Behind The Pulpit

Phillies Karen

• Millington Baptist Church • Season 4 • Episode 1

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Season 4 is HERE, and Behind the Pulpit is back with all the energy. Pastor Bob and Pastor Dave kick things off with summer stories: Blue Ridge hikes, ballgames, and family time—before diving headfirst into the headlines: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement, a senator’s troubling words about rights and government, and Donald Trump’s comments about earning his way into heaven. From memes of “Philly’s Karen” to clarifying the gospel of grace, nothing is off-limits.

The crew also brings back fan favorites: the Great Book War (Vote Below), an audience question on Sheol and hell, and a sermon recap setting the stage for a four-month journey through Isaiah. Noah’s Theology Sprint presses the team on the gender of the Trinity, while Tim introduces new twists that might just flip the script on future questions.

With laughs, lively debate, and plenty of substance, this episode sets the tone for a season that promises to tackle justice, worldview, and the gospel with both candor and conviction. Don't miss a moment!

***VOTE HERE***
The Great Book War is on!  Vote for the winner of the 'Great Book War' with the link below!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSczfOEKGOkJMu91gsO8cojXwAyf1EDY3A1n4Il3UPK4yHkYvA/viewform?usp=header

Fall Launch
https://millingtonbaptist.org/fall-launch-2025/
Truth Rising
https://millingtonbaptist.org/truth-rising/
AWANA
https://millingtonbaptist.org/awana/
Underground Sessions
https://millingtonbaptist.org/underground-sessions-october-2025/
Underground Sessions Unity Workshop
https://millingtonbaptist.org/unity-leadership-workshop/
Interactive Isaiah Scroll
http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Open
5:13 In The News
25:05 The Great Book War
29:13 Audience Question
34:40 Sermon Recap
46:14 Theology Sprint

Music
"Ventura"
Morgan Taylor
U76EPPNJDYZYU0Y7

Unknown:

do

Bob:

We're back! Welcome to the first episode of Behind the Pulpit, September the 8th, 2025. I know some of you have been waiting on bated breath at home. I don't know what you've done with your entire summer without hearing these wonderful pearls of wisdom from Pastor Dave and myself. But you're in luck. Unlike Stephen Colbert, we have not been canceled. We are back by popular demand. And here is my co-host, the wonderful, the illustrious, the amazing... What's your name again?

Dave:

Was that like Queen? Like, we will rock you?

Bob:

That's what I was going for. I

Dave:

was going for that, yeah. Let's have a comeback at the game?

Bob:

Yeah, that's right. I was thinking maybe later on Tim can actually put in the actual, like, the beat at the beginning. We will, we will rock

Dave:

you! Man, Bob's excited. Yeah,

Bob:

we're doing.

Dave:

Can you tell?

Bob:

Are you not excited? We're back, Pastor Dave. I don't know what you've been doing on your Monday afternoons the last two months.

Dave:

Just nothing. Twiddling my thumbs. I got nothing else to do. Sitting

Bob:

down there just in a ball of heap. He's crying. What are we doing? Well, anyway, we're glad that you're back joining us here. Just let's go around the horn. So we got our producer, Tim Ucas, over there. Tim, say hi. What's going on? Tim's back there. I'm so excited. He gave some interesting updates to the order, so stay tuned for that. And also Noah Graves. Howdy, howdy. Yeah, his mic's working. Noah's going to be bringing you the theology sprint at the end of this episode, so make sure you stay tuned for that because I'm sure that'll be something that we're going to be excited to answer. Do we have to keep the theology sprint this season? We'll make a decision after we hear the one for today.

Dave:

I heard something about a theology relay from Noah earlier today.

Bob:

That's right. Periodically, what if we can choose to just give it back to you? Make you think. Let's do it. You give us a sprint. We say, you know what? I'm going to take this time to toss it back to you. Right

Tim:

now, we're making a decision.

Dave:

This season, you get five. Five.

Bob:

That's a lot. We had 40 episodes last season. You get five Uno reverse cards. That's true. We could also do a phone a friend. You could just give it right back to Noah. But it's not valid for week one. Not valid for week one. Okay. All right. We'll think about that. We got some exciting updates though. We're back. Pastor Dave, before we go, how was your summer? What did you indeed do over the last two months?

Dave:

Summer was good. It was a different kind of summer in the Henschel household because everybody was busy so we could not figure out how to have a big family vacation like normal. Sometimes we'll get a house and then that's the bait to bring the kids to visit us. But this summer My daughter, Alex, was busy studying for the boards, and she could not get away. The

Bob:

boards of what?

Dave:

The board exam in order to be a lawyer. The bar

Bob:

exam? The bar

Dave:

exam, sorry. I should say boards. The bar exam.

Bob:

That's for medical

Dave:

school. Yeah, sorry. The other kids in the medical field. Okay, so because of the bar exam study, she couldn't do it, and then Felicity had this certified nursing assistant program that she was going through. She couldn't do it, and then Julie was doing an internship at the New Jersey Department of Public Health. She was busy. So it was more like a...

Bob:

Lots of health stuff happening in

Dave:

your family. Summer around the yard and not really that much exciting stuff. Although we did sneak away to the mountains of North Carolina towards the end of August, just me and Julie.

Bob:

Okay. It was good. We heard about that in the sermon yesterday. Productive. You were like up in the clouds.

Dave:

It was up there, man. There's a wonderful Blue Ridge Parkway that's very narrow that you can take and go slow. And it takes you 4,000 or 5,000 feet up in the... mountain region. Some parts of the road are a little bit dicey. You get to some gravel roads up there. It was an adventure. Did you do Mount Mitchell? Is it open yet? No. Is that good? Should we put that on the list for next time? I think it was closed. It's the highest peak in North Carolina. I'm hoping to climb it next summer. Look at

Bob:

you climbing,

Dave:

huh? On the Appalachian Trail. It was closed. Not in your car. Climb it. I think they were opening up at the end of the summer Like you're going to hike it? Yeah, I want to hike it, yeah.

Bob:

Okay, all

Dave:

right. But it was due to Helene, it was closed. Well, very cool. All right. What did you do this summer?

Bob:

Oh, man, so much stuff. You know, we did, let's see, in July we did the beach, we did the Bronx Zoo, took my kids there. I did a Somerset Patriots game. Actually, I was told that the worship team gathering the other night, the picnic for the, I appreciate folks, Chris Acker came up to and said he saw me at the Somerset Patriots game in August when I took Jenna but they were like way over there so I couldn't see him so we just had a lot of family time it was fun and yeah it was a good summer good relaxing summer the pool went to the pool yeah there we go

Dave:

sounds like a good

Bob:

time no amazing adventures no Blue Ridge Mountains for us this time I did go to the Rocky Mountains back in June but that was before our little break so anyway hey in the comments section let us know what did you do this past summer and how was it? Hopefully it was a good summer. Now, we're introducing a new element to our show today. We are going to be having some advertisement spots. Rather than doing our Body Life at the end, we're going to be having some advertisements throughout. So, now it's time to pause and have our first advertisement. This segment of Body Life is brought to you by The Fall Launch. If you are excited about being part of NBC, The Fall Launch may indeed be for you. We've got some adult education. We got NBC Kids. We got teens. We got women's ministry. We got Awana. We'll come back to that later. We got small groups. Fall launch is going to be an exciting time. That is coming up this September. All kinds of things are happening. Message Pastor Dave if you're interested in some of those things. Message me if you're interested in some of those things. And we hope that that will bless you very much as we kick off the start of the year. Boom. The fall launch. How did I do with that, Tim? Excellent. One down. A

Tim:

few more to go.

Bob:

A few more to go. Well, before we get there, now it's time to bring back our world famous segment lots of things have been happening in the last two months we're going to talk about in the news music All right, Pastor Dave. So there are so many things that have been happening over the course of the summer, but indeed the

Dave:

biggest. Are we going to try to wrap up six weeks of news here?

Bob:

Well, I got a couple tentpole items here. So the biggest one, we cannot begin the year without talking about the fact that Taylor Swift is now engaged to Travis Kelsey in a wonderfully productive or produced, I should say, engagement photo here. So here was the headline that caught my attention here. It said, Taylor Swift's jeweler speaks out on her rare engagement ring from Travis. So, what it looks like is he made the pop star's personalized TNT bracelet, which stands for Taylor and Travis, into a ring and gave it to her. It was very rare. The guy who did it was the Woe of CEO Simone Kendall, and that's what he told Newsweek. Did you happen to catch this engagement past and see people reacting live on air to the fact that Taylor Swift was engaged and it was light. There was actually a video I saw of a guy who was a professor down at the University of Tennessee that canceled class when they found out that Taylor and Travis were engaged. Did you catch any of this?

Dave:

I saw the news. And

Bob:

how excited were you

Dave:

about this bastard? Not very, I'll tell you that much. I did see Travis Kelsey get punched the other day. There was a football player from the Chargers who just... They were kind of shoving each other and stuff like this, and he just really smashed him right in the face there. I don't think it had anything to do with the engagement, but he's been taking some abuse, and I've been kind of wondering about the influence of Taylor Swift. Does that mean more people are going to want to get engaged now? Is that what that's going to mean for our culture? Well, I've heard

Bob:

some people talk about maybe there'll be a Taylor bump in terms of having kids because, if you know, our birth rate's been declining, so now Taylor Swift, with her influence, now that she's going to engage, maybe more people will want to do that rather than be perpetual single. If this is what happens, that would be a good thing. She can use her influence for good rather than evil.

Dave:

Okay. I was already sick of Taylor Swift before this little segment started. I'm kind of slightly annoyed that people watch more football now because she's dating a football player. I feel kind of frustrated by that whole scene. Do the ends

Bob:

justify the means?

Dave:

I don't know if you've ever listened to some of these lyrics that Taylor has carefully but I don't know that we should be having our daughters be listening to this lady anymore she's got some messaging that's a little troubling I'll just put it that way

Bob:

she's gone in an interesting direction early on she was like this really nice humble girl and those days are over and now she's this mm-hmm I don't know what to call her she's she's something all right

Dave:

yeah my recommendation is unfollow that's all I'm saying indeed that happening of her earlier I just think it's funny one of I actually am a big fan of her early music and she had a song called 50 And there's a lyric in that song that goes like this. When you're

Bob:

15.

Dave:

That's the song. There it is. But in your life, you'll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team. But I didn't know it at 15. And here she is. She's marrying the boy on the football team. How poetic.

Bob:

There it is. It was prophetic. She's a prophet. All right. So that was Taylor Swift. Second thing, a little bit more serious and worldview-y. So Tim over here is a Colson Fellows in training. Worldview-y? Worldview-y, yes. I think you just coined a new word. It's a real Colson

Dave:

Phillips. You can find it on the website.

Bob:

It's true. Is it worldview-y or worldview-ish? Worldview-like?

Dave:

I think there was a question about being worldview-ish on one of the...

Bob:

Okay, well, we'll go with that. We got 12 folks going through the Colson Phillips program listening to Breakpoint. So this one came up this morning, although I had heard about this previously, and it was disturbing, Pastor Dave. I think even Al Mohler commented on it today. So last week... I have not caught the Al Mohler show yet today. Good one. I didn't listen to it, but I saw he covered it. So this is how the article begins. Last week, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine made this bold statement during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. So this is coming from a sitting U.S. senator, not just some pundit on a cable news show. So he says this. This is Tim Kaine. The notion that rights don't come from laws and don't come from the government, but come from the creator... That's what the Iranian government believes. It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Baha'is, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their creator. So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or governments is extremely troubling. So essentially what he's saying here is that it is the government that should give us our rights and our laws. Now, if you read further down in this article, one of the things they mentioned is that this is exactly what communist governments believe, that if the rights and rules and everything comes from the government, then just as quickly as they give it, they can also take it away. And this is problematic for a Christian worldview, of course, because we do believe that our rights are imbued to us by our creator God. Did you catch this, Pastor Dave?

Dave:

I did. I was super disturbed by that. He's not just a senator, but he almost was the vice President of the United States. He ran with Hillary Clinton.

Bob:

Were you more disturbed by this or by the Taylor Swift engagement?

Dave:

This. Definitely this. So I could not believe that an elected official was saying this in our country. We literally have a Declaration of Independence that says that our rights are inalienable and they come from our creator. That is one of our founding documents. To say otherwise feels a little treasonous, number one. Number two, yeah, the government's involved, but the government is there to recognize the right and secure the right, not to give the right. And so there's a huge difference there. And the fact that he's pushing back, I just wonder, what's next? Wow. You're allowed to say that? Is that where we're going? Is this going to become normalized, that the government's the one that actually gives us our rights? Why

Bob:

did he think he should say that, too? So keep an eye on that. That's a very troubling statement. Speaking of statements that came from our elected officials. Another thing that made some news back in August was Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin, and then he met with Volodymyr Zelensky, and he was talking about hopefully ending the war in Ukraine, although it doesn't seem like that made much headway. But he made a statement about how he thought that if he brought peace to Ukraine, it would be to some extent a notch on his belt, and he would hopefully get to heaven because he did that. Because he's been here in quote unquote, he's not doing so well. And this unleashed a bit of a firestorm within the Christian community to say that Donald Trump doesn't understand the gospel, which I'm not sure that he does, certainly with that statement. But people clarifying that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone and not by our works here. So did you happen to catch this one, Pastor Dave, or did this one pass you by? Yeah,

Dave:

I saw that. I guess, hey, President Trump, if you're watching, we just want to clarify something.

Bob:

He may tweet about

Dave:

you later. I heard he's a big fan. Truth about you later. Sorry. As outlandish as that sounds to our ears, I actually think it's pretty common for people to think that they're going to earn their way into the eternal bliss of heaven through their own good works. I think that's something that a lot of people believe. So for him to say that about making peace in the world or bringing peace to the Russia-Ukraine conflict seems like a pretty standard the gospel of grace is a scandal the fact that we're saved by faith alone is not intuitive we tend to think that we're going to through our own performance earn our way and maybe at the end if our good stuff outweighs our bad stuff then we'll get to heaven but that is not the gospel of Jesus and so I think that's something that's a good opportunity to clarify for a lot of people not just President Trump we do hope that he is successful in struggling Striking a deal and making the art of the deal happen in Russia and Ukraine. That's great. But even if you do, and even if you were to accomplish many other things, Mr. President, that would not secure your place with the Lord. We all stand condemned. We stand unrighteous. Our righteous acts are like filthy rags. And we need an advocate. We need a mediator. We need an atonement. Nothing but the blood

Bob:

of

Dave:

Jesus. That's right. I love the Babylon Bee headline. God agrees to let Trump into heaven if he repents of his sins and trusts in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. Celestial sources report that in response to hearing of President Trump's hopes to get into heaven, God has agreed to let Trump into his kingdom if he simply repents of his sins and trusts in Christ alone for

Bob:

salvation. Babylon Bee preaching it. Your observation, though, I think was part of the breakpoint commentary on that to say that this is what a lot of people believe. It is kind of standard fare out there, which is why we need to be bold and clearly preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ as articulated within the scriptures

Dave:

so all kinds of heresy coming out of the government of the United States my goodness both

Bob:

sides we just hit both sides right there

Dave:

I will say one more thing about the rights coming from government thing the reason that's a problem is because whoever has the power gets to make those decisions right so might makes right if there's no objective absolute standard to a to, then the only thing to appeal to is the power issue. And that can be a dangerous... Who gets to decide

Bob:

what the rights are.

Dave:

Exactly. And so I don't think we want government to have that kind of power. All right. There you go. The other news story that's a little bit more lighthearted

Bob:

for some people... Bring it home for us, Pastor Dave. Okay. For some people. I guess if you were in this situation, it might not feel lighthearted.

Dave:

Yeah. I don't think in the moment that dad... Traumatization. So there was an incident in Major League Baseball. The Philadelphia Phillies... We're playing the Marlins and it's been going viral on the Internet. There was a home run that was hit and I think it was Harrison Bader who hit a home run out into the outfield. There was a dad who saw that and he scurried over, grabbed the ball, quickly ran back, dropped it in his young son's glove, hugged his son, and then he was accosted by a woman who told him, hey, that's That's not your ball. That was my ball. You took it from me. And basically the dad kind of had to make a decision in the moment there. And there's some debate about did he do the right thing. And he decided to just give the ball to the lady and say, okay, here, have your ball. Just leave me alone. And then she took it back. And then I guess somewhere in the administrative offices in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, they saw this incident happen. And they actually gave the kid an autographed bat. and they kind of made it up to the family for what had happened in the stadium the lady on the other hand kind of dug her heels in and if you saw the after footage of what happened after that some of the other fans were kind of booing her nearby and then she got up into another fan's face and she was chewing him out and then she flipped the bird on the fans like in every which way angle and kind of just like decided to die on that hill and now now she's been now commonly known known as Philly's Karen

Bob:

now she is an internet meme

Dave:

yeah

Bob:

and this is the era that we live in

Dave:

yeah so before we get to the memes there's three issues I think to talk through number one who was right was it his ball or was it her ball do you guys have any opinions on this so yeah I'm watching so this happens a lot I think in foul balls and stuff there was there was a skirmish for the ball there looked like three or four people who were trying to get this ball and he appeared to come at there was no like it appeared to be loose on the ground, and he came out with it clean. There was no ripping it out of the hands, as far as I remember. And so I think it was definitely his

Tim:

ball. Now, I respect him for probably de-escalating a long-term situation by just giving her the ball, but I don't think he

Dave:

was obligated to give that ball up. I think he had won that ball fair and square. Okay. So I agree with you, although the footage did not show exactly where the hands were, but it fell on the seat in front of her. so there was some bobbling and it's like when somebody hits a foul ball or a home run like it's anybody's game it's not your ball just because it's in your seat like it's you know it's whoever grabs it man you gotta have good hands out there like that's and the etiquette okay so this is an unwritten rule the etiquette is if there's a kid nearby the adult makes the kids whole day by going to give the ball to the kid like that's such a common thing

Bob:

over, accosts his father in front of him and demands the ball back.

Dave:

Yeah. An adult woman like for this five or ten dollar ball. And like it's just I don't know. Where are we in a society that that's what you're doing? So number one. So I think it was his ball. Here's what else I noticed. I watched the footage. She has her phone and it's like a bag of potato chips in her in her right hand. She never lets go. She's scurrying her left hand for the ball. No wonder she didn't grab the ball. You're trying to do this with your non-dominant hand because you won't put your phone down or your potato chips down. And then she goes over and the cost of the guy still didn't drop the phone or potato chips. She's putting her left hand on his shoulder and giving him the business, right? So I'm like, lady, how much did you care about this ball if you couldn't put your phone down or your potato chips down to get the ball? You had to go lefty and now you think it's your ball? Okay, that's my little rant about that. So I think it was his ball. Second question is, Did the guy do the right thing by giving it to her or should he have stood his ground and be like, listen, lady, it's my ball. Like go fly a kite. What was the right thing to do there? Tim, you use the word deescalation. So he chose that the deescalating.

Bob:

He didn't, he didn't make a two, a 10. He made a 10, a two.

Dave:

He did. And he successfully that, that strategy was effective. I mean, the kid got assigned bat and you know, as a, as a father, uh, he walked away, uh, happy right from that game he gave his family a good time so maybe de-escalation was good there but there are people who are really criticizing this dad going hey man what you did there is you told you taught your son how to like give in to bullies that's what you did that's what the son's gonna remember so there's critiques of the dad so was it an effective strategy to de-escalate or should he have kind of stood his ground a little bit more so I was chatting with my brother about this I'm like so what would you do he's like I would have got thrown out of that game he wouldn't not have put up with that lady so I don't know so I don't know what do you do you guys would have de-escalated or would you have stood your ground if he

Bob:

stood his ground he would have been also an internet meme so maybe he didn't want the publicity now is this woman we'll never know but that could have went very differently and you know she could have punched him she could have I mean it was

Dave:

yeah yeah not good we'll never know Tim so can I offer an alternative method yeah what there's got to be a third option so there was a viral video years ago of a kid who got caught a ball

Tim:

at a baseball game. I think it might have also been a Marlins game. And he had the ball in his glove and there was a girl next to him that he was trying to impress. And he gave her the ball. But the catch was it wasn't

Dave:

the ball from the game. He had brought another ball with him. So he kept the ball and gave her a decoy ball. Now that would have been really creative. To give the lady the wrong ball. Everyone needs to go to a game with a decoy ball. They need to go prepared. In a situation like this where you give her the decoy ball and you keep the home run ball. Pro tip. Just keep a ball with you at all times. All right. Now we're going to get to the memes. So there's a lot of memes, but here's like five or six that are going around. Okay. So let's just check it out. So this is where you get the action figure meme. Philly's Karen. Give me your ball. That's got the kid there crying. That's pretty funny. Oh my gosh. So this is her back in the back when the baseball player is giving him the signed bat. She's like, that's mine too. Okay, next one. So this is Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner is there with a baseball and Philly's Carrot is going up to him. If you saw Field of Dreams, this would make sense to you. I don't know. That might be hard to understand. We'll do one more, and this is my favorite one. Okay. Philly's

Bob:

Carrot. My precious. The precious ball. This lady's got to ask, was this worth it? I mean, she deserves it. She deserves to get mutilated on the internet. I actually

Dave:

feel sorry for her now. Do you? She's never going to live this down. Well, this is the

Bob:

consequences of our decisions,

Dave:

Pastor Dave. There's consequences, lady. You know what? I would feel bad for her if I didn't see her also double down and flip the bird. Like, lady.

Bob:

She needs to be publicly embarrassed. She didn't feel bad all the fact that she did not notice that what she did was wrong. Which actually might be a commentary. No self-awareness. On our spiritual state. This could be a sermon illustration, Pastor Dave. I have a feeling it's going to come to a sermon introduction soon. We steal the ball. Although... And don't give it back. All the while holding our phone, the idolatrous phone in our right hand, not willing to let it go. You

Dave:

forgot to share the one that I thought Bob would really like. Which one? He would have really appreciated. I have them all. Which one? Okay. Which one was it? There's the one from... This is from the Coldplay gods.

Bob:

I mean, speaking of, yes, people getting landmasted

Dave:

on the internet. She has now finally given this guy a break, I think. He's now off the meme circuit and it's her now. Man,

Speaker 01:

this

Dave:

guy. Wow. The Coldplay guy. All right. All right. So that's enough. Those are the news stories. Thank you guys for watching.

Bob:

Bob, tell us about Truth Rising. All right. Now it's time for another word from our sponsors. This Body Life ad is brought to you by Truth Rising. Speaking of worldview, this is a documentary put out by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview in conjunction with Focus on the Family. If you're interested to learn what the Colson Fellows is all about, if you're interested to learn what a true Christian worldview is, which Philly's Karen clearly does not have, you should come and participate in our Truth Rising documentary viewing Friday night, September the 19th. There will be ice cream. We will give that to you, brought to you by Truth Rising, and it's going to be a wonderful night of discussions and And Connection. So Truth Rising, if you're interested in Connection and Worldview, that's what our advertisers bring it to you. So there you go. Boom.

Dave:

Okay. Segways. Segway now. That

Bob:

was pretty skillful. That's right. Let me segway now into another segment backed by popular demand. The one, the only. Speaking of punches, there might be punches that are pulled for this one. Oh, we never got the flags. It's time for the Great Book War. Yeah. Do we have an icon for this? We do. It's more of a reminder of last season. God, man.

Dave:

Pastor Dave, Season 3 Book War Champion. Notice

Bob:

this one, he actually has a smile on his face. Because he's a champion. But listen, at the end of the day, I look like I'm wearing an auto mechanic. This is the scoreboard. We're back. We are back to 0-0. Double goose egg. Love. Love right here at the beginning of Season 4. Shout out Carlos Alcarez. All right. There you go. All right. So, Pastor Dave, I will let you give your final First, since you won, you can give the initial volley in this book warp.

Dave:

Some of you guys have been asking me for good resources. This is an accessible book about Isaiah. It is from the Bible Speaks Today series. It is written by Barry Webb. He's the senior research fellow and Old Testament and professor, scholar at the Moore Theological College in Australia. Ah, so he would say it Isaiah. Yes, he would. Isaiah. It's... Edited by Motyer. It's a great series. I found this to be super accessible. It's got a wonderful introduction to kind of get you oriented to the book. If you want one good, accessible, pretty short book about Isaiah, this is the one I would recommend. Barry Webb. I've really enjoyed it. It's been great. Check it out.

Bob:

IVP Press. I'll be using that one, man. I got that whole series on my Logos. All right. My entry is going to go along with a later sponsorship for the Underground Sessions. This is the book Walking in Unity by Krista Bontrager and Monique Dusson. They will be here in person in a few weeks for our underground sessions. And if you are a leader, we are having a leadership training workshop Saturday morning, October the 4th, 830 to 11 a.m. And we're going to provide breakfast. And if you sign up for that, we will give you this book right here. So you better vote for this. Otherwise, I won't give you a free one right here. So here it is, the book Walking in Unity. It is focusing on biblical answers to questions on race and racism. If you want a biblical view on how we should respond to that, not the stuff that you just hear about in the news and in the culture all the time, this is the book for you, written by an African American woman and a Caucasian woman who have become great friends and I've learned quite a bit from. So, Walking in Unity, that's my entry. Boom. Excellent. Now...

Dave:

We recommend you decide. Please go vote. It's

Tim:

in

Dave:

the description. So like if you're listening to this right now, all you have to do is just open up the app and scroll down and it's in the description and you can click it. If you're watching it, it's the same thing. Just a little scroll. I believe in you. There you go.

Bob:

I'm going to challenge you to add an extra layer to this, Tim. I think you can report the decision and then I think you and Noah should have the opportunity to override the audience decision if you think they're wrong. That sounds dangerously close to the corrupt government stuff we were talking about before. That's okay. This is the book war right here. There you go. go

Tim:

sometimes you gotta play we'll discuss this

Bob:

turn the book war into a monarchy all right so that's the great book war now it's time for another spot from our body life sponsors we're back at it right here this spot is brought to you by Awana Awana is coming back at you on September the 24th if your kid needs to be discipled alongside you if you want them to learn scripture memory if you want them to be getting those Awana bucks and whatever pride comes with that. September the 24th, starting at 5.30 p.m., although if you want food, you can come at 4.45. We're kicking back off that Wednesday night. Go and sign up online right now. Awana may be for you. There you go. Boom. All right. Bob will be there for the food. I will be. My kids will be anyway. All right. Speaking of Awana and deeper discipleship, we do have an audience question today that, Pastor Dave, this is crazy. quite the audience question. It comes in from John Rickershauser. And do you mind if I read it for you here? Okay. This kind of goes along with Isaiah. But John asked this. He says, It should be in Genesis, I think. It's in Genesis. God creates the earth, then after the fall of man, a place called Sheol, as in Genesis 37-35, and Isaiah 5-14, or hell, since Jesus talked about it, and descended into it before rising again is now a certainty. Why in preaching the gospel of Jesus is it missing? So I think is he asking why we don't preach about hell when we talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Dave:

Well, there's a couple things going on here. So the statement that he created Sheol after creating the heavens and the earth is a little bit of an inference there. I guess that's the case, but I'm not sure that that's totally clear in terms of the order of creation. The second thing is the word Sheol in Genesis 37 was a little bit of a murky concept, as is the New Testament concept of Hades. There's some words that describe, let's say, the underworld that are are somewhat difficult to define. The third word is Tartarus. There's some things that I don't think the scriptures are completely clear about. In Isaiah 5, it does talk about Sheol opening wide its mouth to swallow people. There are certain passages in the Old Testament that actually translate the Hebrew term Sheol with the grave. So it's possible that that refers to the realm of the dead. And it's also possible that that word sometimes just means, sometimes it means the grave sometimes it means the sort of the holding place for the dead without bodies which by the way the Christian hope is for the resurrection of the body it's not for a disembodied state Jesus I think affirmed such a world view especially in the passage that's known as Luke 16 where there's the rich man and Lazarus and there's this place that the rich man goes to that's a place of torment and there is an acknowledgement that there's a space called Abraham's bosom that the righteous person goes to and then there's another place I think called Hades there I can't remember if it's Gehenna or Hades I'm not remembering what Luke 16 uses but there's a place where the

Bob:

uses uses Hades because I remember preaching on that I think it was Hades

Dave:

okay well I can't remember so just The Apostles' Creed I'm not sure that it isn't, but typically when people preach the gospel, they try to do so in a succinct way, like the four spiritual laws or the good news, bad news, or there's a lot of different ways to present the gospel. And usually Hades doesn't make the final cut in terms of the essentials of what is the truth about the gospel. I think that's worthy of mentioning if you have a longer discussion about life, death, the afterlife, what's going to happen. Perhaps I could come up but not in a in a sort of the elevator speech gospel presentation so it might be missing from preaching in some cases but maybe if you have a longer opportunity to really explain and go into theology it might be time to do that I think it's important to mention what people are saved from and so there is some space to discuss these things if you have the time but those are serious matters and we should definitely share the good news because Jesus saves us from all of that.

Bob:

By the way Genesis 37 35 in the NIV does translate it as the grave. I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave. NIV. That's the NIV. Yeah. I'll have to look at which other what the other translations do.

Dave:

Yeah. So if you look up Sheol in like an Old Testament dictionary you can see it has like different interpretive options there. So

Bob:

thank you John. Boom. There we go. All right. Now it's time for another word from our sponsors from Body Life the next one is an exciting one and goes along with our book war this sponsorship comes to you from the underground sessions if you are interested in worldview issues if you're interested in the topic of justice which we're going to be covering in isaiah this is for you a sunday october the 5th 5 to 8 p.m that includes dinner so if you want to come and get a delicious delicious dinner come at 5 p.m that's right we're going to start the presentation at 5 30 and then we're going to be diving into answering god's call to justice advocating for justice according to a biblical worldview again Krista and Monique are going to be our key panelists and speakers for that it's going to be a wonderful time here's the key thing though if you want to take part of this sponsorship you have to go register so right now run don't walk to register for this event

Tim:

pull out your phones

Bob:

scan your QR codes and make sure that you sign up for this event tickets are going fast and we don't want you to miss it Sunday October the 5th 5 to 8 p.m Boom. There we go. All right. So that was our latest sponsor. Now it's time to dive into our sermon recap. Pastor Dave, there it is. What in the world? Oh, my goodness. Tim has been taking some amazing photos for these things right here. This Dave is, he is like a voice crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord right there. The introduction to Isaiah. It's live.

Tim:

Go watch it

Bob:

after this. There you go. So maybe you can put a link, a little thing right here for people to go and watch it.

Speaker 01:

It was already there.

Bob:

All right. It's live. I can't even see it, but there it is. All right, so Dave, why don't you tell us about the overview of what you covered and then maybe we'll dive into some stuff you didn't cover in the sermon.

Dave:

The book of Isaiah feels a little bit like wrapping your arms around an elephant. This is a very important prophetic scroll. This is a scroll that I think Jesus found to be critical in his understanding of who he was as a servant of the Lord. A lot of the New Testament makes reference to the book of Isaiah. I think it's quoted like 66 times, not counting the illusions. Isaiah is good news. Isaiah talks about the movement from ruin to redemption. And so in the message, we gave background information on the book of Isaiah. Tim said it's like Isaiah 101, a college course. That's kind of what yesterday's sermon was. And we talked about a little bit of taste of what kind of things Isaiah is warning about. And then we ended with the gracious invitation of Isaiah. So that was the kickoff for Boom,

Bob:

there you go. Isaiah, big background. Last fall, we covered the book of Revelation. There was a lot of Isaiah in Revelation, speaking of new exoduses and new Israels and things of that nature. So we'll come to the new heavens and new earth at the end of this as well. Yep. There's also a mini apocalypse in 24 to 27. There's

Dave:

an inclusio. The first speech starts with, listen, oh heavens, hear, oh earth. And then at the end of Isaiah, you have the new heavens and new earth.

Bob:

Boom. There you go. It's going to be an exciting series. We know we've heard a lot from you all that are listening that you're excited about Isaiah. So we are happy to bring God's word to you. All right. So, Dave, let me ask you a question. What were a couple things? I know this was a hefty sermon to put together. What were some things that didn't quite make it into your message yesterday that are worthy of mentioning here on Behind the Pulpit?

Dave:

So if you dive. Fresh

Bob:

off the presses right now.

Dave:

Yeah. If you dive. deep into Isaiah one of the things you're going to uncover in the background studies is who wrote Isaiah so the traditional conservative view is that the entire book of Isaiah from chapter 1 to 66 was written by the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos in the 8th century Jewish tradition affirms that early Christian tradition affirms that too it's one unified book the New Testament when it quotes Isaiah simply says we're quoting Isaiah here so that's typically the view that evangelical scholars take that view really requires you to acknowledge the possibility of predictive prophecy. So Isaiah actually in chapter 44 names Cyrus the Great as the coming Persian king who will release the captives from exile. So not only would Isaiah have to know about the exile, he would have to know about the coming king like 300 years before that guy came around, 200 years, and he would have to know his name. I think that's the smoking gun behind everybody's theories about the other parts of isaiah i think that's the real problem how could he have possibly known cyrus there's a couple of reasons why he would know that if you're a christian then you believe in the supernatural possibility of foretelling and predicting the future because these are books are written with inspiration of the holy spirit and um i think there's room for that the critical view um the higher criticism view is that isaiah the prophet wrote chapters 1 through 39 and then another author it's usually called Deutero-Isaiah, wrote the rest of the book or the second half of Isaiah that describes in more vivid detail the Babylonian exile. And sometimes people say it's anachronistic for that stuff to have been written by Isaiah that he wouldn't have known about that stuff. So the critical scholars say there's Deutero-Isaiah, he's the person who wrote the second part. Actually, just to confuse things a little bit further, there's a very common view nowadays that says actually there's three parts. So there's Isaiah 1-39, then there's Deutero-Isaiah 40-55, and then 55-66 is Trito-Isaiah, or the third Isaiah. So that actually takes on a new flavor of like a post-exilic sort of vibe going on there. So most critical scholars take that view that there's two parts, or at least two parts, sometimes even three parts to the book of Isaiah. Is that kind

Bob:

of like first breakfast and second breakfast?

Dave:

Exactly like that, yeah. Elevensies? Yeah.

Unknown:

Jameson.

Dave:

if you want to hear a case that's made apologetically for the fact that there was one Isaiah you can read John Oswalt who wrote the NIV commentary on Isaiah and he talks about some argumentation so he will say things like you do have similar language used in both halves like the Holy One of Israel that's God's name you find that I think like a dozen places in the first half like a dozen places in the second half that's not exact but it It's in both sides there. The second reason is there is zero, zero evidence for the fact that there's any copies of Isaiah that were chapters 1 through 39. This is all conjecture. We have no hard external evidence for the fact that there was multiple parts of Isaiah. In fact, the oldest copy we have of Isaiah is from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's really long. I showed a picture of it in my sermon yesterday. It's 24 feet long. It's one complete unified scroll with no evidence of the fact that there was multiple scrolls. Can

Bob:

you tell us about a website you can go to to actually look at the actual Isaiah scroll?

Dave:

Yeah.

Bob:

Maybe we should put a link to that in the show notes.

Dave:

Yeah, it's fascinating. You can unroll it and then you can hover your mouse over the part and then I think your mouse will translate it into English too, if I remember. Interesting. It's like a really cool online tool and so you should check that out. It's really fun to do that. So there's the critical view and then there's the conservative view and then there's kind of moderate views who take an in-between view. So So the moderate view is that Isaiah had disciples and they are called the Talmudim and they show up in Isaiah chapter eight. They are Isaiah's students. And the moderate view is that Isaiah started the book of Isaiah and then his Talmudim, the Isaiah school, continued the tradition of Isaiah and continued to write and expand his scroll or enlarge his scroll. And it got larger and larger over time through his students. And they were writing in the tradition of Isaiah, using Isaiah. Isaiah as their figurehead, so to speak. So that's kind of a moderate view. I take the more conservative approach. I think predictive prophecy is not a problem. And I think there's some compelling reasons as to why Isaiah would be a unit. So you can chase that down if you'd like to. I had some resources put on the NBC sermon series webpage. And so those are up there if you want to dive a little deeper into those issues. You can see an article from an encyclopedia on there that you can read and then there's a couple different podcasts that are worth your time that will dive deeper into some of these background issues I would highly recommend if you're loving this study and you want to go deeper those are some resources to help you do that

Bob:

that's wonderful so what is the is there a does it make a difference in terms of what Isaiah means depending on the position that you take so what's the big deal about who wrote it

Dave:

in terms of interpretation I think There is a school of thought that you can actually interpret the book in its final form regardless of the view that you take. This is the position that Brevard Childs takes, even though he might acknowledge the critical scholar's point of view. He still says, what we have here is a book, it's a unit, and it was put together in a specific way with a design, and so we should still think about, in terms of correctly interpreting it, what is the final form telling us from beginning to end and why why is that in the middle? And so I think the best way to interpret Isaiah is, is his model that just looks at the whole book because we don't have any copies of fragments. So I think that's, the best way to go about interpretation, in my opinion.

Bob:

Okay, good. So that's who wrote the book. Was there any other things that you studied that you think are worthy of bringing up that you didn't mention in the sermon?

Dave:

Yeah. I will just say one of the things I enjoyed doing was just finding out how many times the New Testament has quoted Isaiah. So I referred to some of those in the sermon, but if you wanted a more thorough list, there's a resource on our website that'll help you chase down the different quotations and also allusions to Isaiah. in the New Testament because there's a lot of them. So you can check that out too.

Bob:

That's wonderful. So maybe last thing, Pastor Dave, just tell us, what are you excited about in journeying through Isaiah? We're going to be here for like four months. So what are you wetting your appetite to dig into? You know, I think

Dave:

there's some beautiful passages that we know parts of them. We know bits and pieces of the verses, but we don't really know the full context. And I think it's important to go back and see what this meant to the people of Isaiah's day and how that directly bridges to our day number two I think there's a theme of justice that's going to be stretching for us Isaiah is very concerned with the marginalized with the oppressed with the widow with the orphan and to follow God means to care for those who are underserved and so I think that's going to be an important thing for us to be learning about and I'm excited to see how God stretches us there we're going to talk a lot about justice what it means and what it doesn't mean. That's part of the underground sessions and what we're going to be doing in October. So I'm excited about that. And then generally speaking, I just love the Bible. So it's just kind of fun to do a deep dive into a prophetic book. And this is going to be a great study. Some of the most memorable and memorizable passages in the whole Bible are from the book of Isaiah.

Bob:

There you go. Well, if you want to learn more about Isaiah, that's what our next sponsor will tell us about. So I'm going to let you, Pastor Dave, give us the next Body Life sponsor

Dave:

This podcast is sponsored by the Isaiah ESV Journal. You can get this in two different styles, either black or with a floral cover. Don't think that just having a floral cover means anything about your gender. Men can have floral covers too. Tim told me that was totally fine. If you can wear a floral tie, you can have a floral cover. Yeah, it's just decorative. And we have got those for you with no shipping and a little bit of a discount. They're $5. They're available. You can pick one up on Sunday and we would love to provide you with that. The reason why that's important is because it's a great place to just keep track of all God is teaching you throughout this sermon series over the next four months. So I encourage you to pick one up and make good use of it. They're available here at the church or pick one up Sunday as you follow along in the series. And they will be very happy if you give them a home.

Bob:

There you go. All right. So now we've come to the home stretch. We've run the marathon we're out of breath and now it's time for the final sprint so Noah right here is going to give us the theology sprint we're going to vote whether we're going to give it back to him so we'll see

Dave:

oh that's not available for today's episode that will be effective immediately starting next week

Bob:

all right well

Dave:

we are

Bob:

it would make him think wisely about what questions he asks if there was a possibility of that happening that's true it would checks and balances

Noah:

all right well it's been a few months so we've had a lot of time to think up of a good theology sprint question so this week's theology sprint question is, what are the genders of each member of the Trinity? What is the gender of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Is it male, female, both, or neither?

Dave:

Okay. Well, I think we have to say neither. We all know that God is referred to as Father, and we know that Jesus was a male when he walked the earth, and sometimes you have feminine imagery that's used to describe God, but I don't think we want to put onto the God of all creation the simple categories of gender which are limited to categories of a creature although I think we learned something about the character of God through those particular categories there's something about fatherliness that teaches us something about God there's also something about motherliness that sometimes teaches us about God too like Jesus says I want to gather you like a hen gathers her chicks or things like that like Hosea says like a mom writes So there are images in the Bible that are gender specific that are helpful, but we don't want to refer to God as a boy or God as a girl. Although I would be super uncomfortable with somebody taking the father passages of the Bible and like replacing those with like mother passages. I think that's an error. I don't think that that's fair. I think if it says father, we should translate it as father. And there's a reason why Jesus taught us to pray our father. I don't think that's fair. I think we should just stick with the text there. They're not interchangeable. And I guess I feel like in today's day and age, we have to make that really clear. There are some people who like to put on the Holy Spirit a feminine category. I actually don't think that's fair. I recently read someone's dissertation on the coming of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room Discourse, which talks about how the Holy Spirit will be sent from the Father and the Son. And there's a an interesting thing in Greek where you have to match gender with the antecedent that the pronoun is going to be used or the demonstrative pronoun. So the spirit there, some people say it's neuter, and some people say it's feminine, and there's a debate there. But actually what's going on there is there's two words for the word spirit is neuter, but then the word paraclete is actually... For those of you who don't

Bob:

know Greek, neuter means literal neutral

Dave:

yeah right so it's it's the word he when he says I will send you another helper or I will send you another comforter that the paraclete passage then he says he but it's referring back to the spirit which is neuter so some people said oh wait look it doesn't match so like he's clearly using he as a male pronoun but it's referring back to the spirit which is a neuter it's not it doesn't have a gender new so numa but It's actually not referring to the pneuma. It's referring back to the word paraclete, which is masculine. So anyway, there's a debate about that, but I thought that dissertation was pretty persuasive on that.

Bob:

Yeah. But to be clear, though, we wouldn't be okay with people praying to Mother God. No. Right. And then the other thing is that when Jesus came, Jesus came manifested as a man. We're not going to say that Jesus is gender fluid. He's male or female. In the end, incarnation he came as a human male to earth yeah so yeah does that answer the theology sprint question Noah that answers it all right

Speaker 01:

good

Bob:

well glad you tuned in for our first episode of behind the pulpit for season four September it's under the belt we'll be back next week and I think I'll be hosting again and then we're going to be talking about Isaiah the first chapter of Isaiah getting into some justice themes we hope you have a wonderful week go check out those body life sponsors they're all wonderful and we will see you same bat time, same bat channel next week right here.