Behind The Pulpit

The Royal Rumble

• Millington Baptist Church • Season 3 • Episode 35

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There was a snake WHERE?!  Welcome back to Behind the Pulpit and boy do we have an action packed episode in store for YOU!  We take you through a royal rumble of 1v1 matchups that are taking place in the news:  Pacers vs Thunder, Oilers vs Panthers, Alcaraz vs Sinner, Reese vs Clark, Biles vs Gaines, Wright vs Orthodoxy, ICE vs LA, and of course Trump vs Elon.  The book war continues and we talk about Pastor Bobs sermon on 1 Timothy Chapter 5.  Its Widows, Wrestling, White House, Wright, and the Wild Wild West.  Don't miss a Second!

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:33 SNAKE!
6:00 In The News: The Royal Rumble
38:01 Audience Question
43:00 The Great Book War
50:05 Sermon Recap
1:04:16 Theology Sprint
1:09:20 Church Body Life 




Music Credit:
ZDQKW7GSXHGKGFAU

Dave :

Hey everybody, welcome to Behind the Pulpit. We have a fantastic show for you. 2025 has been a year. We got some stories today. We got some cage matches today. We got some showdowns to talk about. It's a week of toe-to-toe challenges. We're going to talk about Riley Gaines versus Simone Biles. We're going to talk about Donald Trump and the feud with Elon Musk. We're going to talk about 1 Timothy chapter 5 and how do we arrange for widows to be taken care of. We got the Indiana Pacers and the Thunder that are in a rumble but we got a rumble of a show for you today and we're talking widows we're talking wrestling we're talking the white house we're talking nt right and we're talking the wild wild west wow it is a whirlwind of a show any more any more words that start with w i'm kind of running out of things what's up pastor bob are you ready for behind the pulpit so

Bob:

Well, first of all, as you mentioned last week, nice shirt. Was that salmon? It is salmon. Salmon. Okay. It seems like you got your coffee before we came in here. You're just kind of hyped up on... Or you're excited about this list you came up with. I'm ready to roll. I'm ready to talk about. I'm ready to roll. So, yeah, we got a lot to cover, Pastor Dave. It was a surprisingly eventful weekend. I couldn't keep up. I couldn't keep up between Twitter or X or whatever you call it and the news and everything. So, yeah. Let's talk about it.

Dave :

That's what we're here for. Well, let's just... We want to give some Christian perspective, some Christian worldview perspective on these things. But the first thing I want to talk about is something that happened on campus. We had a visitor. We had a friend. On Thursday, Pastor Bob was with me in the sanctuary along with a couple other staff people. And then our phones go ping. And then I open up my phone and there's a text from Noah Graves saying, in the office with a video. And let me just show you guys the video. This is what I get when I'm in the middle of

Bob:

a meeting. Can you even see what that is from that picture right there? It looks like a thread on the ground. This is what

Dave :

we were scared of, this thing right here? That

Bob:

is a slithering monster right there. There was a snake. Can you zoom in and enhance section three right there? Ha ha ha! There we

Tim:

go. I don't know why the video is not playing. Oh, it's a video? It was a video. Okay. I put it in as a video, but apparently it just wants to

Bob:

be. Well, why don't you tell folks what that is? That looks like a mustache from where I'm looking

Noah:

at it right there. It was no mustache. I walked out of the main office, and I saw what I thought was a toy snake, and I was like, oh, who left this here? And then I saw it starting to slither. And then it moved towards you. And then I

Dave :

realized it was not. What was your theory on what kind of snake it was? I'm

Tim:

pretty sure it's a northern milk snake. All right.

Dave :

Probably a milk snake. They're common in New Jersey. Maybe a king snake. I don't know. Non-venomous. Non-venomous. But man, it was slithering around. They

Bob:

eat mice. They eat mice.

Dave :

Then it kind of disappeared. Noah, where did it go to? It kind of like... It crawled up into this little slot in the wood. And it's just hidden there for a little bit. So we didn't know where it was. And now I'm like, oh man, I don't know where this snake is. And I had to stay late for a meeting. And I was like, is it going to be under my desk? Am I going to be looking for this thing? And so I was kind of like a little bit anxious about it. I don't really want to be having snakes slithering up my pant leg or something. Well, then I came back out into the hallway and it had come out of the wood molding or whatever that Noah just talked about. And it was there. I'm like, okay. So then I start looking for a weapon and i know tim is highly offended at this because tim you know would have probably been a lot more gentle is that right tim i i

Tim:

i think i would have

Dave :

yeah

Tim:

yeah you would have grabbed it by the tail i would have been more gentle than this

Dave :

yeah so i found a stool and i just smashed its head and then i picked it up with a coat hanger to go show

Bob:

when you showed me it looked like you had taken it and like ripped its body can we can we

Dave :

discuss

Tim:

you did not just smash his head you you mutilated the entire organism

Dave :

well you know what man i have a thing with snakes i don't care for them. I have a memory trace and I think humanity is supposed to have enmity with these Slytherin creatures. It's biblical. So I killed it and I yelled at it and I said you will crawl on your belly all the days of your life and then I took it out into the weeds there behind the church and I threw it out there in order to warn all of its friends to make sure they know not to come back into the building anymore. So there is no more snake

Bob:

problem. So a couple questions here. First of all, I went upstairs and all of a sudden the next thing I heard was like about 30 times. But secondly... I wanted to make sure. Was there a problem with your foot that you couldn't just step on it, that you had to take the hanger? Well, I wasn't going to

Dave :

get the smuts all over my shoes, man. I didn't want the snake guts all over my nice shoes. I needed an object.

Bob:

Just to remind you, you were much bigger than the snake. I was looking for your

Dave :

Jedi sword.

Bob:

I don't know if that would have been helpful to you. I do have a Roman gladius sword that you could have used to chop off his head. Anyway, the ladies

Dave :

were upset. A

Bob:

rather gruesome way to open our Behind the Pulpit today, but Pastor Dave was very excited about it. Were they upset that there was a snake there, or were they upset that you mutilated

Dave :

it? No, no, they were very afraid before, and they were rejoicing with glad shouts and jubilation about the fact that it was no longer present, and an enemy had been destroyed from the land. Yes. And so there was much, much shouting and clapping

Bob:

Amy told us, and you can confirm this with her on Sunday morning, that one of her previous churches, a snake had gotten in and they couldn't find it. And then several years later, they did find it and it had grown in size because it had, I guess, had been eating the mice. And it was about three times the size of when they first saw it. So this one could have showed up right here and been like a like a python and about. you know, a

Dave :

year or so. I wasn't up for that. So we had to stop that thing, nip it in the bud. Anyway, that's what happened at Millington. And hopefully that was the first and last time.

Bob:

Did anything happen anywhere else other than Millington?

Dave :

Let's just go beyond our border. So let's talk about what happens in the news. All right, man, this has been nonstop. Let me start

Bob:

with start with the fun stuff. Okay, okay. But your idea was to kind of do somebody versus somebody. This is not just any sort of in the news. This is like an in the news. like rumble in the jungle type of thing. I feel

Dave :

like there's a lot of head-to-head combat competitions going on right now. So Tim, which one do you want me to do first? Well, let's tee it up again. Let's explain the concept.

Tim:

I feel like if people are listening to this right now, they're like, what's going on?

Bob:

Dave was plotting this over text yesterday, and I said maybe you should make a chart of these head-to-head combats that happened over the weekend.

Dave :

I feel like there was a lot of showdown type of activities in the news, a lot of toe-to-toe kind of matches And I feel like we should have like a Royal Rumble with all of these different enemies and nemesises that were going after each other. So, Tim, where do you want me to start, man? Which rivalry should we begin with?

Tim:

Let's start easy with you and Noah's expertise. Let's go here.

Dave :

All right, man. This

Tim:

traffic is courtesy of NBA.com, by the way.

Dave :

It's game... Well, it's about to be game three. So game one was incredible. Oh, my goodness. One of the best finishes I've ever seen in my entire life. Holy moly. As much as I was kind of aggravated with Hal Burton from the previous series and the Knicks and the choke and everything, that clutch shot at the end of game one, I got respect for him, man. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Noah, what do you think, man? Thunder, Pacers, it's one

Noah:

and one. It is. I really want to see the Pacers pull this off. We haven't seen the Pacers dominate in many years. I don't think the

Dave :

Pacers have ever won anything.

Noah:

Really? Even with Reggie Miller?

Dave :

No.

Noah:

They've never won a championship. Let's see them get there first.

Dave :

Yeah, it could be. But the Thunder last night looked dominant. They had a great game. They came back in full force. They're a scary team. So game three, Wednesday night. I notice they're taking two days off in between games now. I feel like it used to be one day off. but now they're kind of stretching this thing out into the end of June. All right, Wednesday night's game three. Let us know what you think. Are you Pacers? Are you Thunder? What's going on? All right, so that's the first rivalry. We're not sure. That's up in the air. The other one, I'm going to lean on you, Tim. What's going on in the world of the NHL?

Tim:

Yeah, so this graphic is courtesy of ESPN. But yeah, the NHL playoffs are also 1-1. It's been kind of late. The first game, the Oilers took it. So the Oilers... have what people say. So this guy with the C on his jersey, his name is Connor McDavid, and he's regarded by most to be the best hockey player in the league and Arguably one of the best. I think he, pound for pound, is the best or most talented hockey player of all time that we get to see right now. And he has not won a Stanley Cup yet. And the Panthers have been the three straight Stanley Cups. They're going for their second in a row. Fun fact, the Stanley Cup for the last six years has had a team from Florida play in it. That's pretty cool. Anyway, game one, the Oilers took it. It was a really entertaining game. Game two was pretty much... dominated by Florida for a while until the last like 18 seconds of the game where Corey Perry scored for the Oilers to send it to overtime and it looked like the momentum had shifted and the Oilers were going to take game two and then Brad Marchand on the Panthers had a breakaway out of nowhere in overtime and put it away and then after I believe that game three is tonight it's they also did a two game break but also this is the same exact matchup from last year so there's a I think... I think it's going to be Oilers in seven this time. All right. But I said that about the Knicks, and I was wrong. So we'll see.

Dave :

Well, maybe this second time's a charm. You'll get it. So NHL fans, let us know what you think in the comments. Who's going to win the Stanley Cup? All right. Rivalry number three. Where are we now, Tim?

Tim:

No, we should have talked about the other one from the weekend. Are we getting into the more

Bob:

serious rivalries right here? Yeah,

Tim:

let's get into the more serious ones here. This is a Pastor Dave one here. Boom.

Dave :

If you guys are following the WNBA, most of us who've been tuning in the last couple of years, you know that Caitlin Clark has taken the league by storm. And a couple of weeks ago, there was a flagrant foul. I don't know if they called it flagrant or not, but Caitlin committed a foul. It was a purposeful foul. And, well, you know, that was not really taken too kindly by Reese, and there were some words exchanged, and there's been, you know, a little bit of a dust-up online between these two ladies. And I don't know if they really care for each other. I've been kind of surprised at how vitriolic their relationship is. I don't know what's going on there. Maybe there's some bitter jealousy, bitter envy between these two, but whose side are you guys on? Should we side with the person who committed the foul, or should we just give some grace for the person who received the foul? I don't know, man. Tim, are you a Caitlin Clark person? Are you following this? I

Tim:

love Caitlin Clark. I think she's super talented. She's a lot of fun to watch. I do have a special place in my heart for Angel Reese, though, because she led LSU to a Women's Basketball Championship, and I'm an LSU fan, so I do appreciate her I don't think she's she doesn't have nearly as much success right now in the WNBA as Caitlin Clark does I think she's struggling a little bit more than Caitlin Clark yeah and you know it's it's an interesting back and forth that they have going on there

Dave :

so Reese was suspended after an explosive clash and fined a massive amount of money and so you know we'll see what happens here but it's interesting people are paying attention to the WNBA

Bob:

for the for the first time in a while people are paying attention to the WNBA is there any other sports that people watch at a high level that we can talk about well

Tim:

there was a I

Bob:

got some comments from people that were big hockey fans from my observations last

Tim:

week I

Bob:

watch hockey I did say one time I did go to a Colorado Avalanche game and it is quite riveting to watch the NHL in person not as much on TV, in my opinion, but in person it's quite riveting.

Tim:

There was another insane... sporting event yesterday. Speaking of head-to-heads. Which was? The French Open final went five and a half hours. And Yannick Sinner blew a two sets to none lead with three match points.

Bob:

So the one match went five and a half hours?

Tim:

The one match went five and a half hours. You can sit there and watch one match for that long. On the clay courts in Paris. And Carlos Alcaraz came out with his second Roland Garros title in a row. Wow. Noah's a big Alcaraz guy. So is my wife. My wife loves... Alcaraz is her favorite player. Go,

Bob:

Carlos. I'm so out of it. I'm still back in Andre Agassi, man. This is like... He was

Tim:

on the broadcast

Bob:

recently. He was? Yeah, at

Tim:

the women's or

Bob:

men's semifinals. He was up in the booth. Who was Agassi and who was the guy he competed against that was older than him? Is it Sampras? Pete Sampras. Yeah, Pete Sampras.

Tim:

My first tennis racket was an Andre Agassi-issued head racket. It was my first ever. He had the 80s malt.

Bob:

that he was sporting all the time. That was before pickleball was invading our courts. Did they make any comments about pickleball at the tennis... No, they don't really talk about it. They just pretend like it doesn't exist.

Tim:

You do see some older tennis players that retire do charity pickleball events. The sport that shall not be named. They look like a lot better than the other pro tennis players. Anyway, so moving on. We are going to begin shifting out of the world of sports as we get a little bit of a mix of sports and current issues.

Bob:

Let's talk about these current issues. So this is a good shift from sports to issues. Who made that

Dave :

thing? Oh

Bob:

my

Dave :

gosh. Simone Biles and Riley Gaines in baby form or something like that. I just put in chat GPT. Are you body shaming right now, Pastor Dave? Please give me a graphic that has some sort of cartoon street fighter motif with Biles and Gaines. And this is what spit it out. So I don't know. Wow. So there's been a dust up. Simone Biles, obviously a wonderful gymnast. People know who Simone Biles is. Does everybody know who Riley Gaines is? Maybe not. Riley

Bob:

Gaines was a swimmer I think for UPenn and she swam on the same Kentucky was it Kentucky yeah okay but she competed against Leah Thomas the trans woman from UPenn and she's become a very vocal advocate for not having men in women's sports, even what has been called trans women who are basically who are men. So she made a comment about a high school team that I think had a trans athlete over the weekend on social media. And Simone Biles decided to phone in a comment. And that's what started this whole thing. And Yeah. Why don't we go from there? So

Dave :

Simone says on whatever social media platform, quote, you're truly sick. All of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. Wow.

Bob:

Yeah. Which I think the ironic thing is she mentioned later she didn't actually lose the race. They tied. Yeah. I think she came in fifth. Right. No, she tied for fifth with...

Dave :

Leah Thomas, I think, was the comment. And then she goes on to say, you should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive or creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports, maybe a transgender category in all sports, but instead you bully them One thing's for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around. So Biles throws down the gauntlet, drops the mic there, and is coming after Gaines. And, you know, I think that's really sad. I feel like Simone Biles has had a great deal of success, and she's in a particular, you know, sphere of gymnastics where she hasn't had to battle that. And so I've heard people say, well, why don't you try competing against men on the

Bob:

pommel horse? Well, no, she's been criticized because, yeah, right, is Is that what

Dave :

you're getting to? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Like, you don't have to do this. You got to where you are without having to compete against men or trans men.

Bob:

Yeah. The ironic thing was Simone Biles followed that up with a comment that Riley Gaines should pick on someone her own size who ironically would be a man. So she's sort of implicitly admitting that men and women are different.

Tim:

The response to that I thought was really funny. She took a mirror picture with her husband and her husband was holding a tape measure and she was significantly shorter than her husband.

Dave :

Her husband's like 6'4". Yeah. So Gaines says something like, I didn't have this on my bingo card that Simone Biles was going to be making a problem for women in sports in this fashion. So Biles threw down the gauntlet. Gaines is arguing back. From a Christian worldview perspective, how should we understand this feud between these two incredible athletes?

Bob:

Well, I mean, I think the issue that we would say is that men and women are different. And if you really want to be a protector of women, we should not have men and women in women's sports areas. Period. Full stop. Right. I don't know what the motivation is with Simone Biles. Maybe she's got some friends who are wrestling with this, but irregardless of that, I mean, I have daughters. If I had men competing against my daughters, I'd have an issue. Aside from the fact that we just think this is a creation order issue of men and women being different and holding onto that truth.

Dave :

Yeah. I'd agree with that. So Sorry, have to disagree. Although Simone Biles is an amazing gymnast. I have to disagree with her on this one. But she is retired now, and so it just kind of feels like a smear, a poke in the eye for athletes that are still dealing with this issue. And, you know, she gets to kind of lay back in her retirement and not have to worry about it. All right, so that's that rivalry. Let us know what you think in the comments. We'd love to hear from you. What's the next rivalry, Tim? All right, let's

Tim:

jump right in. Do we want... Let's go. We got three left here. Let's do this one. Oh, man.

Dave :

Look at that. Orthodoxy. Okay. So. I have a great respect for N.T. Wright. What is up with orthodoxy right there? He's like a priest in the Eastern tradition. And, you know, N.T. Wright made some comments on a particular podcast, radio show, interview. And it's been all the rage this week. The first one I saw, I think you sent me. It was like Monday or Tuesday. It was. And it was him. Defending Marcus Borg, who denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and because N.T. Wright did some project with him, collaborated with him, he wanted to give Borg the benefit of the doubt and say, hey, this guy had... a kind of faith in Jesus, though he denied the resurrection. So he didn't feel comfortable saying that he was outside the boundaries of the Christian

Bob:

faith. He was appealing to the fact that he prays like he loves Jesus, even though he denies the bodily resurrection, I think was

Dave :

the, yeah. And so, you know, I'm all for being gentle and, you know, I think that's important to, you know, not snuff out a smoldering wick or anything like that. But you can also say, as a theologian, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is an essential component of our faith. In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, it says that if you deny the bodily resurrection, then we're still in our sins. We have no hope for ourselves. It is such a linchpin in terms of what we believe. I can't imagine any apostle or any early church father coming anywhere near a statement that would deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus. That just never happened. And so N.T. Wright, I think is out on a weird limb here. And I think it's an irresponsible thing to say. If you're a theologian, you should be able to draw boundaries where they need to be drawn.

Bob:

Aside from the fact that this is the guy that wrote the book, The Resurrection of the Son of God,

Dave :

which was awesome. And he vehemently defends the Anastasis, the resurrection of Christ in that book. And yet here he seems to be soft. He seems to be squishy. He seems to be waffling. because of Marcus Borg. And that guy came from the whole Jesus seminar era. So that's the first thing he did. The second thing he did was he started waffling on another ethical issue. N.T. Wright, I think it was in the same interview with the same guy because it seemed like the same background. And he was He was making the case for in certain situations, abortion would be allowed. Is that a fair way to explain

Bob:

his comments? He was saying that it would... So this is very irritating. So basically, he was making the argument that if the mental health of the mother was in concern, let's say she was going to have a disabled child or whatever, then abortion was justified. He really like that was what he basically said in the podcast and made some other exceptions and stuff as well. But the mental health issue was the one that really garnered the most attention. I mean,

Dave :

that's really crossing the ethical line. I think as Christians, we need to be able to say we take a stand for the sanctity of human life. And I don't. I don't know that you should be waffling on these core issues. I think there's an important place for theologians to stand and say, this is right, this is wrong. And N.T. Wright has a huge audience and a huge following, and yet... he seems to be kind of crumbling in these later years.

Bob:

Right. Well, aside from the fact that, I mean, I'd be interested to hear his discussion of 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul is talking about the resurrection of Jesus. And then 1 Corinthians 15, 16, Paul says, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you're still in your sins. So how can you say, if you don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus... that you're a Christian. I'd be interested to hear N.T. Wright's answer to that.

Dave :

Yeah. So that's that feud. I got to say I'm with the Orthodox priest with the hood that looks like Obi-Wan Kenobi on this one. That's who I'm signing off on, whoever that guy is. All right. So should we move

Tim:

to

Dave :

our next battle royal? All right, yeah, let's go for it. Our

Tim:

final undercard. Okay.

Dave :

All right. Well, I don't even know if this could be considered any kind of undercard. This is a big story. I don't know if you guys are watching the footage from LA this weekend, but there's been an uprising. And I think the protests have... Well, we wanted to define some things today. Occasionally, we need to make sure we're defining terms correctly. So... Are we still talking about a protest or have we crossed the line into rioting? And what is that line and how do we tell the difference and how do we understand that? So this is a reaction. And in the city of Los Angeles, there's been cars on fire. There's been things getting thrown at police officers. There's been a great reaction by those who are opposed to ICE and the recent deportations. And they are... They are coming out in full force. They're walking out into highways and they're causing quite the disruption in L.A. So the National Guard has been deployed. They are only protecting at this point, at least last night, they were only protecting the federal building. They haven't gone beyond that. But it's also possible that the military could get involved in a more robust way. But. Governor Newsom is saying, we don't need that. We've got everything under control. And I was kind of flipping back and forth between the news channels last night. So on CNN, they had this one particular person that was saying, everything's fine. It's not a big deal, but literally like. on the screen right beside her are all of these fires that are occurring simultaneously with her saying everything's under control. It's just a peaceful protest. I don't know. So, Bob, can you help us understand what is the definition of a protest, and how do we think about that?

Bob:

Well, I'd love to do that. Before I do that, I did want to say I was scrolling through, I think, on some social media thing, and there was a map that somebody put up of these issues in LA, and they were saying, stay in your home or get out of town. I was like, what is going on? And then I found this. that apparently this was an ICE staging area that somebody found out and they started to surround it. And then what you described ensued. All right, so is it a protest or is it a riot? How do you define those two things? And so I asked perplexity right here. This is the chart that perplexity came up for me in terms of definitions of protests versus a riot. So a protest is... is a peaceful, organized public demonstration expressing objection or disapproval of an idea, policy, or action. So, you know, in our country, you have the right to peacefully protest, and that's the definition. Now, a riot is a violent and tumultuous disturbances of the peace by a group often involving crime, property destruction, or harm to people. So those are two very different things, and I guess depending on the news channel that you watch, they'll define it one way or the other, although I've been hearing that federal agents are getting attacked, people are throwing cinder blocks at them. That, to me, seems violent. Can you put that back up, Tim? So the other thing were methods. Protest involves nonviolent actions. A riot involves violent actions. The intent is to express a viewpoint and protest. The riot is to create chaos. The thing that made me interesting towards the bottom was the... Legal status and leadership. So a protest is protected by law, but a riot is something considered unlawful and criminal due to violence and destruction. And then leadership, usually a protest has somebody who's organizing it and leading it, but a riot is something that lacks structure or leadership and it's often focused on anarchy. So based on your review of what's going on in Los Angeles, Pastor Dave, how would you define it as a protest or as a

Dave :

riot? I think there's a portion of the population that is coming out to peacefully protest what they perceive as an injustice. And as Christians, we want to listen to the voice of those who need to be heard. But then there's an other portion of people in L.A. that are, I think, crossing the line over to riotous behavior. I would even question if this is funded. I wonder sometimes if people are getting paid to make mayhem there and if there are certain groups there that are causing division and disruption there. In 2020, there was some evidence with the George Floyd riots that some of these people were actually getting... you know, a good amount of money in order to make the kind of chaos that they were making. You saw like pallets of bricks being brought in to throw at cars and things like that. So you kind of wonder who's behind all of this. What was striking to me with the riots last night is if you're looking for sympathy from the immigration standpoint, what I saw were a lot of flags that were not American flags being waved and flown. And it seemed to me People didn't really want to show any patriotism towards the country that they'd like to stay in. So what would be endearing, I think, in this situation would be if people were singing God Bless America and busting out the Pledge of Allegiance and showing their love for this country. But rather what I saw is a disdain for and a hatred for this country. I saw people spitting on the flag and lighting the flag on fire, the American flag on fire, and that kind of thing. And so I think that takes a lot of nerve to wave the flag of the country that you're refusing to return to. I just don't think that's in a very effective way to let your voice be heard. And so that's a problem. I also think as Christians, we want to promote law and order. Romans 13 says the government is there to protect us, and I think we should be

Bob:

respectful. And the governor is the diakonos, the civil servant. He's God's servant, God's diakonos, for your good. Yeah.

Dave :

Now, there could be an underlying cause of certain riots. Sometimes there's profound social grievances and injustices, and we want to be sensitive to that. In this case, here's what I would say. Yes, the Bible says Christians should be loving the immigrant. It does say that. Leviticus, other places in the law, and I think that's true, period. Yes, but I don't think we should let debates about immigration policy necessarily, well, let me just say it this way. Don't harden your heart towards the immigrant. I think that's true, but referencing any deportation of an illegal immigrant and then using the Bible to combat that, I think is a category confusion. I don't think that that's really properly using the Bible. The conversation isn't about do we love the immigrants? That's actually not the right conversation. It's about do we uphold the law? Do we punish criminals? Which is actually very biblical, right? And so the actions being taken by ICE don't have anything to do with people being immigrants. It has to do with the fact that they are illegal immigrants and oftentimes involved in criminal behavior, and that's why they're being lawfully deported. So I think as Christians, we should keep our categories straight there and be careful about using the Bible in ways that could be confusing. So... Can I ask a couple follow-up? The actions being taken by ICE are actions against people who broke the law. A

Bob:

couple follow-up questions. So... First of all, the idea of when the Bible talks about loving the immigrant, agreed. The immigrant categories that are mentioned in the Old Testament are often related to the nation of Israel, more of a theocracy. How does that, have you thought about how does that apply to the responsibility of the church versus the state in our current setup, which is different than what was happening under the Old Testament?

Dave :

Yeah, I mean, if you see discontinuity between the nation of Israel and the church, I think you're going to need to say what was true of a nation and a theocracy and a country may not necessarily come over one for one into the church as it stands. I don't know that we can just take a Bible verse and say, here's what the Bible says. The Bible has to be interpreted, and I think there's a proper way to do that. Yeah. Yeah, let's be careful about how we speak about this and let's pray for those who are involved in this probably still chaotic situation. I imagine that's

Bob:

going to be

Dave :

ongoing.

Bob:

And then if people feel there are unjust laws, what's the appropriate action for that? I would tend to think that's where the protest category comes in, and also trying to get people in office to change unjust laws. Right,

Dave :

which is the beauty of our country, that we do live in a country where the laws can be changed, and we live in a democracy, so we want to have our voices be heard. But we use our voices, and we seek change diplomatically rather than being destructive, and that's what rioting is. Yeah. That's that rivalry. Let us know what you think in the comments. We'd love to hear your opinion. And then the main card. Here we go. For the cage match of the evening, let's talk about the breakup. So this is the breakup we didn't

Bob:

see coming. What just happened here, Pastor Dave? So this is the

Dave :

Street Fighter version of Trump versus Elon. I was watching this podcast last night. I think your 80s are showing right here. Do you know that guy who's connected with Krista and Center for Biblical Unity? His name's Kevin. Kevin. Yeah, he's actually on staff with them now. We just went over. Anyway, I got that graphic from him. So I thought it was pretty funny. So that's their stuff. And, you know, it's like a divorce, man. Divorce is hard on the kids, right? They're fighting.

Bob:

Something happened. There was a tweet war. We're not getting the full story. I was hearing about physical altercation with him and with Elon and the Treasury Secretary over whatever they were discussing.

Dave :

Oh, I know there was a black eye. Is that what you're talking about?

Bob:

Well, that's people were speculating. Where did the black eye really

Dave :

come from? So let's just go through the tweet war, if we will. So the first thing that happened was Elon was thanked. profusely, and he was given honor for his work in Doge over the last four or five months, basically working for free for the federal government to try to wrestle down the spending and try to find waste and fraud and abuse in the budget. And then after he left, Elon dropped a bomb and said something like, I can't take it anymore. Let's just be honest about this big, beautiful bill. It's not good. And Trump was disappointed to hear that he was critiquing the big, beautiful bill. And Trump said the reason why he's critiquing it is because we had to remove certain components of the bill that had to do with electric vehicles. And that's why he's upset about that. Elon then started swatting back to Trump and eventually basically said, Hey, the real reason why you haven't seen the Epstein files is because Trump is in them. And so he kind of dropped a bomb on social media that way. And Trump basically said, this guy's been going crazy. And he's kind of... been wearing thin I think is the term that he used and then he just went off the rails and Trump's been kind of ignoring him and then then Elon said hey listen if you want to make progress with the space program and NASA I'm not going to be helping you with SpaceX anymore so he's trying to bring him to the table that way and man it's been a messy tweet war it's a big breakup they're going tit for tat we're all watching this like we're in middle school man this is a huge thing I don't know if you like friends but this is bigger than Ross and Rachel breaking This is like this is a problem or

Bob:

What it's what it's quite the comparison right there pastor to go back to our do you guys know me Ross and Rachel? Are we got BWF these people? Yes Okay, holy sense and

Dave :

Hulk Hogan and

Bob:

Randy Macho

Dave :

Man Savage when they broke up.

Bob:

I was a problem So how should Christians think about Trump and Elon here? Here's the thing a lot of people don't like Trump, right? So they think this this chaotic stuff is what we don't like about Trump. Yeah and all of that so These two are like these alpha business guys who are used to negotiating, used to getting what they want, and this probably was inevitable of happening. In fact, people saying they were predicting how long it was going to take. But what are we supposed to do with these guys?

Dave :

It was fun while it lasted, but it's over. I feel like it's a big deal. I mean, I feel like we ripped a hole in the space-time continuum or something this weekend. That was a... Big breakup. That's going to be hard. It didn't... Well, here's what I would say about it. Okay. When I was a kid, it didn't... It wasn't... It's sad. This feels like Jerry Springer. Do you guys know who Jerry Springer is? Yes. Okay. Yes. Heard of him. You are not the father. This feels like an episode of reality TV or something. It just... It... It's sad to me that this is happening in our country like this. It didn't used to be like this. There was diplomacy. There was decorum. Our leaders never would have acted like this in a White House context. This is new. So we've now entered into the stage of we now elected someone who used to be a reality TV star who is behaving like one. And I think that part

Bob:

is kind of sad. Yeah, and I think a lot of Christians have issues with the character qualities of leaders. No leader's perfect. Wish they were. And yet, here we are.

Dave :

Yeah. Do you guys think they're going to... patch it up? Do you think there's any hope for this relationship?

Bob:

I think what I've heard people comment on Trump is Trump seems to be angry at somebody one day and then he accepts somebody back in the next day. So I think there's a possibility of reconciliation here. Trump seems to have forgiven a lot of other people. But we'll see. I don't

Dave :

know. Depends. Well, time will tell. But it's been an eventful weekend. 2025, man, it's been a year so far. There's been a lot going on. That was the Behind the Pulpit Royal Rumble. Awesome. Well, let us know what you guys think. We got a lot of stories. Did you just kind of whip that up while we were talking?

Tim:

No, I had that before. I just didn't have the chance to put it up. I love it. So which one's Bob and which one's Dave?

Dave :

Very good. Well, moving on. That was that. We do want to talk about...

Tim:

We do have an audience

Dave :

question. Oh, good. Yeah, let's talk about audience questions. I'd love to do that.

Tim:

What was the question this week? So we had an audience question submitted to me by my friend DJ, who is a listener of the show, listens every week. Hey, what's What's up, DJ? And he's been going through the book of Numbers. God bless you, DJ. Numbers 21, 13 through 14 mentions the book of the Wars of the Lord. Google says it's a completely lost, non-canonical book, possibly adjacent to the book of Jasher, which is also non-canon. Should these books hold any weight? A friend said that it's just heretical, but then why would the word mention a heretical transcript?

Dave :

No, definitely not heretical. That's not true at all. I don't know what friend said that, but that's not accurate. So there are several times in the Old Testament that refers to books, annals, records, things like that.

Bob:

I have a list of them. Latin Chronicles and Kings

Dave :

mentioned. I have a list of them here because I actually... have studied what's called the redaction criticism for quite some time, which is when the Bible gets edited. And these books that sometimes get cited by Old Testament authors are no longer in existence, but yet they were in existence at the time, and the Old Testament authors made use of some of them. One of them is the book that you just mentioned, although there's a lot of other ones as well. So back then they had records, they kept logs, and the authors of the scriptures used those records and used those logs in order to write the books of the Bible. So they did research, kind of like the Gospel of Luke at the beginning. Luke's like, hey, there's a bunch of other stuff I looked at. I interviewed some eyewitnesses and I looked into this for a while and then he came up with the Gospel of Luke. In that way, I think the Old Testament similarly has evidence of the fact that it was researched, right?

Bob:

Yeah, and so that particular, the Annals of the Wars, I forget what it was called, was cataloging Israel's military victories and also being used there to cite the borders of Israel at the time, was at least one of the reasons it was used in context in Numbers 21.

Dave :

yeah so occasionally you'll come across a book like that that the bible cites and it's like man i wish we still had a copy of this and maybe one day they'll be excavating something and they'll be like hey here's that book that was referenced we found it big find that doesn't necessarily mean that that book was inspired just because the bible quotes something doesn't mean the thing that it's quoting is inspired the bible's inspired but that doesn't The Bible can quote other things. You know, Paul quoted poets in the book of Acts. There's other sources of information that are not necessarily inspired. But then when the Bible writers quote them, they do that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And at that point, we recognize the Bible as inspired there. Tim, am I making sense to you? I mean, I'm trying to explain this in a way that's simple. Noah, what

Tim:

do you think? Yeah?

Dave :

Yeah.

Tim:

I think so.

Dave :

Yeah. All right. You want me to read you the other examples? Yeah. Just for fun? Yeah. All right. Obviously. If you guys want to tune out for 60 seconds, this is going to be very boring. Okay. So here we go. So here's the extra biblical books quoted in the Old Testament. The Book of the Wars of Yahweh is the one you mentioned from Numbers 21. The Book of Jasher. Joshua 10. The book of the annals of Solomon, 1 Kings 11. The book of the annals of the kings of Israel, 1 Kings 14. The books of the annals of King David, 1 Chronicles 27-24. The annals of Samuel the seer, the annals of Nathan the prophet. The annals of Gad the seer, 1 Chronicles 29. The annals of Nathan the prophet, the prophecy of Ahijah. The Shilonite and the visions of Iddo the seer. That's a good name for your next... Son, Iddo. 2 Chronicles 9. The annals of Shemaiah, the prophet of Iddo, of the kings. 2 Chronicles 24. The acts of Uzziah. 2 Chronicles 26. The book of the kings of Judah and Israel. That's 2 Chronicles 32. The annals of the kings of Israel. 2 Chronicles 33. The book of the annals. Nehemiah 12. Finally, the book of the annals of the kings of Media and Persia. Esther chapter 10. So that's a complete list from my thesis of all of the extra biblical books that the Old Testament quotes that we don't have anymore. And they must have been around at some point. And at some point they stopped needing to preserve them, probably because the Bible did what we needed it to do. And so, yeah, good question. I appreciate you even noticing that from the book of Numbers. A lot of people would never pick that out. So kudos to you for your observational skills. And thank you for your question. And

Bob:

we're on. You got a thank you from Pastor Dave. We're on,

Dave :

too.

Bob:

Did you see how excited he got to answer that question?

Dave :

Our favorite part of the show. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? It's the book war. The last rivalry of the day is the one between Pastor Bob and Pastor Dave. So, we've been neck and neck here. I think I'm ahead. Is that right, Tim? You are ahead. This is the score after last week. I'm winning. 14 to 13.

Tim:

Um... That is correct.

Dave :

But we had a war last week. You did. Is there results of that?

Tim:

Yeah. The winner is this book right here.

Dave :

Oh, yeah. John Piper. Brothers, we are not professionals.

Tim:

Now, I'm a little disappointed.

Dave :

Why? We

Tim:

got one vote.

Dave :

Oh. Hey, guys. I appreciate the unanimity, but we need...

Bob:

We need a little bit more. So should we rethink what we're doing here? Maybe we should go back to having Tim and Noah vote if nobody's going to participate. You know what?

Tim:

We might have to. We were doing okay on the voting. It might have been because it was the first week back from a couple of

Bob:

weeks. You know what we should do? We should invite a staff member in to come in just for the book and try to get the different staff member to choose. Maybe we should offer a prize. We could rotate that. Yeah, a prize. There you go. A toy.

Tim:

Listeners, if you're listening, we will take the privilege away from you if you don't start voting. A threat.

Bob:

Can one vote be counted as a win? I feel like we need to have at least three people voting.

Tim:

You gotta vote, people.

Dave :

You gotta go vote. Alright. Please vote. We're begging you. Please, please vote. Alright. So, Bob, your book's in your hand. Why don't you go first?

Bob:

Yeah, so this book was recommended to me. It's called Disability in the Church, A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion as it Relates to Disabled Folks by Lamar Hardwick, who's known as the, well, he's a pastor and he's got autism. So we've been talking about how do we develop a disability ministry here at MBC. I'm not quite sure what happened right there. We've got to get these flags. We've got to get the flags for the book. Anyway, we're working with Johnny and Friends Disability Ministry and a woman named Sarah came out and she recommended this book to me. I've found it to be pretty helpful in terms of thinking about some of the issues as it relates to disability in the church. A lot of talk from Luke 14 and the parable of the great banquet. So if you're interested in that topic, this will probably be something we continue to circle back to. So Disability in the Church, Lamar Hartwick, there you go. That'll be my submission for today.

Dave :

Looks good. I was trying to plug something in, but it's not working, man. I don't know. Anyway, so my book is... Is your book dead? I got a regular book, and it doesn't die. So this one is a book written by the Arbinger Institute that I read a few years ago that was absolutely groundbreaking. It's called Leadership and Self-Deception, Getting Out of the Box. It is so profound. This is a very deep book, and the implications for your life are... incredible so this was published like 25 years ago it's not a Christian book it is a secular book but it continues to sell even in Christian circles because I think it talks about the concept of self-deception in a way that is completely compatible with the definition of sin in Christianity so it talks about the universal need that we have for self-justification and when we do something wrong our conscience like bothers us and we have to silence the conscience. And so the book surmises that the manner in which we can silence our conscience is by finding some way to justify ourselves, usually through blaming others. And when we get in that place, we're in the box and we can no longer see what we've done wrong because we're now committed to blaming someone else or finding some reason why I'm not guilty of what I actually did to ping my conscience in the first place. It is a universal human condition we are all self-deceived this book explains exactly what we do and the the illustration he gives in the book is really fascinating he's like imagine you have a newborn and there you are sleeping next to your spouse and the newborn starts crying uncontrollably and you really don't feel like getting out of bed in order to take care of the baby and you pretend To be asleep and not able to hear the crying while you wait for your spouse to get up and care for the child. This is going to ping your conscience because you know that you have been selfishly behaving here in bed. And at that point, the person in the book starts to imagine wrong things that their spouse has done that will somehow justify why they didn't have to get up out of bed. Well, you know. They should get up anyway because, after all, my spouse did such and such and such today. And you start actually having this terribly disdainful attitude towards this person, not because they really did anything wrong, but because you have a need to self-justify. And that happens all over the place, at home, in the family, in marriage. at the workplace. You could even say that this probably happens on a more broad scale, maybe on a national scale, maybe on a global scale. You have international crises where one side hates the other side, and in order to justify their behavior, they have to keep hating the other side. There is no other choice than to hate the other side. So this book is really good. You should read this book. And Bob's book's good too, but if you can read both... That's

Bob:

my

Dave :

book today.

Bob:

Somebody recommended that book to me years ago, and I read it, and it's very good. I would recommend that book to you. Maybe I'll do the assist on the recommendation. If you win, maybe I'll get half a point. I don't know. We'll see. We recommend you decide. We're looking for more than one vote today, guys. Help us out. We need at least three votes for it to count, Tim. That's my wise

Tim:

saying. From now on, we need three votes for it to count. Otherwise, it's voided. And then Noah and I win. The veldt gets the point. Well, then we can say that you guys have to vote.

Bob:

Oh,

Tim:

yeah. We can do that. All right. Yeah. I think Noah and I should just start voting.

Bob:

All

Noah:

right. Vote. We're going to get a minimum of two each week.

Bob:

Okay. So why don't you guys... You guys could vote right now, and then we can see if you pick the right book next week.

Tim:

Oh, I should, like, make a prediction?

Bob:

So... Let's go on. Okay, no, we're not doing that. Sermon, sermon. I like the idea of pulling in the staff member into the seat over here and having them decide. I agree. You can have like a mystery staff person. We can recommend the book and then a mystery staff person comes in and has to decide.

Tim:

Well, we need to talk about the widows.

Dave :

Yeah, we do. So first Timothy chapter five, Bob, that's where we are. We're doing the blueprint of a healthy church. We got to this section and it's like, what are we doing here? So pastor Bob, here's your challenge. 60 second flyover. What is first Timothy five about? Um,

Bob:

So 1 Timothy 5 starts to talk about how we should be engaging in these intergenerational relationships within the church, within the family of God. And then he gives a case study on widows. I'm really distracted by Dave being behind me right there. He's trying to plug his computer in. Don't mind me. Pay attention to the... Pay no attention to that man behind

Speaker 05:

me.

Bob:

Paul gives an extended... treatment on widows in the early church and gives a few principles about how we should be helping those that are in need. It's really a chapter on benevolence. And next week, I think you're going to get into actually how you support your pastors financially. But he gives some qualifications for widows that are really in need and how we can care for them and gives some disqualifications for some widows. But the call ultimately is for family to step in, the church to be a second line, say And ultimately, we should care for the most vulnerable among us. Those are the application points. And we talked about some key principles that the text drew out. So I'm happy to talk about those now if you'd like. Thank you for that flyover.

Dave :

It's a passage that I don't think gets preached on a lot.

Bob:

It doesn't. It does not. I told

Dave :

you that one of my professors developed a sermon and it was like the title was Who's Going to Take Care of Grandma? That could have been a title. It was in my mind, but I didn't want to steal it. It's an issue of like... Actual practical consequence. I feel like your sermon was really practical. We all have to deal with concepts like aging parents. We all have to figure out how to care for the needy. And how do you do that in a way that's generous, Christlike, but also responsible and not enabling people? So tell me, what do you think is... going on behind this loneliness issue. That was the key theme that you decided to go with. Yeah, there could be others, but that's the one that I went with. Are you talking about back then or today? Yeah, why are they experiencing this isolation? Why are they struggling with this? What's the problem? How come the church can't get it together over there in Ephesus? What's in the way of them really experiencing the true community that the church is supposed to be? Yeah. Paul wrote the letter of the Ephesians, and it was like, hey, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Let's get together, put off the old man, put on the new man, and let's do life together. But yet here we are, not that long after that, and man, Ephesus is kind of a mess. They're struggling

Bob:

with the loneliness thing. It's a tendency of the church in every generation for us to ultimately become selfish to some extent. And so I think that's at least part of what the church was dealing with in Ephesus at the time. And we tend to go into the groups that we feel most comfortable with and look down on the people that we don't agree with. And that may have been what was going on here. But... In Roman society, as I was trying to explain about the widows, if the husband died and the widow had nobody to care for them, then she was very much on the outside of society. She was looked down upon. She could be exploited. And there's reasons that Jesus speaks up for widows quite a bit, that the Old Testament has lots of verses about widows and orphans, that these are the people that are overlooked in and not able to take care of themselves. And so I think Paul surprisingly spends about 12 verses right here talking about widows, as well as the other verses throughout the scripture that talk about this category of people.

Dave :

How do you think this passage challenges our current cultural attitude towards the elderly or towards widows or towards the vulnerable in general?

Bob:

Yeah, so... highlighted in the message about how I do think we're, we're obsessed with youth that in American culture in particular, maybe not so much in other cultures. Um, we, everybody wants to stay young. Everybody wants to stay young. Everybody wants to be young. And we always want to capture those that are the under thirties because if we capture them when they're young, they're going to stay with us for the rest of their lives. You had that forever 21 graphic behind. Yeah. I noticed that number, a number of years ago made that observation. You, you, title your store Forever 21 because, hey, don't you want to be 21 forever? Wasn't that a good age? Yeah. Yeah, at least physically. We don't value wisdom. You told us sometimes it's okay just to act your age. It is. At some point. Sometimes you need to act your age. Yeah. I don't want to see you dressing like you're a teenager anymore. If you were a teenager, how would you dress? You wouldn't be wearing that salmon shirt, I don't think. I feel

Dave :

like I follow this biblical principle perfectly, actually. My kids would definitely say, my dad is not trying to... be cool at all. And they'd be right about that. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes we struggle with that. Now, let me ask you a balance question. So how do we balance compassion with stewardship? We want to have compassion, but we also have finite, limited resources, right? So how do we strike the balance there? And how does Paul instruct Timothy to strike the balance there? And how can we apply that to today? We want to be generous. We want to be compassionate. But we also want to be good stewards. We want to be wise. How do we

Bob:

strike

Dave :

the balance?

Bob:

Yeah, and I think this is something that Paul does a pretty good job in this text of outlining. So he's very specific, you know, when he's talking about the widows, the older widows in verse 9, he specifically says, hey, she's got to be... older than 60, which, of course, as I explained at that time, was the age when most likely the widow was not going to be getting married again. So she couldn't find a husband, she couldn't work. Those are the widows that are most in need. And that's the general principle, I think, of this section, is that we should, as a church, prioritize those that are the most vulnerable, the most in need, those that don't have this first-line care system, caring relationship with their children and their immediate family. And that's why the applicational principles are that, that your family is what you should care for first. I mean, Paul has some pretty strong language in verse eight about how you need to take care of your family. If you don't, you're worse than an unbeliever. Wow. Talks in verse four about how children and grandchildren should pay their parents back if they've taken care of them. And in our American individualistic society, this is something that a lot of people push back against, especially if they don't have a good relationship with their family. So those are some good guidelines for us. Take care of your family first. If the church encounters somebody that does not have somebody to care for them, those are the people we should be prioritizing because we have a finite amount of resources. We'd love to help everybody, but we can't help everybody, and some people really don't need as much help as others.

Dave :

You know what I thought would be like a powerful application? If everybody, because of your sermon, just checked on the elderly person in your family. Like, what if we all did that? Just check on them. Ask them if they need anything and show that you care. Sometimes they can be forgotten.

Bob:

Yeah. And if you're older, you get to a certain age. I know this from speaking with people. At some age, people feel like I don't matter anymore. I'm not relevant. I'm too old. Nobody cares what I have to think, what I have to say. And speaking of loneliness, that can be a very lonely situation, even more so if you're older and you have no resources to take care of yourself. That's a very lonely and desperate situation. And that's at least part of what Paul's talking about here, I think.

Dave :

Yeah, I mean, I so just I see the value of an elderly person, even if that person has diminished capacities and lack of ability to care for themselves or even do that much work or even talking like just having a patriarch at your Thanksgiving table. Or a matriarch or a great-grandmother. Just having that person in the room, just in the chair. Maybe they can't even really participate. They can't play the game. They can't really do much. But just having them there brings such a gravitas. Their presence is doing something. Their presence is meaningful. It's like, wow, this is a huge legacy issue. My great-grandmother was around until she was in her early 90s. And I remember, God bless you, I remember just appreciating the fact that

Bob:

she was... Please do not sneeze right into the microphone. She was around. That's nothing to sneeze at right here, Pastor Dan.

Dave :

I know. My great-grandmother, she was a wonderful presence just to enjoy and, hey... It was a blessing to have her into her 90s. And so appreciate the elderly in your family. Respect them. Show them

Bob:

honor. Well, I'll go off on that. So I have one living grandparent. Do you have any grandparents that are still alive or they all passed on?

Dave :

My dad's dad passed, my dad's mom passed, my mom's dad passed, my mom's mom passed. No, I don't.

Bob:

I had to think about that. I was going to notice you didn't need to think about that for a while. So my father's mother, my grandmother on my dad's side is still alive. She is 95, just turned 95, still driving. She still drives up to church several days a week, still sharp, but she's 95. Several days a week? Yeah, I was actually checking with my mom yesterday. I said, have you seen grandma recently? She goes, yeah, yeah, every once in a while on Friday. She's still driving up on Fridays because she does the treasury work at the church she's at. But yeah, 95, still moving. And we always thought that she was the type of person who's, she's going to be working and doing stuff until the day she dies. She's moving. Wow. But at the same time, she's 95. And who knows how much longer she will be with us. And so the moments that you spend with her are precious. Because think about it, she was born in 1929. So she was born right at the time of the Great Depression coming in, World War II. And she lived through all that stuff. And that experience at some point, probably in the fairly near future is gonna be gone. So don't sneeze at that, those moments you have. Tim and

Dave :

Noah, you guys have grandparents that are still living?

Tim:

I have one grandmother.

Dave :

Oh, actually, I saw your grandmother two weeks ago. Yes, she was here. Oh, yeah. Shout out to Tim's grandma.

Tim:

Alfreda. I don't think she listens, but maybe she will this episode.

Bob:

Alfreda gets a shout out. Well, just clip this out and send it to her, right, Tim? Sounds good. How about you, Noah? We've been very blessed. All four of my

Noah:

grandparents are still living. All four? Yeah.

Dave :

All right. And one of your parents was in the ministry? One of your grandparents was in the ministry?

Noah:

Yeah. My grandpa and grandma on my mother's side, they both served in ministry. Yeah.

Dave :

Locally, right?

Noah:

Yeah. Yeah. My grandpa was one of the pastors at Baskin Ridge Presbyterian Church for like 30 years.

Bob:

Wow.

Noah:

Okay. Yeah. And the tree was alive on his watch. Let the record show. During

Bob:

his entire watch, it was alive. And when he left, the tree died. So it was because of his departure. The graves had left and it all went down. So yeah, so one of the points we had was esteeming your elders. That was for verses 9 and 10. And I think we need to very much appreciate our seniors. And the other point I mentioned is that we have a lot of senior communities in our area. So senior ministry is a big mission field that we often overlook and that we shouldn't.

Dave :

One of the things people may not know about Mellington Baptist Church is we partner with other churches in the Basking Ridge area in order to found a community for the elderly who are low income called Ridge Oak. And it's a part of their bylaws that a member at large at Mellington Baptist Church has to sit on

Bob:

their board. You know, we didn't think about that. I should have given them a shout out in my message. They're coming over tomorrow and doing a tour. So we're going to have Ridge Oak here with us. Yeah.

Dave :

So, you know, that's our way of just maybe making sure we're doing our duty in our community to create a caring

Bob:

environment. And what they do is, right, and they provide housing that subs so that if you make... less money, you can still have a place that you can afford to live at. Yeah. So there's always a waiting list. It's a wonderful community. My mother-in-law lives there now, too, so she's benefited from that. All right. So we have a personal referral right here. There you go. You do have to wait several years to get in, usually. She got in unusually quick, I think, because of COVID.

Dave :

Anything

Bob:

else

Dave :

on 1 Timothy 5 before we wrap up the sermon segment today?

Bob:

Well, the only thing I would mention in here that I thought was interesting was the commentary on the younger widows at the end. Every commentary that I read said these younger widows just cannot control themselves and their desires. Paul was very concerned that they were going to want to go off and get married and maybe marry an unbeliever. And very interesting. The point that I made with that is that you should never let romantic relationships define you, that your relationship with Jesus should be first, because it's very easy to get caught up in the winds of culture and be pulled away from Christ and the gospel. So that's at least part of what Paul is saying here.

Dave :

Great message. Thanks for that practical word. Next week, we're going to be talking about 1 Timothy 5, verses 17 through all the way into chapter six, verse two. And the theme there is integrity. And so we look forward to continuing our study as we look at the blueprints for a healthy church. And now we've come to that part of our program where the producers take over and give us a lot of anxiety.

Tim:

Oh, we got to check this out.

Dave :

What's going on here? What's happening?

Bob:

Oh, no. Look at

Dave :

that microphone. Look at that. Tim is having some fun with

Bob:

chat GPT today. I'm going to have some

Tim:

fun.

Bob:

So how did you come up with those pictures right there? It looks pretty good. Pretty good, right? Okay. I have way more hair than I actually do. I'll take that. I took some

Tim:

of your head shots and I threw it in there.

Bob:

Wow. Okay. The Theology Sprint. Why is it not in 16x9, Tim? Listen, I asked it for 16x9,

Tim:

believe it or not.

Bob:

Well, that's not 16x9. Let the record state it says 60 seconds on there.

Tim:

I'll let OpenAI know. So I will kick it over to my partner in crime, Noah Graves, for the Theology Sprint.

Noah:

All right. So this Theology Sprint is inspired by the conversation we had earlier regarding N.T. Wright and some of his... stuff that he had going on with people who were denying the resurrection. It's somewhat related to that. And the question is, is it possible to be a born-again, saved Christian and believe all core tenets of the faith and yet deny the inspiration of Scripture?

Dave :

Okay. Bob, why don't you start here, and I want to bring up a chart that I made about this. Okay.

Bob:

Well, I think perhaps early in your journey, there may be a moment where you question that, but as you grow in your faith, that's something you will not question, that the Word of God is living and active, and it's something that pierces your heart and your soul, that the Word of God, as Jesus said, does not return void. So no, over the long term, I don't think that is something that you, if you are a true born-again believer, will deny. And I'm sure Dave has a chart of a spectrum here of things that must be attained to as a true believer.

Dave :

I just emailed it to Tim, and it's a worthy exercise to go, what are the essential doctrines? Like, what do you have to hold on to, the cardinal doctrines of the faith, to be a Christian? You've got to have biblical clarity on these things. You've got to, you know, here's what is supported by the history of the church. Here's what we find in the Bible. If you don't hold to these things, you're outside of the pale of orthodoxy. You're in severe doctrinal error. You are now a mission field for other Christians to come and share with you the truth, right? So here's my list, and I think it's going to include everything that Noah said, but I'll start with the Trinity, the person of Christ, the hypostatic union, fully God, fully man. The historical life of Christ, meaning the virgin birth, his sinlessness, his miracles, and his physical death, burial, resurrection, his atonement, the gospel, the physical return, the second coming of Christ, the gospel of grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. I think you have to affirm the universality of sin. And then I think you have to affirm the ultimate authority and inspiration of the Bible. Here's the thing. I don't think you have to use the word inerrancy. And I think there's room for debate amongst Christians about that word. I think there are people who are Christians who don't care for that word, who don't like to use that word. And there's reasons for that. I disagree with them, but I don't feel comfortable excluding them as my brothers or sisters in Christ. And then I think we just need to affirm that all the rest of those things. And that's really what a Christian has to believe. Now, how much of that do you fully understand the day you accept the gospel and walk the sawdust trail and like, you know, commit to Christ and bow your head and pray the sinner's prayer? Probably not all of it. But if you are studying the Bible and you are, you know, actually really diving into these things, I think you're going to have to affirm the Bible as special revelation from God is a tenant that our faith cannot really even start without affirming because that's the foundation. Is there a God and has he revealed himself in the inspired scriptures? If you don't start there, how do you get to the rest of the doctrines that Christianity teaches? You've got to somehow affirm that this book is from God, which is an amazing reality. God wanted to talk to us and he put his message in a book called the Bible. So I would say, along with Bob, yeah, you got to affirm that. Noah? You want to push back? I don't want to push back. You want to play devil's advocate? You want to take a different position?

Bob:

No. All right. You want to pull an N.T. Wright over there or what? N.T. Wright. Good

Dave :

question. Good sprint. Probably more than 60 seconds, but appreciate the thoughtfulness.

Bob:

All right, Tim. Body life, man. Maybe the art of the graphics should say 60 seconds-ish. Ish, yeah. Indeed. Did you get my chart, man,

Tim:

or no? I couldn't turn it into an image. All right. Next week, we'll share the chart and

Bob:

see. We got some announcements here before we get out. You got a meeting in eight minutes here, Pastor Dave. We got a... Oh, my. What time is it? Here we

Tim:

go. Boom. So I can take the first one.

Bob:

All

Tim:

right. Take it. So here at NBC, we have a really awesome high school boys discipleship. ministry called Band of Brothers where we meet bi-weekly and we just discuss and grow in the Lord. And this summer we're having the theme of candor and conduct. We are going to be examining the scripture and trying to figure out how should we speak, how should we live, how should we be perceived as a man of God, a young man of God in today's world, just really focusing on our character. So if you're a high school boy that is listening, which is doubtful, or if you're a parent of a high school boy that's listening which is more likely uh we will be starting at johnny's house on june 26th at seven o'clock it'll be a bonfire and barbecue come on out and it's gonna we're gonna be meeting every week this summer up until the beginning of september um except for july 3rd so that's that

Bob:

all right i'll give you a 60 second follow-up define candor

Tim:

candor like how we how we speak the way we speak to, to one another. Is that, is that accurate? Like the, the words we choose to use and how, how we use, how

Dave :

we, how we choose to say them. Authentic speech. Yes. Yeah. I think Dave Marks would be proud of this title. He would. Yeah. He's digging that word candor. I love it. Radical candor. You gotta have radical candor.

Bob:

Radical

Dave :

candor.

Bob:

Radical

Tim:

acceptance. I love radical candor.

Bob:

That was a good impression, by the way. Candor, frankness or sincerity of expression, openness. Radical candor. We're moving on, Bob. This Wednesday is the

Dave :

worship night. June 11th, 7

Bob:

p.m. That was a

Dave :

very statement dripping with candor right there. Join us. We'd love to have you here. It's going to be a good night of seeking the Lord. And the teens are doing it, but Johnny opened up the doorways to anybody who's

Bob:

interested. These are these respectful intergenerational relationships we talked about. Come one, come all.

Tim:

It's going to be intergenerational worship. So bring your lawn chairs and your picnic blankets because it's going to be a lawn... vehicle. Awesome. Next.

Dave :

Hey,

Bob:

here we go. Car wash. It's a tradition. This coming Saturday, 9 to 3 p.m. This helps to support the youth for their mission trip that's coming up this summer. Come get your car wash. It's free. If you want to donate to help them out, you can. Although I hear the kids that are serving have gotten some sponsors. So it's up to you. However the spirit leads. But we do want you to have a nice clean car and get all that pollen off of it from the last few months. Scrub-a-dub-dub. Next. Scrub-a-dub-dub.

Dave :

Summer Sundays, we got a little bit of a change in schedule. So the kids are 1045 service only for nursery, preschool, and elementary. So just be aware of that. There is no kids programming at the 9 a.m. And then the teens are coming up on the end, man. We have graduation Sunday, and the final rush is June 18th, the final rush Sunday. It's June 22nd. It's been a great year. Appreciate Johnny and his leadership. Yesterday was the culmination of the year, saying goodbye to the seniors. Johnny does always such a great job, just pastorally shepherding that moment, saying something unique and individualized for each graduate. I appreciate his heart to do that. And 2025 is almost in the books. So thanks for another great year. And those are the announcements. Is that right, Tim? End of show. Thank you guys for watching Behind the Pulpit. All right. That was quite an episode, Pastor Dave. That was a rumble. We'll see you next week.