Pastor Joel Webbin and Pastor Scott Brown debate the biblical mandate for multi-generational worship, citing Ephesians to reject age-segregated children's ministries in favor of unified assemblies. They define sphere sovereignty, asserting civil authorities lack jurisdiction over family conscience or vaccination, while condemning critical race theory as a tool of division. The discussion advocates daily catechism using Keach's Catechism and the Follow Me Bible, arguing public schools are inherently pagan and parents must protect children through home instruction. Ultimately, they warn against treating Scripture as a relic, urging believers to apply God's Word actively rather than compromising on Sabbath observance or civil submission. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Pastor Scott Brown Introduces Ministry00:04:35
Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another episode of Theology Applied.
In this episode, I was privileged to have as a special guest Pastor Scott Brown.
He's the president of Church and Family Life, it's a family integrated network of churches.
My church, Covenant Bible Church, is actually a part of that.
If you're looking for a family integrated church, you should check out Church and Family Life, their website, do a church search.
If you're anywhere in the North Austin area of Texas, you should come and check out my church, Covenant Bible Church.
We'd love to have you there.
All that being said, the interview was great.
We had a great conversation about the importance of bringing your children to church and that children's ministry is not church.
And so we talked about the whole family, multi generational ministry, especially on the Lord's Day.
We talked about family worship and what that should look like on a daily basis in our homes.
And then we also talked about sphere sovereignty that the family is a government, the authority of fathers, the authority of mothers, and right now, the tyranny, encroaching overstep of jurisdiction from.
Civil authorities.
And so we talked about vaccines a little bit.
We talked about all these different things and how it works together for the family, that family unit being a God glorifying community of saints.
And so I hope you enjoy.
That being said, real quick, if you're able to do so, we need your support.
If you'd like to make a donation, go to rightresponseministries.com.
You can give a donation of any amount.
We are so grateful for your giving, for your generosity.
If you're not able to make a donation, you can still support this ministry.
By simply subscribing to our YouTube channel, downloading our podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and sharing our content with your family and friends.
All that being said, let's go ahead and get started.
Hope you enjoy.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, so welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your guest, Pastor Joel Webbin.
And as I've already mentioned, I'm privileged to be joined by Pastor Scott Brown with Church and Family Life.
Uh, Pastor Scott Brown, would you go ahead and just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your ministry?
Yeah, I'm married to Deborah.
I have four children who are married.
I've got 24 grandchildren.
I grew up in Southern California, spent the first half of my life there.
Now I'm in North Carolina and I'm a pastor at Hope Baptist Church here in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
And so I wear two hats typically in a given day as a local church shepherd and also, uh, The head of church and family life.
Church and family life is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life.
We're focusing on these two institutions, the church and the family, these powerful, remarkable institutions that God has created the church and the family, the two discipleship and evangelistic institutions.
So we focus on both because we think that they are complementary in the way that they function, they need one another.
Churches need holy families and families need holy churches.
So that's what we do.
We have a network of about 500 churches around the country.
We do a lot of conferences.
We mentor people.
We write books.
We have a weekly podcast on issues that are impinging on the church and a family.
And so I guess that's it.
Yeah, that's what I do every day.
Well, that's great.
So, our church is a part of church and family life.
And we, I think, I probably, my first introduction was probably through Vodi Bakum and some of his teachings.
And from time to time, he would reference the network, which at the time used to have another name.
What was the name that it used to have?
Right.
It was the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, NCFIC.
Nobody could say it, nobody could even pronounce it.
So, we thought we'd use a name that actually people could understand, actually describe what we do.
Yeah.
Amen.
Well, the family integrated model, that's something that for a lot of people is just, as you know, completely foreign.
And it was foreign for me as well.
And by God's grace, He changed my heart.
Breaking Generational Church Division00:15:12
And, you know, the short answer that I always give people, you know, is just when they say, well, how come you don't have a children's ministry?
You know, or how come you don't do this?
How come you don't do that?
And I always just say, well, we believe that children should come to church.
And I think part of what's difficult to persuade people with is that, um, People don't really have a clear biblical definition of what constitutes the church.
So they would never see it that way.
They would never see, you know, if you put your children in a separate wing of the church facilities and, you know, they have a Bible lesson, you know, and they're doing some Christian things, Bible centered things, the parents to say that, well, you didn't bring your children to church this Lord's Day.
That would be my conviction now, but that's because I better understand what the church is.
Is.
And so I guess my question is could you provide for our listeners a little bit of the biblical support for why children should participate with their mothers and fathers on the Lord's Day in worship?
Sure.
The only positive witness that we have in Scripture is for the church gathering generationally, all ages gathering together.
The pattern is explicit in the Old Testament, it's explicit in the New Testament.
It's really the only pattern that we have.
It's one thing to say, well, there's no age segregation in the Bible.
Well, that's not actually the primary argument that we have.
Our argument is that the only thing you see in the Bible is a generational pattern of worship and discipleship.
So the only reason that we bring the whole family together in worship is because that's the only thing you see in the Bible.
So, how would you respond to the antagonist who would say, Well, I do believe in multi generational discipleship, but a five year old just isn't going to understand 75% of what the pastor is saying in his sermon.
And so that's why, right?
Because I can hear the devil's advocate saying, That's why we have a children's ministry on Sundays, because we believe in multi generational discipleship, but we think it should be geared for each of those generations.
Right, so that's pragmatic thinking, not biblical thinking.
I think that's really the heart of the matter.
But the truth is, in the Bible, you do have infants gathering with their families to hear the Word of God.
I mean, in the Old Testament, hearing the reading of the Word of God for a half a day.
In the New Testament, you absolutely have children in the meetings of the church.
When the Apostle Paul is writing to the Ephesian church, he addresses wives and then he addresses husbands and then he addresses children.
Children.
Obey your parents in the Lord, honor your father and mother.
The Apostle Paul believed the children were there.
So he was speaking to them.
He thought all of them would be there.
That's the most natural and biblical thing.
You know, I have been on dozens, maybe probably hundreds of debates and interviews over this.
I really only ask one question Can you show me anything in Scripture where there's a positive pattern for the segregation of age groups or life stages in the Bible?
And the problem is, there is none.
You can read the Bible till your eyes bleed, and there is none.
It just doesn't exist.
So that's the question.
Can you give me a positive witness from Scripture about this pragmatic pattern?
And frankly, there just is none.
And people have to come up with other things.
Well, they say, well, the rabbis did it.
And I always say, well, our pattern isn't the rabbis.
I think Jesus had a lot to say.
About the way the rabbis were conducting the church.
And they weren't positive.
So our pattern is not the rabbis.
Our pattern is not the culture.
Our pattern is not our own pragmatism.
Our pattern is the word of God alone.
Amen.
Yeah.
One thing that was helpful for me was around the same time that I was coming into the conviction of family integrated worship, I was also coming into the conviction of a church having a single service.
And I don't know how you feel about that, Pastor Brown, but I. For me, I just, you know, I look at the New Testament word that's used for church, ecclesia, and that it means assembly or a gathering.
And so the idea of, well, really, I mean, you know, I don't want to be too technical, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, when Paul is chastising the Corinthian church, he's chastising them for the manner, the heart posture, the attitude in which they were participating in the Lord's Supper.
But I think there's also a practical concern.
And so what we see clearly in the text is.
Paul's concern, his pastoral concern for their hearts, their attitude and posture towards one another, that some people are showing up early and despising those who come later, and the rich despising the poor, and some not having anything to eat.
And so there's certainly that element.
And that's the primary element, but there's still the practical implication, which is you have two sets, two portions of the church that are showing up at two separate times.
And it seems as though one of the things that the apostle is advocating for, he's hitting the spiritual issue.
Of division.
But I can't comprehend solving the spiritual issue of division without doing anything about the practical issue of division.
That at the end of the day, even if our hearts are aligned and even if there's no resentment or bitterness or any of those things, division in our hearts, when you have half of the church showing up at 9 a.m. and then the other half of the church showing up at 11 a.m., you still have, with the Lord's Supper, it being divided.
That, you know, when Paul says earlier in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, he says, just as there is one bread, we who are many, Are one.
How do you do one loaf of bread at two separate times with two separate groups of people?
And I think some people would probably hear that and say, you're being too technical or too literal interpretation of the text.
But to me, it seems as though Christ's body is not meant to be divided.
And it seems as though the Lord's Supper is this sign that is given to the church, this covenant renewal ceremony that in baptism we enter into.
Covenant unity with Christ and his people.
So you could say in baptism, the one joins the many, but in the Lord's Supper, the many become one.
And the Lord's Supper is the renewing, the renewal ceremonial, covenant ceremony that we participate, you know, and I believe it should be weekly, that we're weekly participating in.
And the symbolism, the picture is that the many who have been scattered all week long are being made one in this sacrament or ordinance of the Lord's Supper.
And And I don't know how to do that with two separate groups of people at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.
What do you think about the single service model of the church?
Oh, I think that's absolutely the biblical pattern.
You don't have one bread for the senior citizens, one bread for the singles, one bread for the 13 year olds, and one bread for the marrieds.
The church is not a fragmented organism, the church is a family.
And because the church is a family, It should look like a family.
And as it turns out, when you have a family, you have older people and you have younger people, you have babies and you have the whole group.
So, yeah, I think the fragmentation of the church, the fracturing of the churches is really an important matter.
And what we've seen is that some children, when they're fragmented away from the worship of God, they grow up, they don't really even think the church is their church.
So they go somewhere else.
Right.
So.
No, I completely agree.
I've heard horror stories and witnessed some of them in visiting churches where not only is it pre K and kindergarten or even elementary, primary school, but all the way through high school.
So, all the way through 18 years old, it's one thing, and there's something that can be said about this as well, but it's one thing if it's a Wednesday night youth group.
I think there is a distinction to be made when we talk about.
Certain age based ministries as a substitute for the Lord's Day gathering.
I think that that's a really, really big deal.
But I've been to churches, reformed, at least in their soteriology, churches, reformed ish churches, lowercase r, they're not confessional per se, but I've been to these churches where during Sunday morning, the adults, the parents, and mothers and fathers are in one room, and all the way through 18 years old, they're all in different rooms, you know, your elementary, your middle school, your high school.
And they would even boast as though this was a positive thing, but they would say, Yeah, we have a middle school pastor and a high school pastor.
And they're not just doing Christian activities, they have a sermon.
Right now, the high school pastor is preaching through the book of Matthew.
And the senior pastor with the mom and dad is preaching through the book of John.
And essentially, in some of these mega churches, it's a large campus.
And so it's not just a separate room, but a separate building.
And I think they're going to, your children go to another church.
The families, it's not even attending the same church.
You have separate pastors, you have separate sermons, separate books of the Bible, separate buildings.
Right.
And when you do that all the way through 18 years old, that little Sally and little Johnny have never been to church with their parents, that's just crazy to me.
And it's become normative in our.
Yeah, this is a house of inventions.
This is inventing a sociology that's contrary to the Bible.
God.
Has really established a particular kind of sociology.
And when you go and invent new sociologies, you've really departed from scripture.
In fact, I mean, even the whole imposition of critical race theory and identity politics is a reinvention of the sociology of the church.
It completely revamps the way that everybody relates with one another.
And it's actually satanic because the church was never meant to function according to an identity politics platform.
The church is a family, and there are ways that we treat one another like the older teach the younger, right?
That's what they do.
And you are brothers and sisters together.
And there's just no evidence at all that the church is a fragmented sociology.
It's a unified sociology.
And I really think it breaks up the unity of the body of Christ.
I completely agree.
Both critical race theory and intersectionality, as well as many other things under the large woke banner that we have today, they are tools.
But I like what James Lindsay says not a brother in Christ, he's an atheist, but a friend.
And the Lord in His mercy has used Him to be a help to the church during this difficult time.
But James Lindsay says, yeah, critical race theory, intersectionality, they're tools in the same way that a jackhammer is a tool.
Like there are certain tools that the only thing they do is deconstruct, they don't build anything.
And so the sad reality is that these things, it's not that they're not working, they are working.
They're doing precisely what they were forged in the fire of hell to accomplish, which is division and deconstruction.
And so on that note, Do you find an irony in the sense that we're all about racial reconciliation and racial justice in our culture today?
And so much of the church has bought into this, taking its cues from the culture instead of the word of God.
And so we wouldn't even dream of something like racial segregation.
And then at the same time, with vaccines, and then with precisely what we're talking about with ages and demographics, we're segregated.
We're completely segregated.
I mean, even the church, like for months now, even before the vaccines came out, churches decided we're going to do two services.
We're going to have a mask only service without singing, which I don't know how you defend that in scripture, that commands us to address not only God, but one another with psalms and hymns and scriptures.
So we're going to have one service where we administer some of the means of grace, but not all the means of grace.
We're deliberately choosing not to obey all the things that God tells us to do when we gather together.
And we're going to enforce, we're going to require masks.
And then we're going to have another service where masks are optional and where there is singing.
And I look at that and I'm just between masks, between vaccines, and then what we're talking about for decades, the church with age has been segregated.
And we talk about how we're all about unity.
But number one, we're going about it the wrong way because we've despised the word of God.
But then number two, we're so narrow minded.
We keep thinking about unity in terms of, Racial reconciliation, and we're completely content to divide in all these other ways.
And so it's just funny that, like, you know, people who, they're like, how in the world could there have been separate water fountains, you know, for during Jim Crow era, you know, for white people and black people?
And then in the next breath, you see them, you know, essentially doing the very same thing between the vaxxed and the unvaxed.
Have you seen that?
Have you felt the irony in some of these things?
Oh, yeah, it's bizarre.
It's a return to the things that we turned away from a long time ago.
You know, we turned away from that kind of segregation decades ago, and now people somehow, for some crazy reason, want to return to it.
But here's the root of the issue this is the root of the issue for why you have churches that segregate the generations.
It's really one issue, and it's the reason we have people embracing critical race theory.
The Problem with Cultural Sufficiency00:04:12
The church doesn't believe that scripture is sufficient.
The church believes that culture is sufficient.
And if you look at the great movements, at least just in my lifetime, the secret sensitive movement, the emergent church movement, and now you have this woke movement, it's just the same thing.
It's nothing different.
I've seen this already before.
And it's that the church isn't satisfied with the word of God alone, the church wants something cooler than God.
You're right.
And so that's why the church is a house of inventions.
In a lot of ways, we become like the Roman Catholic Church.
We're inventing all these offices.
We're inventing all these pilgrimages and all kinds of ways of righteousness that the Bible doesn't.
But they're thrilling to people.
Give them candles.
Give them some incense.
Give them something to thrill them.
Give them some images in the wall.
Give them some statues.
That'll thrill them.
That'll get them closer to God.
Well, this is a house of inventions.
And the reason the church became Segregated in the generations is because it happened in a season where the church really just wanted to be creative.
And creativity is a disaster in the church.
No, you're right.
I always want to remind Christians that there's a difference between the inerrancy of Scripture and the sufficiency.
And I think there are still many card carrying evangelicals who will tip their hat to the inerrancy of Scripture, that Scripture is authoritative.
Um, that you know, we believe that scripture is, um, you know, that it is, you know, sola scriptura, the idea that you know, scripture alone, and what we mean by that is we don't mean scripture is the only authority, um, because scripture itself testifies to other authorities that God has established and instituted, but what we do mean is that scripture is the highest authority and it's the only infallible authority, so it's the only authority that never errs and it is the highest authority.
And many Christians would respond to that by saying yes and amen.
The problem is when we get to the sufficiency of scripture, and the reality is that it's.
You know, Christians think that they're being faithful because they would say, Well, I would never contradict the authority of Scripture.
But you can effectively, in effect, you can completely bypass the authority of Scripture by simply saying that the Scripture doesn't apply to this or to that.
Right?
So you're recognizing, tipping your hat, you know, in word, you're paying credence to the authority of Scripture.
But in action, if you don't hold to the sufficiency of Scripture for all of life, then.
Then it doesn't matter if it's authoritative.
It would be the equivalent, you know, a good analogy or illustration would be the equivalent of, you know, having a sword on the mantle of your fireplace at home.
And it's encased in some kind of glass, you know, glass case.
And it's, you know, it's a double edged sword, you know, and it's sharp.
And you brag about it with your children, your grandchildren, you know, as you gather around the fireplace.
Maybe it's an old war relic that you used, you know, decades in the past.
And this is the sword that I.
That I've used in this context and that context, and look at its beauty, look at the craftsmanship, look at its effectiveness, all these kinds of things.
But that's the inerrancy of Scripture.
But the sufficiency is when you actually open the glass case and take the sword down and use it.
And I think that's the problem there are so many things, especially in the last 18 months, that have come our way.
And Christians, while still acknowledging that the Scripture is authoritative, they have no earthly idea how to apply the Scripture to, and they just don't think it does.
I think they just don't think the scripture applies to vaccines.
They don't think it applies to pandemics.
They don't think it applies to the civil government, or the only application that they can see is we always submit, no matter what is ever handed down.
Applying Scripture to Daily Life00:03:42
And they don't think it applies on the Lord's day.
And that's been something that we've seen for decades.
You're right, it's pragmatism.
We come to the church thinking it's a blank canvas for our own creative license and freedom.
And we don't think that the word of God actually tells us.
How to worship, that it conducts our affairs and especially our Lord's Day gathering.
And so it's certainly a problem.
And for me, understanding what constitutes church was a really, you know, I think the same mindset, the same wrong principles that allowed us to segregate the church based off of age for the decades was the same mindset that allowed many Christians and sadly many pastors to have completely consciences that were completely at ease when it came to live streaming.
Their church services for months on end with no sense of urgency that we got to get back to gathering because we can't answer the question, what is church?
And I would say, and maybe you can add to this, Pastor Scott, but I would say that church is the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day, that the Lord says the Christian Sabbath.
And so Christ, He did not abrogate the Sabbath, but He did not remove it, but He renewed the Sabbath from the last day of the week to the first day of the week by virtue of His resurrection and His appearance.
To the apostles.
And so it's the gathering of the saints, young and old, on the Lord's Day.
It's the ecclesia, a one assembly, one gathering of all the saints together on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week, for the administering of the ordinary means of grace, which is to publicly preach the word, publicly pray the word, publicly sing the word, and also publicly see the word, S E E, in the only ordinances that have been given to us by Christ that are by sight, which would be baptism and the Lord's Supper.
And we don't live by sight, but we live by faith.
And faith comes by hearing, and in hearing by the word of God, which is why we don't have images.
That's why we adhere to the second commandment.
And the Protestant churches rejected Rome, that fills its cathedrals with all of these things by sight.
However, the Lord has given us these two things that are visible, that tell us something about Christ and his people and the covenant that he's made with us.
And so I would say that's what it is the Lord's Day gathering of all the saints together, one gathering, one ecclesia.
For publicly preaching the word, publicly praying the word, publicly singing the word, and publicly seeing the word in baptism and the Lord's Supper.
And wherever that is not happening, if that's not occurring, I would contend that that's simply not church.
The church has been defined for us.
And so if I'm sending my children to another room and that's not happening, it's not the gathering of the saints on the Lord's day for the preaching, the praying, the singing, and the seeing of the word of God, all word centric.
Then I am sending my children to some other place than church.
Would you agree with that definition?
Would you add anything to that?
No, I think that's exactly it.
And the problem that we have been facing in evangelicalism is it's exactly as you said.
People have been content to accept inerrancy as an intellectual proposition, but they don't want God to tell them what to do, and particularly what to do on the Lord's day.
You can't tell me what to do.
But the truth is, God wants to control your life, He wants to control your time.
That's why He sets aside one day in seven.
Embracing God's Sovereign Providence00:07:03
He wants to control your time.
And he's controlling your time by saying, work six days and then come and worship me one day.
And I think it's really a matter of submission and authority and the desire that we have to hold an intellectual proposition like inerrancy and call ourselves Christians, but yet not really being willing to say, Lord, what would you have me do?
I want to do the things that you've said we should do in the church and in the family and at work.
And in every part of life.
Right, right.
It's the regular principle of worship, but really it's the regular principle for all of life.
There are choices that are made available to us.
There's nothing in the Word of God that says, thou must take this job over that job.
But the reality is, even with that example that I just gave, well, let's look at these two companies and let's look at the ethics behind them and the principles.
And let's also look at what they pay and the type of work that I would be doing and what's more glorifying to God.
What do they pay?
What allows for me to Better provide for my family?
What's the work schedule?
One makes me work on Sunday, right?
And one doesn't require me to work.
And so, you know, for me, I used to be charismatic.
I don't know if you're familiar with Jack Deere, but I was a part of his church once upon a time when I was in college and helped with the prophetic teams and those kind of things.
And then slowly but surely, the Lord, you know, he brought me into Calvinism and complementarianism, and he brought me into congregationalism and cessationism and all these, you know, Notorious infamous C words is what I call them all the bad C words, and the big C word is confessionalism.
And so it took me a long time, but eventually I became Reformed Baptist and confessional.
But one of the things that helped me to kind of embrace cessationism is I just realized that, like what you're saying, the sufficiency of God's word that what I used to see as prophecy, I now realize that there's not one prophetic word that I ever got for someone that could not have been arrived at.
Equally or better by simply the word plus providence.
The word plus providence.
And I really, that is how God guides his people.
He does it through special revelation, first and foremost, but then also in natural revelation.
These two things are two powerful.
So you think that, like, well, but the Bible doesn't.
Yeah, but God is directing his people.
He is a shepherd, he is guiding his sheep very meticulously, with much more control.
Like you said, then I think we're willing to recognize or able to recognize.
And so when I look at the Word of God and all of its commands, like for me, I left California.
And when people say, Why did you leave California?
I would say, The Word of God.
Because the Word of God tells me that Titus 2 talks about what women should be, older women training younger women and teaching them to submit to their husbands, to love their children.
But then also talks about working at home.
And so I want my wife to be able to be at home.
Home.
And then looking at the word of God, fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but rather train them up.
And so I realized I'm responsible for my children's education, and it must be a distinctly Christian education that I give them, whether it be homeschooling or classical Christian school outside of the home.
But either way, my wife needs to be at home to teach the children, or I have to be able to afford the tuition for a private school.
And then, a good man leaves an inheritance for not only his children, but his children's children.
And although It can be nothing less than a spiritual inheritance.
I believe that it does include more, that it includes building wealth and leaving a material inheritance for your children.
Money is not evil.
It's the love of money that is evil.
And money can be used to do wonderful things for the glory of God.
And so, as I was looking at all this, and then the lifelong command not children in the home obey their parents, but even grown children are called to honor thy father and thy mother.
And as my parents begin to age and my wife's parents begin to age, You know, they weren't going to be able to retire in San Diego, California.
And so we wanted to be closer to them so that we could care for them.
Like 1 Timothy chapter 5, children should give some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God.
And so, as I just constructed, you know, looking at the word of God and then looking at its real application in terms of this is how much money it's going to cost to obey Jesus.
And you might say, well, there are people who are poor in China and North Korea that obey Jesus.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
The difference is they're stuck.
I had a choice.
I didn't have to live in California.
I didn't have to live by the beach.
I had a choice.
And so there's the providence piece.
So, between the word of God, special revelation, and the providence piece, and then looking at my budget and looking at how much I was going to be able to make and what I'd be able to do.
And then that doesn't even bring into question what my taxes were going to in California and what I was supporting.
And so, all these things, it became as though it was almost as clear as though there were actually a verse in the Bible that said, Joel Webbin, thou shalt move.
To Texas and leave California, you know?
And so my point is the word of God is sufficient.
It just, it takes work.
You know what I mean?
It takes study.
Do you have any comment on that?
Yeah.
And it takes a heart that says, Lord, I want to do what you want me to do.
I mean, I've seen this happen in so many people's lives, just like the way you've just described it.
You know, Lord, I want to raise my children the way that, you know, you said.
I mean, in fact, an entire Shift in thousands of people's thinking was when they realized the Bible said, Be fruitful and multiply.
And there were people that said, Wow, Lord, if you say that's good, I want to do that.
I want to be a living picture of what's in the Word of God.
I don't want to go invent my own life.
It's the heart that says, Lord, I came to you because I needed you to lead me.
And that's really the whole matter of the sufficiency of Scripture.
That you think scripture is all you need.
And so as you navigate your way through life, you're always looking to the word of God.
And you described the worship of God in the church.
There's been a great return to those simple means of grace.
And it's so important that we do that.
I mean, John Knox said, all inventions of man in the worship of God are idolatry.
That's what it is.
I wrote a little book called Counterfeit Worship a few years ago.
Defining Government and Family Spheres00:09:46
About Knox, particularly.
But it's just critical that we understand that.
Do we want to be creative or do we want to be?
Do we humble ourselves before the Lord and do what He told us to do in all of its simplicity?
Or are we going to create a house of inventions in our homes, in our churches, and in everything else that we do?
Right.
Amen.
John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, is the one who also said that resistance to tyranny is submission to God.
And there you go.
Man.
Yeah.
I.
We need pastors and Christians to be studying guys like John Knox.
I think we just weren't prepared for the last 18 months.
The church was just not ready for this.
All of us, at least myself, I'll speak for myself, quickly trying to learn theologically in 15 minutes what I should have studied and learned over the past 15 years.
And statements like, I'm sure you heard someone that I appreciate a lot of his ministry, but he recently said, Well, as long as the government's not telling us to do something that God forbids or refusing to allow us to do something that God commands, causing us to sin, then it's okay.
And the example that was used is if the government tells us to put pinwheels on the side of our heads, wear a pinwheel on the side of our head, then I'm going to wear the pinwheel.
And I was just thinking, that's the product of someone who's lived in a nation that's had a lot of freedom.
Well, also, that person is also not thinking clearly at all.
Probably because of the pinwheel on the side of his head.
It's probably cutting off his brain.
Well, for instance, let's just say that you, as a pastor of your church, are telling everybody in the church to wear pinwheels to work.
Right.
Or you start telling the wives how to dress.
Well, I'm pretty confident that that fellow would reject that.
It's not sinful to wear a pinwheel, and it's probably not sinful to dress the way you say that they should dress.
But the problem is if you do that, you've stepped out of your jurisdiction.
And so a jurisdiction may command you to do something that's not sinful, but it's not their jurisdiction to command you.
That's the deal.
And everybody believes that.
Every pastor believes that.
Well, I'll obey, you know, just as long as I don't have to disobey the Lord.
They're not thinking clearly.
No, you're absolutely right.
I want to address that a little bit more because you've had some really great stuff on your podcast about sphere sovereignty and jurisdictions and that, you know, God instituted the home, the church, and the state.
And I think part of the problem is that we are, as a nation, and the church sadly is proving to not be much of an exception to this, but I think the average American is, we're statist.
And we see the civil magistrate.
First, we don't understand the doctrine of the lesser civil magistrate, and we could talk about that.
But we see the civil magistrate as just this the highest power in all of human society and all the land.
And we point to something like Romans 13 and we miss exegete it and we say, well, it says submit.
But I can point to Hebrews chapter 13 that says, obey your leaders.
Talking about elders, spiritual leaders in the church, which is another human institution that's divinely instituted by God, no less legitimate than the state.
And I have verses that I can point to that specifically say, Obey your leaders in the Lord, for they are keeping watch over your souls as men who must give an account.
So let them do this with joy and not a groaning, for that would be of no benefit to you.
And so I can point to something like that and say, Hey, well, the Bible says that you're called to submit to me.
And so if I tell you what to wear to work, as long as I'm not telling you to sin, I'm just telling you that you should wear a blue suit instead of a black suit.
I'm not telling you to be immodest or anything like that.
Right.
So, I mean, we can make that argument all day long and no one would tolerate it.
What would they do?
Right.
I mean, I would be on the news.
I'd be picked up by, you know.
Yeah.
So, at the end of the day, what is the difference?
Go ahead.
Sorry.
I just wrote a short book on this whole subject.
The illustration is Forced Vaccinations.
It's called Forced Vaccinations Thinking Biblically.
It's a short book, but what I try to do is explain a jurisdictional argument.
It's exactly what you're saying.
There are jurisdictions that have particular authority, but the government has no authority to tell you what to inject into your body.
God has actually given that authority to you under his headship that your body belongs to the Lord.
It doesn't really belong to the government, it belongs to the Lord.
A Christian can't do anything that harms his body or that he thinks harms his body.
And God has given that jurisdiction to you.
And if you're parents, he's given that jurisdiction to parents.
To parents for their children.
The government can't tell your children, the government doesn't own your children.
These are just the simple jurisdictional structures that we find in the Bible.
God has created society under this matter of various jurisdictions.
And you have the church and the family and the state, and you have the individual and you have the employer as well.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And I think the problem is, and I think you would agree with this, the problem is that people see the church, they don't see these as sovereign spheres that are side by side.
And there are cases where there's overlap, right?
Sure.
But for the most part, these are autonomous, sovereign spheres of authority that coexist side by side.
But that's not how the church sees it.
I think subconsciously, and a lot of people couldn't even verbalize or articulate this, but subconsciously, they think that the state is here and the church is underneath it.
Rather than seeing that both the state, the church, and the home are beside one another at times, like a Venn diagram, at times overlapping, but each distinct.
And autonomous and on equal planes, I would argue.
And the only thing that they're under is Christ.
And I've said this a few times.
It's been said, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.
And I would say yes and amen.
And I would go further and say, Christ, not Caesar, is head of the state.
That Caesar works for God.
Romans 13, he's God's deacon.
And so Christ is overall and in all.
Ephesians 1, verse 22, God has set him not just as head of the church.
But the head of all things to the benefit of the church.
But Christians don't see that.
They see it as there's Christ, and they wouldn't say this, but I think implicitly this is what our actions and our compliance in many areas has revealed we see it as there's Christ, there's Caesar, the state, and then there's the church or maybe the family.
But the church is way down here, and the family is way down here.
And we don't realize that these are not only sovereign.
Autonomous spheres, but they are autonomous governments.
They're spheres of government.
There's the familial government that has a head, an authority.
The husband is the head of his wife.
And then in a church, there's an ecclesiastical government.
We have church officers, elders, and deacons who are ordained as they have authority in the church.
But in each of these arenas, the authority is limited.
It's never an inherent authority, it's a vested authority.
And the moment that that authority, the jurisdiction is breached, the authority is gone.
It's not there.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, and I would expand on that a little bit by saying, by talking about it like this: you have the government has a little bit of authority over lots of people, the church has more authority than the government over a smaller number of people, the family has lots of authority, nearly unlimited authority over a very, very small number of people.
So, in this authority structure, you both have the definition of the authority and you also have the scope of the authority.
And that's just simply thinking Christianly.
That's all that is.
And so that's why the government doesn't have exclusive authority.
Jesus Christ has exclusive authority over all the other authorities.
So, you have this great authority over all the jurisdictions, and then you have the definition and the scope.
On each jurisdiction.
That's the way that God designed it.
And that's really helpful.
Yeah, you know, the state is given the sword, the family is given the rod, and the church is given the word of God.
Raising Children as Christians00:15:29
I mean, those are the means of instruction.
That's right.
And even that you could argue, I heard someone say just the other day that the individual is given the conscience.
That, you know, even the conscience governs and regulates and disciplines the individual, it restrains him.
From certain things.
And so at every level, whether it be self leadership or a husband's leadership of his wife and children, or like you're saying, a civil magistrate and his leadership in the civil realm, or an elder in a church, at every level, there is a degree of authority, and then there's also a tool, an instrument that God has given to them in order to wield that authority.
And for the church, it's a sword, it's just a spiritual sword, it's that double edged sword, it's the word of God.
For Caesar, it is the sword and a physical sword.
And with the father and the mother in the home, it's the rod with the children, which is such a beautiful.
The reason why I love that is because it's so simple.
There's so many times where I just feel like you doubt the promises of God, bringing it back to parenting in the home.
You doubt the promises of God.
You're like, my two year old, my two year old is a rebel.
And there's times where it's just you spank them and you.
And you don't want to break their will, but you do want to harness their will and shape their will.
And you spank them, and then you're praying for them, praying over them.
We're doing family worship every single night in our home.
Well, that's not true.
We are striving for every single night.
I always encourage people to make your goal daily.
That way, you at least hit four.
If you don't have a daily goal, then it's going to happen once a week.
So by us making a nightly goal, You know, a daily goal, we usually hit four to five times on average.
And we always try to make sure that one of those times, because we do it in the evening, is the Lord's day.
Because right now we're a new church plant.
We don't have an evening service.
And eventually I want to have an evening service, not for a second group of people to attend, but for the same group of people to attend church twice, because it's not just the Lord's hour, but the Lord's day.
And so, anyways, all that being said, but believing the promises of God that rebellion is bound up in the heart of a child and the rod will remove it far from them.
That is such a relieving, delivering, hope filled promise that if I just obey God's word in this arena, That he's made this promise and he's faithful.
What do you, real quick, I'd love to pick your brain on this.
How should we do family worship?
How did you do family worship with your children and now with your grandchildren, senior children do that?
How do you do family worship in your home?
Very simply, we would get up in the morning and we would read the Bible.
We read four chapters, we read through the Bible nearly every year.
You know, maybe 16, 17 years of raising our children.
And I would ask pretty much one question What wonderful thing did you see in the Word of God?
And then we would pray.
And sometimes we would sing.
My view is make it simple.
You know, dad doesn't have to create a sermon for everything.
Just read the Bible.
The Word of God is so powerful.
You want your children, don't let your children leave home without the whole counsel of God.
They need to see the whole sweep of redemptive history so they can see the greatness and the kindness and the mercy of God.
So that's what I think.
The Puritans took the morning and evening pattern.
I think that's a really good pattern.
But it's like you said if you don't commit to do it, you're never going to do it.
There are 400 things that wage war against your gathering together to read the Word of God.
So you just have to say, we're going to do this.
We're going to do this at this time, regardless.
Of what else is happening, whatever phones are ringing, whatever.
And so, yeah, but I think simplicity is really the way to think about it.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, I don't want as much of it.
I just wanted them to see the beauty of Jesus.
That's what I wanted them to see.
Right, amen.
I was going to say, as much of a preacher as I am, I don't take the time to write a sermon for our every evening for family worship.
But we're very similar.
What I'll do is I'll read the text.
Every night I'll read the same chapter.
Right now we're preaching through the Psalms on the Lord's Day with our church.
And so I'll take that Psalm that we're coming towards on the Lord's Day and just read the same Psalm each evening.
And then we have the Follow Me Bible by Joel Beakey, who is one of the lead editors on it.
And so it doesn't have any images of Christ, which I appreciate.
And so we'll do the Follow Me Bible, a story from that.
And then we use Keach's Catechism.
It's a Reformed Baptist catechism.
And so we're doing that.
And then some memory verses.
And then all the children, you know, we take turns, you know, praying.
And one thing I also wanted to add you're, so you're Reformed Baptist, right?
Are you 1689?
Yeah.
Yep.
So with being Reformed Baptist, I, you know, I'm about as covenantal as you can get without baptizing babies.
So I'm about as far as you could go, you know, in the covenantal vein.
And when it comes to, you know, My children who are young right now.
So, I have a three year old, a two year old, and a 10 month old.
And with my children, I just preached a sermon on this from Psalm 71 last Sunday.
But I always am trying to train my children as Christians, not pagans.
Absolutely.
And so, even like a question like teaching them the Lord's Prayer, should a two year old pray, Our Father?
Right?
Even if it's like, well, I'm not sure if they're regenerate yet.
You would say yes, of course.
Absolutely.
I would say yes, too.
I would say yes, too.
But coming from my Baptist background, there was a time when I would have said no.
There was a time when I would have said, yeah, but they're not regenerate.
Could you help me with how would you make that argument for parents?
Because the way that I would verbalize it is like parents should raise their children, not just to be Christians, but as Christians.
Pastorally, what would you say to parents about that?
Well, parents are under divine commands to teach their children when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up.
Parents are obligated before God to bring them up in the training and the admonition of what?
The Lord.
So, yes, children should memorize scripture.
They should sing.
When a child comes into the church, you should teach them to sing.
In fact, I wrote a book about how to bring your family to church called The Family of Church.
And I've chapters in here on singing, helping your children sing.
But you're going to help, they're going to sing Christian words.
And when they're converted, those words will be so powerful for them.
Those words will come alive like never before.
They sang them when they were unbelievers in their youth.
And then they get converted, and then they just are absolutely thrilled because God changed their heart.
So it's, you know, I mean, think of Charles Spurgeon, whose parents filled him up with the knowledge of God.
That formed a tremendous foundation for his whole life.
You know, his parents made him read the Puritans and all kinds of stuff like that.
Right.
Well, that was a good thing.
And they were filling up the well of his soul.
So, yes, absolutely.
And children can pray.
Children should pray in their families.
And I completely agree.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, no, I completely agree.
And I think.
You know, some of the Psalms that, you know, where the psalmist says, you know, from my youth, or even more than that, it's like from my mother's womb, you know, like from infancy.
And I think, you know, the famous quote by Polycarp, that, you know, the disciple of the Apostle John, where right before he was martyred, you know, 86 years have I served thee.
He has never done me any harm.
You know, how now could I then blaspheme my Savior and my King?
My King, my Savior.
And most.
You know, most historians and biblical commentators and theologians would all argue that 86 years was the length of his entire life.
So essentially, you know, Polycarp is saying, I've served Christ from my birth.
And I think that's the testimony, isn't it?
That's the testimony that we want for our children I cannot remember a single day that I did not profess Jesus as Lord.
And I tell parents all the time, they're like, Well, yeah, but God's sovereign over salvation, you know?
And I don't, and I'm like, yeah, God's sovereign over salvation, but why do we do evangelism?
You know, like the same God who's sovereign over the ends of people's salvation is sovereign over the means.
And the means that God has granted to save people ordinarily is through the church and the family.
And so that if someone is submersed in a gospel preaching church and also a gospel preaching family, then I think we should expect that God is going to save them, not because we, by our Good parenting have merited, made ourselves entitled to God's salvation, but because God saves through ordinary means.
And so I always think, you know, if God didn't intend to save my children, then He would have given them to my pagan neighbors.
I believe God gave my children to me precisely because He wants to save them.
And that the same God who has predestinated their salvation predestinated the means by which they would come to that salvation, placing them in a God fearing home.
And I think the sad thing is, you know, many parents, and I don't want to make light of this because it's tragic, but many parents would say, we can't believe that our son went off the rails, our daughter, you know, is not serving the Lord and has renounced Christ and doesn't even claim to be a follower of Jesus.
And this is where, like, we're not trying to be mean spirited, but it's because we love children, we love parents, and those are tragic stories that we don't want to see happen.
I think we have to, in a loving way, we have to address and say, okay, so you say you raised your children to fear the Lord.
But you never brought them to church.
You never had church in the home.
You never had family worship.
And if you did, for every 15 minutes of reading scripture with your kids, you subjected them to 40 hours a week of public school.
Right.
That has a worldview.
It's not just math, there is no neutrality.
Could you speak on that for a moment, Scott?
Like, what do you think about can a Christian send their children to public school?
No.
Great answer.
Can you flesh it out a little bit?
Yeah, I'll quote Lodi Bakum.
He said this probably over a decade ago that the public school system is pagan by federal mandate.
And Christians cannot send their children to learn paganism.
Christians are commanded by God to bring their children up in the training of the admonition of the Lord to teach the whole counsel of God.
So, um, The student always becomes like his teacher.
And with the schools that we have going now in our public system, which are so corrupt, they're so sexualized, they're insane.
They're telling kindergartners to try to figure out what gender they are.
So, you know, if you're a Christian, you cannot send your children into this system.
Amen.
Yeah, I think Bakum also said, don't be surprised.
If you send your kids off to Caesar, don't be surprised when they come back as Romans.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that's just, it's the myth of neutrality.
I think that's what it is.
It's just that parents, they, they, it's science, it's math.
And they don't recognize, yeah, but there is a way of teaching math to the glory of God.
And there's a way of teaching math that blasphemes God.
That all truth is God's truth.
And so I would be of kind of, you know, the Francis Schaeffer, Kyperian mindset of like, let's, instead of burning the Babylonian libraries, like, let's plunder them for whatever riches they might have.
But you're only able to do that in a way that brings any edification at all when your worldview is secure, when that's first put in place and you're able to discern, you're able to extract truth without getting poison in the process.
And I think that's part of the problem is this buying into the myth of neutrality.
And then part of the problem also is we miscategorize our own children.
I've heard parents use, you know, the.
The reasoning of, well, I want my children to, I don't want to shelter them.
I want them to be like missionaries.
And I would just say, that's, they're not missionaries.
They're children.
You be a missionary.
You be a missionary.
Your five year old's not a missionary.
What are you talking about?
A missionary, that's, what kind of language does the Bible use?
Like good soldiers of Christ Jesus.
What parent puts their five year old in an army to be a soldier?
Your children can be soldiers later, but right now they're not, they're children.
And so the idea of like, well, you're sheltering your children.
Yeah, I'm sheltering my children.
What, what, I mean, you can look at nature, natural revelation, with, you know, like that's, that's what even animals instinctively do is they shelter and protect their, their children.
They're, they're, we want them to be like arrows and we're going to shoot them out one day, but, but not yet.
And yeah, so it's just, I don't know.
It's sad.
So all that being said, I, you know, my point is just to say that, you know, you know, God, the same God who predestines the ends, who he's going to save, he doesn't save arbitrarily, right?
You know, the, Romans 10 14, how would they believe unless they hear?
And how would they hear unless someone preaches to them?
And so, I think it's safe to say that at this, you know, God is sovereign over salvation.
And there are some one offs, but I believe that by and large, they are exceedingly rare.
Addressing Vaccine Mandate Lies00:02:06
You're Judas type of person.
I think that by and large, the radical majority is that if someone is submersed in the hearing of the word of God in the home and in the church, in their education, you know, that.
That God's going to save them.
And again, it's not a works based salvation.
It's not if I do that, God will give me salvation.
It's exactly the opposite.
Switch it around and say, I am only doing this.
So it's not if I do this, God owes salvation to my children.
No, it's if I do this, it's only because God gave me the grace to do it.
And God gave me the grace to do it because He determined before the foundations of the world were laid to save this child.
And therefore, he determined the means of their salvation and supplied the grace to me as their father or their mother in order to be that means.
And so, anyway, so all that being said, are there any final thoughts that you have about family worship or family integrated worship in church or tyranny?
Any of these things?
Yeah, scripture is sufficient.
God has given us an eternal testimony, it's all we need.
We should look there for everything and not to the world.
Amen.
Tell us about your book one more time, the vaccine one.
Yeah.
So, this is a book called Forced Vaccinations Thinking Biblically.
And, you know, I walk through the various issues, just giving, I believe, biblical counsel for all these things.
The whole, the principle, the primary principle is that God owns your body and that he has given you jurisdiction over it and that you, That the Bible makes it very clear that you can only do good to your body.
There's a chapter in here also about lies, dealing with lies.
Do you believe that these vaccine mandates are based on lies and what you do about that?
Book Offer for Doubting Hearts00:01:12
So I address that as well.
But it's a book to just help people think through a vaccine mandate.
That's really good.
Where can people find that?
At churchandfamilylife.com.
It's our website, churchandfamilylife.com.
Great.
It sounds like you're writing a book like once every couple months.
It sounds like you write pretty often.
I've got three more that I want to push out in the coming months.
That's really cool.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
And I hope that our listeners will be blessed by it.
And I hope to get to do it again with you sometime soon.
Hey, I'd love it.
Joel, thank you so much.
It was such a delight.
As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.
To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.comslash offer.
We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?
If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource.
As a reminder, to get this offer, go to rightresponseministries.comslash offer.