NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - An Epidemic Of “Weaker-Brother” Pastors!
Aired: 2022-01-05
Duration: 01:16:57


=== Weaker Faith and Tyranny (14:45) ===

[00:00:00]  Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to yet another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:06]  In this episode, I was once again privileged to have my friend, A.D. Robles, join me for the task.
[00:00:13]  Now, I want to read something.
[00:00:14]  I don't typically do this, but I want to read something right now from the outset to set the framework, the theological framework, for the discussion that A.D. and I have in this episode.
[00:00:24]  I've written this R.C. Sproul famously preached a sermon called The Tyranny of the Weaker Brother.
[00:00:31]  His premise comes from Romans chapter 14.
[00:00:35]  He talks about how the church should welcome the weaker brother into membership with grace, but he warns of the weaker brother's tendency to be a tyrant towards the rest of the body.
[00:00:46]  The weaker brother, due to his weaker faith and underdeveloped conscience, has a bad habit of adding the traditions of men to the laws of God.
[00:00:56]  Unfortunately, he often does not do this merely for himself, but for others.
[00:01:01]  For example, the weaker brother will frequently insist that their fellow church members, and especially their pastors, not drink alcohol, even though Scripture permits the righteous enjoyment of alcohol to the glory of God.
[00:01:15]  And yet, churches should still welcome the weaker brother into their membership and be willing, and in certain contexts, to lay down their liberties in order to avoid becoming a stumbling block for him.
[00:01:28]  But should the church welcome the weaker brother as their pastor?
[00:01:33]  That is the question.
[00:01:35]  If the Apostle Paul labels the one whose conscience is wrongfully bound by man made traditions as objectively weaker, should this individual be in a position of authority over those who are objectively stronger, according to the Word of God?
[00:01:51]  Clearly, Paul's point has to do with faith.
[00:01:55]  Therefore, the weaker brother is not merely weaker in some kind of abstract way.
[00:02:00]  Rather, in accordance with Scripture, the weaker brother of Romans chapter 14 possesses less faith than the weaker brother of Romans chapter 14.
[00:02:07]  Than his other brothers and sisters in Christ.
[00:02:10]  Such a man should be graciously welcomed into the church.
[00:02:14]  But is there not a serious problem when the church is led by those with the least amount of faith?
[00:02:21]  In these cases, by virtue of both the individual's person and position, the church becomes a context for mass tyranny.
[00:02:32]  Man made traditions become church wide requirements that everyone is commanded to follow.
[00:02:38]  Despite Christ having purchased freedom from such traditions by the costly price of his own blood, is there currently a national and even global epidemic of weaker brothers filling our church's pulpits?
[00:02:56]  Wearing a mask is not a law of God, and yet many of our puny faith pastors have wrongfully bound the consciences of all their congregants in this regard.
[00:03:08]  The same can be said of pastors requiring vaccines for worship.
[00:03:13]  Or segregating the people of God on the Lord's day according to their vaccination status, having a vaccined area and a non vaccined balcony.
[00:03:25]  Pastors are actually doing this.
[00:03:28]  Possessing a conscience that is so poorly shaped is not a disqualification for salvation, that is, membership in Christ's church, but it should be a disqualification for pastoral ministry, that is, eldership.
[00:03:43]  Christ Church.
[00:03:45]  Would not the Apostle Paul expect the office of elder to be filled by stronger brothers?
[00:03:52]  The past couple years have appeared to prove that the vast number of evangelical churches are being led by the weakest among us according to clear biblical standards, and rampant tyranny has been the result.
[00:04:09]  You're in for a treat.
[00:04:10]  Enjoy this episode of Theology Applied.
[00:04:13]  Real quick, before we get started, if you would prayerfully consider supporting Right Response Ministries, we would be incredibly grateful.
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[00:04:48]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:04:52]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:04:58]  All right, so here we are once again with AD Robles.
[00:05:01]  AD, I'm really glad that you joined the show.
[00:05:03]  And as you know, our topic is really, if I were to sum it up, it's just should I go to a church where I'm more spiritually mature than my pastor?
[00:05:13]  Talking about the weaker brother, the person with weaker faith.
[00:05:16]  And sadly, R.C. Sproul, he famously preached a sermon where he said that he talked about the tyranny of the weaker brother, the person who has less faith, whose conscience doesn't allow them to drink wine, or conscience doesn't allow them to not wear a mask or not get the jab.
[00:05:31]  That person seems to be the person who doesn't just have their conscience shaped in a particular direction, but they enforce that on everybody else.
[00:05:39]  And when a pastor is in that position, it seems to cause a lot of problems.
[00:05:43]  So, should a Christian belong to a local church where their pastor is less spiritually mature than them?
[00:05:50]  Yeah.
[00:05:50]  So, the way you've just described it, I would have to say no.
[00:05:53]  You know, the whole idea of the weaker brother, you know, and the kind of, you know, his theology, you know, kind of binds them in ways that he shouldn't be bound.
[00:06:04]  But you know, you accommodate them and stuff like that.
[00:06:07]  Look, we're supposed to be following our pastors as they follow Christ, right?
[00:06:11]  And if our pastor is following Christ in a way that's like you know, rule crazy in weird ways, like that doesn't make any sense.
[00:06:19]  When I first heard your question, by the way, Joel, not to extend my answer too much, but I was thinking to myself, like, okay, well, what about like you know, older uh, Christian who's not a pastor and you know, they've seen a lot, you know, they've dealt with conflict a lot, they've seen a lot of people struggle against sin and stuff, and so maybe.
[00:06:38]  They're going to respond in a way that's more mature in the sense that they're going to be slower to anger, you know, slower to speak than maybe their pastor.
[00:06:46]  And in that way, I would say, yeah, that could potentially be something where you maybe you're older and you're older in the faith.
[00:06:51]  And so maybe you've, you know, you've fought your sin longer than your pastor has.
[00:06:55]  And so, you know, maybe you're better at it in certain ways than your pastor.
[00:06:58]  In that way, I could see, okay, there's some flexibility there.
[00:07:01]  But in the way you describe it, I would say, absolutely not.
[00:07:03]  Right.
[00:07:04]  Right.
[00:07:05]  Yeah.
[00:07:05]  No, you're right.
[00:07:06]  Spiritual maturity is a broad category, and there's multiple different categories.
[00:07:09]  You know, markers that we could put underneath that, you know, with the fruit of the spirit and all those things.
[00:07:14]  But you're right.
[00:07:14]  For the purpose of this episode, we're, you know, for our listeners, I guess, to provide a little bit more clarity.
[00:07:18]  We're talking about spiritual maturity as it pertains to the degree of a man's faith.
[00:07:23]  Paul talks explicitly in Romans chapter 14 about the person who has weaker faith.
[00:07:29]  He is the weaker brother.
[00:07:31]  And, you know, just to reference it once more, some of our listeners will probably be familiar with this sermon.
[00:07:35]  If you're not, I highly recommend it.
[00:07:36]  Go check it out.
[00:07:37]  But it's called the tyranny.
[00:07:39]  Of the Weaker Brother by R.C. Sproul, the tyranny of the Weaker Brother.
[00:07:44]  The Weaker Brother is the one who has weaker faith.
[00:07:46]  His conscience will not allow him to enjoy wine to the glory of God.
[00:07:50]  It will not allow him to eat meat.
[00:07:53]  And so, you know, the Apostle Paul says that, you know, we shouldn't offend, go out of our way to offend our weaker brother and his conscience.
[00:08:00]  And so there are certain Christian liberties that we should be willing to lay down for our brother.
[00:08:05]  The problem is when our brother also happens to be in an ecclesiastical position of authority.
[00:08:12]  So, like, if we were asking the question, should the church have weaker brothers as members?
[00:08:18]  Of course, of course.
[00:08:20]  And everybody, including the elders, especially the elders, should be willing to accommodate them to some degree, right?
[00:08:27]  So, of course, the church should have those who are weaker brothers in the faith.
[00:08:34]  But when they're pastors, so I'll just get really, really clear here.
[00:08:40]  What do you think, AD, about have you ever heard of when a senior pastor at a church enforces a rule for the entire elder board that they cannot drink alcohol?
[00:08:51]  Have you heard of that?
[00:08:52]  Well, I'm a Presbyterian, so I don't know anything about those.
[00:08:55]  But you go to a Baptist church.
[00:08:56]  But I have heard of such things.
[00:08:58]  Yeah.
[00:08:58]  Well, let me tell you something I heard one time.
[00:09:00]  This makes it real for me.
[00:09:02]  So I'll just tell the story.
[00:09:03]  Someone I knew was accepting a position at a seminary, a Southern Baptist seminary.
[00:09:08]  And he was told to scrub his social media of any cigars or any mixed drinks he may have had on there.
[00:09:20]  And stuff like that.
[00:09:21]  Right.
[00:09:22]  Like that was something he had to do in order to take the job, essentially.
[00:09:25]  Wow.
[00:09:26]  He could do that stuff, but he couldn't put it on social media at all.
[00:09:30]  Like that was a rule.
[00:09:31]  And the problem with that, and I think I know you'll agree, the problem with that is, okay, give me a Bible verse.
[00:09:38]  Give me Bible.
[00:09:39]  Right.
[00:09:40]  You know, and like that's the problem is that it's tyranny.
[00:09:45]  So, one thing that a helpful category, I think, is authority of command versus authority of counsel.
[00:09:50]  Right.
[00:09:50]  So that you can counsel something.
[00:09:54]  Without commanding it.
[00:09:55]  But the moment that we step into the realm of commands, then the Bible gives us a very specific and limited jurisdiction as clergy, as pastors, and just as brothers and sisters in Christ, as Christians, right?
[00:10:09]  Because even with church discipline, Matthew 18, that's not just given to the officers of a church, elders and deacons, but every member of the church has an obligation that if their brother sins against them, so church discipline doesn't start actually with.
[00:10:24]  With the session of elders, it actually starts often with the members of the church and arises to the session.
[00:10:29]  And so, everybody has some measure, even a member in a church who's not an officer, they're not a deacon or an elder, they have some measure of spiritual authority.
[00:10:37]  The question is, where do we overstep our jurisdiction?
[00:10:41]  Are we overstepping the bounds?
[00:10:42]  Are we commanding where we should counsel?
[00:10:45]  Right?
[00:10:45]  I think of this even with like, well, when I'm doing pastoral counsel and somebody is in sin, right?
[00:10:52]  So, for instance, like, Here's one.
[00:10:55]  All right.
[00:10:57]  The guy is struggling with lust, and struggling with lust often being a euphemism for the guy's looking at porn, you know.
[00:11:02]  And so the guy, he's not actually struggling.
[00:11:04]  Struggling often, you know, struggling conveys that he's actually putting up a fight.
[00:11:09]  But sadly, a lot of times there's no struggle.
[00:11:12]  It's just a sinful indulgence.
[00:11:15]  Indulging in pornography.
[00:11:16]  Yeah.
[00:11:16]  Exactly.
[00:11:17]  And so in those cases, what I can command, and I'm curious, you may disagree with me, but the way I see it is I can command.
[00:11:25]  That man never look at pornography ever again, that he uphold his wedding vows to his wife if he's married, that he would recognize that he was bought with a price, that he is not his own, therefore honor God with your bodies.
[00:11:38]  That he not join his members to a prostitute and so unite the members of Christ's body with a prostitute.
[00:11:45]  So, I can command purity.
[00:11:46]  I can command that he would mortify the flesh and put to death the sin of perversion and lust.
[00:11:55]  But a lot of pastors would then also require, which is another word for command, it is expected.
[00:12:01]  They would expect covenant eyes, for instance.
[00:12:05]  Whereas I think that that could be a really helpful tool that I think I could counsel.
[00:12:11]  I think, I feel very strongly, young man, that you would do well.
[00:12:16]  To put these protective measures on your phone or get rid of your iPhone or this or that.
[00:12:21]  But I don't feel like the Bible gives me jurisdiction to say, you've got to stop sinning.
[00:12:26]  But I don't think the Bible gives me jurisdiction to tell him my opinion of how, how he stops.
[00:12:31]  Sure.
[00:12:32]  What do you think?
[00:12:32]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:34]  Yeah, I think I would agree with that.
[00:12:35]  You know, and I think to be honest with you, and I think you probably would be right here with me on this, if he hesitated and was like, no, I don't know about that covenant eyes thing.
[00:12:43]  I mean, that's just, I don't know about that.
[00:12:45]  Like, you'd probably want to ask more questions and have some more counseling sessions and be like, Okay.
[00:12:50]  I mean, like, I'm not going to, it's not in the law of God, but like, you're going to have to explain that one to me.
[00:12:55]  That makes no sense.
[00:12:56]  You got to turn into the detective almost, the interrogator almost a little bit for a minute there, you know?
[00:13:00]  Right.
[00:13:02]  And so, yeah, I think I'm right there with you.
[00:13:06]  You can't, you can't.
[00:13:07]  So, this is another good one.
[00:13:08]  So, right.
[00:13:09]  So, we've got alcoholics out there.
[00:13:11]  And so, people that are addicted to alcohol and then, you know, they come out of that, right?
[00:13:17]  You know, so a lot of people have testimonies where they've been given over to wine and all this stuff.
[00:13:22]  And then, You know, the Lord finds them and then they kind of just put it away.
[00:13:26]  And so that's great.
[00:13:27]  So then, so, so, so imagine a person like that and, you know, you see them, you know, take a couple drinks or whatever, you know, to the glory of God and they're doing fine.
[00:13:37]  And then one night they fall off the wagon, right?
[00:13:39]  One night they just go in again.
[00:13:42]  Are you allowed then to say, well, you see, you lost the right to alcohol.
[00:13:45]  You just can't have it anymore.
[00:13:46]  No, you're not, that's not in your purview.
[00:13:49]  You can't say that.
[00:13:51]  You might be able to counsel them though, look, you know, you don't want to go back down that road.
[00:13:55]  I mean, is it worth it?
[00:13:57]  You know, is it worth it?
[00:13:58]  But you wouldn't want to command something that you're not allowed to command.
[00:14:01]  Right.
[00:14:02]  Yep.
[00:14:02]  Even if you think it's a good idea.
[00:14:04]  Yep.
[00:14:04]  I completely agree.
[00:14:05]  Yeah.
[00:14:06]  So there's a problem with it.
[00:14:07]  I think pastors, they blur the lines often, and Christians, just brothers and sisters in Christ, they do this also.
[00:14:15]  There are things that the Bible commands.
[00:14:17]  You must be like this.
[00:14:19]  You must put sin to death.
[00:14:20]  You must be pure.
[00:14:20]  You must be faithful.
[00:14:21]  You must be.
[00:14:23]  But then we command the means by which we attain that purity, the means by which we attain that sanctification.
[00:14:30]  Like with back to covenant eyes, you know, one more point that I would make on that is just the Bible doesn't actually prescribe covenant eyes to a man that's single, a young, single man who's struggling with lust.
[00:14:42]  The Bible prescribes marriage.
[00:14:44]  Marriage, yeah.

=== Marriage Authority and Control (15:01) ===

[00:14:46]  Right.
[00:14:46]  Paul wouldn't say, Hey, get covenant eyes and you should get, you know, a few accountability partners.
[00:14:51]  And you, you know, Paul would say, You should have a wife.
[00:14:55]  I'll never forget right before my wedding day, you know, I remember lamenting, you know, not a gospel coalition lament, but like an actual Christian.
[00:15:04]  And lament, you know, but I was lamenting the fact that, like, I so badly wanted to have beaten the sin of lust more than I had.
[00:15:16]  I wanted to make more headway.
[00:15:18]  By God's grace, I had made headway, but I wanted to have more progress against that sin than I had in my singleness before entering marriage.
[00:15:28]  And I think that was a good desire, you know, that I wanted part of it because I loved my wife or the woman who was soon to be my wife.
[00:15:35]  And I wanted to.
[00:15:36]  To be more pure for her.
[00:15:38]  But ultimately, I wanted to honor the Lord.
[00:15:39]  But I never, I'll never forget that I just, I had this sense.
[00:15:43]  It's not like the Lord spoke to me or anything like that, but just Him reminding me of His Word, the Holy Spirit working in conjunction with the Word of God, and just reminding me that marriage, it wasn't that I needed to get pure for marriage, although that would be good and right, but that marriage was given to me as a grace for purity.
[00:16:01]  And I just felt like this peace from the Lord, not saying that sin is okay, that lust is okay, but the Lord saying, instead of you getting pure for marriage, I'm giving you marriage.
[00:16:11]  As a grace to help you.
[00:16:13]  So the fight against lust is not over.
[00:16:16]  I'm now bringing in the reinforcements.
[00:16:18]  This is the best accountability partner you will ever have here on this earth in this life, your wife, because she'll be able to help you as you fight against lust in a way that no other man can, or covenant eyes, or anything like that.
[00:16:31]  Yeah.
[00:16:31]  Yeah.
[00:16:32]  And it was just this encouraging thing.
[00:16:33]  So, anyways, my point is, covenant eyes and those kinds of things can be super helpful, but when they start getting commanded, when they start getting prescribed to where if the member of the church says, Okay, I agree with you.
[00:16:46]  This is sin.
[00:16:47]  I need to put it to death.
[00:16:48]  And let's say you say the covenant eyes, and he actually does have some good reasons for why he doesn't want to use covenant eyes on his phone or device because of his work and it might enter whatever.
[00:16:56]  And then he's like, what about this other plan?
[00:16:58]  And you're like, nope, it has to be.
[00:17:01]  Then I would say that's tyranny.
[00:17:01]  Right.
[00:17:02]  That's right.
[00:17:03]  Absolutely tyranny.
[00:17:04]  And what's interesting about this too is when people start prescribing things as if they were from God, you know, and they're not.
[00:17:12]  So covenant eyes, or, you know, you're not allowed to have any alcohol anymore, those kinds of things.
[00:17:19]  What's interesting is they upplay their own ideas of what you should do and then downplay what you're saying, because that is what the word of God says of how to beat lust.
[00:17:29]  You have your own wife.
[00:17:31]  So, what if instead of every single time you have a young man in your office that's like, man, like, I don't know how to beat porn, instead of saying, you know, get cut, what if instead of doing that, you said, you need to find a wife.
[00:17:43]  Now let's work together to get one.
[00:17:46]  You know what I mean?
[00:17:47]  Maybe you need to do some work on your own, but you know what?
[00:17:50]  I'm not helping.
[00:17:51]  This is one man.
[00:17:53]  I don't know if I ever told anyone this story before, but one of the things that I saw when I attended a CREC church in Brooklyn for like six months, this blew my mind.
[00:18:03]  And I was so impressed by this.
[00:18:06]  So there was this woman and this man and woman that we met there.
[00:18:09]  They were married and they told us their story.
[00:18:12]  They met because one of them, I forget which one, went to their pastor and said, Hey, I need help and I'd like to get married.
[00:18:20]  And they went through their CREC connections and found another.
[00:18:24]  Person, whether it was a woman or man, I can't remember which it was.
[00:18:27]  And they connected them and they made a love connection.
[00:18:29]  It wasn't like an arranged marriage or anything, but the pastor was active and said, Let's find you a wife.
[00:18:35]  Let's find you someone.
[00:18:37]  And it's like, what if guys were doing that instead of covenant?
[00:18:42]  I'll help you.
[00:18:44]  Maybe I can hook you up with someone or maybe I can show you how to find a girl.
[00:18:47]  You know what I mean?
[00:18:49]  Presumably the pastor's married.
[00:18:50]  A lot of times pastors are married.
[00:18:53]  I don't know.
[00:18:54]  And the same thing with the wine, for example.
[00:18:57]  So, you know, one of the things that some people think is that, you know, you're actually commanded to take wine in communion, right?
[00:19:02]  Some people think that grape juice is no good.
[00:19:05]  I would be of the persuasion that it must be wine, that the Bible persuades wine.
[00:19:08]  Okay, great.
[00:19:08]  So, you're right there.
[00:19:09]  You're right there.
[00:19:09]  So, think about the guy who's like, okay, here's the solution for you, alcoholic no wine.
[00:19:16]  When God has commanded that wine is for your joy and he's commended it in one of the sacraments, we only have a couple.
[00:19:23]  Right.
[00:19:23]  You know what I mean?
[00:19:24]  So, it's like, man, often the weaker brother sort of commands, their tyrannical commands actually.
[00:19:31]  Downplay what God has actually commanded, which is a really insidious thing about them when you think about it.
[00:19:36]  Right.
[00:19:37]  Right.
[00:19:38]  And, you know, I think, and some people push back on this because they're going to be ardent 12 steppers and stuff.
[00:19:43]  And I honestly have some problems with the 12 step program, Alcoholics Anonymous, and stuff that I personally don't think is biblical.
[00:19:52]  For me, I would say that what would it look like for a person to be truly sanctified who has been a slave to wine?
[00:20:00]  I think if a person has been a slave to wine, then their full redemption, their full deliverance from slavery to wine, is not the ability to never sip wine ever again.
[00:20:11]  But the ability to enjoy it without sin.
[00:20:16]  That takes, and I think, of course, the AA person would agree with this and say that that takes a much greater degree of self control.
[00:20:24]  And then they would argue and say that it's impossible because, well, and it gets into identity and those kinds of things.
[00:20:30]  But we know it's not impossible because we see people do it all the time.
[00:20:32]  Right, exactly.
[00:20:33]  I already know it's not impossible.
[00:20:34]  I know people who were part of AA and who were labeled as alcoholics, and I'll never be able to drink again.
[00:20:40]  I cannot drink with self control.
[00:20:43]  I'm just like, but the Bible says that God has not given you a spirit of fear, but a sound mind, sober mindedness.
[00:20:48]  He's given you self control.
[00:20:50]  Self control is a fruit of the spirit.
[00:20:51]  You do have it.
[00:20:52]  You're a Christian.
[00:20:53]  You know?
[00:20:53]  And so, yeah.
[00:20:54]  So, anyways, and I know that that gets into, you know, people want to talk about dopamine receptors and serotonin and, you know, the genetic side of things.
[00:21:02]  And there may be something to the sense that one individual physiologically may get more pleasure from a glass of wine than another individual in a genetic sense.
[00:21:12]  And I think that there's probably, Some truth to that, but even in that regard, I don't think that that means that you are biologically hardwired to be a slave to wine.
[00:21:21]  I think that even you enjoy wine more, okay, but yeah, are you a slave of Christ or a slave of sin?
[00:21:29]  You're a new creation in Christ Jesus and you have self control.
[00:21:31]  So, anyways, all that means is listen, and listen at the end of the day, and I don't want to say this too, you know, you got to know yourself sometimes.
[00:21:36]  So, if you're one of these people that you just can't take it, right?
[00:21:40]  Okay, okay, then what did Jesus say?
[00:21:43]  You know, if your arm causes you to sin, cut it off, okay.
[00:21:46]  I'm down with that.
[00:21:46]  I'm not saying you can't do that.
[00:21:47]  And I don't think you're saying that either.
[00:21:49]  But understand that that's not necessarily the ideal.
[00:21:53]  Right.
[00:21:53]  Exactly.
[00:21:54]  You know what I mean?
[00:21:54]  Yeah.
[00:21:54]  If that's what you got to do, that's what you got to do.
[00:21:56]  Of course.
[00:21:57]  And you're right.
[00:21:58]  That is commendable by Christ.
[00:22:00]  Like cut off your arm, gouge out your eye.
[00:22:02]  You do whatever you got to do.
[00:22:03]  Better to enter the kingdom of heaven missing an arm, missing a hand, or missing an eye than for your own life.
[00:22:08]  Or not enjoying wine.
[00:22:09]  Or not enjoying God's good.
[00:22:11]  It's better that you make it to heaven without that than not make it at all.
[00:22:16]  Right.
[00:22:16]  So, if that's where you're at, that's the level of sanctification.
[00:22:19]  So, I think that that may be entirely appropriate that somebody who has proven a track record of debauchery in that arena of drunkenness, then yeah, they probably need to get rid of it altogether, not have it in their house and all those things.
[00:22:35]  But what I'm saying is not that the raging, binging alcoholic the very next day tries to drink wine responsibly.
[00:22:44]  I'm saying, but eventually, I think that should be the goal.
[00:22:47]  I think that should be the goal eventually.
[00:22:49]  I don't think the goal is just this indefinite for the next 40 years.
[00:22:51]  I'm never going to drink a drop again because I'm an alcoholic.
[00:22:54]  I'll always be an alcoholic because ultimately my identity is I'm a slave to wine and not a slave to Christ.
[00:22:58]  I have problems with that.
[00:23:00]  I don't really, I don't like that.
[00:23:01]  All right.
[00:23:01]  So, all that being said, when we talk about tyranny, I think everybody, you know, I know that it's my natural inclination.
[00:23:06]  Everybody thinks, you know, the civil realm.
[00:23:08]  They think about government, right?
[00:23:10]  So they think, you know, politicians mean tyrannical.
[00:23:14]  But God, you and I both agree, God has established, you know, three primary spheres of government the church, the home, and the state.
[00:23:21]  And would you agree that tyranny, you know, God has, you know, I would prescribe to biblical patriarchy.
[00:23:26]  God is a father.
[00:23:27]  This is the father's world, and he works through fathers.
[00:23:30]  There are civil fathers, familial fathers, ecclesiastical fathers.
[00:23:33]  You know, so in the church, it's men who are elders, they're fathers, spiritual fathers.
[00:23:38]  And in the home, it's the husband, the head of the wife, and the father, the children.
[00:23:41]  So God, who is the father in the father's world, works through fathers that he has appointed in each of these three spheres home, church, state.
[00:23:48]  And I would argue that when a politician, when a civil magistrate oversteps their bounds, the jurisdiction that God has clearly prescribed to them, then that's tyranny.
[00:23:59]  But that's not unique, that can happen in the sovereign sphere of the home, and that can happen in the church.
[00:24:05]  So a pastor can be tyrannical.
[00:24:07]  A husband can be tyrannical.
[00:24:09]  And I think part of my problem, I did a post about this a while back, but part of my problem is guys like the Gospel Coalition, they would be the first guys to jump on a husband's tyranny in a marriage.
[00:24:24]  So they would say, if a husband said, and not like if a husband told his wife to sin, okay, then that's clear.
[00:24:32]  But if a husband just said, I don't want you to dress that way, then there are a lot of beta pastors.
[00:24:38]  Slimy, effeminate pastors who would say, Well, oh man, I don't think that's appropriate for a husband to tell his wife how she should dress.
[00:24:48]  And you know what I mean?
[00:24:49]  And they would get involved in that, right?
[00:24:51]  Like, so if there was tension in the marriage and that became a point of tension for the husband and the wife, the wife, you know, not wanting to do what the husband is asking, the husband saying, I, you know, commanding his wife down to the way she dressed in certain regards, then that would probably be brought to marriage counseling.
[00:25:06]  Eventually, it's going to cause tension.
[00:25:08]  And I feel like 90% of pastors are going to side with the wife on that one.
[00:25:13]  And say that the husband, that's outside of his jurisdiction.
[00:25:17]  Yes, he's the head of the wife, and all while carrying their complimentary cards, but they're going to say that's too far.
[00:25:24]  This is tyranny.
[00:25:26]  You need to back off.
[00:25:28]  She is not required to submit to you.
[00:25:31]  And then we move to the civil realm, and all of a sudden the Gospel Coalition and John Piper and everybody else is writing articles about how submitting everything.
[00:25:39]  And I'm like, if we're biblically, if we're going to be fair biblically, when it comes to a husband and his authority, the Bible says the wife should submit to her husband in everything.
[00:25:48]  Right, so everybody will quote Romans 13 and say, you know, like, oh, well, it just says submit and doesn't say when the government acts righteously, it just says submit.
[00:25:55]  So that implies even when the government is acting unrighteous.
[00:25:57]  Okay, well, that's an implication, that's an inference from the text.
[00:26:00]  But if we want to just look at what a text plainly says and just move over to this sphere over here, the sphere of the home, the Bible says that the wife should obey her husband in everything.
[00:26:10]  First Peter chapter 3 says that, like Sarah, calling her husband Abraham her Lord.
[00:26:17]  So if you're looking at like degrees of authority, It seems like the husband has way more authority over his wife than God ever gives in terms of authority and jurisdiction to civil magistrate over citizens.
[00:26:30]  Would you agree with that?
[00:26:32]  Absolutely.
[00:26:32]  And if you think about what they would say, and you got to catch them out of context because if you were to make this argument all at once, they would know what you were doing.
[00:26:43]  But if the government came out with a dress code for your wife, they would say follow it.
[00:26:47]  They would.
[00:26:49]  If your wife's employer has a dress code for your wife, They would say, follow it.
[00:26:54]  And so, what they've adopted is this kind of upside down, kind of perverted pagan ideology, where essentially what you've got is this hierarchy that essentially starts with the state up here, and they've got the ultimate power.
[00:27:09]  Whatever they say goes, and you got to do it.
[00:27:12]  And the one who has the least power is actually the family unit.
[00:27:16]  And that's not how God's system works.
[00:27:18]  God's system doesn't work that way, it's actually opposite of the way God's system works.
[00:27:22]  I think.
[00:27:23]  I think you look at the Old Testament laws and you see punishments for adultery are very harsh.
[00:27:28]  They're essentially punishments for, it's what you would punish someone for sedition in a country because it's essentially, you know, you're a turncoat on the primary unit of government, which is the family.
[00:27:44]  So that's why the punishment is so harsh.
[00:27:46]  It's like you have betrayed the one most important part of God's spheres of sovereignty, spheres of government.
[00:27:55]  The family is the primary unit of the government that God gives us.
[00:27:59]  And so.
[00:28:00]  Not only are they beta pastors who would be like, you know, side with the woman no matter what, but they also have turned, they've inverted God's authority structure.
[00:28:11]  We have different spheres of authority, but the primary unit, in my opinion, is the family that God gives us.
[00:28:16]  And they want that to be the weakest and the one that has the least authority, one actually has the most.
[00:28:22]  You're absolutely right.
[00:28:23]  I've heard it said before that if you think of like home, church, and state, it's basically the state is authority over virtually everyone.
[00:28:32]  But a very, very small amount of authority.
[00:28:35]  The church is authority over some people with a kind of like a medium degree of authority.
[00:28:42]  And the home, fathers, especially with their children, husband with a wife, but especially fathers with children, have virtually limitless authority, but over a very small group of people.
[00:28:53]  So it's like a little bit of authority over a lot of people, civil government, some authority over some people, ecclesiastical government, pastors and churches, and then virtually limitless authority, but over just a few people.
[00:29:06]  The home, the father has authority for the children what vaccine they get, what goes in their body, their diet, you know, what they're going to eat, what they're going to wear, what they're going to, you know, all those kinds of things.
[00:29:16]  Like, I have a four year old, a two year old, and a one year old, and I'm making every, you know, like me and mom, you know, but me ultimately as the head, and the mom is really just, she's executing the things that I've decided for our family.
[00:29:29]  But we, you know, we're making every single one of their choices, you know, that like our kids, we're not doing Montessori, you know, our kids teach us who they are, you know, show us who they like.
[00:29:38]  No, we're telling them who they are and we're making decisions for them.
[00:29:41]  And we're buying their clothes for them.
[00:29:45]  They're doing what we're doing.
[00:29:46]  They're eating what we're eating.

=== Household Authority and Masks (15:24) ===

[00:29:48]  That's right.
[00:29:48]  Yes.
[00:29:49]  And this is why, again, in God's system, people look at the Old Testament law, they think it's barbarism.
[00:29:55]  No, no.
[00:29:55]  See, if a husband or a wife is to go commit treason against that primary governmental unit, that's such a serious thing in God's view that requires the penalty that a treasonous person would get, which is the death penalty.
[00:30:09]  You know what I mean?
[00:30:10]  So, this is the thing.
[00:30:11]  So, what's amazing about this is, you know, you mentioned sort of the pastor, you know, commands that you get covenant eyes, right?
[00:30:20]  Right.
[00:30:20]  Like, here's the thing like, you know, I could command that to my 13 year old if I had one.
[00:30:26]  You know, I could say, we're installing this.
[00:30:28]  And if you want to use the internet, this is how it's going to be.
[00:30:30]  Like, but think about this for a second.
[00:30:33]  It's almost like when your pastor does that and kind of tyrannizes you in that way, like, they almost are treating you like their child.
[00:30:40]  Because if I had, An adult son, and he came to me and said, Hey, dad, like I'm struggling with pornography.
[00:30:46]  Like, what do I do?
[00:30:47]  Like, at that point, even then, I wouldn't command him.
[00:30:50]  He's out of the house, he's an adult.
[00:30:52]  Like, I would be like, This is what you should do, son, but I'm not going to command it because that's not how a relationship works anymore.
[00:30:58]  So, it's like not only are they tyrannizing you, they're treating you like a child, like as if you're a 13 year old living in their house kind of child.
[00:31:05]  It's like, it's so twisted when you think about it.
[00:31:09]  And, you know, we'll talk potentially about.
[00:31:12]  You know, could a father tyrannize?
[00:31:13]  Yeah, a father can tyrannize.
[00:31:14]  And we'll talk about how to define that.
[00:31:16]  But it's just so crazy.
[00:31:18]  Anyway, I just had that side thought when I was.
[00:31:19]  No, that's a good thought, right?
[00:31:21]  It's not only tyranny, it's demeaning.
[00:31:23]  It's demeaning.
[00:31:23]  Yeah.
[00:31:24]  No, you're absolutely right.
[00:31:25]  And so, with that, like, I think of, you know, when COVID 19 hit, you know, and bringing this, you know, making this really applicable to the, you know, the pastor question.
[00:31:36]  Cause I get, I get, you know, I'm sure you do too.
[00:31:39]  People email guys like you and me and John Harris all the time, you know, saying, like, I don't know if I can stay in my church, you know, and it's either because the church has embraced social justice and gone woke, or it's, well, usually, you know, these birds of a feather run, you know, they flock together.
[00:31:55]  Yeah.
[00:31:56]  But you know, or it's the civil tyranny thing.
[00:31:58]  It's like my pastor is just drinking, you know, all the COVID Kool Aid, you know, and my pastor's on his seventh booster shot, you know, and we haven't met as a church.
[00:32:10]  You know, church has been canceled for 20 months, you know, or whatever, or it got uncancelled, but then Delta hit and we got canceled again.
[00:32:16]  And now Omicron, the least deadly, you know, there's a cold going around, but it has a Greek name.
[00:32:24]  And so church is canceled again.
[00:32:27]  And what I'm saying is it like, That pastor who's leading his church, you know, I think a lot of pastors just didn't think through these things, you know, so they said church is canceled and they don't think through the implications.
[00:32:40]  Like what they're doing is they're using the ecclesiastical authority that God gave them to be keepers of the Lord's table and to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, his body and his blood to his people to nourish them.
[00:32:56]  And they're saying to the people of God that the Lord's Supper belongs to them, it is their right, Christ has purchased it for them.
[00:33:03]  They are members of the covenant.
[00:33:05]  They belong to his table.
[00:33:07]  Christ is standing there saying, Come to me, you know, all who are weary, all who are heavy laden, come to me, feast on my body, drink my blood.
[00:33:16]  And the pastors are standing in between them.
[00:33:18]  They don't think of it like this, but by canceling their church service, the pastors who should be the ones who, not bouncers, right?
[00:33:25]  Sometimes we can over fence the table, but pastors are also greeters, welcoming the people of God to the Lord's table.
[00:33:32]  And instead of that, they're saying, No.
[00:33:35]  You blood bought Christian who the supper was purchased for and it belongs to you, it's your right.
[00:33:42]  You may not have it for a month, now for two months, now for three months, now for four months, now for five months.
[00:33:48]  Okay, now you can have it again.
[00:33:50]  Just kidding, up, Delta.
[00:33:51]  Nope, it's gone for a month, for two months, for three.
[00:33:55]  And they don't think of it like that.
[00:33:56]  They think of just love your neighbor and we don't want to do any harm.
[00:33:58]  And they're not thinking, there's so many other things.
[00:34:01]  The Bible is a big book, right?
[00:34:03]  It's not a 30 page pamphlet that just says love your neighbor.
[00:34:05]  And the only way to love your neighbor is by not getting them sick.
[00:34:08]  Like, like, And I would be more sympathetic if these pastors weren't the guys who brag about being intellectuals and being theologically astute.
[00:34:17]  So, by their own admission, just like Jesus with the Pharisees, but because you claim to see, right, by their own admission, they know the theological implications.
[00:34:26]  So, they're doing one thing to protect their neighbor, but that one thing is doing all these other things.
[00:34:34]  And not just to their neighbor, but in this case, we're talking about what they're doing to their brother, to their sister, to the people of God.
[00:34:39]  And so, I look at that as like for a pastor to cancel the church service.
[00:34:45]  I don't know.
[00:34:46]  Can you think of any, like, does a pastor have that authority?
[00:34:50]  Maybe just ask it like that.
[00:34:51]  Does a pastor have the authority to close the church doors?
[00:34:54]  Good question.
[00:34:54]  So when I start, when the COVID thing started, I got this wrong, in my opinion, because I said, yeah, you know, they would have the authority to do that.
[00:35:02]  And they simply do not.
[00:35:04]  That's so that I've changed my view on that.
[00:35:07]  I got set straight pretty early on that one, maybe a few months or maybe a month into it, a few weeks into it.
[00:35:13]  But no, no, because here's the thing the pastor doesn't have any authority that God didn't give the pastor.
[00:35:20]  Right.
[00:35:21]  And so the only authority that exists is from God.
[00:35:24]  And so if it didn't come from God, then it didn't come, then it's not legitimate.
[00:35:27]  It's tyranny.
[00:35:29]  And so it's not the road to tyranny.
[00:35:30]  It is straight up tyranny.
[00:35:32]  So if you're right, Joel, and I agree that you are, that Christians have the right to that table and it comes from God, it doesn't come from a man, that right.
[00:35:42]  Well, I guess the God man.
[00:35:44]  But anyway, it doesn't come from a regular man.
[00:35:48]  You know, if they have that, then they have it.
[00:35:51]  And nobody can take it away from them.
[00:35:53]  That's right.
[00:35:54]  So they either have it or they don't have it.
[00:35:55]  And you got to make that decision.
[00:35:57]  And so some of these guys are theologically astute enough to know that people have that right.
[00:36:03]  And so they're the ones that really need to take a good look in the mirror, a good hard look at what has happened.
[00:36:09]  How did we get duped like this for so long?
[00:36:12]  And so that it never happens again because it's absolutely insane what's gone on.
[00:36:16]  Nobody has that right.
[00:36:17]  Right.
[00:36:17]  So me and you would both, just to be abundantly clear, Haiti Robles and Joel Owen would both say that a pastor closing the church doors.
[00:36:26]  Effectively, what that does is it bars the people of God from Christ, from Christ in the supper, from Christ in the preaching, from Christ in the singing of hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, from Christ.
[00:36:38]  Joel, I don't want to interrupt you, but I just have to get this out because I don't know if you saw this, but I saw this.
[00:36:44]  Pastors trying to spiritualize this, where it was like, God has judged us, and we need to look at this time where we can't have the elements as a sign of God's displeasure with us, and we need to lament it every day.
[00:36:57]  And it's like, no.
[00:36:59]  That's not what's happened.
[00:37:00]  You've just decided that this is happening.
[00:37:02]  You've decided.
[00:37:03]  God hasn't told us that.
[00:37:05]  Because, yeah, it's dangerous.
[00:37:06]  But guess what?
[00:37:09]  The apostles did a lot of dangerous things to worship Christ on Sunday in the book of Acts, right?
[00:37:15]  The early church did a lot of dangerous things in order to worship God on Sunday, the way he was commanded.
[00:37:26]  That made me so sick to my stomach when I heard people saying, oh, it's lament.
[00:37:30]  It's just a season that God has.
[00:37:31]  Told us we cannot partake.
[00:37:32]  He did not say any such thing.
[00:37:34]  Right.
[00:37:35]  Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
[00:37:37]  We just, you know what happens when we assume, you know, but we just assume.
[00:37:41]  You know, like one verse that, like one text that's always struck me as just profound is, you know, when Paul is miraculously set free, all the prison doors open, all the prisoners are set free, and like, and the jailer's about to take his own life.
[00:38:02]  And then Paul stops him.
[00:38:03]  We're all accounted for.
[00:38:04]  We're all here.
[00:38:05]  Nobody left on your watch.
[00:38:07]  And the jailer and his whole household, his whole household, Andy, they get saved, they get baptized.
[00:38:14]  I'd like to think that he didn't have any infants.
[00:38:15]  So his whole household, but anyway, but the whole household gets saved.
[00:38:19]  What kind of self respecting jailer wouldn't have any infants?
[00:38:24]  But my point is, I mean, I feel like you and I, if we were in that situation and all of a sudden, miraculously, we're arrested, persecuted for our faith and for preaching the gospel, and then the jail doors miraculously opened up.
[00:38:37]  Like, I'm not going to stop and ask God what that means.
[00:38:40]  I'm just going to, I'm going to, God wants me to escape, you know, but, but, you know what I mean?
[00:38:46]  And, but, so it's, and, and that would be something that's pretty clear, you know, but like with, with a virus that kills, you know, 1% of the people who even get it, you know, like, like 99% survival rate.
[00:38:59]  And now, you know, when most people have a vaccine, which, you know, I don't know how effective, but have a vaccine that's supposed to be effective.
[00:39:06]  And, you know, and then more importantly than that, a lot of people have actually already got the virus and have natural immunity, like myself, which is arguably 13 to, you know, 20 something times more durable than the vaccine.
[00:39:16]  Like when all those things have happened, then if it's a 99% or was a 99% survival rate, then now it's even more so.
[00:39:24]  And if we have new strains that are less deadly than the alpha and the delta, and like, then, you know, like, So now we're talking about something that really arguably could be as deadly as the flu.
[00:39:35]  And we didn't cancel church for flu.
[00:39:37]  So, all that to be said, like you're saying that, you know, we just assumed this happens and we immediately start putting words in the mouth of God and saying, this is a season, this is what God is doing.
[00:39:47]  And we're speaking for God.
[00:39:49]  And so we're making things up instead of sticking to the script.
[00:39:52]  Like, what do we know?
[00:39:53]  What we know is that on the first day of the week, Christ rose from the dead to free people from lifelong slavery to the fear of death.
[00:40:03]  So, he rose from the dead to free us from lifelong slavery to the fear of death so that we might gather on the first day of the week and the right worship of him.
[00:40:12]  And, you know, that's the marching orders.
[00:40:14]  That's what's plain.
[00:40:15]  And instead, we go for this weird, obscure, mystical thing instead of sticking to what is so clear.
[00:40:22]  And so, you and I would both say that's tyranny, right?
[00:40:25]  That's outside of the pastor's jurisdiction.
[00:40:27]  Totally.
[00:40:27]  And you know, it's tyranny because here's what I like to do.
[00:40:29]  And this is not foolproof, but it kind of helps me think through things.
[00:40:32]  So, I hear a woke pastor say something stupid about, you know, how he wants to.
[00:40:37]  You know, I don't know, do something that's totally ridiculous, right?
[00:40:42]  And so, what I like to do often is I like to switch around the races, right?
[00:40:45]  So, I say, okay, if I said this about a white person or a black person, whatever the situation warrants, would it be okay?
[00:40:52]  It's not foolproof, but at least gives you an idea like, is there some partiality here, right?
[00:40:56]  So, you know, it's tyranny because think about it this way.
[00:40:59]  What if there's a husband to go back to your previous point that was demanding that his wife for the rest of her life wear a mask for her own protection, of course?
[00:41:09]  Also, he then demanded, we're not, she can't go to the worship service for her own protection, of course, because it's dangerous out there.
[00:41:17]  And you know what?
[00:41:17]  COVID's just the tip of the iceberg.
[00:41:19]  We got the flu.
[00:41:20]  We got everything.
[00:41:21]  You know, we don't know.
[00:41:21]  Maybe there's going to be a new novel, something.
[00:41:23]  We don't know.
[00:41:24]  So she can't go to the worship service.
[00:41:26]  She can't partake in communion.
[00:41:27]  You know, it's tyranny because they'd be all over that.
[00:41:29]  Wow, how dare you?
[00:41:30]  They don't have the authority.
[00:41:32]  It's like, well, exactly.
[00:41:34]  Yeah.
[00:41:35]  You don't either.
[00:41:36]  You're exactly right.
[00:41:37]  And so, okay.
[00:41:38]  So, yeah.
[00:41:39]  So the massing, so we talked about shutting down the church.
[00:41:41]  Because that effectively bars people from Christ.
[00:41:43]  So let me ask this What about a pastor or a group of elders or whatever in a local church who require mass?
[00:41:51]  Not optional, but they require it.
[00:41:53]  You cannot come and worship the Lord Jesus Christ unless you're wearing a mask.
[00:41:57]  Is that tyranny?
[00:41:59]  Yeah, definitely.
[00:42:00]  I think it's a lot of people think, oh, it's just a mask.
[00:42:04]  And often the way I'll respond is exactly it's just a mask.
[00:42:08]  So what's the big deal?
[00:42:09]  I'm not going to wear a mask.
[00:42:11]  Right.
[00:42:11]  But more seriously, though, it's like, You can't require something to make you clean enough for worship besides what God has required.
[00:42:21]  And I don't see any mask requirement.
[00:42:23]  Right.
[00:42:24]  Right.
[00:42:25]  No, I agree.
[00:42:26]  And so then, you know, the YouTube troll would hop on and say, okay, well, then, you know, like I'm going to come to worship naked or something.
[00:42:33]  We say, well, we got a Bible verse for that, you know, and like, or a man's going to come, you know, wearing a dress.
[00:42:39]  Well, I've got a Bible verse for that.
[00:42:41]  Yeah.
[00:42:41]  It's an abomination in the sight of God when a man dresses like a woman or vice versa.
[00:42:46]  When a woman, you know, dresses like a man, you know, and.
[00:42:49]  And so, like we say, the Bible speaks to those things that on the Lord's Day, the Bible talks about modesty, the Bible talks about prudence, the Bible talks about all those kinds of things.
[00:42:57]  So, the Bible does say that we should dress and even tells us how to dress.
[00:42:59]  It doesn't say so specific, like as in three piece suit, you know, or.
[00:43:04]  Sure, sure.
[00:43:04]  But the Bible does very plainly.
[00:43:06]  It tells us that we should be modest and that we should be dressed in such a way.
[00:43:11]  And, you know, my understanding of 1 Corinthians 11 this is one of my understandings.
[00:43:17]  So, just for the record, my wife, she wears a head covering on the Lord's day.
[00:43:20]  Sure.
[00:43:21]  But, you know, beyond that, in a broader interpretation, my wife dresses like a woman.
[00:43:28]  So, I believe that part of what 1 Corinthians 11 is getting at.
[00:43:31]  Is that God created the two sexes?
[00:43:33]  It was his idea, and it's like everything else that he made, it's good.
[00:43:37]  And so, therefore, the distinction between the genders should be, if anything, even more visible on the Lord's day as something that's not bemoaned, but something that is celebrated.
[00:43:47]  So, women, I think, should look extra feminine.
[00:43:50]  Now, we know from other writings, like Peter, you know, like there's a difference between looking very feminine and a woman looking gaudy, trying to draw attention to herself.
[00:44:00]  Draw attention to herself.
[00:44:01]  Braids are not bad, but in the context, they were braiding like.
[00:44:04]  Like silver and gold and jewels into their braids, you know.
[00:44:07]  And so a woman shouldn't be loud in her heart and the way that she acts.
[00:44:11]  She also shouldn't be loud in her dress.
[00:44:13]  There it's, look at me, look at me, a loud woman.
[00:44:15]  Proverbs, you know, has a lot of bad things to say about the loud woman, but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't be beautiful, that she shouldn't be.
[00:44:22]  So I would say the woman.
[00:44:23]  So my whole point is to say we got verses for that.
[00:44:25]  So the person is like, yeah, so the Bible tells us, the Bible actually does all of Christ for all of life, right?
[00:44:30]  Like the Bible actually does speak to a lot of stuff, including what you wear to church on Sunday.
[00:44:36]  And It doesn't say anything about a mask.
[00:44:38]  And honestly, if we were going to get really technical, I feel like it's a little bit of a stretch exegetically, but I don't think it's that much of a stretch.
[00:44:45]  If anything, the Bible actually says we who worship with unveiled faces.
[00:44:49]  Sure.
[00:44:50]  You know, so it's just like, so I, yeah.
[00:44:52]  Yeah.
[00:44:54]  Well, I mean, it's not that much of a stretch because think about it this way like, you know, there is a major religion who has people veil their faces as they worship.
[00:45:06]  So it's like, it's not that much of a stretch at all.
[00:45:08]  And it's like, well, but this is a science, though.
[00:45:11]  Like, this is the thing.

=== Science, Religion, and Masks (02:57) ===

[00:45:12]  Like, you know, I just, I talked to, I'm a recruiter, right?
[00:45:16]  And I talked to this like really annoying engineer and he's leaving his company because they're not doing a vaccine.
[00:45:23]  And he's like, he was like, I would hate to meet that guy.
[00:45:27]  He would hate me.
[00:45:28]  Right.
[00:45:28]  Yeah.
[00:45:29]  He was like, it's not that hard.
[00:45:30]  You just follow the science.
[00:45:31]  And it's like, the way he said it, it was like, you know, it's like, it's a religion.
[00:45:36]  It is a religion.
[00:45:37]  It's a religion.
[00:45:37]  So it's like, yeah, it's the science.
[00:45:38]  Yeah, sure.
[00:45:39]  But you're treating the science as if it was a deity.
[00:45:43]  Right.
[00:45:43]  Right.
[00:45:44]  You know what I mean?
[00:45:44]  So it's like, it's actually not that far fetched at all, in my opinion.
[00:45:48]  Okay.
[00:45:48]  Well, that's helpful.
[00:45:49]  I appreciate that.
[00:45:50]  I know that that's other guys that I respect and trust.
[00:45:53]  That's their view.
[00:45:54]  And I feel like it's pretty good.
[00:45:56]  I just, you know, I haven't taken it so literally, but you're right.
[00:46:01]  What you said about Islam, like that there's an entire false religion that worships a false God that covers their faith.
[00:46:07]  Even that just makes me think about it.
[00:46:08]  And there's a new alliance of branch Covidians.
[00:46:10]  Say that again.
[00:46:12]  Say that again.
[00:46:12]  Branch Covidians.
[00:46:14]  Oh, yeah, the Branch Covidians.
[00:46:15]  That's really good.
[00:46:17]  The new.
[00:46:17]  Yeah, I'm close to Waco out here, man.
[00:46:18]  I'm only like an hour away.
[00:46:19]  So the Davidians, now the Covidians.
[00:46:22]  Now you got the Covidians.
[00:46:23]  Yeah.
[00:46:24]  But yeah, it's not science.
[00:46:26]  We know that.
[00:46:27]  If anything, it's like, like, oh, Mucron.
[00:46:30]  Like, okay, so it's more contagious, but from all the data that we can see, it's more mild in its symptoms.
[00:46:37]  Right now, there's not globally, globally, in terms of data as of today that we're recording this.
[00:46:42]  So when this airs, I don't know if it'll be the case, but today it's December 7th.
[00:46:47]  As I'm recording this, there's not one case globally of somebody being hospitalized or death due to the Omicron.
[00:46:56]  I don't care anything about this at all, but imagine if it's all true, what you just said.
[00:47:00]  It's more contagious and it's less serious.
[00:47:04]  Wouldn't that be the best case scenario, like for a variant?
[00:47:07]  That's my point.
[00:47:07]  So it's like everyone's going to get this.
[00:47:10]  So it's going to push out Delta, it's going to push out Alpha.
[00:47:15]  So more people are going to get, or they would, if we weren't all, you know.
[00:47:20]  If we weren't all vexed, but more people would get this, it would become the dominant strain, which is also the most mild strain.
[00:47:30]  It's almost like God knows how to preserve people, his creation, his image bearing creatures, like even built into the framework of a virus.
[00:47:39]  Like that's what viruses do.
[00:47:41]  They become more contagious, but they become also more mild in terms of their symptoms, and then they become endemic.
[00:47:46]  It's just something that we live with, and it's, you know, Spanish flu all of a sudden becomes, you know, 100 years later, it's a cold, and, you know, or there's, A flu season that we have every year.
[00:47:54]  And sometimes it's a bad flu season, and sometimes it's not a bad.
[00:47:57]  Like, that's, we know that we're going to live with COVID.
[00:47:59]  We're shutting down the virus.
[00:48:00]  Joe Biden's not God.
[00:48:01]  The state is not God.
[00:48:03]  So we deify science, we deify the virus, and we deify the state, you know, and all these things are false.

=== Discerning Pastoral Trust (07:52) ===

[00:48:10]  And, but yeah, so we know that tyranny with the state is wrong, that the state doesn't have that kind of authority to do these things.
[00:48:19]  But then, but then I think we think pastors do.
[00:48:22]  And we would, what's frustrating for me is that.
[00:48:25]  What's frustrating for me is that I feel like Christians will kick at the goads when it comes to a pastor exercising authority that he actually does have, like preaching God's word boldly.
[00:48:35]  That's right.
[00:48:36]  You know, they're like, you can't talk like that, you know, or you're being harsh or you don't have that authority.
[00:48:40]  Like, and those things, and they may be right, but those are hard, those are more difficult things to discern, right?
[00:48:46]  Like, where is gentleness and what actually constitutes an elder being quarrelsome, you know, which is why, you know, in that regard, I like the King James, like a brawler.
[00:48:56]  Like, is he punching people?
[00:48:58]  If not, Leave him alone, he's okay, you know.
[00:49:01]  So, but that's you know, that's that's something that is more subjective.
[00:49:05]  It's harder to discern, it's not subjective, but it's harder to discern.
[00:49:09]  Whereas, yeah, a pastor does he have the authority to cancel church?
[00:49:12]  Yes or no, that's super easy, that's super clear.
[00:49:15]  And so, pastors cancel church, clear breach of their authority, that's a good guy, you know.
[00:49:21]  And then, a pastor preaches God's word boldly, and like Paul, who addresses Hymenaeus and Alexander, you know, like names people, this pastor names false teachers, and And so, yeah.
[00:49:33]  It's the King David syndrome when he was having Bathsheba.
[00:49:36]  It's like he had this huge, ridiculous sin in his life, apparent, and he didn't care at all.
[00:49:45]  So he overreacts when he hears the story about the lamb.
[00:49:49]  It's just a lamb.
[00:49:51]  And he overreacts and he kind of just goes in.
[00:49:54]  It's like, and we just talked about this with the weaker brother, you know, like imagine if they just gave God's prescription.
[00:50:00]  It always downplays God's prescription get married.
[00:50:02]  That's the prescription.
[00:50:04]  You don't need covenant eyes.
[00:50:05]  Get married.
[00:50:06]  It's like it always works out that way.
[00:50:09]  When you make up your own stuff and you pass it off as God's law, you end up downplaying God's actual law.
[00:50:14]  The Pharisees were doing this with the Corbin thing.
[00:50:17]  They made up their own law.
[00:50:18]  And what do they do?
[00:50:19]  By doing that, they overturn a big glaring law to honor their father and mother.
[00:50:24]  You know what I mean?
[00:50:26]  It never leaves God's law alone.
[00:50:28]  It's not like they're coming out with this nonsense, wear a mask, and it doesn't affect anything else in their teaching.
[00:50:35]  It definitely does.
[00:50:36]  Yeah, you're absolutely right.
[00:50:38]  So, this is one of my last questions.
[00:50:39]  This is the big one that'll be the most relevant for our listeners.
[00:50:44]  At what point do pastors who messed up on this, right?
[00:50:48]  I'm talking about the pastor who, you know, like not just, you know, canceled their church for, you know, three weeks or something like that, but like canceled church for months, you know, and then when they did come back, would not let the congregation sing.
[00:51:03]  Not just mask optional, but prescribed masks, you know, or didn't serve the Lord's Supper.
[00:51:09]  For a year, you know, I'm just naming examples.
[00:51:12]  It's literally, as I'm naming, I'm like, that's ridiculous.
[00:51:15]  Nobody did that.
[00:51:16]  And then I have to keep reminding myself, no, like, thousands of pastors did that.
[00:51:20]  They did that.
[00:51:20]  Yeah.
[00:51:20]  So, all right.
[00:51:21]  So, let's say that that pastor now is their church is meeting on Sunday.
[00:51:26]  Masks are optional.
[00:51:28]  They serve the Lord's Supper, maybe with some gloves or whatever, but they're serving the Lord's Supper, you know, and they're singing as softly and as effeminately as possible, but they are singing.
[00:51:41]  I went, he's changed his actions, but should he be trusted?
[00:51:48]  What, like, so some of these guys, it's the same with the social justice thing, right?
[00:51:51]  So, like, let's say, let's say it's David Platt.
[00:51:55]  All of a sudden, let's say David Platt starts preaching biblical justice, no partiality, your eye shall not pity the poor or the rich, you know, two or three witnesses, the evidence has to be weighed, you know, those kind of things.
[00:52:06]  Like, when do you, you know, I saw one of your videos recently where you commended Jonathan Lehman, who you've, you know, who you've taken to the mat several times.
[00:52:16]  Sure.
[00:52:16]  But you still said, like, but I don't know yet.
[00:52:18]  Like, when do we, when do we, because forgiveness and trust are not the same thing.
[00:52:22]  I would say, I can forgive my pastor even if he never changes his actions.
[00:52:26]  I can, I can forgive that guy because I've been freely forgiven in Christ.
[00:52:29]  So I see forgiveness as free because I've been freely forgiven.
[00:52:32]  But trust I see as something that's earned, right?
[00:52:34]  There are qualifications for an elder for a reason.
[00:52:37]  You have to be qualified, you have to be credible in order to be worthy of being trusted in that position.
[00:52:43]  And so for me, I'm like, I know lots of guys, I mean, close friends, close friends.
[00:52:48]  Who are now taking the right actions?
[00:52:51]  They're now taking, like, their church is meeting, you know, they're serving the Lord's Supper.
[00:52:55]  They're even saying something, you know, like, yeah, this is ridiculous.
[00:52:58]  But I'm like, yeah, but, yeah, but dude, you, you were on the wrong side of this for a long time and adamantly on the wrong side, adamantly on the wrong side.
[00:53:09]  I don't trust you.
[00:53:10]  Yeah, I get it, man.
[00:53:11]  No, that, this is the big question, right?
[00:53:13]  Because I did say that.
[00:53:14]  That's the first place my mind went, the Jonathan Lehman video I did, where I said, oh, no, I mean, I don't trust him yet.
[00:53:19]  I mean, I don't know what it would take for me to trust him.
[00:53:21]  I don't know.
[00:53:22]  But you're 100% right.
[00:53:23]  Like you got to earn that, right?
[00:53:25]  So let's just say, God willing, David Platt starts teaching rightly on this.
[00:53:29]  And what I don't want to do is give him the list because sometimes what I'll see is somebody repents and then they're given a list by everyone on social media, what they have to do in order to really repent.
[00:53:39]  You know what I mean?
[00:53:40]  I don't want to do that.
[00:53:41]  Yeah.
[00:53:41]  I don't want to do that.
[00:53:42]  But what I do want to understand is the reality that, you know, your trust has to be earned and it's earned over time.
[00:53:50]  And it's not something that anyone can just kind of turn on.
[00:53:53]  You know what I mean?
[00:53:55]  It's just, I don't, it's not that, it's not like it's a mystical thing, but it just, you build trust over time.
[00:54:00]  You can lose it really quick and maybe never get it back, you know?
[00:54:05]  So the thing with it, so let's make this as practical as possible.
[00:54:07]  Like, what would you do if you're in a church like this where they're basically doing the right things now, but it took them a long time and, you know, you don't know what to do?
[00:54:14]  Should I leave my church?
[00:54:15]  What should I do?
[00:54:17]  I think that you need to have hard conversations about, and it's got to be like back room, like, how did this go down?
[00:54:25]  What happened?
[00:54:26]  What were you thinking?
[00:54:28]  How did the conversations go?
[00:54:32]  Was it just easy for you to believe CNN or did you wrestle?
[00:54:37]  You want to know the play by play, right?
[00:54:39]  Let's talk, let's talk, let's talk, you know, how this all went down.
[00:54:43]  And I think those conversations, you'll kind of get to see sort of where they were at and where they're at now, the differences.
[00:54:50]  My pastor, you know, I think he probably, so when he called me and said they were closing down, like I said, I got this wrong in the beginning.
[00:54:57]  I was like, okay, I understand, you know, I support you.
[00:55:00]  And I should have said that.
[00:55:01]  I should have said that I don't support you and you shouldn't do it.
[00:55:04]  I think honestly, when he called me, he was kind of fishing for that.
[00:55:07]  Now that I have talked to him, but he's kind of sensed this, right?
[00:55:09]  So he came to his senses fairly early on, you know, probably longer than he should have.
[00:55:14]  But when he decided, when they decided to do nothing, no more restrictions, nothing, he called me and was very excited.
[00:55:21]  And he took the time to take me through the whole process what had happened, you know, what the conversations were like, what they're thinking now, what the future holds as well.
[00:55:31]  That's key.
[00:55:32]  And emphatic, this will never happen again.
[00:55:35]  That's, yeah, that's all.
[00:55:36]  I don't care what else happens.
[00:55:38]  I'm opening that church.
[00:55:39]  Yeah, that's really.
[00:55:40]  And if you have a pastor who's willing to look you in the eye and shake your hand and say, Look, I've learned my lesson, and here's what we're doing in the future, that means a lot, man.
[00:55:49]  Yeah.
[00:55:50]  But if you get the wishy washy, well, you know, we got it, maybe, you know, Homicron, you know, it might be a little scary.
[00:55:55]  You kind of know what you're dealing with right then and there.
[00:55:57]  They haven't learned any lesson.
[00:55:58]  They just came out when the cover was enough that they felt like they could get away with it.

=== Repentance for Public Sin (04:45) ===

[00:56:02]  Right.
[00:56:03]  So I think you just put your finger on it.
[00:56:05]  You were specific, and, you know, the pastor lets you in on how do we arrive at this decision and blah, blah, blah.
[00:56:10]  And he assures the sheep that.
[00:56:14]  I wrongfully, I was tyrannical.
[00:56:16]  I barred you from Christ.
[00:56:19]  I put myself as a wedge between you and Christ instead of as an under shepherd who's meant to bring you to Christ.
[00:56:26]  And I promise that I'll never do that again, which implies in everything that you said, it seems like the glaring implication is the pastor says, I was wrong.
[00:56:38]  I think that's my big thing.
[00:56:40]  So, like, we don't want to make a list, right?
[00:56:41]  Because that's the whole thing we were just talking about, right?
[00:56:43]  It'd be so hypocritical if at the end of this.
[00:56:45]  Podcast, we literally, you know what I mean?
[00:56:46]  Like, we're like, so he needs to get covenantized, you know, or, you know, by the equivalent of it, like he needs to, you know, he needs to write letters against the CDC, you know, because that would be literally the same.
[00:56:56]  So, what we can say is he's got to do the right thing.
[00:56:59]  How he gets there, what the Lord uses as the method of his, because I think that's what penance is, right?
[00:57:06]  Like, I, you know, like if, you know, I've had people do that to me.
[00:57:11]  I don't want to be too specific because I don't want to throw people under the bus, but, you know, where they prescribe, you know, three years of penance.
[00:57:18]  Right, like, yep, like, um, you need to read these exact books, um, this exact amount, um, six days a week.
[00:57:26]  You can take off the Sabbath for three years, do a writing assignment, you know, all so many times, yeah, in order to prove that, and you know, and they'll use like acts like doing good works in keeping with repentance.
[00:57:38]  But the thing is, like, with doing good works and keeping with repentance, the Holy Spirit decides what those good works are.
[00:57:45]  Man doesn't prescribe them, the Holy Spirit grants repentance, right?
[00:57:49]  Repentance is a gift that is granted.
[00:57:52]  And the fruit, the good works, they're good fruits of the Holy Spirit that begin to become more evident and are increasing as the person is walking in repentance, which is a gift granted by God, and therefore being formed more into the image of Christ.
[00:58:06]  And the fruit of that may be increased study habits because of a greater desire for God and his holiness that comes with the knowledge of the Lord.
[00:58:15]  Or it may be this or it may be that.
[00:58:16]  But when we start prescribing penance, and we can call it doing good works in keeping with repentance.
[00:58:24]  And that's using biblical language, but I don't think that that's honest.
[00:58:28]  I think it's penance.
[00:58:29]  It's penance.
[00:58:30]  And my point is, in saying all that, is just to say that I think that one of the things that I can put on the list, right?
[00:58:38]  So we don't want to be hypocrites and do everything that we just said not to do.
[00:58:42]  But one thing that I would put on the list is this in order to trust a pastor again, I feel like he has to repent.
[00:58:49]  I feel like that's a fair thing to put on the list.
[00:58:52]  And with repentance, yeah, you can get subjected.
[00:58:54]  Well, what does it mean to repent?
[00:58:55]  What does it look like?
[00:58:56]  How do you outwardly observe somebody else's repentance?
[00:59:00]  Well, The good works that are keeping with repentance, those might be different.
[00:59:05]  The Holy Spirit is going to sovereignly ordain those things.
[00:59:08]  But these are two good works.
[00:59:10]  I want to hear your thoughts.
[00:59:11]  Two good works that I think are always going to be evident, going to be evidenced when someone repents a change, repentance is to change, a change in their action and an acknowledgement of failure or sin in their word.
[00:59:28]  Meaning that if I'm repenting, that means I'm changing.
[00:59:32]  So I'm going to stop doing the thing that I'm repenting of.
[00:59:35]  I'm going to stop sinning.
[00:59:38]  And I think that repentance has to be in word and in deed.
[00:59:42]  So I'm also going to, with everyone that I sinned against, I'm going to say, I'm sorry.
[00:59:50]  I'm going to acknowledge, I'm actually going to acknowledge that I sinned.
[00:59:53]  And one of the things that just drives me at the wall with pastors is that pastors will change their position when they realize they were wrong and never, ever, ever admit it.
[01:00:07]  And the problem is, is like, well, you know, why does he have to admit it publicly?
[01:00:10]  Because I'm talking about when a pastor sins publicly.
[01:00:13]  If you shut down your church, you send not just your sin was a public action, but it's also not just a public context that you sent, but you send against the church.
[01:00:26]  So you send against every member of that church by barring them from the Lord Jesus Christ.
[01:00:31]  So you owe, in my opinion, every single member in that church an apology from robbing Christ from them.
[01:00:38]  And disobeying God's word, which means you can't just change your position in your actions and pretend like you never did that.

=== Why Public Confession Matters (02:19) ===

[01:00:47]  I don't know about you, but I just feel like that's so common that I'm seeing guys, they're coming around now.
[01:00:52]  And the reason why I'm upset about this is now that you and Harris and sovereign nations and founders and all these guys and Wilson are like, God is using this grassroots thing to blow off the lid, not just with COVID, but with the social justice thing.
[01:01:05]  I'm worried, AD.
[01:01:07]  I'm worried, brother, that we're gonna win because Christ is gonna win.
[01:01:12]  But the moment we actually start winning, these guys are just going to stop using that language, that critical race theory language, and they're even going to start preaching different messages, and they're going to pretend like they were always on our side, right?
[01:01:27]  Like Albert Muller is going to run out in front of the conservative parade and act like he engineered it, you know?
[01:01:33]  And some of them are ideologues, but some of them are opportunists.
[01:01:36]  And with those guys, I feel like one of the requirements that I want to hold is does he ever with his mouth say, I was wrong.
[01:01:49]  Yeah.
[01:01:49]  Yeah, that's right.
[01:01:50]  That's right.
[01:01:51]  Well, the thing about that is, and I understand that.
[01:01:53]  I totally do.
[01:01:54]  I mean, you know, Republicans have been getting away with this kind of thing for a long time.
[01:01:58]  In fact, your governor, I think, today got away with something like this, where, you know, he all of a sudden is no vaccine mandates after it's totally safe and the judges have all ruled.
[01:02:07]  You know, he comes and rides those coattails really well.
[01:02:11]  Anyway, Abbott just copies DeSantis after he sees DeSantis take the risk.
[01:02:17]  And it pays off after it's worked.
[01:02:19]  Yeah, it's taking the risk and it's worked.
[01:02:20]  Then he'll come on board.
[01:02:21]  That's right.
[01:02:22]  But anyway, but yeah, this is something.
[01:02:25]  But I think that the internet, though, is and the ease of information sharing that we have right now is going to make it so that they can't get away with that anymore.
[01:02:36]  I mean, they can change their messages all day, but it's still like, okay, so let's talk about all this.
[01:02:44]  Do you still believe all this?
[01:02:46]  Because you could change your wording all day long, but we're not going to play that game anymore.
[01:02:49]  We've seen too much now.
[01:02:51]  The genie's out of that bottle.
[01:02:53]  You know, you can't unscramble that egg.
[01:02:54]  So, yeah, I hear you.
[01:02:56]  I hear you.
[01:02:56]  I think that, you know, the requirement of admitting that you were wrong, I honestly don't even hold that as a requirement.
[01:03:03]  That's just basic repentance.
[01:03:05]  It's like, you know, I was wrong.

=== Elders Convicting the Rebellious (03:45) ===

[01:03:07]  Like, I didn't do what I was supposed to do, or I did do something I wasn't supposed to do.
[01:03:12]  Like, that's got to start there.
[01:03:13]  Because if you're not even willing to say that and just you're going to pretend like it never happened, that's actually not repentance.
[01:03:19]  Right.
[01:03:19]  You know what I mean?
[01:03:20]  That's not repentance.
[01:03:21]  Exactly.
[01:03:21]  Yeah.
[01:03:21]  I don't feel like that's doing good works in keeping with repentance.
[01:03:24]  Admitting that you're wrong is repentance.
[01:03:26]  How do you repent without saying I was wrong?
[01:03:28]  Like you said, it was a sin that was very public against people.
[01:03:32]  Like it wasn't like, you know, okay, well, I, you know, I cheated on my taxes, you know, 10 years ago.
[01:03:38]  And so, like, who do I repent to?
[01:03:40]  You know, you're not going to call up Uncle Sam.
[01:03:42]  You know what I mean?
[01:03:42]  Like they don't care.
[01:03:43]  They don't even, they don't even know how to get their computers from the 70s.
[01:03:46]  They probably don't even go back 10 years.
[01:03:48]  So it's like, so it's like, what do you do then?
[01:03:50]  Well, okay.
[01:03:50]  So then you don't cheat on your taxes anymore and just keep it to yourself.
[01:03:53]  I can understand someone that would want to do that.
[01:03:56]  Right.
[01:03:56]  But when you're actually like, there's people here that you barred from the table, like you need to admit that.
[01:04:03]  And I think so.
[01:04:04]  And here's another thing, too, just to add one more wrinkle.
[01:04:06]  You know, just I know we're wrapping this conversation up, but you know, if your pastor did this and closed for way too long and you talk to him and, you know, he's not convincing you, right?
[01:04:17]  Like, in other words, you don't know that he's repented.
[01:04:20]  You don't, yes, he's doing the right thing now, but like there's no indication that he understands what was wrong about it.
[01:04:26]  Like, as a father, you know, you're actually.
[01:04:30]  Completely within your this is not tyranny to say, I don't trust this man, and so I'm going to go find a church where I can trust the pastor because my family has a right to that table.
[01:04:41]  You know what I mean?
[01:04:42]  My family has the right to, you know, even if you're Baptist and they're not baptized yet, like they have the right to worship with their friends and see the sacraments distributed rightly and things like that.
[01:04:54]  Like they have that right.
[01:04:55]  So, as a father, you're this is not about, you know, you're tyrannizing your pastor.
[01:05:02]  No, no, you have responsibility for your family.
[01:05:05]  That's right.
[01:05:06]  That's right.
[01:05:07]  No, I completely agree.
[01:05:08]  And I just, yeah, I completely agree.
[01:05:10]  And I, you know, I'm thinking back, remember, you know, when we closed our doors, I was in California at the time.
[01:05:15]  And so there was an added pressure and being a part of, you know, the Soviet state of California.
[01:05:18]  And so, but I, you know, I put out, I remember so etched in my mind.
[01:05:23]  I put out, because I was like, I got to say something, you know, I got to announce that church is closed this Sunday.
[01:05:29]  And I got to say why.
[01:05:30]  And so I put out a 10 minute video and where I exegeted.
[01:05:34]  Horrifically, Romans 13.
[01:05:37]  I said, This is why.
[01:05:38]  And I talked about how, you know, people in America and even Christians, we have a propensity towards being rebellious.
[01:05:49]  And so we want to be rebellious against the state, you know.
[01:05:52]  And it was just, I look back now and I'm ashamed of what I said.
[01:05:56]  And when I realized it took me about two weeks to realize that was wrong, it took me another two or three weeks to convince a majority of my elders.
[01:06:04]  I was never able to convince one of them, but.
[01:06:06]  A majority of the elders to outvote the tyrant.
[01:06:09]  And then, you know, and then we started having church again.
[01:06:12]  And like the first sermon that I preached, no, it was the second sermon, actually.
[01:06:17]  The second sermon that I preached to the church included a public apology and an explanation of why my previous exegesis of Romans 13 was unbiblical, and then providing a new exegesis of Romans 13 and what it actually means with an apology for leading the church astray, for teaching falsely, teaching something that was wrong,
[01:06:44]  and then allowing the fruit of that teaching in my own life.
[01:06:48]  To bar them from Christ and to cancel the church, you know?

=== Hard Conversations for Generations (10:04) ===

[01:06:52]  And my point is that I'm just like, you say like these guys aren't gonna get away with it, but I'm like, I don't know, man.
[01:07:03]  I'm just like, I don't know if people are dumb, you know, like, or if people just want, you know, because I'm like, when, you know, oh man, I gotta be careful.
[01:07:14]  I've got a lot of questions here because, no, no, yeah, yeah.
[01:07:17]  You can just go ahead and stop right there.
[01:07:20]  No, I get what you're saying, though.
[01:07:21]  No, I get what you're saying.
[01:07:22]  And I have a lot of optimism, though, because I think that, you know, as, you know, and this is not, I'm not trying to be, you know, against, you know, the older generations and stuff like that.
[01:07:33]  I have nothing but respect for the older generations.
[01:07:35]  But the thing is that the younger generations are more into sort of like, you know, weirdos on YouTube like me and you and stuff like that.
[01:07:46]  And so they're more willing to hear the non, you know, big conference speakers than I think some of the older generations are.
[01:07:52]  They're more comfortable with that.
[01:07:54]  So, I have a lot of optimism in the sense that, like, God's going to use the internet in a way that's going to be very, very powerful.
[01:08:01]  And it's going to be very hard to get away with these lies.
[01:08:03]  I think a lot of lies are being exposed for what they are these days.
[01:08:07]  You know, I think, you know, think back to the election and like there's some shenanigans going on there.
[01:08:11]  Whatever you think about how legitimate the shenanigans are, there's something going on that, no question about it.
[01:08:17]  I think they've been doing this for decades, but they've been just, no one had any way to know.
[01:08:21]  But now it's like, it's just, It's hard to hide this stuff now.
[01:08:26]  So I have a lot of optimism in that way, but I understand your fear.
[01:08:29]  I get it.
[01:08:31]  It's not easy, right?
[01:08:32]  It's not easy to do.
[01:08:35]  But there was something that you said that I wanted to comment on.
[01:08:38]  Oh, what you said, by the way, about people in America, you know, to have it in a tendency to rebel, that might be true.
[01:08:46]  That might not be wrong.
[01:08:48]  But the truth is, though, that in that moment, and I think we all kind of realized this, you know, maybe a month in, you said a couple of weeks, you know, a lot of us about a month in, we're like, There is some rebellion here, but it's not the rebellion we said was going on.
[01:09:00]  It's actually rebellion against God, is what it is.
[01:09:03]  That's right.
[01:09:04]  That's right.
[01:09:05]  Yeah, no, you're right.
[01:09:06]  Absolutely right.
[01:09:07]  So, yeah, so I guess, I don't know, in summation, I would say that, you know, if your pastor, if your pastor, you know, shut down for a couple of weeks and what, that's one thing.
[01:09:16]  But if you've had, if your pastor has shut down his church, I'll say it like this if he's shut down his church more than once, like reopened and then shut down again.
[01:09:24]  Oh, man, yeah.
[01:09:25]  You know, big red flag.
[01:09:26]  Yeah, if he's shut down for months at a time, not weeks, but months at a time, even in the very beginning, if he has mandated mass, if he is prohibited, even if it's two services, but in one service he's prohibited singing, all those are huge red flags.
[01:09:44]  And so, my question is if he's not doing that now, okay, that means he's repented in deed, he's changed his actions.
[01:09:52]  Has he repented in word?
[01:09:54]  Has he ever said to the people he sinned against, namely you?
[01:09:58]  Christian, who is a member in his church, you're the one he sinned against.
[01:10:01]  Has he said to you and your family and the other families in that church that he was wrong?
[01:10:06]  Or did he just change his actions and count on you being so stupid that you wouldn't notice?
[01:10:12]  Can I jump in here one more time?
[01:10:14]  It's different than that.
[01:10:15]  I know you wanted the last word.
[01:10:16]  Can I jump in one more time?
[01:10:17]  Yeah, yeah, of course.
[01:10:18]  Okay.
[01:10:18]  So, this is something that you need to watch out for as well.
[01:10:21]  Because what you're basically saying is, and I think what I was saying is that you need to start having some hard conversations with your pastors about all this.
[01:10:32]  And what they've done, they've preempted this, knowing this is coming.
[01:10:36]  And they started to write these poor me, it's hard to be a pastor.
[01:10:40]  I'm so discouraged articles, like a bunch of whining little sissies about how COVID is just so stressful.
[01:10:47]  And like, now I got to deal with this.
[01:10:49]  The Atlantic article that I did a six part series on was just a big whining article.
[01:10:53]  Eric Raymond for the Gospel Coalition is famous for these kinds of poor me, it's hard to be a pastor articles.
[01:10:58]  And he wrote another one recently.
[01:11:00]  We're so discouraged.
[01:11:01]  And all that is trying to bind your conscience that you're going to make your pastor's life difficult by asking him these hard and necessary questions.
[01:11:11]  Don't fall for that.
[01:11:12]  Yeah.
[01:11:12]  Yeah, I'm sure their lives are difficult.
[01:11:14]  Every pastor's life is difficult.
[01:11:16]  Guess what?
[01:11:16]  It's hard.
[01:11:17]  Living as a Christian, it's not always easy, right?
[01:11:20]  We get that.
[01:11:21]  So, you don't want to like purposely seek to give your pastor grief, but don't let them trick you in saying you can't ask any questions because otherwise I'm going to be so discouraged.
[01:11:32]  Right.
[01:11:32]  Tough luck.
[01:11:33]  It's hard to be a pastor.
[01:11:34]  And you know what?
[01:11:35]  If you did something that was sinful in this way, like a lot of us did, I'm not saying you're alone, you're going to have to deal with it.
[01:11:42]  That's part of your job description.
[01:11:43]  And so, I want you to watch out for that because a lot of these guys are writing these poor me, it's hard to be a pastor articles.
[01:11:50]  I think trying to avoid The tsunami of conversations that they're facing about why did you shut down, by the way?
[01:11:57]  Right.
[01:11:58]  No, you're right.
[01:11:59]  But be nice, but do it.
[01:12:01]  No, you're absolutely right.
[01:12:02]  So, like Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ.
[01:12:05]  I think the pastor should be the stronger brother, that his conscience is not so puny.
[01:12:10]  Amen.
[01:12:11]  That he can't do anything to the glory of God.
[01:12:14]  And it doesn't just limit him, but then he makes that, then his conscience, his puny conscience, he makes that the law of the land and tyrannizes the rest of the church and says nobody else can do anything.
[01:12:24]  And he does it with COVID or he does it with alcohol.
[01:12:26]  There's a million different ways that the pastor can exercise authority of command when he should be giving counsel or not saying anything at all because his conscience is actually just misinformed or it's not informed in light of the law of God, but rather the traditions of man and all those kinds of things.
[01:12:42]  And so, if you're a part of a church where you've got a puny pastor with a puny conscience, but a really big mouth, right?
[01:12:50]  Puny conscience, but he shouts tyranny and says that the church can't do this and the church has to do that and all those kinds of things, and all in the name of love.
[01:12:59]  It'll always be in the name of love, loving neighbors and protecting people and don't want them to be sick.
[01:13:02]  And then, like what AD said, and then he covers his, you know, he hedges his bets by saying, it's really hard to be a pastor right now.
[01:13:09]  And, you know, I really don't know what to do either.
[01:13:11]  If you don't know what to do, then why are you making a decision?
[01:13:15]  A command decision.
[01:13:17]  Canceling your church is a massive decision.
[01:13:19]  I don't, I just don't know what to do.
[01:13:21]  So I'm going to bar 150 people from the Lord's table for five months.
[01:13:26]  Well, that's a huge, like, it sounds like you know exactly what to do.
[01:13:29]  That kind of decision assumes an incredible degree of certainty.
[01:13:34]  You must have a direct line to God.
[01:13:35]  So, anyways, that's what we're trying to talk about.
[01:13:38]  And if your pastor is the weaker brother, and that's a biblical phrase, these are biblical terms.
[01:13:43]  If he's the weaker brother, according to Romans chapter 14, and in his weakness of conscience, he is making those commands for everyone else, that constitutes ecclesiastical tyranny.
[01:13:56]  And if you're in a tyrannical church because you are pastored by a weaker brother who is completely comfortable.
[01:14:04]  What should be counseled or what isn't even true at all, then yeah, I think like what AD is saying, it's not like your first step is never to show up again, but you need to have some serious conversations.
[01:14:13]  I get emails all the time saying, Joel, this is exactly what I'm going through.
[01:14:18]  And I'll coach them.
[01:14:19]  I'm like, this is how you should reach out to your pastor.
[01:14:21]  This is how you should do it humbly.
[01:14:22]  Because I am a pastor.
[01:14:23]  This is how you can be humble.
[01:14:24]  This is how you can ask.
[01:14:26]  And every single person that I've coached through this, and it's been about a dozen, they always email me a few days later saying, I had the meeting with the elders.
[01:14:35]  They did not listen to me at all, gave me no credence, no hearing.
[01:14:42]  They heard what I said and immediately, Pointed the gun on me that I was being harsh or I was being overbearing.
[01:14:49]  I was being, I was the tyrant.
[01:14:51]  That's essentially what it comes down to.
[01:14:52]  They said, I'm a tyrant for being overly dogmatic, overly certain, right?
[01:14:57]  Overly this, overly that.
[01:14:58]  And I just want to encourage the Christian who's going through that right now, who feels like, you know, that you're living in the upside down world and you're being gaslighted, you're not crazy.
[01:15:05]  Your pastor is wrong.
[01:15:07]  You're not the crazy one.
[01:15:08]  Your pastor is wrong.
[01:15:09]  You going to your pastor and requiring a high degree of proof.
[01:15:16]  Right?
[01:15:16]  It's like, who is the burden of proof on?
[01:15:18]  The burden of proof is on the person who's going to shut the doors of the church.
[01:15:21]  That's where the burden of proof is on.
[01:15:23]  The guy who's saying, maybe we should keep them open, the burden of proof is not on you because we have clear biblical commands to gather on the Lord's day.
[01:15:30]  So your pastor is making you think you're crazy.
[01:15:34]  This episode, if nothing else, is to help everyone who feels crazy realize you're not crazy.
[01:15:39]  So I feel like AD says that every episode.
[01:15:41]  So it's my turn.
[01:15:42]  I get to say, you're not crazy, right?
[01:15:44]  Don't you end it like every episode by basically saying, I regularly do.
[01:15:47]  That's right.
[01:15:48]  All right, man.
[01:15:49]  You want to give a last word?
[01:15:50]  Any other thoughts?
[01:15:51]  No, Joel, this has been really good and actually really helpful to me to kind of think through.
[01:15:55]  So I love talking to people because it helps me think through sort of things as well.
[01:15:59]  And I'm glad we ended up on an encouraging note because that's what's so necessary right now.
[01:16:05]  You know, men of God out there, you have your families, you need to take care of your families.
[01:16:10]  God has commanded you to do that.
[01:16:12]  And so just like you don't want your pastor outsourcing his decision making to CNN, don't necessarily outsource your decision making to a pastor who's.
[01:16:21]  Shown himself willing to just disregard the commands of God.
[01:16:25]  I wouldn't do that, and I don't think that anybody should do that.
[01:16:28]  Amen.
[01:16:29]  Thanks, AD.
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[01:16:41]  We highly recommend Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved?
[01:16:45]  If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource.
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