Theology Night with Nathan Finochio | 1.31.2021 | 6:00 PM

it's gonna make us professional there it is all right hey fh online community we are the mendez's coming to you live from our central campus i feel like we need to slide one direction or something but let's go this way let's go this way that's the one right there so again we are the mendez's my name is anthony mendez and this is my beautiful wife jessica and my name is jessica mendez and we are from our southend campus if you haven't seen us before we decided to migrate we migrated uh we migrated north for the evening so that's right we're getting a little bit of feedback on but we migrated north for the evening you know we got on our scooters and made sure that you know south end campus was represented here tonight um we got nathan fenoccio today and he's going to be yeah and again here tonight absolutely he's gonna happen tonight we're having a theology night so you know what a theology night is go ahead and type that in the chat with us we want to hear from you guys um but nathan is if you don't know nathan he has been with us before he was at south end campus a couple years ago maybe not a couple maybe like a year yeah like a year okay a year and so he is really great at breaking down the bible connecting all the dots yes and so that's something that he did this morning this morning just a quick little recap he talked to us about you know god is not just a cosmic being he is a imperson he is a person and he desires to have a full-on relationship with uh similar to that you would have to have with your spouse mine's right here so gotta make sure that i talk good about my wife and make sure that i'm paying attention to the things that she likes and he talked about just making sure that uh you know using the bible to be able to figure out what god actually likes pretty crazy thought right i know why would we care what god thinks babe like i mean because if we want to have a relationship with him it would be important that we care about what he wants to do probably yeah so what do i like so well you are big into my wife jessica if you want to get on her good side get her a good cup of coffee and some sushi yes not at the same time but those are she likes those two things that's definitely something that my wife is all about makes me very happy yes they do and my hubby loves chelsea soccer so for any soccer fans or any euro league fans out there english premier league but english premier i'm sorry i'm close close i can't i came close nathan talked about listening today so well one thing he talked about is that what his wife liked and this is how he found out what god liked is his wife he put it in very south end terms y'all for us very south end terms so she likes avocado toast hello hey oh southampton is crazy but uh south enders were all over all about it and she is a wine drinker so she likes cab have so any wine drinkers out there it's okay but that those are the stores where's the red ones where's the red ones yeah and so that is what she likes and for all of our south vendors you all know that south enders are foodies that's right 100 so we want you all to help us in the chat tell us what your favorite restaurant is in charlotte so that we can go visit it and tell all of our friends to go visit but we could also have people watching not from charlotte right and so if you are not from charlotte let us know what city you're from and let us know what your favorite restaurant is shoot it to us in the chat and we'll uh yes so because oh yeah so we have rosie on there rosie tell us where you're at and tell us what your favorite restaurant is call her out why don't you i know hey she's interesting we love you we just want to hear from you too so really fast so we're having people send in their answers we want to talk a little bit more about what nathan taught us today so he taught us two hebrew words yes the first one being yod like jamaica you know yad man okay and there's the jamaican bobsled team y'all hey guys cool running cool runnings i'm at the olympics with my olympic mic yad means hand so i'm gonna raise my hand with my phones even though i'm got my phones in my hand for the chat chat so oh donna you're from cleveland i love cleveland donna do you like um barrios tacos yes that's one of my favorite places to eat in cleveland so if y'all never been to cleveland go to barrios oreos has some of the best tacos um rosie you're from charlotte too tell us oh maggiano's rosie likes to go to maggiano like an italian restaurant it is it's in south um park mall if y'all haven't been super good wreck donna says yes she loves barrios tacos hey cleveland it's one of my favorites as well yes okay yeah we are really really running out okay and the other word is kabad so that means our passion our weight our worship so praise with hands and then we we not only worship god with our hands but we do with our passion too and that is something that like avocado toast and cab save he [Music] looks good evening everybody good to see everyone y'all doing good what a great sunday you get you know you know what happens today because you came to church extra credit in heaven you know those little gold stars ashley that you give your students when they do really well do you give those to amado like gold stars you yeah vacuumed chart gold stars how many have you got today amato you've lost three we won't talk about the losing part but today you get two gold stars so just think about in heaven next to your locker you get two gold stars for come to church on a sunday night how many all just thankful you have free babysitting tonight raise your hand that's good there's no child care okay so you just left your kids at home that's what that's what we used to do just put some food on the ground they'd be fine for a couple hours if you lock the doors they're safe they can't get out and so they're all good what a great day we had olin preached here at central way to go olin fantastic we had aaron i don't know where aaron is is he did he make it back tonight nope he's taking a night night off look he preaches on sunday morning he thinks he gets the night off what the heck's going on around here what kind of boss am i so anyway aaron preached at our lake norman campus and then nathan whom you're going to hear from tonight's talked at our southend campus and so we also have a bunch of live streamers on give it up for our live streamers [Applause] good to see everybody hey we're going to dive right into this um we've never done anything like this before we've had some extra credit stuff that we've done before but nothing like this kind of theology related let me just give you a little background on nathan we met probably two or three years ago my wife and i have been hearing about him for a long time uh he's involved with hillsong and what what happened is he started to gain a lot of traction on social media and before and then he basically what i what i this is my feeling of you okay like this may not be the truth but this is what happened with me and you okay you can fix it all once you get up here and so um and what's amazing is i realized that um the the theology aspect of thing i'm very i'm kind of like scratching the surface of theology that's for me i'm trying to dig in a little bit but sometimes i can get a little off and what they have designed online is the thing called fiasc u and it is a phenomenal tool for pastors and for people to take the next step maybe you don't want to go to cemetery i mean seminary maybe you don't want to go to seminary but you you feel like that you want to dig into a little bit more of your education and understanding well what they've done is they've provided that and phenomenal very inexpensive way for you to kind of itch that scratch of hey do i really want to take another step do i want to go a little bit deeper and great great people on there that that are way smarter than everybody and nathan is super smart and i'm just it's an honor for us to be able to get somebody to come and be a part of our church like this and so um so i want to just welcome nathan can we just stand up and just give nathan a great big welcome freedom house church welcome so exciting thanks brother did i mess it all up it work for is check one all right we're we are live um all right thank you troy um i love your pastors by the way gosh i love penny and troy they're i love how real they are like what pastor goes you know i i don't get my theology right all the time [Applause] that's that's amazing i don't either right like but some people would never say that and aren't we just all trying to just get better at reading god's word and understanding it right so um i just love that and i i just love how you guys carry yourself and i just love your church so thanks for having me um but i'll give you a little bit about you uh about you i'll give you a little i'm gonna talk about you individually um i'll give you a little bit about me uh and just a little snapshot and then we'll go um i'm canadian and my dad's a pastor in a small town twelve eighteen hundred people we have a stoplight it's pretty awesome eighteen hundred population including livestock i don't know it's an agricultural community and uh my parents are still there and um i'm married to jasmine and she is australian and we've been married for seven years we were in new york city for eight or nine years and then we moved to we moved to california i live in palm springs right now two and a half years ago i came off of staff i just felt like i wanted to do some creative type theology type stuff and i was teaching i was a teaching pastor in new york city at hillsong and i would teach i came up with basically teaching an evening college which was about 14 lectures students would come and we'd pack out you know people who'd never heard the gospel before and they're just okay i want to learn about the bible and we'd pack out these places and these kids would come it was amazing and we'd do q a it was the best best teaching i've ever done um it was most enjoyable maybe it was the theology was bad i don't know um so then we started theos you ca because i'm a canadian and everybody that works for me is canadian at the moment right now um and uh and essentially what it is is it's just um instead of taking the book of romans in 36 lectures you can take the book of romans in eight hours and basically we just we we break down and we distill bible college level teaching and so it's kind of like a it's interesting because we have a 4 000 students now and people pay 14 a month and they can watch unlimited lectures and you know the book of hebrews book of john we have a course called defense against the dark arts and i'm going to take a lesson from defense against the dark arts tonight i'm dead serious we're going to do defense against the dark arts tonight and we're going to do a lecture a lecture from it uh this is this is a fun one um we have courses on on spiritual gifts and prophecy and transgenderism and critical theory and all kinds of different stuff and so we have out of four thousand students a thousand of them over a thousand are pastors so we love resourcing the charismatic evangelical community we don't know everything but we're a point of reference to get the conversation started does that make sense um so i'm not i come to you i'm not i'm not an authority on anything um i have a mullet for crying out loud my wife hates it i love it i had all my friends over i'll give you the i'll give you the story behind the mullet and then we'll get into this okay because we have to talk about the important things i had all my friends over for a super spreader because it is what it is because i don't care [Music] some of you are like he is so disrespectful um why are you here um you're not wearing a mask either um so this is a super spreader um so so i had like you know 15 friends in california over right and and so we're we're having we're hanging out and my my my 22 year old brother-in-law has a mullet it's awesome it's exactly like mine and i just want to be i'm 38 and i'm i want to be young do you know what i'm saying and i'm just like this this is so cool all my young friends are getting mullets i need to get a moment my wife's like you're not cutting your hair and i'm like it's happening she went into her room almost like she was basically crying and they cut my hair the boys cut my hair and this is what it looks like and she hates it and i love it okay let's do this like who gets a mullet you know like you have fringe yes it's crazy i feel like you know like that uh that joe guy from from tiger king or whatever thank you that guy all right here we go that's not who you want to look like right okay so let's let's call this this uh this is a talk from defense against the dark arts but i'm gonna call this this uh we're gonna talk and we're gonna do a q a um and so this little talk is about the bible and we're gonna call this is the bible reliable okay the reason why i want to talk about that is because man if we don't if we're not on the same page about the scriptures it's really hard to have conversations and there are so many good conversations happening right now in the church we have to have conversations with one another because we have a lot of differences right and so often times though we begin to talk about things that are um it's like we're talking about some some things we're arguing and going crazy over things that are like they're sort of peripheral to the conversation where we we realize well we don't even have the same core principles or first principles in common um so i think it's for me i'm always trying to bring people back to the first principles and if we can nail our first principles then we can have a conversation you know we all agree on justice but we maybe will disagree on how justice you know should some people will be like well justice is socialism is the best way to take care of people and then somebody will be like well i think that capitalism is the best way to take care of people but we have to first agree that we want to take care of people does that make sense right so we can we can agree man what's the heart behind this and so getting our heart right so this is why um i want to share this talk okay let's get on the same page in terms of what we believe about the scriptures um all right so firstly the bible and this is kind of the take that i want to give you tonight the bible is humanity's most reliable ancient document for some of you you're going to be like nate i'm with you i'm already with you i already believe that the bible is god's word but i feel like a lot of young people don't believe this and we have to have good conversations with them and be prepared to have those conversations with them so that they can be getting their ideas from scripture as well does that make sense so maybe we can equip you tonight if you're already with me and maybe you're not with me and so i can take you on this journey tonight so the bible is humanity's most reliable ancient document that's my thesis and here i go defending it so um some of the questions that we'll get is like wasn't the bible written thousands of years ago you ever hear somebody say that you know c.s lewis used to call people who had problems with old thoughts um you would call that sort of questioning chronological snobbery chronological snobbery where it's kind of like well it's old so it must suck you know i live my life like it's 2021. you ever hear somebody it's 2021 that's why we should be doing x y and z well that's not a very reliable argument is it's not very logical you know you know what i'm saying in fact um there's some really great old ideas there's some really horrible old ideas right for sure slavery was a bad idea it's always a bad idea it was never a god idea right um but but like for example there's been some good ideas in the past and for shakespeare for example shakespeare in the academy is considered the greatest author ever just ever the reason why english the english language is spoken so much and so often is because no no other language has actually had a shakespeare anybody even comparable to shakespeare shakespeare is just so far far beyond his time and eclipses his generation and the way that he began to think about plays and soliloquy's and the characters you know sharing their thoughts with the audience and you being inside the actor's mind like that is that was groundbreaking it still is people are still copying those those ideas and the literature is just absolutely incredible and by all uh for all intents and purposes in the academy shakespeare dante milton like literature has actually gone downhill from there right like so when i'm having conversations with young people it's like man we have facebook like isn't we're amazing and i'm going dude we don't have shakespeare do you what i mean like we've gone culture has eclipsed in some ways when i say the best is yet to come i'm saying that it's a theological idea about like god is the best and we're gonna we're gonna see the lord and and the best is yet to come in a theological sense like when we see jesus and we're in the new heavens and the new earth and it's just amazing right so it's that's true but the best is yet to come in terms of humanity that's not necessarily true outside of jesus i mean humanity will have its best days in the new heavens and the new earth for sure right but on this side of eternity there might be never be another shakespeare so so just because an idea is old doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea does that make sense and we have to kind of fight for ridiculous things like that um even even in in music like when people evaluate music as a whole like some music 200 300 years ago like that was an art like if you asked you know like scholars in academia you know hey what's the best what's the best art does well the sistine chapel or michelangelo's david that's it we've we peaked right for young people to digest that it's actually good for them to digest to chew on that okay so not every new idea is better than old ideas right uh isn't it fake and corrupted by copyists i don't know if we're gonna really get into um all of that but ancient people were really really really good at copying and they didn't have the attention span of a gnat like we do right in fact people were so good at oral tradition and and listening and learning that way you know they'd they'd put everything to songs and then they'd sing them and it's not like how we you know forget everything and we have to i remember i used to rem do you remember before like having an iphone where you had to remember people's telephone numbers i used to have a skill of remembering all of my friends numbers dude i've lost that skill it's gone it'll never come back right is it actually what the disciples wrote and recorded that's a that's a great question and so we're going to have to defend that because it's like hey like you know was what do we have what john wrote or do we have you know some you know patriarchal you know uh adulteration of paul a lot of people believe that that the new testament has been highly highly edited and it's it's always convenient for them because it's edited in the places that they disagree with interesting how that works i mean okay got you so where you this suits your theology no that's that's definitely paul but where it doesn't suit you that's been see you can't play that game can you where do where does it end where does it start um first peter 3 15 always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have okay let's keep moving along all right so who wrote the bible 40 different writers wrote over a span of 1500 years um the bible was edited for sure the old testament in particular was edited by the post-exilic community okay so you remember israel goes into captivity right and then well judah to be precise israel gets swept away by the assyrians and then the southern kingdom of judah they go in in babylon and they're there and they're having a they're in timeout basically and god's just like okay you out and go think about what you've done they're thinking about what they're done and the prophets are singing to them and prophesying and going hey guys so by the way you know how we've been saying that you've been disobeying god's law that's why you got kicked out so then they decide man wow we need to really understand this law so that when we go back to the land we prosper this is going to be the root of the zeal that jesus experiences when he encounters the pharisees right their their zeal was man we never want to forsake the law because then god will kick us out again so they saw it strict adherence to the law as what would kick the romans out et cetera et cetera et cetera but the the root of this seal comes from being kicked out and being in babylon et cetera so while i believe that moses absolutely wrote the first five books of the old testament and jesus himself gives authorship to moses that's important like in like internal evidence like that when me when when when jesus will quote you know genesis and he'll say well moses said does that make sense moses obviously didn't pen and moses went up to the hill and died you know what i mean that's just obviously he didn't and he died there and he was buried you know it's like what do you what are you like you don't know where you're married so obviously um the bible was edited by people believe it was edited by the by the davinic dynasty editors and by the post-exilic community and so they're obviously piecing this thing together but we believe that those editors were divinely inspired by the way you need editing so i wrote a book the book is called hearing god and under the title it says nathan fenocio but that's a lie right like every other book right pastor brian houston wrote a book live love lead and yes brian is the author but of course we all have line editors and copy editors and you're hearing me we don't have a problem with me being the author though do we no we never because we just assume that of course the book has been edited right in the same way though the scriptures were edited that way but the old testament primarily by the post-exhibit community and then the new testament appears to be actually believe it or not unedited which is pretty cool okay we will keep going so there's 66 different books the septuagint was finished the septuagint is the greek old testament and it was actually finished before jesus was born in fact the oldest copy of the old testament that we have is in greek and it predates the hebrew coffee copy coffee copy the masoretic text by like a thousand years there was these there were these guys so there was a huge greek speaking jewish population in egypt in alexandria particularly which is probably where jesus uh lived growing up in egypt uh it was the second largest jewish population outside of jerusalem in the ancient world and there was the all these alexandrian jewish scholars they were brilliant and these guys were the ones apparently 70 of them wrote the old testament in greek and they absolutely killed it and this is actually when jesus quotes from the old testament and when paul quotes from the old testament they always quote in the phrasing of the greek septuagint the reason why the septuagint was created was because the everybody spoke greek and these scholars wanted a like a really trusty translation of the of the old testament you know the old testament um for everybody who's you know being dispersed the the the diaspora the diaspora however you want to pronounce that which is jews living all throughout the mediterranean world so that was that existed in its form that we have right now that existed before jesus was even on the scene that's pretty cool in 8367 athanasius uh listed the 27 books of the new testament but we have um we have guys in the second century a.d listing the books of the new testament essentially that the the early church used the 27 books that we considered canonical um and we have early church fathers using those as well and considering them uh the reason why i pull from athanasius is because athanasius was a he believed there's some there were some patristics that believed all kinds of weird stuff and athanasius was just an amazing guy all right um the early church accepted the septuagint which is the greek old testament and the new testament and and you know pretty much unanimously how is the bible written all right so it's a god book right not a man book but it is a man book which is right like because people wrote it so paul had a pastoral situation that he had to deal with and he wrote it going man i need to talk to this church about not sleeping with your mom that's not okay dear dude don't do that nobody does that but you're doing that don't stop that you know what i mean like so paul is it's a pastoral issue but he's being guided by the holy spirit to do that does that make sense um the the writers um like the bible didn't just fall from the sky right that's not that's not how it worked because god works with people i don't know why he does that legitimately i don't know why he lets us cooperate with him but he does we can guestimate that you know oh he's a dad and he loves his kids he likes to do things in groups i don't know you know bottom line that's a mystery but god loves god loves to involve us in his plans of redemption the authors wrote under the inspiration of the holy spirit they were moved by the spirit you know so paul was moved by the spirit to address this issue in the corinthian church and so he's writing right like he's he's got a reason for writing but he's moved by the spirit that's what we believe they wrote of their own will right paul's going man like i don't want this to be happening but obviously that's there's some cooperation happening that god didn't want that to be happening either in the corinthian church he didn't want there to be division he didn't want people to you know be divisive et cetera et cetera their thoughts were guided by the holy spirit so as paul is writing pastorally and he's addressing issues in the corinthian church wow your church is a dumpster fire when you get together it's literally worse imagine going to a church where it's worse when you had church that's in first corinthians 11 which is amazing that that made it into the bible right that was that was paul's will paul's obviously adjudicating the situation and pronouncing judgment upon it but the holy spirit is as well okay um his thoughts are guided they weren't in a catatonic state you know what i mean like their eyes roll back and like he's like right that's not how the bible came came to be um there was this this blending of of paul's will and god's will what they meant to write was what god meant to write which is significant which means that the text can't mean what the author didn't mean and what the original audience didn't understand it to be so that's kind of a guiding principle of how do i study the bible i should study it in in an attempt to try to find out authorial intent what did paul mean by this and how would the original audience would have understood this does that make sense um so it sort of places them first and as i'm placing them first i'm understanding what the holy spirit wants to say to me because the bible was not written to me but it is for me right bible was written to other people living in corinth who are having sex with their mom you know like that's pretty messed up that might brush you the wrong way but that's literally what was happening in corinth that was the occasion for the letter um who said the bible was boring um you know so obviously this is literally written right so it's written to them but it's for me as in okay what's the lessons to learn here god loves order uh god there's some boundaries you know god loves me cares about me etc etc etc so um they were aware that they were writing god's words okay why would god write a book god wants relationships with his runaway rebels i was telling the church earlier this morning i kind of don i've never even said this to people before it was funny um but like have you noticed that less and less people are like i'm a sinner and i'm a i'm a rebel and more and more it's like i'm broken you know what i mean there's something broken in my brokenness well totally yes we are for sure broken but also you're a rebel do you know what i mean you intentionally when i when i when i confess to the lord often i'm just like lord i willfully and intentionally disobeyed you i'm sorry you know what i mean because i want to be honest i'm not going to hide behind i'm broken you're hearing me right because then there's no guilt there's no culpability if you're broken right so against you and you only have i sinned and done this wickedness in your sight right so you can clap that's good stuff you can clap for the bible um so yeah god wants relationship with i was telling the the church this morning that we're like the kids we're not kids who got lost in the forest we're kids who who who tied the parents up and ate them you know what i'm saying we didn't run away from mom and dad we had them for dinner right that's that's the issue we've rebelled against god and we killed jesus you hear me um and our sin made him put him on the cross right so but god in his infinite mercy i don't under it's infinite he wants relationship with us and he wants to be known he wants to be known god wants people to know about him god's a person he's not an impersonal cosmic force and as a person he wants to be known he doesn't want to be projected upon he doesn't want you to think things that aren't true about him that's why a bible exists it makes so much sense that there's a scriptures right because who likes to be projected upon my wife is a five wing four okay she thinks that she's special they all do um and um but like her big thing is she hates being misrepresented it's amazing i kind of don't really care i care but i don't care but i care i don't care right but my wife meant she freaks out that is not my favorite star wars movie she will lose it right if you say you know like no no lord of the rings is my favorite movie it is not two towers you know what i'm saying um she's just it's amazing and i think that god is the same way he doesn't want to be some figment of your imagination or some fantasy that you build he wants to be him and he wants to be known for who he is and so of course there's going to be scriptures which are his self-revelation him going hey this is what i'm like this is who i am you're hearing me the only way that we can know god is if he first reveals himself it's the only way because god is not you know we're living here in time space matter right in quantum in quantum physics time space matter they all exist together right you can't have time without space and space of the time et cetera time space matter well god exists outside of time space and matter what the heck when the bible says god is spirit it's saying he's qualitatively other he's not casper the ghost right he's qualitatively other his in his in the new heavens and the new earth we won't even be experiencing all of his qualitatively otherness because we'll still be in time-space matter he exists outside of that because he's before he exists outside of it he's always been isn't that crazy that doesn't mean though that we can't know him accurately so i might never know god exhaustively there's no way i'll ever know god exhaustively he's god you think that when you go to heaven you're going to look up at him and be like i get it no no you are going to be more puzzled right you're going to hit the deck worshiping and just be like this is crazy i'm gonna go back to playing fortnite you know like it just it's gonna be god's something else and so because he exists outside i can't know him unless he comes into time space and matter and reveals himself that's the story of the tower of babel and abraham in genesis chapter 12 genesis 11 and 12. god rejects the people who are trying to build up to him and he just invades abraham just finds a guy and go hey will you believe me sure all right let's do this isn't that cool without the bible we just create our own god that's why we need the scriptures we create our own versions of love our own versions of justice our own versions of righteousness our own versions of salvation our own verses well my god you ever seen that movie tell dagonites it's one of my favorite movies ever if you haven't seen it go home immediately and there my favorite scene is ricky bobby he's a race car driver and he's sitting there and he's they're praying over dinner and and so ricky bobby's going deer you know five six pound seven else baby jesus and he's like baby jesus you know somebody maybe jesus isn't a baby he's like well my baby jesus is you know like so you know we people do that that we they create their versions of jesus and what you're doing is just it's just your god it's a it's an idol it's a false idol god doesn't like that so all the more we need to read the scriptures and go god who are you i want to know you i can't know you exhaustively but i can know you accurately and i want to know you as you've revealed yourself because i i want to be in a relationship with you and i care to know you as you are because that matters to you you've taken all this time to make yourself known i will know you the way that you've made yourself known i'll save my questions for heaven which probably won't get answered anyways archaeology confirms the bibli the bible's historical accuracy sometimes the bible names places we haven't discovered and that's there's a ton of places particularly in the old testament but john describes the pool of bethesda uh for example with five walkways leading to the pool scholars didn't think the pool existed until archaeologists found it 40 feet below ground complete with the five porticos isn't that cool renowned jewish archaeologist nelson glueck this guy's not a christian he's a jew he says this it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference isn't that wild as in like it yet we've we've when we discover stuff it's in line with what the scriptures have said it's never not been in line that's unbelievable isn't it in the book of acts luke names 32 countries 54 cities and nine islands without an error which have all been identified through archaeology isn't that pretty cool all right the bible today is the same as the original manuscripts the dead sea scrolls found in 1947 contained old testament manuscripts dating a thousand years older the these were septuagint then any manuscripts we had and when compared with the ones we did have we found 99.5 agreement the 0.5 differences were minor spelling variances and sentence structure that didn't change the meaning of the sentence isn't that incredible so these copyists were jesus makes this joke uh it was sort of like an inside scribe joke and he's like not one not a jot or a tittle will will will change from the law um and and basically what he was saying is there was this there was this this phrase in in the copies the jewish copious tradition that like heaven and earth hung on a jot or a tittle as in like a crossing a t or getting an eye perfectly don't mess up copy because heaven and earth are in the balance isn't that crazy no pressure exactly these guys are just like sweating like [Laughter] there's somebody with a noose behind them don't you dare they're in a dunk tank they're just you make a mistake somebody throws you know i don't know i just made that up dunks we need to bring back dunk tanks by the way remember when we used to have like dunk tanks after church in the parking lot you guys still do that can we please do that this summer you know what i mean like you used to like you know to raise money you'd put the youth passer in and troy you'd go in the dunk tank wouldn't you penny would no she would i take that back benny jasmine wouldn't go in the dunk tank either the copyists strained meticulously over their work errors of sight occurred of course but when compared with the hundreds of other copies we easily spot the minor errors it's kind of like um have you ever seen somebody signing or signed a bunch of stuff you know like a christmas you're signing all the christmas cards you know like you can you can tell that it's your signature but not every single signature is exactly but you can if you put them all together that's your sig you know what i'm saying similar similar type stuff copies had to be made because they were written on paparas which could be obviously damaged they didn't have the technology that we have today um i have this little chart and then we're gonna we're gonna end but uh well rather we're gonna do the q a but um this chart is pretty cool and it just it just shows the the historical reliability when you put the the new testament against other um pieces of literature like other ancient documents so when when we compare the new testament by the old testament as well but the new testament specifically it's insane so we have five thousand forty four to five thousand copies of the new testament okay that that's a lot now people all the time all the time because you have to attack the source of authority right so people all the time are just like well the bible no it's been edited and it's been it's been corrupted and you know how do you know that you have luke how do you know that you have john how do you know et cetera et cetera well here's the deal nobody ever complains about homer's iliad you know what i mean like no like or get the gallic wars by caesar like everybody is just like that is definitely caesar right when they when when when see when iliad and golic wars and herod herodotus and and aristotle when they're quoted they're quote they're quoted authoritatively like these men existed and the that's a fact and that's a fact and that's a fact and that's the fact well the issue that you know we need to bring up is well okay yeah so we have seven copies of plato ps thanked the the monks for that because the dating of these copies are all like eighth ninth century so if you you know like thank the church for for material that we don't even necessarily even disagree or agree with you what i mean like that's how awesome the church has been for the world p.s um you know uh don't get me started on that one but then we got caesar you're right like eight copies aristotle five copies new testament four to five thousand copies and then in the the middle column right the the the difference between when plato wrote to when we have the earliest copy is 1200 year gap right a lot can happen in 1200 years uh caesar same thing from caesar's writing to the earliest copy that we have that the monks you know copied 900 years right you could go down through the list nobody's disputing that these guys didn't write these books the new testament there's 35 to 100 year gap of the earliest manuscripts that we have i think that that should settle it right there was just like you know what i think i can trust this thing i can trust this thing i think that that's that holds up in a court of law that holds up pretty pretty hard in academia and it holds up for me this is the last slide and then we're gonna get into the q a historians also confirm what the bible says about jesus so some people have even had the audacity to not believe that jesus is a historical person which is crazy now then again there are people who don't believe that we landed on the moon some of you might not believe that i forgive you for that right like there's like the earth is flat man it's like flat earthers it's like people believe crazy stuff just because people believe crazy stuff doesn't mean it's true right so you got tacitus tacitus is a roman he's a roman historian and he writes nero inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class called christians christus from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of tiberius at the hands of one of our proctors pontius pilate sound familiar right so the roman empire documents that jesus was a dude that got he was killed on a cross by pontius pilate hearing me he's a historical person um josephus josephus was a jew not a christian he writes uh antiquities it's the greatest jewish literature middle eastern history that we have and he says this we learned that jesus was a wise man who did surprising feats taught many one over many scholars from among jews and greeks was believed to be the messiah was accused by the jewish leaders was condemned to be to be crucified by pilate and was considered to be resurrected this guy doesn't have a dog in the race and he's just saying it like god this is what happened so for me i'm gonna i'm gonna believe i'm gonna believe that the old testament is authoritative i'm gonna i'm just gonna go you know what you'll in the new testament man i'm just gonna i think that that's in humanity according to the rigor of academia that is humanity's most reliable document it's got the most copies it's got the shortest distance p other people who aren't even christian confirm that jesus is a real historical character so what that leaves me with is whether i trust jesus's words about himself or not it always comes back to jesus so when i'm thinking about the scriptures and i'm thinking about my faith and you know where i learned from and where my authority is rooted obviously my authority's in god the bible didn't die for me right but the bible has authority from jesus because it's his words and i can't divorce jesus from his words and so i got jesus here and he's saying hey you know like i i'm the only way to the father i am the way the truth and the life no man comes with the father except through me okay well jesus jesus says i am god what do i do with that the book of john you know like why do i tear that out of my bible you know i got i i just trust jesus and then jesus of course quotes the scriptures all he does is quote the old testament to prove that he is who he says he is and all of the new testament authors i mean read matthew every five seconds matthew's going to fulfill this scripture that said this to fulfill this scripture that said this right why would he do that if the old testament's not authoritative so i submit to you that the bible can be trusted does that sound good okay [Applause] bono wasn't that good very good look at that we got georgia watching north carolina new york new york some friends from here from new york probably not they all moved to california they did yeah i think they definitely sit down you sit down i know you're tired all day long we didn't do anything that is nice so let's just a quick review yeah because i think this is the uh i think we have three of these little chairs yeah then move that that'd be good where would you like to sit honey i'll sit in the middle all right you got to put the rose between the thorns truly hey i'm fine with that you're fine with that yeah i'll take that on the gin good just don't drop his computer then you could take that good deal thanks guys the files are in the computer perfect you still want you want your phone i don't you probably want to instagram and stuff oh that's all right is that coming out of my honorary yes okay wait i was afraid wait you didn't do this just for a volunteer just because well apparently i did that was a mic drop moment by it wasn't mike moment so i i i want to lead into a question then penny has a lot of questions um i'm trying to change the subject that was a good moment was that good all right so uh so of the 4 000 students that are on theosu what's the number one class that's being watched right now defense against the dark arts really yeah that's the number one chorus and explain what that means because somebody when i think of defense against the dark arts i'm thinking you know dungeons and dragons harry potter harry potter yeah so so yeah so basically it's i hate the term apologetic because a people don't understand what it means and it's like what am i apologizing for my faith and then just apologetic books are boring like it's just it's hard reading i'm a smart guy and i get bogged down reading apologetic material um so i just wanted to create something where it was just a bit more light and fun and we hit the hit stuff that basically is helping people navigate questions in our world right like so we have so every generation has questions about the bible and questions about jesus that are unique so for example like the world war one and world war ii generation they didn't have a problem with the idea that there was sin in the world and that people were going to hell they were like oh for sure you know what i mean like when you have hitler and stalin and like you're dying and you know in on islands in the in the south pacific you understand that there's a problem with the world our generation doesn't so um and so we have unique so so for me i wanted to create this course that would just challenge like so in that in that course we talk about god's love because nobody knows what god's love is right now i mean young people you know it's like well god's love means that i can do whatever i want no you know like yeah so let's look at the new testament do you know when you just said that i realized who you reminded me of and i have a picture brad pitt you know close robert because this reminded me of who you are [Applause] i'm okay with that yeah that is hilarious i feel good about that yeah jeff daniels is a star he is a star he's a stud he's legit it's a great movie dustin hoffman thought that it was one of the greatest dramas ever made he calls that a drama yeah he called it a drama what's your favorite movie casablanca seriously yeah wow okay absolutely wow i think i saw that probably 25 times with my mom that's scary for sure yeah that's definitely a connect with mother movie yeah it is was your mom a drug dealer too you know what before she met the lord she might be watching right now be careful my mom might be all right so let's let's jump into some questions because you said that each generation has uh questions that come to the forefront can you talk about some of the premier questions that you get from this generation and then i would love um to you know to hit some questions because as pastors we hear things all the time and i'm surprised the the people that are so illiterate when it comes to god's word there are specific things the bible covers and people have no idea that it's even in the bible right yeah for sure uh i think gosh where to start so i guess for me um my journey has been i want to know why we believe what we believe right so why do we believe that the things that we believe about sexuality why do we believe the things that we believe about hell and you know what i mean like we just go down the list so i've been on this journey just kind of just figuring out um so the the long and the short of it penny i think is um and this is a complicated this is like a term that a lot of people maybe we're happily ignorant of but the term is epistemology epistemology is how you go about studying and finding out what is true and epistemologies have radically changed in the last hundred years and they're changing even more in the last 10 years for example standpoint or positional epistemology is a popular one where this is my experience therefore this is my truth ah okay um so that that's just an example of an of a epistemology but for example the reason why so many people come like we can all read the same bible and come to different conclusions it's because our epistemologies have changed so what i've been trying to do and i think what what we should do everybody should do is go why did the early church believe um like how did the apostles creed come together well they obviously needed the same epistemology in order to agree on those 12 important fundamentals about the christian faith right like those are 12 non-negotiables you know like romans chapter 10 there's a couple non-negotiables if you believe in your heart and you confess your mouth like god raised jesus from the dead right you have to there's certain stuff you have to believe in order to be saved does that make sense so is it a faith issue or is it a question issue i think it's a little bit of both so so it's it's not just people going you know i uh i i'm having trouble trusting god it's more so i've learned from my schools and my teachers that um this is the way that you can study and text can mean anything so for example like when students read shakespeare today they read it as what does it mean to you injunctive that's the so our st our generation is being taught that there's like truth is is just totally positional so however you feel however that makes you feel and whatever your experiences are and where you are socioeconomically and the color of your skin and like all the and just break you know if you're a man or if you're a woman or you know like then and your experiences in that plus whatever you feel and that's the truth so that's why like false doctrine is multiplying because our epistemologies are multiplying the way that we discover what is true so that's why for me i go my big thing is always trying to get us on the same page in terms of epistemology the way that we learn so hey the and i was addressing epistemology without telling you tonight i was going the bible was written by paul and paul was writing to corinth for this issue so if you understand what paul is trying to say then that's the truth not just what it means to you while you're reading devotionally because that's that's that's how cults are formed yeah now we've all been there and can god speak to me like can the scripture have a meaning but then there can be an application and the lord speaks to me through that application of course right of course yeah um but when we stopped caring about what like the the authorial intent and thinking about the original audience and we kind of de-centered them and then we place ourselves and it's just all about what how we perceive things et cetera that becomes a really dangerous place that's good so all the questions yeah penny for example that people are asking are all coming from from relativism and and it's the result of a changing of the guard whatever your truth is correct so so for example the bible says god created them male and female but right now if you ask alexa and you say how many genders are there she'll say as many as there are people because it depends on how that person feels so then i asked alexa well how many people are there in the world and she says 7 billion so in essence she's saying there are 7 billion different genders and our young people are getting their information from things like alexa or things like google or things like a particular movement or right they're getting they're getting their information from people who have been trained and steeped in positional from from standpoint epistemology and standpoint epistemology if you want to read a really great book on all of this and going why do people believe the things they believe and learn the way that they learn and then trust that as something to be trusted a book called cynical theories yeah by uh james lindsey and helen pluck rose and it just talks about what postmodernism is doing to the academy and it's the reason why you know people are some people are fine with a transgender uh man competing in girls sports you know what i mean it's like dude you're going to just you're going to win that's not fair to girls well he's not a man he's she is a woman now and it's like well and it's like common sense it's like common sense does not exist right and then we we tap that and put that out and we say well you know what on my cabinet i'm going to put the first transgender and i'm going and it's it gets us to go well you know what everybody has their own views and opinions and if we don't this is this is the thing that is frustrating to me a lot of people perceive that well if we don't embrace this as christians then we're not being loving and so it's like weaponized empathy yeah 100 percent i think um i think it's important gk chesterton one of my favorite authors he said it's like it's important to not let hypocrites um like be hypocrites so it's like it see past people's vices to the virtues that their vices are hiding so for example a transgender person being appointed to a cabinet you know our staff why is that happening okay that's happening because people feel like christians and the church and maybe america and christian america have beat up on people for a long time and so now does that make sense so i want to see past what is the good part what is your what is the the is there an honorable part here you know what i mean like so i get it so you want to you want you feel like we need to honor people more i can get on board with that i mean i want to honor people and you know i mean to be honest with you people who gender dysphoria is a real thing that people experience it's a horrible thing that people experience and i want to show compassion to people that have gender dysphoria um but also we're not calling it that no and i need to cut but i can't compromise truth right so then they'd go well truth is experience and i go okay see right there we can't have a conversation because we are not our first principles are not the same because the way that i go about my epistemology the way i go about discipline exactly is not the way that you do and to me that is um post-modernism you know and which is the it's the seed bed it's the epistemology of things like critical theory that to me that is the great that's the that is the seed of the great falling away so talk about that for a second because i think you know i think some of us may have an inkling or a little touch of what critical critical theory is um we're seeing little you know i talk a little bit about it um i do it like you i do it kind of under yep under the which is kind of what you did to tonight is you dealt with an issue that is a critical theory issue which is the authoritative you know structure of the of the of the bible but give us a quick overview i know you can't you know so probably a two-week course but give me just a quick overview of what critical theory is okay so critical theory is basically okay in the in the 1940s and 50s there was a group of academics who who believed that basically that we were in the matrix literally so they're going so it was basically it was it's that it was the seed bed of the matrix and they believed everything that we're in is just a narrative and nothing is real like it so it is the it's when you don't have god anymore you start asking crazy questions like that some make sense so all of the power in the world down to language language is just a way that power stays in power that makes sense so critical theorists for example in academia they will literally write things that are impossible to understand on purpose because language is the way that of a way of control and if you if you and if you get into a conversation with somebody who's a critical theorist they don't like to do that either because because logic is the way that you maintain control so it's it is a questioning of meta narratives so the meta-narratives like um what is right and what is wrong that's just control language that's just i mean it's crazy these people believe this stuff so then there's all of these children of po of applied post-modernism and the children of post-modernism is critical race theory gender studies fat studies um post-colonial studies and some and some of these like there's real obviously there's real issues i mean like you know making fun of fat people that's that's sucks you know like racism that's real that sucks um colonialism was horrible you know like so you can go through these things and go you know like there's yeah there was there were some problems in there but what it begins to do is just essentially say to these to to people who believe these things is um your experiences um so for example like uh in in in the body positivity movement the whole job of of critical theorists is to blur the lines to take away power right because they believed in this crazy conspiracy that that being skinny is just a power move for the you know for the power elites you know or or standards of beauty now standards of beauty are definitely you know created by people who own magazines and of course we're influenced by those things you know what i mean but also being 400 pounds isn't healthy i just saw that on the cover of a cosmo magazine they had a very large one they said this is healthy yes totally it's exactly what it said and as somebody who has struggled with weight and had you know um hormonal issues that were tied to that and all of that it the enneagram ate in me the you're lying to people this isn't okay this is not you know and i think that's what gets me is that people are saying whatever it is that you want to be you just you just be it if you're a kid i had a lady post this past week on my instagram that her 18 month old she knew they wanted to be transgender and that i shouldn't because i i was like you guys if you're following some of this stuff she's like no my 18 month old wants to wear boys clothes and i'm like you're 18 month old doesn't even know their colors right totally i was like don't don't put that on your 18 month old and she's like no they push away boys or girls clothes and want boys clothes and i said when my son was little he wanted to wear a dog collar and bark yeah you know you you if there is truly an issue you direct the issue but you don't you don't call it normal what you should have said to her though is oh uh but i thought that uh boys can wear girls clothing and that's okay too do you know what i mean wait like isn't uh it's it's all a construct isn't it like just come back at them with their own theory right right so their theory is right have you ever seen like have you seen like harry styles walking around in like girls clothing so just so just bring that out you know about his post but bring but bring that up bring that up to that parent go oh no no your parent no no no he's not he's not transgender he's just like carrie styles it's actually very masculine for men to do that right and then they're like wait a minute you know what i mean like or the same people that come against like well let's just make everyone neutral let's just make all the are the same people that go can you believe we are so excited to have the first woman vice president i'm like wait a minute i didn't think we could talk i didn't think there was male and female like which is it right are we proud of this or is that does this not exist so so in a nutshell yes so the the big push of critical theory is just basically standpoint epistemology so it's whatever your experiences are that's your truth so and rewrite the narrative so if you're 400 pounds and the doctor doctor's telling you you need to lose 200 pounds you know and you're literally dying you're this is not healthy that's fat shaming and my story and this is how the power brokers maintain control by your science you know like so so it's it's just this is real and universities are teaching it and this book that i'm recommending to you cynical theories by helen pluckrose and james lindsey are two atheist scholars who live in academia and they're seeing the juxtaposition of these two ideologies and you can't have a science community and critical theory but in universities you have the humanities department which is total critical theory and and then this this huge line and then which is in its fantasy land and then they expect people in the science department to not believe that stuff and live by you know by but when it comes to male physiological and when it comes to experiences you can't trust the science well 100 and this is why these two atheists helen pluck rose and james lindsey atheists have now become strange bedfellows with christians because we are all we have the same first principles because you know what i mean it's we're going yeah we when we we can actually have conversations with asus because they're going how did the world start i want a material explanation of it and we're going okay we do too and we're not saying that and i'm not saying that i'm not a seven-day i'm open to seven day creation but i'm not just to be honest with you and you can all hate me for that um but there's there are con [Laughter] there are there are actually creation was six days the seventh day was rest thank you i i i sit corrected there are conservative evangelical old testament scholars who also believe hey i think that maybe god the big bang could be like the whole world was formed in seconds according to the big bang and god spoke the world's resistance and the jealous and the world is billions of years old okay that could very well be i don't think that the bible is trying to tell that story the bible's literally trying to tell a story to a bunch of slaves and go hey god's in charge he he made everything does that make sense so um no that's that's a long conversation not even the point of the bible 100 yeah exactly that's not even the point no you know to get caught up in that exactly but the point is is that we can we have we can have these conversations with atheists who are asking legitimate questions that i think that god cares about you know and that the point of genesis is that god is the one who created the heavens and the earth and that we're not here by accident and that is so important to know right and um and so now and and so these these guys they were arguing james lindsay was like do you remember when atheism like atheism about 20 years ago it was militant remember that you had like richard dawkins and peter christopher hitchens and sam harris and they were all they were just lambasting us constantly right and james lindsay was part of that you know mob and then he's became he's become friends the last ten years with all of these christians because they're the only ones left who think he thinks are sane you know like we're the only ones that are going no we need the science on gender it's like what when do christians care about science we're going dude we always cared about it you know what i mean like we it's like empiricism matters man like we need to know uh does that make sense absolutely so that's kind of a little bit of background if you want to know a bit more about critical theory i have a course on these which is fantastic by the way and and i i basically uh talk about uh critical theory for about two hours and and hopefully that that can help and neil neil shenmue is fantastic 100 percent his his google neil shenvy and he's fantastic he's got some great and he teaches a lot of high school students about critical theory which helps for me and i'm you know i know i'm your pastor and i'm supposed to be really smart but honestly these guys y'all have to understand their their thought processes well as they just make it simple yeah so let's let me ask you a question if i can because i want to talk about justice you mentioned it yeah because this is a struggle in the church yeah you know the struggle when the church is we need justice so let me throw this out and correct me if i'm wrong and asking the question is there a difference between biblical justice and social justice okay so so i think that social justice is a loaded term okay so it's kind of like black lives matter black lives do matter yeah um but black lives matter as an organization is different than saying black lives matter yes you know does that make sense yeah y'all may have heard that preached a time or two around here yeah so so for me um or it's like saying make america great again and when you say that that is a that's a politically loaded term yeah i mean like so it's the same way that like i can't just say black lives matter and it's hard to unglue that from the organization and their demands if that makes sense um same with with mega you know like if you if you let's make america great again well what does that exactly tell you what i mean so so all that to say um um yeah uh justin so social justice the term is a loaded term so of course our justice should be social in that um you know we because because all justice is social isn't it like it's like it has to do with people like doesn't that what isn't that what social means and so um but social justice has become a movement where it's about the great equalizing and equality is good okay so we have to talk about equality um let's start with the trinity so you've got the father you're the son you have the holy spirit right um jesus when you read the book of john man every time jesus turns around he's saying i do the will of the father yeah do the will i don't do anything except what the father tells me to do right and he is the father's servant and he does everything and he doesn't say anything that the father doesn't want him to say and the way that he obey the way that he i have loved the father by obeying his commandments i want you to love me by obeying my commandments right so jesus is really submitted to the father and he doesn't do anything on his own terms if you know me you know the father exactly yeah exactly so and then the same jesus says the same thing with the spirit the spirit's not going to come and say anything on his own behalf he's going to say what the father said so the father is in in orthodox trinitarian thought the father is the first among equals it's a crazy thought um jesus and the holy spirit and god are the father are co-equal they're co-god they're co-eternal yet there is um there's a variety of roles right there's there's difference in function so how do you explain that in today's world because in social justice basically it's like everybody needs to make the same amount of money in order for the world to be equal everybody has to have this you have to have the same you have to have the exact same amount of women and men that are ceos you know what i mean like okay well let's have the same amount of men and women doing you know being septic tank cleaners um who wants to do that i think the men should do that yeah well exactly yeah maybe men and women want different things also maybe uh and i think it's been good that women that the marketplace has opened up and women can do anything they want to do um but the point simply being though that people don't want to deny that men and women are different right so um i'm kind of trailing off here but social justice has been hijacked that term and so when we're talking about biblical justice what we need to do is read the prophets and read the law and find out what that meant to them so for example here's here's an example the metoo movement that's that's perfect for social justice you better be preaching on this okay so believe all women right okay once again let's find the good part of it the good part of it is that women have been scared and silenced into talking about when they've been um when they've been assaulted etc okay that is that's unacceptable and we need to we need to champion women who've been abused does that make sense like when they need to be able to face their accusers 100 i'm all for that also believe all women is stupid do you know what i mean because some women are liars right like i don't believe all women yeah of course no women no woman believes all women which is the irony [Applause] i i dip my toe in that drama every now and then vicariously through my wife and that is not a world that i want to be involved in whatsoever um but the that's social justice so the social justice movement goes there's been inequality and so this is how we this is how we swing the pendulum and and then we have to go well the scriptures teach that um we you shall not show preference to the poor or to the rich so you know god loves he loves an honest scale is what he delights in and he hates a dishonest scale right so that's what so in everything that we're doing in injustice and gosh is the church ever called to justice of course we're called to justice right um so we're called to to speak out on behalf of people who are silenced and speak out for the marginalized and feed the poor and all that good stuff right but we need the way that we do it is just as important as what we're doing exactly right that makes sense and so that's to me the whole the whole talk about critical theory and justice and all that stuff it's going hey let's make sure that while we're doing this we do this the right way and let's create martin luther king jr's dream where people can be judged on the content of their character not the color of their skin if that makes sense you know what i think a lot of people uh forget about one of his quotes that's actually my favorite is he said along for the day where no one is saying white power or black power they're only saying god's power and i think we forget that i think we're so busy trying to pit people against each other or elevate our platform that we forget we're all on the same platform and the longer that we keep talking about it the longer that we keep trying to tip scales and you know as a woman when i speak out against certain things that i see happening in culture with women um it's it's so funny that i people some people would say oh you're anti-woman i'm like really is that the best you got for me it's like where did you get that yeah so this is a great example as well of don't let don't let hypocrites get away with with you know hypocrite hypocrisy in the sense of let's see their virtue so for example with black power black power didn't come out like white power did right black power was was go was let us have self-determination and so to me that is awesome because black people couldn't freaking vote in this country you know what i mean so what where did that the where did black power come from black power come from we aren't even able to determine our future yeah does that make sense so that's actually a beautiful thing so if i can see where things are coming from that's when i can have conversations with people do you know what i mean absolutely same with women in vogue 100 but you have to get to a place where you're not still using the same argument when you can vote you can't keep the same argument and cause division because there is nothing there is nothing systematic of why women aren't ceos there is nothing on our law books of why a woman can't be a ceo now there are things in play in people's hearts like maybe a woman wants to climb a ladder and there's a particular boss but there is nothing on the law books that keep me or keep other women bound and i think the longer that we see ourselves as victims the less ceos that there will be and so we need to get over that we need to get over that and you know and stop saying well you know man is holding me back or you know men are not our enemy when we link arms with men that's the greatest blessing that there is and i think for so long whether it's the black white thing when you start pitting others against each other the very thing that you're wanting which is that equality you're actually ticking the other group off when women act obnoxious and they like start this whole woman power thing it doesn't endear us to men which is a lot of times what we're trying to do is say hey we're equal to you but when you act obnoxious it does the opposite it doesn't end endear people to your plight or your pain or whatever we can't be one when we're acting obnoxious very good i love lincoln too i love the lincoln part the link the linking part she said men he's being well he he's a married man that's right can you blame me i think you know one of the things that and you said it this morning which i thought was great and i think this is important because it fits into kind of how we feel because i think we all have passions in the church we have a passion and when something happens in our nation in our city we are compassionate and we feel something so strong so then we come to church and we expect the church to adopt our feelings when it's important to recognize what the church is called to do our primary call is to worship god yeah which is that's it yeah like that's our call yeah and then help of people not in the reverse order totally it's not to help people and then worship god right because we'll never be able to help people if we don't put god in his proper place yeah you know what i'm saying yeah getting the getting the order of the existence of the church right is really important especially when it comes to justice because if we if we start and this is what i've seen in pastors and and leaders and churches is they get the order wrong and they end up um creating a dysfunctional part of the body and it's it's it's it bothers me a little bit and what's happening with leaders and and the complicit attitude and the complacent attitude and really the idea of let's let's be let's be courageous and knowing exactly where our priorities are sure which is you know what what sometimes you feel a pushback from you know and i'm sure you see it as you travel around the churches is the ones that are leading that way are feeling the pressure of yeah but you need to make sure that you are touching the feelings of the people no that's not the role of the church it's to get us out of our feelings no no it's it's not even that so much as getting the priorities right we need to we need to establish a place for feelings and experiences to be talked about in the context of worshiping god yeah because if we're not worshiping god all of that will lead us to a i'm just broken yeah and that's what we'll just eat our parents again the three the three reasons i think in in this order that the church exists the first the reason why i'm alive yeah is to worship god that's that's why uh the westminster catechism why what is the chief end of man you know to enjoy god and worship forever right so so that is why the church exists the church you know um remember it was judas uh when when you know the woman breaks the years a year of wages you know imagine 80 grand worth of of perfume and she breaks and she's worshiping jesus and judas is like we could have used that to feed the poor you know it's like that's what we have today you know it's crazy you guys have a big building and it's like yeah the building exists to worship jesus this is a waste for him but it's a beautiful waste that makes sense so let things be wasted on him because he's the priority and people encounter him here does that make sense that is absolutely our first priority our first priority is to worship him and then the second part of our is is to is to the church exists secondly to nurture the believer right so we gather and we nurture and we we we we eat and we and we minister to one another etc it's like we minister to the lord then we minister to one another and then thirdly then we go out into the world and we we be jesus to the world we're the feet in the hands right so so but it's got to be in that order and when we reverse the order you know then it's we we miss jesus and we become martha's instead of mary's right so we're called to sit at his feet and and and be ministered to you know obviously and then go out and go okay lord so you know freely i've received freely i give so god i'm gonna get involved in in people's lives that are poor and i'm going to get involved in communities that have been marginalized and i'm going to be a voice for them and and you know lord lead me to the places where you want me to to be your um you know restorative uh restore to be your your restorative grace and mercy you know et cetera very good you know it's interesting when you're talking about the alabaster i was doing my shred and i listening which the shredder is going through the bible in 30 days 30 days and so never saw this before right after that happened breaks the bottle that's right after that judah goes to judas goes to the uh the pharisees right she he's mad right that all that money was wasted totally and so he's like i'm going to get some money back but all along he was stealing yeah totally that's probably why that's usually the people that complain about the waste is the ones who are stealing robbing from god anyway they're probably not even tithing anyway my mom wouldn't say that [Laughter] man this has been fantastic yeah thanks man can we give it up for nathan this is great i hope you all learned something very very good so how do they uh pias you what's what's the uh website so theos u-t-h-e-o-s dot c-a and it's a monthly subscription t h t h t h e o t h e like the o s okay theos just remain standing for a second we're going to dismiss you here fiasco.ca and um yeah it's all rather complicated isn't it but fiasco.ca and so ca ca up there yeah hey can you play if you just google it you'll find it i'd love to can you pray for us yeah father thank you for your church and um god i thank you that uh i love that verse of jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled and father we were hungry and god i ask you that you'd make us more hungry for you jesus would you cause us to hunger for your word and hunger to to to to ask the right questions and holy spirit would you lead us in in the places that we're eating from and places the wells that we're drinking from god i thank you for this church and just bless them in jesus name and help the buccaneers to take it lord in jesus name amen before they cut my mic off before they cut my back off you guys go follow him on instagram if you are on instagram it's at nathan n-a-t-h-a-n-f-i before they cut my mic off go tom brady before they cut my mac off you will love the content you will love the things that he shares it will really like spark some things in you so go follow and this was great we'll do this again all right god bless you guys have a wonderful night

Channel: Freedom House Church

Views: 860

Rating: 4.7894735 out of 5

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Id: Gt8m8RTJW7A

Length: 91min 25sec (5485 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021