, and then we work with whomever it is for them to tell us what the metrics are and the tactics we are going to use to get there. We as a leader still nurture and approve that. If we are not engaged at any level as a leader, that is a problem. The trick is not to overfunction and to find someone gifted and to be engaged enough so that we can tweak it. Who knows more about our vision than us? Who understands the outcomes more than us? We as leaders are not clear on the outcomes, and we are not clear on how to delegate or manage a process. How do you feel about that? Gaydon: I totally agree. From the context of marketing, I see the problems that you are talking about but from the marketing angle. That’s the lens that I view things from because that is my subject matter of expertise. Let me make this real tactical for you, Hugh. Once we define who that CRO/CMO is, and for those of you who are listening, you just felt a tremendous responsibility realizing that that hat is on your head. If that is the case, I want to relieve you because that is the first step: realizing that it is your responsibility. Once you know that, the good news is that the case study I was talking about, with 700 businesses, here is what we found. The CRO/CMO position should be a strategic one. Customer acquisition, donor acquisition, whatever you want to call it, marketing departments function best when there is a strategic person whose responsibility is strategy and high-level decision making. When there is someone who is not charge of strategy and is operational, they are in the weeds. The good news is if you are wearing the CMO hat today, you can do that responsibility with as little as 20-30 minutes a week. Hugh: That’s awesome. Gaydon: I have engineered a system for that. I am not saying it’s easy. It took me a long time to build something. But the punchline is that you don’t need to be overwhelmed by the responsibility. You just need to take it seriously. I have built what some people call the CMO’s toolkit to enable that person who is playing the CMO role part-time as it were because they are wearing ten other hats to do that job well. The mistake people make in my world, and I don’t know if it adapts itself to the other areas that you focus on, is they think of the CMO as the end-all be-all. They don’t think of them as the strategic outlet. They think of them as strategy, execution, the kitchen sink. The CMO should not be in the weeds communicating with every single vendor, trying to figure out all the details, editing the site, writing all the copy. That is not what CMOs should be doing. The mistake people make is they think they need marketing, so they think they can hire a CMO. Maybe I can hire a marketing manager. That person inherently has skills. Marketing is too broad to give it to someone and expect them to do all of it. You have to get more intelligent about that hire, that function. Whether you are hiring or not is really irrelevant. The function of that role is really what we are talking about. Strategy versus implementation or management, those are two different things. When I am looking for a marketing manager, someone to work under a CMO, I look for an ops person, someone who is operationally savvy. This is someone who never lets anything fall through the cracks. They are super OCD. They never show up late. You know the type, right? They are not the person who you peg as a marketing person. They are more of an executive assistant who happens to understand the marketing strategy well enough to take it to execution. Those are the best marketing managers. The punchline is if you have one of those people, and it was your responsibility to be the CMO, all you have to do is a 30-minute-a-week meeting with a marketing manager who knows how to run marketing, who knows how to do all the tactics. I don’t mean tactics from the perspective of a marketing manager as a copywriter or a programmer or a designer. Those are functions you need to hire out. Outsource those effectively to the right programmer, to the right price. Live with the consequence. Have the marketing manager do all of that. There is a system. It’s almost like you were getting into human capital hierarchy. That is probably pretty similar to what you are talking about. Hugh: It is. I spent 40 years as a musical conductor, and the image on the podcast is me in my tails. It’s Orchestrating Success. What you just defined is orchestrating success. I would hire the best players. I hired members of the Atlanta Symphony when I was in Atlanta who were very skilled. They were also union members. Downbeats when you start, and two hours later, you get paid for a two-hour gig, and they are either leaving or you are paying overtime. My job as a leader is to define the results and make the most out of them. You don’t micro-manage them. You don’t hire the best oboe player and tell him how to play the oboe. You do tell him what you want and you do shape the process. I bet most people haven’t even thought about a CMO, that it hasn’t even entered their consciousness. To have the best oboe player who knows how to play the oboe, well, they need the music. Maybe it’s not music you wrote. Maybe there is a sketch or some improvisatory piece. It might be jazz. But we have a very rigid structure. We have a very clear outcome, and we know where we are going. It’s my job as a leader. It’s pool leadership; it’s bringing the best out of all of these distinct players. Here is the barrier. “I can’t afford that” is going to be the number one objection. How do you respond to a leader’s comment of, “That sounds great, but I can’t afford that”? Gaydon: It’s interesting that you would say that because people call me a marketing scientist, and I get accused of being a mathematician because so much of what I do is the mathematics behind the customer acquisition system. In your world, it might be a client or a donor. It doesn’t matter what the nomenclature is, but you need to know the mathematics of your business. If we think of nonprofits in a nonprofit sort of way, they don’t really thrive. If we think of them as businesses, they can thrive. Business economics, venture capitalists call it unit economics, and for this purpose, I would call it acquisition economics. You need to know your acquisition economics. You need to know what a donor or a customer is worth to your business. When you know that number, you can reverse engineer yourself. To say you can’t afford it is saying I got a blindfold on and don’t know mathematics well enough to know what I can spend to acquire more donors and customers, etc. You have to take the blindfold off, expose yourself to the mathematics, and understand that this is a business and it is based on math and it’s really simple. Dollars in, dollars out. In the marketing world, it’s customers in, acquisition cost out. In other words, how much am I willing to pay to get a customer knowing how much they are going to pay me to be a customer? The multiple between what they are worth to you and what you are willing to pay to get them is where the magic is. That is where the private equity firms focus their energy. That is what venture capitalists want to know before they acquire a big company. In your world, it’s probably not any different. You may just have not audited before. But you have an acquisition cost right now. You have a marketing budget right now. You have a CMO right now. You may just not have defined it that way. Hugh: The social entrepreneurs are the COE, the Chief of Everything. Part of that is their problem. They are trying to be experts in everything, and they are trying to pinch pennies. I am a recovering Scottish Presbyterian. I am just as guilty as anybody. We know how to bend a penny. But there is a practical side to this when we need to find really good people and get out of the way. The reason we don’t have money to do that is because our marketing sucks. The client acquisition of the church or the synagogue would be members or community foundations. We want to have members. Those members are our local charities. They are members in mission. They are members in servant leaders in the community. I abolished the word “volunteer” when I worked with organizations like that because it is a different dumbing-down mindset. We are leaders in action. Reframing the thinking, even though we are a nonprofit—like I said, it is not a philosophy, it is a tax clarification—it is a tax-exempt charity, it is a social benefit organization. We don’t treat our systems as important as our mission is. Our mission has got to make a huge difference. We dumb down on the money part. With charities, we want to save the whales; we don’t care about money. Wait a minute. You are going to build a car, but you haven’t learned to drive it, and you haven’t put gas in it. How is it going to go anywhere? We need to be good stewards on all the resources, including the cash flow. We can’t achieve our mission without the fuel in the car, which is your cash flow. Churches tend to backpedal on that. Sales is evangelism in the church. I told you I grew up as a Scottish Presbyterian. The old joke is when you cross a Presbyterian with a Jehovah’s Witness, what you get is someone who knocks on the door with nothing to say. Most of us don’t even knock on the door. I’m not cutting out any particular sect. But there is a pattern of knocking on the door and marketing your message, which is what they do in that denomination. But we don’t do that very well. We are closed in on this enclave. We are not a cloister or a monastery. Rethinking how we do church and charities and enterprise as a small business owner is where I live. This series of recordings is about leadership paradigms. What you have just uncovered is a huge paradigm. It’s taking it off my plate, finding someone competent, and working with them to let them do what we need to have done. Part of it is getting out of the way, and the other part of this is how to select a good marketing person. Part of my work is working with leaders selecting the right team, whether they are board members, staff, or people like you and me who provide goods and services for this organization. If somebody is selecting a marketing expert, even for a CMO or higher, what are the questions they should ask? Gaydon: The question I always ask: Who is in charge of growing the business? In a smaller organization, that is usually easy to answer, whomever that is. May I make two comments before I get to your question? Hugh: Absolutely. Gaydon: The question you have to ask yourself is this: Do you actually have a growth goal for the organization? Is that even the topic of conversation? Are we trying to grow membership at our church? That is an example. If that is the case, this is the next question you ask yourself: What would it mean if I were to hit that target? I don’t know what that target is. That is on your plate. Did I hit that target last year? If I did, that’s great. How much did you hope it would have grown last year? My guess is if I grew last year, it probably didn’t grow as much as you wanted it to. If it didn’t grow last year, are you willing to do anything to solve the problem? If you’re not willing to do anything to solve that problem, there isn’t really a lot of what we are talking about that it is going to be able to solve. So I’m going to say anecdotally that you want to grow membership 10%. For those of you who are listening carefully, you may want to think, “Man, what would it mean for me to grow membership by 10% this year? What would it mean for me to grow membership 10% this month?” I grow businesses up to 235% a year. I know what it means to grow the business over 10% per month. It’s a big deal. You have to ask yourself whether that is actually a goal for you, a realistic target for you, and if you actually want to do it. But it does cost some money. The investment will be worth it. Hugh: Let me comment on your comment before you answer the question. May I? Gaydon: Please. Hugh: If somebody is going through my strategy process, somebody is going to go through my goals. We tend to run around and do a lot of stuff as entrepreneurs. We implement tactics in the absence of an overall strategy, which is what we do with marketing as well. We try this and try this and try this, and it didn’t work. I say to people, “I tried to exercise one day last year and it didn’t work, so I stopped.” There is this limited experiment that is also we are doing the tactic piece. What you are talking about is a very important leadership paradigm. Have a plan. Sorry, that is a commercial for me. If you do your strategy, you will know what your end goals are. That is a great question. I wanted to affirm that question. Let me stop interrupting you. Gaydon: I love it. I’ll be honest. If you don’t have a growth goal, or if growth is not at the top of your priority list, then they don’t need me. They probably need you, but they don’t need me. I’m the growth guy. I’m the profitable growth guy. If you do want growth, there is so much data that I have in doing this for 12 years in a case study environment as a marketing scientist figuring out all the reasons why it didn’t work. I know why it didn’t work, Hugh. That’s the punchline. They could hand me that case study and say, “This is what I did. Tell me why it didn’t work.” Within two minutes, I will know why it didn’t work. A little golden nugget is if you have been in this space long enough, 90% of marketing activities that fail fail not because of the medium or the tactic of choice. What most people think is, “I tried radio. It didn’t work. Radio must not work for me, my business, my industry, my geographics, whatever.” The reality is, the magic is never in the medium; it’s always in the message. If you are writing something down, write that down: The magic is never in the medium; the magic is in the message. The message is an overly simplified way to say the magic is in your entire marketing infrastructure that leads to the message the person hears. I’m not saying go out and rewrite a message a million times. I’m saying the message is born of your audience itself. If you don’t target the audience and segment it well enough, that is your first mistake that will come out in the message. Another thing is your drivers. What is your audience motivated by? What are their problems? What keeps them up at night staring at the ceiling wondering how they are going to solve this? What are their hot buttons? Knowing the audience, their desires, motivations, drivers, etc., really leaves you to say, “Okay, if I understand that audience, let’s keep looking externally and figure out if there is anything about the industry, its competition, its solution alternatives, and other things at play that might affect my ability to speak to them on that level and get them to want to join me in my mission, my quest, and my social entrepreneurship in the purpose of my company.” There might be competitors at bay who can beat you on price and other things. You have to look at those. Once you define that audience, those industry drivers, those competitive drivers, you start to look internally. Who are we? How are we going to prove our viability to this particular audience? How are we going to position ourselves to that audience? Are we the Lexus in the market? Are we the Toyota in the market? Are we the Scion in the market? Are we the Smartcar in the market? Are we the Tesla in the market? Who are we? If it’s a church and about membership, it’s still relevant. Everybody is positioned. You are positioned relative to the competitors and the space, and you are positioned in relation to the things that differentiate you that you can message to. When you look at audience and drivers and competition and how that leads to positioning and differentiation, eventually, if you go through the whole process, that frankly I have codified, you get to the message. Nine times out of ten, the marketing activity fails because of that message. It’s not because of the person who you hired to write the message is incompetent as a writer. It’s usually because you are not competent as a strategist. Hugh: I love it. Of course I think you are brilliant. That’s great. Say this again. It was profound. Gaydon: The reality is, the magic is in the message, not in the medium. The message is failing not because the writer who wrote it is incompetent, but because the strategist who was behind it is incompetent. Hugh: It would occur to me that if you got 700-something clients in the recession and you grew your business exponentially in the recession, that you understand marketing. You understand how this client acquisition thing works. Any of us in any of these institutions need critical mass to do what we are doing, and we need to continually grow it because we are growing our vision, which is usually way bigger than we can achieve. We are visionaries. Several people who are entrepreneurs say, “Do all of you suffer from insanity?” I say, “Heck no, we enjoy it.” It’s a way of life. You are one of us, so I just put us in the same bucket. We are individuals; however, the very things that drive us are also the thorns in our side. Our assets are our liabilities. We don’t want to participate in this corporate structure; however, we need the discipline of working within structure in order to let the full creativity of our vision materialize. We tend to poo-poo the discipline and system parts of it because we want the freedom of our entrepreneur. As a musician, I know this. Once we got the music, once we have rehearsed it, once we have done all the hard work, then we are free to be creative. There is a pathway to creating the strategy, which you so eloquently articulated. There is a discipline part of this. As you said earlier, there is work in this. There is no easy button. I tell people that there is no easy button in the work I do, but there is an easier button. When people try to do it themselves, it takes way longer and we make it way harder and they spend a whole lot of money, especially money they don’t have, and they don’t have time, so they have to go redo stuff. This is all great stuff. The question was: If somebody is going to hire a marketing specialist internally or externally to advise a plan to help them take their brand to the market, what are the questions they should ask? Gaydon: That’s a hard question to answer because of the levels that we are talking about it on. In the context of you are the CMO/CRO, the person listening to this, the first question you need to ask… Hugh: The person listening is going to be the top leader in the organization, and they are going to be bringing in a marketing person. How do they qualify that person, whether it is internal, external, or using a service like yours? How do you know it’s going to be the right fit for your organization? We are talking about smaller organizations here. Gaydon: I’m making the assumption, Hugh, that these are small enough organizations that we are talking about here that they are not going to hire that CMO. Correct me if I’m wrong. They are wearing the hat. Anecdotally, I have to help them wear that responsibility or hat well. I’m going to take the next five minutes to figure out how to do that better. They are not going to shell out the four, six, or eight thousand dollars a month to bring in the right marketing ninja, right? I hate to say ninja because samurais are probably more tough than ninjas, right? Hugh: I think the majority of people fit the category you’ve described. If you educate them on that piece, it would lead them to enough revenue to hire the person you’ve described. Gaydon: Exactly. The cadence of this usually looks like you are wearing the CMO hat because you haven’t given it to anyone else yet. Once you grow the company to a certain point, you can, which is brilliant because you really want to be the leader, and you probably don’t want to wear the CMO hat long-term. Under the guise of you are wearing the hat, and you are not about to give it to anyone else soon, the first question you need to ask yourself is: Do I know how to write a strategy? I codified a process by which you just use an iPad and peg-leg your way in. I will stop using pirate analogies. You really don’t need to be a samurai. I don’t mean this to be a commercial at all. If you ask yourself how do I write a marketing plan, and you don’t have a step-by-step process, you will write a bad one. That is what this comes down to. It is just too complicated of a subject. Do you feel comfortable writing an enterprise-level strategy to grow a business if you don’t have any training on the subject? That sounds ludicrous. That would be like me trying to train a dog. I know nothing about pets and animals. I chase mountain lions for fun in the back country in the hopes they will eat me. That is my preferred way to die; I want to get eaten by a mountain lion. The problem is, I can’t find one, dang it. The point is: If you are wearing that hat, you have to know how to write a strategy. If you wrote a strategy that works, that is really engineered for profitable growth, that you are confident and clear on, now the next question you ask is really important. Now you want to say who can be in the weeds on this thing? Who can manage this strategy on a day-to-day perspective in terms of all the deliverables? You don’t necessarily need to hire a full-time person to do that, but let’s call that person the marketing manager. The first question I would ask is: Do you have the ability to hire a full-time or part-time marketing manager to do all the dirty work so that you can continue to be the leader, and you can put on your CMO hat for just 30 minutes a week? If you can do that, here is what I recommend you do in terms of asking questions around hiring a marketing manager. You basically put up a job description for an executive assistant. Sounds counter-intuitive. If you ask for a marketing person, here is what you are going to get. You are going to get a yellow personality that is a little bit ADD, super creative, will have a ton of ideas and no follow-through. That’s what you want. Don’t post a job anywhere that says “Hiring marketing…” People will hear that. What you want to do is post a job that says to the effect of, “Looking for an executive assistant,” and then say, “Skills need to include operational efficiencies, doing things on budget, doing things on time, not letting things fall through the cracks.” Then what you do is as you interview the executive assistants, you will find one or two that has a little bit of marketing experience. That is your golden goose. That person will say, “I’m really good at operational stuff, making sure nothing falls through the cracks. But actually I like marketing.” It’s your perfect hire. If you don’t want to do all that, we can talk later, and we can talk on another podcast where I can point them to part-time marketing managers who are certified marketing managers that you don’t have to train or look for or hire. You can just turnkey, boom. A couple grand a month, and they are in your organization helping you out. Most of them work remotely. The point is you can outsource that function. You are really just hiring a 1099 person. That is the real possibility. The next level underneath this marketing manager who gets everything done is this specialist, the tactician, the copywriter, the designer, the programmer, the person who has that subject matter expertise that is so specific that you need to bring them in to do that specific job. A really common thing is someone to administer the CRM. Let’s say we are using InfusionSoft or something like that. InfusionSoft is really complicated. You probably should not administer it yourself. Maybe your marketing manager will have those skills, but probably not. So it might make sense to find somebody who has very specific skills administering InfusionSoft that you can pay an hourly rate to whenever you need them. The same goes for your graphic designers, your logo people, your website people, your hosting people, your programming people, a data scientist, YouTube experts, LinkedIn experts, anything. What I am teaching you to do here is outsource effectively while insourcing effectively. What all your insourcing is is the responsibility you already have. It’s that responsibility you haven’t given anyone else yet. While not changing the scenario, you are changing the paradigm with which you look at it. But you can insource without adding a bunch of costs by just assuming the responsibility to write the strategy. You can definitely insource a marketing manager or hire a 1099. You can outsource effectively by finding specialists. What people do, Hugh, and I know you have seen this, is they get opportunistic. Think of a continuum. On one end is opportunist, and on the other end is strategist. The opposite of a strategist is an opportunist; the opposite of an opportunist is a strategist. The number one plague in small business is we get opportunistic. I know that resonates with you because you teach leadership. What an opportunist does outside of marketing is they say, “We need to grow. Let’s go find someone to do that.” They hire an agency and turn over the car keys, the wallet, the house, and everything and say, “Run it for me.” It doesn’t work. I can prove to you that it doesn’t work. More than that, some of them will say, “I don’t know if that’s the right idea. We should hire a CMO.” Then they make the decision of thinking the CMO is some deity of marketing, and they can do the strategy, manage the execution, do the execution, do the reporting, report to themselves, and be accountable all at the same time. How opportunistic does that sound? Yet people do it all the time. I ask people, “Who is running point on marketing?” “Our CMO.” “What does he do?” “Everything.” “Wait, hold on, everything?” Then I interview the CMO, and the CMO says, “Gee, the reason why I don’t dare tell this to the CEO, and the reason I can’t do my job, is because I am writing copy, and I am doing design, and I am managing vendors, and I am looking for proposals, and I am managing our events, and I am writing the strategy, and I am editing the strategy, and I am doing the reports.” All you did by hiring that CMO is duplicating your problem of having too many hats on someone else. Hugh: Oh that is so spot-on. I talk to people every day that that fits. You have come back to a lot of the themes without even knowing that I teach. My whole paradigm is to reframe leadership as a pathway to profit. This series is converting a passion to profit. You have just tagged a lot of the major leadership decisions that lead organizations to generate recurrable income. Managing that becomes profit. Nonprofits need profit. It’s not for profit; we don’t distribute it individually. But we have to be in the black to achieve our vision and mission. I think we have given people a lot to chew on today. I think we can probably talk for hours on these topics. How do people find you and your company? Gaydon: I’m not terribly hard to find. My company is called Savavo. G Leavitt or Gaydon Leavitt. If they are really looking for something to take from here forward, I recommend we put up a freebie for your audience to go to marketingsequence.com/ballou. What I have there is a five-part video training course that essentially gives you the basics of how to start to formulate the strategy. If you go there, you will see the videos that will walk you through sequentially, and I think it will help your audience go on the right trajectory. Hugh: That’s generous. Marketingsequence.com/ballou. G, you have demonstrated a much higher level of competency than other people I have spoken with. I think you hit a sore spot for 4-12 million companies that are stuck. I find that one very good leadership trait is making a decision to get out of your comfort zone and do something different with different results. Your marketing sucks. You have heard Jeff Magee that says, “SUC is halfway to success.” We don’t get there because we suck. We don’t get there because we are not getting out of our comfort zone and making intelligent leadership decisions that are going to lead us to that profit. That is a generous offer. As we pull this to a close, do you have a parting thought for the audience to think about? Gaydon: I’m glad you asked that because I think people tend to get hung up if they don’t feel comfortable building a strategy or even spending a dollar to build a strategy. I think the best thing I could give them is the who we are platform. I’ll illustrate this for you right now. This is a tool you can use to immediately improve your pitch, your messaging, and your ability to get a donor, a patient, or a customer immediately using a challenge you are already using. So I will give you mine in hopes you can model mine and create your own. I will give you the four or five steps that are part of this model. It goes something like this: I believe marketing is the reason businesses fail and the reason they succeed. I also believe it is the only way they will grow properly. At the rate at which a company or organization is growing is directly related to the marketing acumen, knowledge, or skills and the infrastructure that organization has. I also believe that marketing is a science, not an art, not a lottery, not a crapshoot. You are not at the casino. It’s a process. If you know the process, you could have success with it. Do not think of it as a science. I believe it as a process. Because I believe all of these things, my mission and purpose as an organization, as an entrepreneur, as someone who is trying to provide value to the world, is to turn marketing into a science and into a predictable, followable, learnable, masterable process for people. We believe we are doing that. The benefit to that process is clarity, confidence, and ultimately return on investment. It creates ROI. It creates bigger companies, faster companies, and better companies. The question that I have for you is: How clear are you about how to turn your marketing into predictable, profitable process? Hugh: Gaydon Leavitt, very well-spoken. Thank you for sharing your intellectual property with my listeners today. Hope you have a great day. I look forward to the next conversation. Gaydon: Thank you so much. Find out more at https://savavo.com  

and#8220;Relax It is Just Godand#8221; is a podcast of worship service at Laguna Presbyterian Church.  Rev. Dr. Jerry Tankersley is preaching from Matthew 13. We begin our new sermon series on the Parables of Jesus from Matthewand#8217;s Gospel. We are reading from the NRSV. This is also a communion Sunday. This Sunday we are also introducing Plainsong using Tone V.1 for Psalm 1. This way of singing the Psalms goes back to the 3rd and 4th century Christian Church as it was handed down to the Church from the Hellenistic Jewish Synagogue worship. This way of singing places the emphasis on the Scriptural text rather than on a melody or harmony. This way of singing allows us to sing all the verses of any particular Psalm. John Calvin, the great Protestant Reformer, believed that the Church should only sing the Psalms in this way. They were sung without any musical instrumentation. The Reformers intended for the hymns and other music to support the singing of the Psalms, never to supplant them. Plainsong has all but fallen out of practice in the Presbyterian Church throughout America. While many Scottish Presbyterians sing the Psalms using Plainsong in every worship service. As you listen, may you hear Psalm 1 more fully.

Time for another book review, and we're giving this one three thumbs up! Our hosts discuss the recent republication of The Church of Christ, a classic of Scottish Presbyterian polity and theory by James Bannerman. This book highlights the Church's role, power, and importance during a time the world (and even Christians!) struggles to see its purpose. Does the church stand a chance in societies that continually belittle its values and undermine its presence? Not surprisingly, the world is growing more uncomfortable for Christians, so we must purpose to understand what God intended for His Bride and keep heart. Bannerman helps us do just that.This week The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals would like to give you the opportunity to win a free copy of James Bannerman's The Church of Christ. You can enter here to win a free copy of this timeless work.Additional ResourcesThe Post-Indiana Future for Christians

This message was preached at New Testament Christian Fellowship in Conover, NC on January 18, 2015. The particular focus is the infernal destruction of the sixth trumpet judgment. DISCLAIMER: While discussing the history of the area around the Euphrates River, the story was told of Cush, Semiramis, and their son, Nimrod, with reference to Genesis 10:8-10 and the incident at Babel. It was mistakenly spoken that Cush, according to historical tradition, was killed by Shem for leading men away from the Creator God and into pagan idolatry. In reality, Cush did begin to lead men away from the One True God after the Flood. However, he died, and Semiramis (i.e. his wife) then married her son Nimrod. It was Nimrod, in partnership with his mother, that instituted pagan idolatry in the plain of Shinar, thus further associating the Euphrates River as a place of rebellion against the Creator. And, it was Nimrod who was killed by Shem for this wickedness. Semiramis then conned the people into believing that Nimrod was a god and that she was the mother of god. Thus began the pagan mother-child imagery seen even today in Roman Catholicism. References to Bel in pagan mythology point to Cush. Ninus or Tammuz point back to Nimrod. And, the queen of heaven label points back to Semiramis. There is nothing new under the sun. For more information, a difficult but good read is The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, a Scottish Presbyterian theologian. This text was first published in 1853 and is available today via Chick Publications.

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A report to the General Assembly of Scottish Presbyterians of 1923 contains the following passage: “God placed the people of this world in families, and history which is the narrative of His providence tells us that when kingdoms are divided against themselves they cannot stand. Those nations homogenous in race were the most prosperous and were entrusted by the Almighty with the highest tasks.” Strange as it appears today, such a racial theology was commonplace among Christians prior to 1945. Where did the notion that races had providential roles come from? One origin was a theory that the world had been inhabited by humans before Adam. The history of this theory, which formed at the intersections of science, religion and colonial geography, is taken up in Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011). In this interview with its author, David N. Livingstone, Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen’s University Belfast, we discuss how Pre-Adamism moved from being a seventeenth-century heresy to a widely accepted theological and scientific theory of the nineteenth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Amateur Traveler talks to Joseph about his recent trip to Malawi in Southern Africa. Malawi is not know for its game parks like other countries in the region for for the relaxing shores of Lake Malawi as well as the lush green highlights. It is a country heavily influenced by David Livingstone and the Scottish Presbyterian church and one benefit of this legacy is welcoming church guest houses to stay in. So join Joseph and I as we talk about the people, the politics and the minibuses of Malawi.

The Amateur Traveler talks to Joseph about his recent trip to Malawi in Southern Africa. Malawi is not know for its game parks like other countries in the region for for the relaxing shores of Lake Malawi as well as the lush green highlights. It is a country heavily influenced by David Livingstone and the Scottish Presbyterian church and one benefit of this legacy is welcoming church guest houses to stay in. So join Joseph and I as we talk about the people, the politics and the minibuses of Malawi.

The Amateur Traveler talks to Joseph about his recent trip to Malawi in Southern Africa. Malawi is not know for its game parks like other countries in the region for for the relaxing shores of Lake Malawi as well as the lush green highlights. It is a country heavily influenced by David Livingstone and the Scottish Presbyterian church and one benefit of this legacy is welcoming church guest houses to stay in. So join Joseph and I as we talk about the people, the politics and the minibuses of Malawi.

Introduction Well, I remember when I was growing up. I used to love to watch on Saturday afternoons Wide World of Sports, because they had all different kind of weird sports and different things, not the regular ones you watch, but they had different ones. And one time they had this Chinese juggling troupe that did the most incredible things with their bodies that I'd ever seen, like making inverted pyramids on the stage and all kinds of stuff of strength and flexibility. But there's one guy in particular I remembered and just being amazed, and it was the plate spinner. This man had the ability to take a flexible rod and spin a plate up on the rod and it would just balance there. And then he would pick up the next rod and spin the next plate and the next one and the next one. Five, six, seven, eight plates spinning. By the time he got to 10, plates number one and two we're starting to wobble. And so you're kind of freaking out a little bit as you watch this whole thing and you're urging, as though he could hear you, that somehow he could spin this plate a little faster. But he knew what he was doing. 12, 14 plates, 16, 18, 20, and he seemed to know which ones needed help without even looking. It'd behind him and he was setting up a new plate and he'd turn and give it a little spin and then do some other things. It was incredible. It was just amazing. Now, CJ Mahaney had a similar experience on the Ed Sullivan Show. He watched a plate spinner doing that. I bet you're wondering what that picture had to do with Colossians 2. I'm trying to explain that. Here is a plate spinner who's got two phones, one he's talking on and something else going on and there's this franticness to life. Now, this sermon is not about the busyness of modern life and how we need to slow down and smell the roses. That's not what it's about. This sermon is about the lethal danger of legalism. And CJ Mahaney likens the legalistic lifestyle of the Christian to the plate spinner. What happens is you hear some good themes from the Bible, some things that we ought to be doing with our Christian lives and in effect at that moment you can set up a plate and start it spinning. And then another plate gets spinning as well. And this whole concoction in your mind sets up a paradigm that's very dangerous concerning your relationship with God. The more plates I have spinning and keep spinning, the more God is pleased with me, the more fruitful my life is, the more pleasing I am to Him. If I should let any of those plates fall and crash to the ground, there may be serious doubt as to whether I'm a Christian at all. And that's the legalistic mentality that I think Paul is fighting against in Colossians 2. You know how it is, the themes, a daily quiet time, prayer life, intercessory prayer for others, concern for evangelism, concern for cross-cultural missions, unreached people groups, financial faithfulness, stewardship, the tithes and offerings, faithful attendance at church, using your spiritual gifts to minister to others. All of these themes, ministry to the poor and the needy, concern for them. And more and more and more. I struggled with this this Summer on my sabbatical as I was looking carefully at the Christian life and all the elements that are involved in what it is to be a faithful, sanctified, mature Christian. And it's so easy to get under the pile, and for a subtle or perhaps not even so subtle shift to happen in how I see myself before God. That I've got to keep these plates going or else God will not be pleased with me and if enough of them fall to the ground I may not actually have been saved at all. This is an incredible bondage. And Paul here in Colossians 2, as he does in Galatians and in Romans and other places, seeks to liberate us from this bondage of legalism. That we would be free from it, that we would serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. That we would see ourselves as adopted sons and daughters of the living God and not as slaves on a plantation. "It is for freedom that Christ has set you free," Galatians 5. "Stand firm then and do not let yourself be yoked again with a bondage of servitude," Galatians 5. And I think that's exactly what Paul was seeking to do. Now, let's get a little context here. Colossians 1 has established beautifully the supremacy of Christ over all things. The Colossian heresy that Paul is writing to combat, denied the supremacy of Christ, He was a created being, a spirit emanation in the world, and that God, being pure spirit, really didn't desire or want a physical universe to be created, for physical matter is evil and wicked and salvation is to somehow get away from the physical lifestyle into a purely spiritual relationship with the true Spirit God that there was. Christ being an emanation, a created being like other spiritual emanations, can help us through specialized knowledge and through a special religious pattern to be liberated from the physical life and brought into Heaven in that way. It's a heresy. Complete in Christ Review: The Supremacy of Christ And in order to combat it, the Apostle Paul focuses first and foremost on the deity of Christ, on the perfection of Christ, the supremacy of Christ over all things. Colossians 1:15, "He is the image of the invisible God. The firstborn over all creation for by Him all things were created. Things in Heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things and in Him all things hold together and He is the head of the body, the Church. He is the firstborn from among the dead and by His blood which He shed He reconciled all things to the Father, so that Christ would have supremacy in all things." This is the greatness of Christ, the supremacy of Christ. Christ is Complete, We are Complete in Him And then in chapter 2 he's arguing that, "Christ is complete and therefore we are complete in Him." We don't lack anything. We are fully circumcised spiritually. We are fully alive in Christ. We were dead, but now we're fully alive. We are fully forgiven. He forgave us all our sins, not half of them or three quarters or 99%. He forgave all our sins. We are fully free from the law and we're going to focus on that today. Fully free from the law and we are fully triumphant over Satan and his accusations, specifically his ability to use the written code to accuse us of sin. We are fully free, triumphant because of the cross of Christ. So we're fully complete in Him, but along comes Satan, the intimidating bully that I mentioned last time, and what a bully he is, and through false teachers, through false teaching, he seeks to intimidate us and to tell us we are not complete. Oh, there's something missing. Yes, Christ is good. Yes, Christ is beneficial and helpful, but He is insufficient. I can scarcely say the words. How could the infinite God dying on the cross for us be insufficient for anything? We are full in Christ. But that's what the false teachers were saying. You needed something more. You needed human philosophy. You needed human obedience to the laws of Moses, Jewish legalism. You needed mysticism, some worship of angels and mystical experiences and you needed asceticism. These things will help complete the beginnings of the work of Christ in your life. If you don't have them, then you're really not saved. You're inadequate. You are insufficient. Satan bullying us, trying to show us that we are incomplete. The Intimidation of Philosophy Philosophy Defined Now, last week, we looked at the intimidation of philosophy. Remember what we said in verse 8? "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." We took time to define philosophy. The word literally means love of wisdom. But generally the way we use it, it's just the human attempt to make sense of the world we live in, to answer life's deepest questions, ultimate questions of meaning. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What happens after death? What is right? What is wrong? And why should I do the right and avoid the wrong? These questions are the purview of philosophy. There's nothing wrong with answering these questions. The problem, though, is the kind of philosophy that Paul was refuting. Hollow and deceptive philosophy which is based on human traditions and not on Christ. This is simply human philosophy that is not based on Christ. Christless, man-centered philosophy. Now, that is an enemy of the Gospel and he says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through it." Don't become a slave to that. Philosophy has a long and assorted history which we talked about last time. I won't go into it this time, but there's been literally millennia of the attacks of philosophy on the Gospel and on the church. The great danger of philosophy is that it starts with man, with man's knowledge, man's perspectives, man's issues and it does not go to the Word of God for its answers, but through our own abilities, it reasons out. But philosophy is defeated in Christ. Christ has become for us the wisdom of God, though He looks foolish. Jewish carpenter, bloody, dead on the cross. Where is the wisdom in that? But it is pure wisdom from God and all of the right answers to those questions, they flow from the cross of Jesus Christ. All of them do. He is our philosophy, Christ. But then He takes on the second bully. The Intimidation of Legalism And that bully is the bully of legalism and we're going to spend all our time on it today; I shifted the message a bit. I was going to do legalism, asceticism and mysticism in one Sunday and the folly of that became clear to me the more I looked at it. Can't do it. And so, instead, we're going to look at this issue of legalism. And the issue of legalism is a yoke of bondage, the law of Moses, the rules and regulations, circumcision becomes a portal, a doorway into a whole way of thinking about your relationship with God. A whole way of seeing yourself before the holy God. A way of anticipating how it's going to go for you on Judgment Day, legalism. And it's intimidating, it really is, because along with legalism comes the thought police, the religious police that come and tell you how to observe a Sabbath day, for example. They'll tell you what you're doing wrong, and there's danger to the church here. Look what it says in verses 16 and 17. "Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon, a celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ." Legalism Defined What is legalism? How do we understand it? Well, I love CJ Mahaney's definition of legalism in his wonderful book, the Cross-Centered Life. By the way, that is a great book. I've already alluded to it this morning. It's great for a number of reasons, mostly because it's great to be centered on the cross of Jesus Christ. It's also great to be able to finish a book. So, 82 pages, small, big print, you can get through this, you can do it and what a good feeling to read that final page. If you're kind of a starter and not a finisher, it puts it in succinct language, but he does an excellent job. Maybe one of the best things he does in the whole book is defining legalism. He gives us that image of the plate spinning, but then he gives us a good definition. "Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God." That is one of the best. It's just so clear. Let me read it again. CJ Mahaney: "Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God." It's really any attempt to rely on self effort either to attain or maintain our justification before God through self effort. Either to get it at the beginning or to keep it going once you have it. And it's a subtle change that comes over the brain and you start thinking, "I got it and it's been so good but I have to hold onto it now. I have to hold onto it to make progress. I've got to hold on to Jesus." And Paul, writing in the Book of Galatians, he says, "After beginning with the Spirit are you now completed through the flesh?" After you started by the power of the spirit through simple faith in Christ, are you going to finish your journey through your own efforts? It's so pernicious, so dangerous. John Piper advances the definition a little bit and I think his distinctions are helpful too. He speaks of two different kinds of legalism in the Christian life. One is individual, personal legalism that infects the brain of an individual Christian and hinders their ability to see their relationship with their Father properly. And the second is a more of a community legalism that comes over a group in which man-made rules are brought in to discern who should be a member of that group and if they're in good standing. The first individual, Piper writes this, "First, legalism means treating biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God's favor," those are key elements. "A law kept by your own power to earn God's favor." That's legalism. In other words, legalism will be present wherever a person is trying to be ethical, to be good in their own strength, that is without relying on the merciful help of God in Christ. Simply put, moral behavior that is not from faith in Christ is legalism. Anything that does not come from faith is sin. Here we're labeling this kind of effort as legalism. That's individual. Then there's that community or corporate legalism. Piper said the second meaning of legalism is this, "The erecting of specific requirements of conduct beyond the teaching of scripture and making adherence to them the means by which a person is qualified for full participation in the local family of God, the church." This is where an unbiblical exclusivism arises. In other words, the community agrees that this is what we're going to do and be, and you are not a Christian, frankly, if you don't keep these standards and the standards that are erected aren't coming from scripture. But they're man-made. So those are two different kinds of legalism, both of them deadly in the life of the church and the individual Christian. It crushes the joy of the Christian life, crushes it. As a matter of fact, Paul uses joy like I talked about a few weeks ago, as the canary in the coal mine. He is looking at joy and saying it's a fragile thing and when joy goes, one of the things that can kill it is legalism. "What has happened to all your joy?", he says in Galatians, "Where did it go? Don't you remember how it used to be? How sweet it was to know that He forgave us all our sins? To feel like a child of God, adopted and safe and secure." It crushes joy and it leads to a constant effort to earn God's favor. Over and over and what a yoke of bondage that is, how crushing it is. You know the story of Martin Luther, how he tried to earn his forgiveness through Roman Catholic legalism during the Middle Ages, at the end of the Middle Ages. For him, it was a matter of being a monk and fasting, and praying and spending long nights on the floor and all of these things, and thinking that by obeying to the nth degree all of God's laws, he could do enough to cover his sins and not spend eternity in Hell or hundreds of thousands of years in purgatory. That's legalism and it was awful for him. It was awful because you know why? There's never any enough. There is never any enough. What's enough for the eternal, infinite God, perfectly holy? What's enough for him? And so, as he confessed sin after sin to Staupitz, his father confessor, and just kept coming back to confess more. Sacramental system, you had to confess your sins, or if you died with unconfessed sin that was X number of years in purgatory. It was a terrible bondage for him. And he kept going back. "Oh, I forgot something." The man couldn't get any work done, Staupitz, and he's like, "Look, go do something real and come back and tell me about it." It was just inclinations and issues of the heart. And he said, "You're making it too complicated. You just need to love God." He said, "Love God? I hate Him!" Well, that's blasphemy. There's no doubt about that. But that's what it leads to. It kills joy in the Christian life. It makes you insecure, and you can begin well, understanding the Gospel, but soon you're oozing over into this whole way of living. Think about the story of Anne of Green Gables. And Anne Shirley, she was an orphan girl who was taken into a family on probation. How would you like that? "We'll decide whether we'll adopt you or not by how you behave." That's tough. It's not right. It creates a works relationship that is not like a parent-child relationship. Brothers and sisters, we have been adopted. It's done. We are in the family. "A slave has no permanent place in the family," Jesus said, "But a son lives there forever and if the son makes you free, you'll be truly free. Free from the bondage of sin." And Jesus has that kind of power to free us from sin and to bring us as full members into the family of God, sons and daughters of the living God. Now, that's the joy out of which I want to serve God. I don't want to be wondering whether I'm on good standing with Him, and maybe if I do a few more good things I'm in better standing. That is legalism. It is bondage. Legalism’s Long Sordid History Now, legalism has a long and sordid history. It's been around forever, from the Old Testament right on through the New Testament. The Judaizers, the Pharisees, that some of them perhaps became Christians or at least outwardly professed to be Christians, they dogged Paul’s steps on this. They were sent to spy out freedom of the Gentiles, trying to make them obey a bunch of rules and regulations. And finally, they were openly teaching false doctrine. In Acts 15:1 it says, "Some brothers came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." Well, that's a wonderful example of legalism. You have to have Christ plus circumcision. Christ's accomplishment on the cross is not enough. And circumcision, I told you, is a doorway into a whole way of living. A whole way of living before God. It has to do with dietary regulations. What you eat, and what you drink, and religious festivals, and how you dealt with the Sabbath, and all the things he mentions here in Colossians 2. Well, the Apostle Peter stands up at that council, just gives a stirring speech, beautiful speech on this. He said, "Brothers, you know that some time ago, God made a choice among the Gentiles, that God, that they would hear, the Gentiles would hear from my lips the message of the Gospel and believe, hear, and believe, and be saved, that's all. God who knows the heart, showed that He accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as He did to us. He made no distinction between us and them for He purified the hearts by faith. Our hearts are purified by faith," and so it continues. "He made no distinction between us and them," said Peter, "For He purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke, that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are." Why would you want to be slaves on that plantation again? Earning God's favor by doing His laws, keeping His laws, bondage, and the council rightly decided against it. Paul wrote the whole Book of Galatians to combat this error as they were teaching the same thing there to the Gentiles. And he says this, "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.’ Clearly no one is justified before God by the law rather, because the righteous will live by faith. The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, ‘the man who does these things will live by them.’ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hung on a tree.'" So there it is, that's bondage. He's saying Christ has freed us from that. He became a curse for us. We're serving in a new way now, of the Spirit, and not the old way of the written code. Well, it wasn't just during biblical times, but after that, in the Roman Catholic era and in the Middle Ages, little by little, more and more laws, and man-made regulations, and canon law, and traditions started coming on one after the other, and you had to do all these things in order to be saved. They would teach outside the church, there's no salvation, and then they would define what it meant to be in or outside the church. And it meant the sacramental system, it meant having your infants baptized, and then the sacraments all the way through, including confession and taking the communion and all of those things. It was legalism. And after Luther's insight concerning justification by faith alone, that we are made righteous in God's sight by simple faith. You just look to Jesus. You just trust that He is the Son of God, and He shed His blood on the cross. You just look to Christ and you'll be forgiven. Luther discovered that that is the Gospel. It could be that that's why God brought you here today to hear that simple message. How can I stand before a Holy God on Judgment Day and be forgiven? The answer is not through legalism. It's not through good works. It's through simple faith in Christ. That's the discovery of the Gospel, rediscovery. And Luther found it and the other reformers, the Catholic Church rejected it. And at the Council of Trent they re-established this statement, "Justification: If anyone says that we are justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law, let him be anathema, let him be accursed." So, there you go, right back into legalism again. It's there all the time. But you know, it's not just the Protestants, I mean, the Catholics, the Protestants have had it as well. Baptists have it. There are some groups, Anabaptistic groups, that became schismatic and broke off, and they were free church movements under no authority of the state or any other group. And they practiced extreme separation from the world. And they were very concerned about worldliness. And they made up rules and regulations about what worldliness was. And a fight against worldliness is one of the most subtle in the life of a church. It is a real threat. But you don't fight it by setting up rules and regulations. And so, groups like the Amish and others, they define worldliness in terms of buttons, and use of modern equipment, technology, and other things like that, these rules are not found anywhere in the Bible. We are four or five steps removed from any passage of scripture. But if you are not involved, if you don't assent to it and you act differently, you are shunned, disciplined from that group, you're not part of the group. That's the second definition of legalism that Piper gave us. It's a community coming up with man-made rules and regulations by which they discern who's in and who's out. And other baptistic groups have done that as well. We were trying to do ministry in Haiti, and there was a group that wouldn't formally do any ministry with us, because we were part of the Southern Baptist Convention, and we do not practice enough separation from the world for their group. So, we are the liberals in their eyes and we are the ones not strict enough, etcetera. To other people, we're exactly the opposite. Isn't it interesting on that? And that's the whole thing. Legalism’s Great Danger When you're setting up your life in front of a bunch of human judges, you're always going to find people to your right and people to your left. I would say, if there's no one to your right or no one to your left, you're probably not a Christian. You are the extremist of all the extremists, either in legalism or license, but you're always going to be able to find somebody who can judge you. And so, Paul says very, very plainly here, "Do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or by religious festivals, new moon festivals or even what you do on a Sabbath day. It's freedom. Don't let anyone judge you." Now, what does he mean by that? Well, legalism leads you to look away from the cross. You're looking first inwardly to yourself, right? You try to save yourself. You're given a bunch of rules and regulations. You're looking inwardly to yourself and either, friends, you're doing well or you're doing poorly. If you look inwardly and you're doing well, you are going to become arrogant and insufferable and pretty soon you will be one of the judges. You'll be probably appointed by the church to be one of the Sabbath judges or whatever, because you're looking inward and doing well. You will become arrogant. You've lost the sense of grace. If you look inward with the law and you do not find that you do well, you will despair. You'll become discouraged. You will fall away from any efforts to continue growing in the Christian life, because you think it's too hard. That's the danger, is looking inward. The next thing you do is you start looking at other people to try to see how you're doing, and that's very dangerous. Don't let anyone judge you. Now, it's interesting a command. I really can't obey it and literally. How can I stop you from judging me? “Don't let anyone judge you.” You're judging me now, stop it. I wasn't, I really wasn't. Yes you are. I really don't know how you literally obey it, but I think what Paul is saying is, at least this much, don't take their judgmentalism to heart and don't let their judgmentalism take root in the church. So individually, you are not standing or falling before them. They are not your judge, and don't let their rules and regulations take over the life of the church. I think that's what he means, when he says, "Don't let anyone judge you." Legalism Defeated in Christ Legalism is defeated in Christ. It says in Verse 17, "These are a shadow of the things that were to come.” The reality, however, is found in Christ. Christ's blood shed on the cross is the only way to wash away our sins. Christ's righteousness imputed to us by simple faith is the only thing that's going to survive the scrutiny of Judgment Day, perfect righteousness. Ceremonial laws like the sacrificial system, the eating laws, temple worship, annual pilgrimage and I believe the Sabbath were meant to point us to Christ. They were the shadow. The reality is Christ. The Difficult Case of the Sabbath Now, I want to take a few minutes and talk about the difficult case of the Sabbath, alright? This is a challenging issue, very challenging. Paul is talking here about what you eat or drink. We know that Jesus declared all foods clean. I don't know many people that struggle with this, with the issue of meat sacrifice to idols and all that. Some struggle with the issue of drinking, and I'm not going to address that today. There's plenty of things to be said about that, many things, and I don't want to do a half-hearted job on it, so we have to do it more thoroughly another time. But here he's saying at least don't let anyone judge you based on these things, or on what you do on a Sabbath day. Now, you've heard the story of Eric Liddell, Chariots of Fire, years ago, that movie came out. He was a Scottish missionary, his parents were missionaries in China and he eventually became one. Served to great effect in China and died of a tumor toward the end of World War II. Just a great man of God. He also happened to be a great runner, in 1920 he won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Paris in the 400 meters. Now, usually he was a sprinter, but he had to change, because it turned out that some of the heats for the sprints were on Sunday and it was against his Scottish Presbyterian convictions to run on the Lord's Day. He based it on the 10 Commandments and many people who are Sabbatarians, strict Sabbatarians, will say, "Look at you folks, what you're saying is in effect you believe in all nine of the 10 Commandments." We don't have to do that one, okay, but the other nine are still good. And they will point to Genesis 1 and 2, the creation ordinance. God created the universe in six days and He rested on the seventh and He set the seventh day aside and made it holy and sacred. And they will even point to the language of the 10 Commandments, the fourth of the 10 Commandments. This is what it literally says. "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God. On it, you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, your manservant or maidservant, your animals nor the alien within your gates, for in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day and therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." That's what the Commandment says. Now, the ultimate legalism on Sabbatarianism is coming from the Seventh Day Adventists, who in a pure form say this, that the Lord's day worship that we're doing today is the Mark of the Beast, that if you worship on the first day of the week and not on the seventh day of the week, you have received the mark of the beast. Well, I don't know if you've read the Book of Revelation, but the Mark of Beast leads straight to hell and there's no escape. There is no rest, day or night. The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for any who receives the Mark of the Beast. Well, that's a very good example of legalism. If we don't agree with them about the seventh day Sabbath, then we are going to Hell. That's what they teach. The question is, is this commandment still binding on the conscience of Christians today and what should we do about it? Well, there's different ways to look at it. Legalism has one extreme, license says the other. Legalism is you got to keep it, got to keep it, got to keep it, and you've got Sabbath police and we'll have to start a new committee here in this church to judge what you do on the Lord's day, etcetera. That's legalism, okay? License is, this matter doesn't mean anything. We're totally free. We could worship on Tuesday if we wanted. We could worship every other week. We could do all kinds of things. We're just totally free in the matter. It has no impact on my life whatsoever. There's nothing here for me at all. That's license in this matter. And then in the middle there's another error, and that is the Malachi 1:13 error, in which you do what you think is right but you sniff at it and say, "What a burden," and you grumble under it the whole time. That's an error too. How shall we come at this issue of the Sabbath? Well, first of all, let's understand the Sabbath is clearly called a shadow here in Colossians 2. The reality is what? The reality is Christ. Hebrews 4 is the extended treatise on that issue of reality and shadow. And it says, "If you have come to faith in Christ you have entered your Sabbath rest. You have ceased from your work just as God has ceased from His." And that's an incredible thing. That's Hebrews 4:3. "Now we who have believed enter our rest." So, when you come to faith in Christ, the Sabbath, friends, for you is fulfilled. And therefore, we are free from careful restrictions concerning what we do on a Sabbath day. Now, is the Sabbath a perpetual regulation? Well, I don't think that we can understand it that way. I think the Sabbath was a sign of the Mosaic Covenant. There's no clear example in the Old Testament of anyone observing the Sabbath before Mount Sinai. We know that it's recorded that on the seventh day the Lord rested in Genesis 1 and 2. And I know it's an argument from silence. But I think it's significant that it is openly and clearly called in Exodus 31, "It is a sign of the covenant I am making with you today." And so, therefore, it is a sign of the Mosaic Covenant. We are not saved in the Mosaic Covenant and, therefore, the sign is not binding on us today. Christian practice almost universally has been to move from the seventh day to the first. The scriptural basis for this is this is the day that Jesus was raised from the dead. And Jesus showed Himself on the first day of the week to His disciples. The first Sunday evening service, friends, was when Jesus showed Himself that evening to His disciples. So you don't want to miss home fellowship, friends. You want to be involved in whatever the church is doing on Sunday evening. Some of the best things happen Sunday evenings. And Thomas missed it, to his great regret, but the Lord did show Himself on the first day of the next week. And so, you see a regular pattern there. First day of the week. First day of the week. Friends, I think there's a theological principle here. The seventh day Sabbath looks backward at physical creation, for in six days God made the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. The first day observance looks ahead to the new creation. And Jesus' resurrection body is the first new creation stuff there is in the universe. It will never die. It will never perish, spoil or fade. All the other stuff is obsolete. It's aging. It's going away. So, we are forward-looking by worshipping on the first day of the week. So, what? Well, I want to ask a strict Sabbatarian a key question. If I do not agree with you, what does that mean for me? They must answer that question. I respect Truett Cathy who won't open a Chick-fil-A on Sunday. I respect it. I just want to know what the reasoning is. And some of it could be delightfully wonderful and spirit-led and some of it could be terribly legalistic. I just want to know the motive, the reason. And if their answer is, "It's the Mark of the Beast and if you don't do it our way you go to Hell," I think that's pure legalism right there. If the answer is, "This is what we have chosen do with our time so that we can give ourselves to holy endeavors, to reading the Word of God, that just takes time, and if I'm going to watch a football game or if I'm going to go to Golden Corral, Heaven forbid... Well, I'm sorry, other restaurant, wonderful restaurant... " Is this being taped? I always forget that. But if I go to this place or that place and you're thinking, "Is this wrong, I'm making somebody work on the Sabbath, or on the Lord's day, I'm sinning, I'm making them sin and there's a whole bondage there," I need to know about that. Romans 14 deals with this in the matter of freedom. It says, “one man considers one day more sacred than the rest and another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” At the end of that same chapter, Romans 14:23, it says, "Everything that does not come from faith is sin." So practically, I want to ask you this. How do you spend your Sunday and why? Why? We need a practical day we get together. We can't have a rotating schedule. You guys would be and so would I be hopelessly confused. You'd definitely have to look on the website to find out what day of the week and time we're meeting. I think it's best to set a time, don't you? And to follow the pattern of the resurrection of Christ, let's do it on the first day of the week. If we don't, are we going to Hell? No. That's done. That was nailed to the cross. That whole way of thinking is gone. But there are practical sides here. We need to have a time when we can assemble ourselves together and worship together and it's the first day of the week. The Sabbath was set up, also Jesus said, for us. Man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for us. Well, in what sense? We can't go on endlessly working, friends. I was reading Bill Gates. He said he doesn't have time for church on Sunday. I don't know what he works on, I wouldn't say 24/7, but lots of hours on Microsoft things. It's what he does. We can't do that endlessly. You're going to break down. You need some time to get away and to be refreshed spiritually, and that's what the day is for. Call the Sabbath a Delight Furthermore, I do have questions. If somebody is working 24/7, isn't there a danger that there's some idolatry, some covetousness that's come in there? That's what's motivating them, and that is dangerous. If there's an idol in the heart, if there's covetousness in the heart, it may be that Christ isn't there, but not because they're not following the rules, it's because there's covetousness in their heart. And Christ drives that away. Who is the Lord of your heart? And practically speaking, don't you need time to read the Bible? Don't you need time to be with your family to have family worship? These things take time. We have bodies. We can't deny it. So we need to rest, we need to be recuperating ourselves, we need to be refreshed, and this is a good way to do it. And so, what could you do? Well, I would urge you, like in the language of Isaiah 58, "Call the Sabbath a delight." Call it a delight, not because you must, but because you are willing as God wants you to be, quoting from another place. 1 Peter 5, talking about elders. “Not because you must, but because you want to.” And so the question, the practical questions, you start to answer in that way, "Can I watch the Super Bowl on a Sunday? Super Bowl Sunday, can I?" I don't want to say yes or no. I want to say, "Can you watch by faith?" If you can watch the Super Bowl by faith then do it. Frankly, I think you could sin by not running on the Sabbath, on the Lord's day, etcetera, in that you're not understanding the cross rightly, and somebody else could be feeling God's pleasure and glorifying Him by running on a Sunday. I want to know what's going on in the person's heart and I never really can. But you can know better than anyone else what's going on in your own heart. Why would you choose to watch the Super Bowl instead of doing X, Y, and Z? That's all. You have to answer that. You be convinced in your own mind. And then some other practical things can come in to help you. Like some suggest that people do their cooking on Saturdays, not because you must, but because you're willing. And not every week. Some Sundays you can cook. But just try it sometimes. Try getting all your meals ready, all your clothes ready, everything ready, and then just resting on the Lord's day. But not just having a nap. There's nothing wrong with a nap, friends. Nothing wrong with a nap. We need to sleep, okay? There's nothing wrong with that. But instead of doing that, why don't you go pursue the Lord? Psalm 73, "Whom have I in Heaven but you? And Earth has nothing I desire besides you." Use it as a time to renew your love relationship with Christ. Pick your favorite Psalms, a good Christian book, gather your family together if you have one, if you're married and you have children, focus on Christ. But again, not because you must, but because you're willing. Because you want to get closer to Christ. So you're saying, "Pastor, I'm confused." Well, come talk to me afterwards. We're almost done with our time here. I can't go through all the case studies. I say this, we are freed forever from the legalistic requirement to keep the Sabbath. We will not go to Hell based on what we do or don't do with the Sabbath day. And we are not going to set up Sabbath requirements in this church that if you don't meet those requirements you are not a member in full standing or could be disciplined from this group. Instead, what I'm going to do is do something even harder, I'm going to challenge you to say, "What's going on in your heart?" Are you loving Jesus with every thought in your heart, every moment of the day? Are you doing the best things? Are you choosing the excellent things? And if part of that is enjoying watching a football game or playing Ultimate Frisbee or doing something like that, I'm not going to judge you, it's not my place. I don't want to to be on the other side of Colossians 2:16, doing the judging. I'm not going to not do that. But instead, I want to challenge all of us to call the Sabbath a delight, because if you look at that Verse, in the end, it's Isaiah 58:13 and 14, read it later. It says, "Then you will find your joy in the Lord and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob." Close with me in prayer.​

A new MP3 sermon from Still Waters Revival Books is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Religious Principles of the Scottish Martyrs (Covenanted Reformation, Scottish Presbyterians, Overcomers, Scripture, RPW, etc.) Subtitle: Calvinistic Foundations Speaker: Andrew Symington Broadcaster: Still Waters Revival Books Event: Audio Book Date: 10/1/2000 Bible: Hebrews 12:1; Revelation 17:6 Length: 13 min.