Behind The Pulpit

A Tale of Two Charlies

• Millington Baptist Church • Season 4 • Episode 3

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This week, Pastor Bob and Pastor Dave dive deep into Isaiah 6, God’s holiness, Isaiah’s life-changing encounter, and what it means to say “Here I am, send me.” They also reflect on the massive Charlie Kirk memorial service, offering pastoral insight on faith, politics, and forgiveness in a moment that has captured the nation’s attention. Plus, hear about the Truth Rising documentary, our own upcoming documentary: In the Wake of Helene, and yes...the beloved Book War is back.

And that’s just the first half. We’ll show you how to join the Millington Bible Memory group, preview key fall events, and close with a rapid-fire Theology Sprint tackling one of the hardest questions about the cross: how could Christ’s short time on the cross pay an eternal debt? It’s thoughtful, timely, and packed with next steps you can take right now. Join us for a warm, high-energy conversation designed to encourage, challenge, and inspire.

***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/1FAIpQLSd2yue85Om86ru2uPGo0s2A84ffjk5DMDIL-y6UFCEHQJoK9Q/viewform?usp=header

Truth Rising Documentary
https://youtu.be/XXc5IhgSZkg?si=vFCDJtaFL9QHs-fE
In The Wake of Helene
https://youtu.be/TS-44zcSPxk
Faith Explored
https://millingtonbaptist.org/faith-explored-2025/
Operation Christmas Child
https://millingtonbaptist.org/operation-christmas-child-2025/
Underground Sessions
https://millingtonbaptist.org/underground-sessions-october-2025/
Walking in Unity Leadership Workshop
https://millingtonbaptist.org/unity-leadership-workshop/


Music
"Ventura"
Morgan Taylor
U76EPPNJDYZYU0Y7

Dave:

Hey guys, welcome to Behind the Pulpit. We are so excited to be with you once again. Here we are and it is September 22nd and we are ready to come into your device, come into your household, come onto your desktop, wherever you're streaming this. Welcome. We have a great show for you planned. We've got some things to talk about with regards to the book of Isaiah as well as a lot happening in the life of our body. Summer is coming to a close. Tomorrow is the official first day of fall, the autumnal evening. Equinox is upon us. And so we're going to be seeing some little less daylight and we're going to be creeping towards the winter here.

Bob:

What's up, Pastor Bob? It's my one time. Yeah. No. No.

Dave:

Harvest moons?

Bob:

Is that what they are? I don't know. But the ones that turn red. Yeah. That's a harvest moon.

Dave:

Yeah, I don't know that those are on a regular cycle, but they do happen. Well, they often

Bob:

happen in September in relation with the fall feasts, right?

Dave:

Not necessarily. It could be any time. No. Yeah.

Bob:

I remember recently them

Dave:

happening a lot in September. You've been reading too much John Hagee. All right, so what's going on? We got a lot going on. I just came back from a ministry opportunity in Long Beach Island. You did? How was it? It was good. Friday, I went up a little early and got a chance to escape onto the shore. It was about 85 degrees. It was like a summer day, Friday. You were

Bob:

doing some beach evangelism and handing out water

Dave:

on the beach, huh? Something like that. It's good to get away. It was an opportunity to preach through the life of David, which we haven't done in like three years. So I thought it was appropriate. You know, last week you were talking about the Jonathan David issue with Saul and what are they going to say about you when you die. And that seemed to be top of mind. And then yesterday I was preaching about the problem of revenge and how does God want us to relate to our enemies, which also seemed to be very relevant culturally. Yes. House of David is coming up

Bob:

soon. Two weeks. October 5th, the same night as our Underground, so we'll have to watch it maybe on Monday.

Dave:

That's a conflict of interest. I don't think I'm coming to the Underground. I'm sorry, Bob. I can't miss that.

Bob:

We should watch it before we record behind the pulpit. Oh,

Dave:

I'll be staying up very late that night. Cool. Couple things here. We had an event Friday night that was drawing some interest. Very well attended. Truth Rising, the documentary that's been put out by it's a combination right of the Colson what's the name of the

Bob:

organization so Focus on the Family and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview Colson Center for Christian Worldview so basically the way they explain it is that Focus on the Family funded it and it was a several million dollar project and it definitely showed in the production value and the Colson Center curated the script and the cinema how the script was put together

Dave:

And it featured Os Guinness, right, who we've had as a guest here.

Bob:

Os Guinness was the narrator, yes. Os Guinness, Katie Faust, who we've had here.

Dave:

Love her.

Bob:

And then Jack Phillips, who I know from my Colorado days. Masterpiece cake shop. Masterpiece cake shop. John Stonestreet, who obviously, he's the president of the Colson Center, so I've seen him, we've seen him kind of walking by us at conferences.

Dave:

Can we talk about how awesome he is? He just kind of, off the cuff, he can get up and answer any worldview question that comes his way I don't know how much scripting he does for like the breakpoint podcast but it seems like he's just gifted to talk very extemporaneously the Lord has wired him in such a way I mean at that conference I saw him just follow any speaker get up there and like sneakers and a t-shirt and just but he's very professional but he's sort of casual in the way that he can just kind of banter and go ask the most important questions about what was said and Really gifted guy. John Stonestreet.

Bob:

Talked about them, talked about Chloe Cole and the detransitioning issue. She was in the film and a few others, but it was super well done, really well produced. I had a couple people say the first half of the film felt very like, man, this is dark, we're hopeless, but then the second half really takes you into... Why

Dave:

did I come out here? I thought there was ice cream and...

Bob:

Second half leading into the gospel hope, what we're called to do and how God can use us and There's some super inspiring stories. So I definitely encourage you to go watch it. It's on YouTube.

Dave:

So we had what? How many people come out? We had a

Bob:

hundred folks here. You

Dave:

guys had some ice cream? We had some ice cream. What was the favorite ice cream?

Bob:

We had the Neapolitan spread. So it was vanilla, strawberry chocolate, lots of toppings. Amy put it together. They got those big old tubs. So John Batone and Alan Smith and Christy were helping to dish out the ice cream. People were grabbing that, eating it. Wow. My kids were eating it. kids enjoyed the Oreo toppings.

Tim:

Karen Frazano was awesome.

Bob:

Oh, that's right, Karen. That's right.

Dave:

Shout out, Karen. Thank you.

Bob:

I was afraid I was going to miss somebody.

Dave:

So is there any ice cream left?

Bob:

Apparently. I think there is. I'm not sure

Tim:

how many people could have that. Do you think Amy could bring us some ice cream mid-show?

Bob:

Well, if you text her, I bet she would come down here with the ice

Tim:

cream. That could be funny. I'll see what I can do here.

Dave:

So Truth Rising, if you didn't get it, just search Truth Rising on YouTube. Take the time to watch that documentary. But thank you guys for serving and for helping and for coming out. out to a cool event, which reminds me that another cool event happened last summer, and we want to highlight that. Our youth took a missions trip down to North Carolina to do a lot of rebuilding and cleanup after Hurricane Helene, which happened way back in 2024, but the damage continues to be a problem. So one of our church attendees, one of our youth, one of the teens who also did an internship here last summer, Hannah McLaughlin, has taken some time to put together a documentary about the missions trip and that's going to be premiering this week and so the name of the documentary is in the wake of Helene and we hope that you will check this out it's going to be premiering Friday night and so that's going to be cool thank you Hannah for your hard work on that and we hope that this is a little bit more of a deep dive in terms of what our youth group did in their missions trip this year so premiere this week make sure you tune in Tim anything else else you want to add about that

Tim:

yeah sure it is will be on our YouTube channel I'm gonna have the link it to it in the description so yeah five o'clock on Friday get to your YouTube app on your computer your phone or your TV it's about just over 19 minutes really cool make sure you check it out

Bob:

link to that link to truth rising you got a lot of documentaries to watch this week

Tim:

we're really going hard on the show notes this season folks if you hadn't if you haven't figured it out already the show notes are crazy

Dave:

click the show notes right now Just see all the hard work Tim does on the show notes. All right, so that brings us to our most important, most famous segment or infamous segment in the news. All right, Pastor Bob. Well, where do we begin? There's a lot of things that have occurred here in this new cycle. Lots

Bob:

in introduction. Many things do occur every single day. It seems like more things continue to occur. So

Dave:

let's just start

Bob:

with the part

Dave:

that's going to get us into the most trouble. Yesterday, there was a memorial service for Charlie Kirk down in Arizona. They put together a program within like three or four days, and the team at Turning Point USA, I think, did a good job production-wise of figuring out how to have this many musicians this many speakers and this many people in one location I think the stadium is like 60,000 or something like that and then they had alternative seating outside and it was a huge turnout maybe the biggest turnout for anybody who's ever experienced a tragic assassination in the history of our country for their memorial service so it was yesterday afternoon I tuned in around 2 o'clock but they had already started when I tuned in it was like Brandon Lake was already singing I said what did I miss the beginning but I guess they had some pre worship um prelude stuff going on officially the bagpipes started at 2 eastern time and they didn't wrap up till like i don't know 6 45 or something like that it was

Bob:

like five hours past

Dave:

it was a long memorial service i don't know if any of you guys saw that or hung on for the whole thing but there's a lot of different speakers a variety of different um artists everybody from worship um bands like chris tomlin brandon lake as i mentioned and then there was well-known american politicians there was Marco Rubio was there, J.D. Vance, of course, President Trump. There was also Christian speakers and apologists such as Frank Turek and actually Charlie Kirk's pastor, Pastor Rob, opened up the service with a pretty clear gospel presentation. I thought it was solid, and he invited people to embrace Christ as Lord by taking a stand for him in that moment. And I noticed people did respond to his gospel call That was a pretty significant event. And the live stream numbers were even bigger. So we're talking about probably millions of people who saw this memorial service yesterday. A place that, of course, was a mixture of different political personalities and then different evangelical Christian personalities. You know, here's the thing about the current conservative platform. It's not monolithic. You have a coalition of different types of people. people that are that are making up this party so and yesterday they were all charged to share the stage which to me felt sometimes like it didn't align perfectly like well that guy probably wouldn't agree with what this guy said and so you had to kind of put up with some of that stuff a couple highlights for me I thought Tucker Carlson's five minutes snippet of what was driving Charlie Kirk's political engagement was outstanding if you haven't seen that please go watch that I think that's a highlight

Bob:

that was taken from conversations behind the scenes with Charlie

Dave:

right

Bob:

right

Dave:

I thought Frank Turek did a terrific job just articulating the clarity of the gospel Frank actually jumped in the back of the SUV and sped off to the hospital so he was with Charlie in his final minutes describing that horrific scene

Bob:

he's got a whole hour podcast describing the aftermath

Dave:

yeah so that's worth it if you want to hear like a first-hand might be another

Bob:

thing to note in the show notes there Tim

Dave:

yeah by Vice President J.D. Vance basically said, she knows had a heart for specifically college age students and specifically young men. His target was to reach out and try to impact young men in his generation. And then she said, and you know, the person who took his life was a young man. And then she said, and I forgive him because that's what Christ did. And that's what Christ also commands us to do. And that's what Charlie Kirk, my husband would do. And that was a very powerful moment. She received a standing ovation for the that bold statement of forgiveness, which is an amazing thing that Christ calls us to actually not treat our enemies as they deserve, but to remember how God treated us when we were his enemies and actually return evil with good. And I was spellbound when she said that. So pretty powerful service. There were some things said that made me absolutely cringe. So I'm sorry about those things. Some of them were said by our president and I'm like, Man, I really wish you didn't say that. But, you know, she gets up there and says, I'm going to love my enemies. And he gets up there and says, I hate my enemies. I'm like, OK, well, at least at

Bob:

least he admitted that they disagreed.

Dave:

Yeah. There's a little incongruency here. And I also thought that he unnecessarily took the microphone and did a little chest beating with some political things that didn't need to be said at a memorial service. But that's who Trump is. Yeah. Like him or not, this is who our president is. A lot of stuff that we agree on, a lot of some stuff that we don't agree on. So what was your experience yesterday watching the memorial service? Well, I mean,

Bob:

it's similar. I mean, I also enjoyed, I think you didn't mention Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, all of them had kind of, you know, gospel themes kind of woven through. I think the disconnect for some people is with Charlie Kirk is that he's, yes, he definitely was a political figure. And some people think, well, we shouldn't comment on that. But he also had a very, very vibrant Christian message. And I think for some people, it's hard to kind of put those two things together, that if you're doing this and you're doing this, they can't go together. They must be separate. And he had a way of bringing those two things together, whether you agreed with his politics or not. I mean, I heard videos of him very clearly articulating a gospel message that we would very much preach.

Dave:

Better than I could do,

Bob:

actually. So, and I think, excuse me, having heard some people talk about him, one of my favorite quotes that I've read over the couple of is from David Bonson, The Economist, and he said, there's just a lot of things that Charlie would say that would just drive me crazy, but also the thing that I saw was the growth of him over the years, that what he was doing at, you know, 22, 25 is not the same. Like, he was on this growth trajectory path, and then he made the comment to say that all the things that he, David Bonson, has done that are meaningful occurred in the last 15 years, he felt, and he's now 51. So just, I would not want to be judged, he said, based on 25-year-old David Bonson, but on 51-year-old David Bonson. And so Charlie Kirk, of course, now doesn't have the ability to live that long and continue to grow and mature. But he was growing, and he was definitely having a major, major impact. And I think anytime somebody's bold about something in particular, there's usually going to be a stark response to that. He wasn't trying to ride the fence. He was trying to stand firm on certain things that he felt were his convictions. And the thing that also What also struck me quite a bit was his desire to engage with his opponents, with people that disagreed with him. And I think that's being overshadowed a bit in some of the commentary on him. some of the race and the crime issues in the country and talk and have a dialogue even though they didn't agree and that's one of the things that Charlie Crook's been criticized for specifically people are calling him a racist and this and that and here you have this information that he's trying to reach out to his somebody who very much disagrees with him to have a conversation civilly so that I found pretty interesting and all this testimony about people that knew Charlie behind the scenes seems to attest that that's the type of person he was.

Dave:

Yeah. There's a lot of misinformation. You know, one of the things Charlie said is he's not a big fan of the term empathy. That he has an issue with that. And that has kind of made the news. Oh my gosh, Charlie Kirk doesn't believe in empathy. And I think taken out of context, that can sound pretty harsh and maybe unchristian. But when you actually go back and listen to his quote and you realize what he said, it actually does start to make sense and so there's this concept that's been talked about recently through Canon Press through Ali Beth Stuckey called toxic empathy and I think he was more talking about that so

Bob:

also Joe Rigney that's part of the Doug Wilson crew wrote a book called the sin of empathy and they were going after this this concept that's been weaponized

Dave:

right yeah and so what basically that concept I don't know if you want to take a stab at it explaining, or I can? What is toxic empathy? Or what is the sin of empathy? My

Bob:

understanding is that they're using empathy as a way to silence people. That you basically can't disagree with me. That it's unloving to disagree with me. You're not being empathetic. You're not putting yourself in my shoes. And if I understand correctly, their argument is that no, I can understand where you're coming from, but that doesn't mean that I'm still going to agree with you. We can still disagree and still... come together and have a conversation.

Dave:

Furthermore, I think what the point there is, is if you focus your empathy only on one group and you lose sight of how that decision or policy might affect other groups, you're not actually being empathetic towards the totality of people who maybe need to be considered. So I'll give you an example of empathy. So CNN came out like two weeks ago when there was that horrific knife murder on the train in Charlotte. And CNN actually said this man was hurting. Okay, so maybe that's true. But empathy for one can mean cruelty for another. So, you know, there was a policy issue being debated about, you know, when should we allow parole and when should we allow certain crimes to be, you know, punishable. And to always lean towards empathy sometimes forgets the fact that you might be putting other people in danger. Or take, for example, the abortion issue. If you're empathetic for the unwed pregnant mom, and that's all you can see, so you want to give her complete freedom to terminate her pregnancy, you're losing sight of the empathy that you need to have for the unborn child and so forth, things like that. Katie Faust would say regarding the parenting issue, like if you're only empathetic towards adults who don't have their parenting desires being met, you're losing sight of the empathy you need to have for the kids that are now being robbed of their mother or father with this policy.

Bob:

She would say their rights are being violated by choices of

Dave:

adults. Right. That's the kind of empathy Charlie was critiquing, that it's simplistic empathy and it's not something that he would be in favor of. That's one of the things I've noticed. It's kind of a lot of misinformation going around out there. Please do your homework. Please check that stuff out. But the story continues to be in the news. It's a very big, seems like a watershed moment. The news cycle kind

Bob:

of rolls on like a tumbleweed in the desert. It does. It keeps going. It does. Where it stops. Round and round it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

Dave:

There was another story that Noah was wanting to talk about with regards to what happened this week. Can you break this story in, Noah?

Noah:

Yeah. Yeah. So there's been some news about a very famous actor named Charlie Sheen. Two and a half men. Two and a half men. I actually never watched that show. Well, actually, I have never seen anything with Charlie Sheen. Major League. Yes.

Bob:

Major League. This is way before your time. He was in a lot of movies. He was like 80s, 90s, was in a lot

Noah:

of stuff. He's huge. He's

Bob:

huge. He was the wild thing in Major League.

Noah:

So for those who don't know Charlie Sheen, he was obviously once this absolutely mega actor. I think at one point he was actually the highest paid actor in the world at one point. And he also had a very bad turn of life, you know, substance abuse, addictions, life choices that led to his kind of downfall And that was several years ago. But recently, he had a documentary come out where he opens up about all his mistakes in his life, and he kind of shares everything. And he's also been on a few podcasts recently. And he's really turned... Number one, he's really turned his life around, which is really cool to see someone who reached a really low point, but now he's on a better path now, which is really cool. But one of the things that I found really fascinating was when he was sharing his story on this one podcast, though, was listening to, he was saying how when he was at his very low point with addictions, bad decisions, all that stuff, that all the people around him and all the media and all the world were seeing everything that was going on in his life and they allowed it to happen. People were even admiring him for the lifestyle that he was doing and no one came to him in love and told him, you're making bad decisions, you're destroying your life, et cetera. And he's saying that looking back on everything, he was he and also the person who's talking in the podcast said how that is what he really needed in his life was for someone to come to him in love and say you're destroying your life by these decisions and lifestyle you're living and you need to you know go a different path you need to change it and i thought from a christian worldview that that was really powerful to hear that because i think a lot of stuff we've been talking on this podcast and also in some of our underground sessions lately it's kind of that tension that we feel in our culture right now between wanting to love someone but also wanting to bring them truth and i thought this was a really good example of what happens if you don't love someone and you don't bring someone truth in their life in love to try and get them on the right path so I thought that was a really fascinating story

Dave:

I'm glad to hear that his life is being turned around but it brings up the question like what is love you know is it always just affirming and being supportive or does sometimes love call us to say something that's hard to say or a little confrontational you know Proverbs 27 6 says faithful are the wounds of a friend but profuse are the kisses of an enemy so i think we need to be willing to be wounded sometimes by our friends who are truly our friends uh and that's actually what love is as opposed to like toxic empathy right is i'm always just going to be empathetic towards this person who's going through this or that instead of recognizing sometimes you need to bring in the Holy Spirit inspired truth that needs to be spoken there

Bob:

isn't there a whole training in the Stephen ministry course about sympathy versus empathy in the mud pit that illustration

Dave:

yeah there is yeah they use empathy in a much different way than Stucky does they see it as a positive but they're not talking they're not endorsing what Stucky is critiquing at all so but first Corinthians 13 love does not rejoice in evil but the Right. So I think there's does not delight in evil, but rejoicing in the truth. I think we have to figure out what is what is love. So thank you, Noah, for that story. Any other news stories before we move on to the next segment? Are we good?

Bob:

I think we're good for today, Pastor Dave. All right. Guarantee you next week there'll be more news stories.

Dave:

OK, well, this segment is is brought to you by our next adult education opportunity called Faith Explored. You're invited if you'd like to continue the journey that started last spring with regards to Christianity Explored. Lord we are going to have a part two another eight week course is coming up starts Sunday October 5th which is actually like two weeks away during the second hour during the 1045 hour so you can come worship with us at 9 and then head over to the YFMB and be part of this class it'll be a safe environment for you to ask questions and explore faith together that's also being led by Paul and Kathy Wilford as well as I think there's some other leaders involved too that I'm not mentioning right now but that's an opportunity coming up in the life of our church. So check that out. We're looking forward to it. And that brings us to the great book war. We know that you've been waiting like months and months and months for another book recommendation. We know your library shelves are collecting dust and you need something to read. And so Pastor Bob's going to bring us his best shot right now. We need the results

Tim:

and then I'll do my best shot. Of last week. I had a conversation, I must say, with a civilian voter. I'm not going to reveal who they were. They are a fan of the show. But they were asking for a third option, and that to be the none option. So I don't think, to that person, I don't think we're getting enough votes to get, to warrant a none option yet. But he assured me that he was giving Pastor Dave, he was receiving no money from Pastor Dave. As Pastor Dave will take week one here. Yay! Bibles speaks today. Invincing fashion. What

Bob:

did I, what did I?

Tim:

You did, you did the walking in unity book, uh, which I personally voted for. So Bob, that little red pie piece right there. That's, that's Tim. That's, that's me. Um, so I was the first vote and the last vote that voted for Bob. So for those of you who are getting bribed by pastor Dave, uh, that's not okay. We, we, we asked that you, um, stop taking his

Dave:

money. Total fake news, misinformation behind the pulpit should not be a place of spreading that kind of thing. factual error. Well,

Bob:

let me tell you, it seems like the audience has made clear the type of things they desire, but I will not change my recommendations based on the shifting winds. So if I must lose to recommend good books, I will lose.

Dave:

Absolutely. Not me. I'm going to put my finger to the air and whatever winds are blowing, I'm in it for the money. I'm in it to win. So

Tim:

voters, I ask you, are you going to vote for the man who's standing on his convictions or the one who sways with the tide? A sellout, if you will. Pastor Bob, what book do you have for us today? All

Bob:

right. My recommendation this week is a book I'm making my way through as part of a biblical counseling certificate I'm keeping up with, but also because we're going to be doing a series on it in January. It's a book called When Disability Hits Home by Paul Tauches. I believe I said his name right. Johnny Erickson Tada also contributes to the book, and the subtitle is How God Magnifies His Grace in Our Weaknesses and suffering. So this tells the story of, he kind of weaves in his own personal story of his children that have been touched by this, and gives us a good theological read on, you know, if somebody has a disability, whose fault is it? Where's God in the suffering? What's God doing through disability? Does God make mistakes in the womb? And then a bunch of other things in terms of how the church community can come around people when they're touched by this. So I'd highly recommend this book, I'm about halfway through it, and I've just been, I've and blessed by it. And even though I have a child with a disability, I think even if you don't, this is something that will open your eyes in a great, great way. So when disability hits home, that's my recommendation for this week. Check it out. And also, if this is enticing to you, it is only about 120 pages, so it's not a super long book.

Tim:

Pretty digestible. It is a digestible one. Actually,

Bob:

I should say, it is around 100 pages, and then also it's got a discussion guide at the end. So if you want to gather some people together to discuss the concepts. Here it is. Here you go. It's my best shot for this

Dave:

week, Pastor Dave. Seems like a really good book. My book, I forgot at home, but I have a picture of it here. It's called A Phoenix of Women, Puritan Spirituality in the Life of Brilliana Harley. So this book is an obscure collection of 400 letters from the year 1640 to 1650-ish from a woman that was part of the Reformation. A lot of times we think think about the Reformation and we think about Calvin, Luther, Bucer. Well, there was a lot of women too. And Brilliana Harley was an absolute rock star. She grew up in a wealthy household, became well-read. She was familiar with the institutes. She knew the life of Luther and her letters are correspondences with her son, Ned, who was a student at Oxford. And she is encouraging him in a way that is like parenting spiritual formation to continue to keep the Sabbath, to pray, to read scripture to interact with the different scholars this kid Ned's 14 because you went to Oxford when you were 14 back in the 1600s and she's talking to him as a mom and interwoven in there is like her physical health advice for her son like he had some kind of cold and she was telling him to take licorice I guess that's what they used to offer for colds back in the 1600s maybe

Bob:

we've been missing it Pastor David

Dave:

there's some weird cures in here I guess whatever but in the middle of the letter writing in the middle of like the 400 letters she gets attacked and a civil war breaks out in the middle of Britain between the Royalist Party the people who wanted Charles the first to be the king and the head of the state and the parliamentary party that thought that the the Presbyterians and the Puritans should be in power and those two sides were fighting each other and they attacked her house because they the king was saying that her house is some kind of like beachhead for the Puritans and they were hiding out in her castle even though they weren't so she had like a bunch of servants and her kids in the house her husband was was a dignitary he was out traveling and they brought cannons and rifles and grenades to like destroy this woman's castle so she then turns from like mama bear puritan reader calvin expert into like commander of armies soldiers sending people out to destroy the enemy grenades and hold her ground at her castle the brampton brian castle in england which you can still go visit so the letters tell the story and it's absolutely fascinating fascinating I finished it Sunday and I'm like let me look up this castle so I googled the Brampton Bryan Castle in Herefordshire England you can see the ruins there today you can go check it out and they had a website and the family evidently like nine generations later still lives in this castle and they're like they have an email address and like click here if you'd like to talk to us so I clicked the email yesterday I'm like hey my name is Dave what can you tell me about like you know that you your family, the Brilliana Harley legacy. Like where did she get all these books and tell me where I can access more about her. And this morning they wrote me back. They wrote me back saying, you know, this is where we keep most of that stuff. And thanks for reaching out. We're glad that you're interested and, you know, Lord bless you. So that is such an obscure book. I'm guessing most of you would not be interested in that, but like, there's probably some one person out there that's going to watch this podcast and you're going to be like, huh? Now that's an interesting book. So I'm not really going for the majority vote this time. I'm going for the here's something you've never heard of person who needs something fresh. So Brilliana Harley, check her out. The Phoenix of Women. She's an absolute rock star. That's my book. Now we recommend you decide. Let us know what you think. Yes.

Tim:

The book war's

Dave:

on. It's back on.

Tim:

There's 635 of you who watched this or listened to this episode last week and only eight of you voted.

Bob:

Shame on you

Tim:

all. Can we do some quick math there?

Bob:

We want some more

Tim:

engagement here. That's a very low percentage of people. Come on. Come vote. Where can we find the voting link, Tim? It's in the show notes. Okay.

Bob:

Stop what you're doing right now. If more people don't vote, can we fire them? If you scroll down. Push

Tim:

pause. Go vote and then come back. If you scroll down. it's got three asterisks and then it says in all caps vote here and then it'll have three more asterisks and then there's a link to a google form and you'll press that and you'll pick one it takes about five seconds you might be done by now or you just chose not to vote anyway next

Dave:

we have i believe an audience question and uh tim do you want to read the audience question

Tim:

for us yeah but what is what is the

Dave:

audience question brought to us by it is brought to us by the first a word from our sponsor today is the official kickoff of Operation Christmas Child. We are going to be collecting boxes. I hope that you picked up a box yesterday when you were here. If not, there's still some more available. Take it, fill it up with items that are useful, and let this be a gesture of generosity from you to a child in need. As always, every year I call it the missionary in a box. This is a simple way to take the items that you might have or go shopping for some items and share Jesus with somebody who may not even know what they're missing. So OCC, participate, and we'll be collecting here in early November, but now's the chance to get some boxes and help us out. All right, audience question. Tim, somebody had something that they wanted to know about. What did they want to know about?

Tim:

This is actually, I think, one of our first questions that we have ever gotten like this. Most of them are theological or sermon-based. Is this a first? This might be a first. How would

Bob:

you categorize this question, Tim?

Tim:

It's cryptic, starting with a C, and that's That's what the person assigned this question as. From C, the question is, it's not cryptic. I thought there was mention of an NBC Bible memory group. Would you provide more information on how to access that?

Bob:

So this is somebody looking for information, very clear information.

Tim:

Very clear. They are trying to build

Dave:

their own ad. The answer to that question is go to BibleMemory.com or BibleMemory.com app. You can download that either for Apple or Android. And then once you do that, if you just get the free version you can join our group and the name of the group is called Millington Baptist Church and each week we will have the memory verse from Isaiah logged in there to help you memorize and we as a group want to encourage each other to memorize a verse Bob I'm going to put you right on the spot here the verse for this week comes from Isaiah chapter 6

Bob:

verse 3 do you have it holy holy holy is the Lord Almighty the whole earth is full of his glory hey Bob did it very good Good. All right. Memorize that.

Dave:

So that is the memory verse for this week. We hope you guys are memorizing. And that's how to do that. You can also download the app or just do it on your browser. Hopefully that answers your question.

Tim:

Thank you for asking, C. Now go and vote for the book war.

Bob:

There you go. All right. And now I'm going to bring a word from our sponsors. Our big sponsor today, the diamond platinum sponsor today is from our underground sessions, which is occurring on October the 5th, 5 p.m. And what I'm going to tell you right now, I see on the screen on the We'll be right back. There's going to be audience Q&A. There's going to be speaker Q&A. There's going to be an address. We're going to be talking about justice. So come out October the 5th. That's a Sunday night, 5 to 8 p.m. I'm also going to be interviewing them as part of the sermon on Sunday morning. So that might whet your appetite for anybody who's a late adopter. But you will want to be there for this event.

Dave:

Stop what you're doing and go register. Run. Push pause. Don't

Bob:

walk.

Dave:

Run. Whether you're on your phone or your laptop, push pause. Push pause. Go click register on the website and just let us know you're coming. It's really important. And it's coming up soon. And we really need you to register. Like, Bob, do we need them to register? We need

Bob:

them to register also for that and for the Saturday morning event, which we'll be getting to after the sermon.

Dave:

Hold that thought. Register for this right now. Okay. It's in the show notes. It is. Now we come to that part of our show where we go a little deeper into the scriptures. We're all about the Bible here. Everything we do is filtered through the word of God. It informs everything. the pulpit, but it informs pretty much every ministry. So Pastor Bob was on the dock yesterday preaching from one of the most famous scriptures in the whole Bible, Isaiah 6, the dangerous

Bob:

beauty of God. That's me being fearful of the nuclear reactor that is the Lord. So 60-second challenge. All right. What is Isaiah 6 about? Isaiah 6 is about, first and foremost, the holiness of God and how that changes our our lives. And so we looked at Isaiah 6, 1 through 12. We talked about how do we respond to God's holiness, the dangerous beauty of his holiness. And we said there's three things we have to do. Number one, we have to get a proper vision of God, that in order for you to live a life that is pleasing to him, you have to have a proper vision of who he is, and then you get a proper vision of yourself. Second, you'll make an authentic confession of sin, admit that you are a sinner, you need a savior, you need to give your life to the Lord, repent, turn of your ways. And then finally, as that happened, you'll get a clear commission to go. And so we saw Isaiah's commission to go out into God's people and call them back to him. He was an obedient prophet. And so this was all about that. We also got into the three-step story of ruin to redemption that Pastor Dave introduced last week, and we covered this week. We saw that specifically in verses five to eight. And it had that very famous verse who will go for us who will we send and Isaiah says here I am send me so by the way a lot of Isaiah 6 in the Charlie Kirk memorial yesterday apparently all over the place

Dave:

everybody was quoting Isaiah 6 everywhere boom boom boom the here I am send me was a big like scripture that impacted him and his desire to serve God and he feels like he answered that call so encountering God's holiness Isaiah was undone he was ruined when he saw God in all of his glory. What do you think it keeps people today from seeing or sensing the holiness of God in a way that truly humbles them?

Bob:

What keeps them from doing that? Well, one of the things I said in the message, and I think this is true, we can talk about it a bit, is that people don't want to be ruined. I think people don't want to admit their faults, and that's part of our cultural conversation today. Everybody's more interested in pointing out other people's faults in order to lift themselves up and look better than other people. And so that is one of the things that keeps them from admitting that we have a holy God. Also, if you admit that God is holy, that God is the king that means you're not in control of your life and so I you know I want to be the one who who says where I can go what I can do what I should do don't you don't you ever say that you can judge me or even that there's a greater being who can judge me because after all I got to live my truth

Dave:

you talked about this concept of like cult casual spirituality or casual faith tell us more about that what is that

Bob:

that that struck me as I was reviewing revisiting Isaiah 6. Of course, like probably many of you, I've read Isaiah 6 before, memorized it, you know, I've had revisited it many times, but it struck me that people a lot of times, when they're starting churches or they're revisiting their churches, want to create more of this kind of casual atmosphere within the worship environment. We want to make it accessible to people, we want to have, you know, it's okay if you bring your coffee in, it's okay if you, you know, just kind of of dressed down, and not that everybody has to get, you know, dressed up in a three-piece suit, but this is more of the attitude. We've created this attitude of the fact that, do you remember there was a t-shirt back in the day called Jesus is my homeboy? Like, we want to treat God like he's my homeboy, he's my friend, he's the one who's just close to me. And in some senses, God is imminent, he is close to us. But we often emphasize that at the expense of understanding that God is transcendent, he is holy, he is all-powerful, and he is something, he is someone who The Bible calls us to have a healthy fear of, and that is counterintuitive to our modern, postmodern day that we live in. So, you know, we treat the worship service like just another checklist that we do. We treat prayer as something that we, you know, well, maybe we'll pray if, you know, if nothing else works, if my efforts aren't good enough. You know, we treat church and even God as part of a consumeristic exercise, that as long as God works out for me. He answers my prayer in my time. If he gives me the things that I want, then I will give at least a piece of my life to him. But that's really not what holiness is about. Holiness is about showing us that God is all-powerful, that in his presence, we disintegrate. We are shown to be these paltry, sinful beings that need God to come in and take control of our life.

Dave:

Why do you think it was significant that Isaiah mentions in the very first line that this occurred in the year that Uzziah died?

Bob:

Yeah, we talked a little bit about the historical background here, and you had asked the question during the run-through, was this intentionally chronological? So when I went back and reviewed, most of the commentators said, hey, Isaiah may have actually been out preaching, he may have been out doing things and calling people to the Lord before the events of Isaiah 6. And Isaiah 1 1 to 5 in a lot of ways is setting up, at least literarily, the major themes that are going to happen in the rest of the book. So you have scenes of judgment, scenes of condemnation, the future of Israel compared to the future for Israel compared to what actually happens. You know, you have this love song, and then you have all these woes in chapter 5, and what the author, what Isaiah is doing is giving us a background of what was going on at the time. And then you get to Isaiah 6, which is the culmination, or a rather, the resolution of all the tension that was created in the first five chapters. So the first five chapters, you're asking the question, how is God going to redeem sinful, arrogant Israel when they're so rebellious and turning away from him? And Isaiah 6 is the answer. God is going to choose a prophet to bring his word to his people, and then that's going to also get played out in the next five chapters and beyond as we go further into the book. Did that answer your question, or did I... to get part of it.

Dave:

Well, the issue there is that Uzziah, the king is dead, so why does he mention that?

Bob:

Right. So he mentions that specifically because Uzziah did a lot of really, really good things. He made a lot of spiritual reforms. But I think partly why he's mentioning that is to show the contrast between the earthly king dying and then the heavenly king immediately showing up in this vision.

Dave:

Love it.

Bob:

So that's a very stark contrast in just one verse.

Dave:

And What is the significance of Isaiah, or I should say the angels, or the seraphs, whatever you want to call them. I don't know if angels would be the right category, type of angel. Yeah,

Bob:

it's definitely a being. What's the significance

Dave:

of them repeating the word holy the amount of times that they repeated it?

Bob:

Oh, this was a fun part of the message. I will say, admittedly, I did get the idea from R.C. Sproul as I listened to his message on this. So in the Hebrew, when something is repeated three times, it's a literary device called the Trisagion. Can you say that three times fast? Trisagion? I don't know what you're talking about right now. Trisagion. The tri. It's another language. Of course. Yes. Are you speaking in tongues over here? It is the strongest superlative in the Hebrew. God is not just holy. He's not holy, holy. He's holy, holy, holy. And it's equivalent to the English exclamation points. We had some fun with the exclamation point idea. I said, those of you out there that like to use exclamation points, you just need to calm down. We can't have having exclamation points at the end of every single sentence, like when Pastor Dave sends me an email. At the end of every single sentence, it loses its significance. It's supposed to set up apart something as special. By the way, did you ever see that Seinfeld episode with Elaine where she broke up with her boyfriend because he didn't use enough exclamation points, and then she gets called on it later? I

Dave:

forget

Bob:

that. Her boss comes in and says, so interesting, you've added a lot of exclamation points in the edit. As a reminder, you can find the preaching schedule on the website! Wow. Pastor Dave offered an overview of an exposition of Isaiah 1. Right. He's like, get rid of the exclamation points. The period. Period. That's right. That's right. So that's the significance. It is specifically used to draw attention to who God is and put a big exclamation point on his holiness as the central theme of the chapter.

Dave:

I think there's a couple other things repeated in the Bible three times. Like the book of Jeremiah, he says people keep coming to the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. It's very few times. Ezekiel says like ruin, ruin, ruin. I think there's woe, woe, woe in Revelation. But there's never any attribute of God that's ever raised to the third power in that way. So repetition for

Bob:

emphasis. Or as R.C. Sproul mentioned in a good– good contrast in his sermon. We never see God as mercy, mercy, mercy. God is not justice, justice, justice. God is not love, love, love. God is holy, holy, holy. And that's significant.

Dave:

Yeah, that's good. So in terms of the next part of the text, Isaiah gets this, well, the coal thing, which I don't know, the first thing coming to my mind if a seraph being was coming at me with a pot burning coal to like, I don't know if I would be thinking this is how I'm going to be redeemed. But that's actually what happens. And then he answers the call to go. And the call is to basically proclaim the truth about God to the people of his generation. And they are not going to be so receptive towards this particular news. And that's a tough call. And I wonder if you could just comment more on how that part of the passage is specifically challenged Yeah,

Bob:

what is challenging about it, and we did unpack it a little bit, is that Isaiah tells the call in such a way that it's emphasizing its effect on the people that it's coming to. So what we hear is you should go to these people and you should preach, and as a result of your preaching, as a result of your calling them back to repentance and warning them that judgment is coming, you should go to these people and you should preach. Their eyes are not going to be open. Their eyes are actually going to be closed. Their ears, they're not going to be able to hear. They're going to become dull. They're going to not be able to hear. Their hearts are going to be hard. And the striking contrast here is that the message is not something that's going to be easy to hear. It's going to be something that's harder to hear. And again, if you put that in modern language, a lot of times people will preach a, what's been called a watered-down gospel that is meant to make it easier to remove the barriers for people coming to faith. It's very therapeutic, but that's not what we see here in Isaiah 6. I'm going to make this people's heart calloused by your words. Their ears are going to be dull. Their eyes are going to be closed. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. But the emphasis here is that first they have to understand their ruin and their need in order to turn back to God, and yet the people are going to be obstinate. And Isaiah isn't super excited about that message, because you read in verse 11, hey, how long do I need to do this, God? And I sort of picture him saying, okay, how long are you calling me to do this? He almost seems a little skeptical here. And then, of course, in verse 12, God says, until everything is basically laid waste, and then there's going to be a ray of hope that we read about in verse 13.

Dave:

That part of Isaiah 6 is quoted in the gospels, specifically in Mark chapter four, after the parable of the soils. And Jesus basically says, you people are just like the people back in Isaiah's day. And your hearts are just as hard. Your eyes are just as blind. Your ears are just as deaf. You're not able to hear me. And as I was walking my way through Mark, I was helped by an interpretive commentary back then from a theological journal who said what this means is Jesus is quoting Isaiah and Another way to translate that particular section would be this, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, because the last thing they want is to turn and to have their sins forgiven. In other words, that's the issue there. They refuse to listen and reject the truth.

Bob:

Just despite evidence, right? So Jesus is going around, he's performing miracles, he's teaching, he's saying repent for the kingdom of God is here, and their refusal to believe is actually now bringing judgment upon them because they're rejecting the true king

Dave:

yeah sad story although there's a little hope at the end of Isaiah 6 yes there's an image that comes up at the very end

Bob:

an image that Noah wonderfully baked into our graphic into our graphic right there where is it oh the Isaiah graphic come on man

Tim:

it's I got show me the stump I got something close

Bob:

that's good it's there it's a you see the stump the stump is right there there's a there's a a shoot coming up branches are coming and of course it's going to point us to the holy seed which comes from the line of Jesse which ultimately becomes we learn later as the suffering servant in Isaiah 52 and 53 who will come to die on a tree for his people to redeem them of their sins and make atonement for them

Tim:

also pick up the journal if you haven't already

Bob:

and that's right read this amazing book on unroll the Isaiah scroll that's the that's the word of the day

Dave:

awesome anything else from the sermon you wanted to touch on before we wrap up that segment?

Bob:

I don't think so. I thought we had mentioned something before, but no, I think that covered all the stuff we were talking about. Excuse me, other than I think one of the main questions applicationally for us that we emphasize was the call. So who is God calling you to go to? Who are your people? And I would encourage you to be very prayerful about that this week and to not be afraid to be bold for your faith, to go and to speak words even if they're unpopular and even in many cases if it's dangerous because if God is calling you, How can you not go?

Dave:

Very good. Thanks, Pastor Bob. We will continue with Isaiah chapter seven next week, a very famous section that talks about the virgin being with child and giving birth to a son. What does that mean? And what did that mean back in Isaiah's day?

Bob:

So we got a couple of well-known chapters right here in Isaiah.

Dave:

We do. But I bet this is going to be a little bit of a learning when we realize the original context had a certain setting that maybe people are unfamiliar with. familiar with. So Isaiah 7 next week. And speaking of people answering the call, Monique Dusson and Krista Bontrager have answered God's call on their lives, serving with the Center for Biblical Unity. They're going to be coming, not just for the underground sessions, but the Saturday before, they're going to be doing a leadership workshop. They might be doing a brain workout. There's going to be a workshop, and we wanted you to know about that, too. That's an opportunity to hear hear some in-depth teaching about the topic of biblical unity. Bob,

Bob:

anything else we should say about that part? A biblical unity, which has broad ranging implications, but their book is specifically focused on racial unity and what that looks like from a biblical perspective. And as an enticement, I will just tell you that this, we're not charging for this event. We want to empower leaders. We are going to give you for free a copy of their book, and we're going to give you breakfast. So if you want free breakfast, you want a free book, just come for that and you'll be blessed. by the teaching sign up sign up sign up boom that is repeated three times and that was exclamation point

Dave:

we've come to the sprinting time it is time to run it's time to get our blood pumping it's time to get the juices flowing it's time to do a little bit of sprinting anxiety induced theological question answering

Tim:

just want to make you a

Dave:

special time of torture that we enjoy every single week Just want to make you aware.

Bob:

I saw I made the sprint last week.

Noah:

Yes, it was a big hit on YouTube.

Tim:

We still do not have the behind the pulpit reverse cards available yet. Noah and I are still in negotiations about that. You guys will once again have to answer the question.

Noah:

But we do have a question, and here's the question. So this week's Theology Sprint question is, it is often said that Jesus took the punishment for our sin in our place. Is the punishment for sin eternal, never-ending punishment slash death? If so, why Why was Jesus' punishment slash death... Sorry. If so, why wasn't Jesus' punishment and death eternal if he took the full punishment for sin? Why was the punishment three days for Jesus, but never ending slash eternal for unsaved mankind?

Dave:

Well, thank you for answering that question. It's like a question that I have wrestled with for years, and I did not get a satisfactory answer in many different college classes that I asked the teacher of the question and I just I was really struggling with that because it didn't seem like apples and apples didn't seem like tit for tat didn't seem to make sense to me and I finally figured out why it happened the way it happened by studying the cross of Christ propitiations and the substitutionary atonement a little bit further in depth through the cross of Christ by Stott and other people have helped me understand that the reason why that one man sacrifice for just a few short hours on the cross and a few short days in the tomb could pay for a multitude of men who actually deserved eternal suffering in hell was because that one man's sacrifice was an infinite sacrifice and that one man's life was worth more than all of the rest of their lives put together because that was not just a man sacrificing his life on the cross that was God who took on human flesh with infinite worth and infinite value and so actually It was an overpayment. Actually, the life of Christ and his death on a cross and his few short hours suffering and his few short days on the tomb was much more than would have ever been required of God to fully satisfy justice on behalf of sinners because of who Christ was. He is the eternal, infinite, holy God. I love to tell the story, and this is longer than the sprint, but of a lie and the prophets of Baal back then there was a contest and you may recall that it was like my God can beat your God and the prophets of Baal like could not call fire down and no one answered and then Elijah's like okay I'm gonna get up and he pours water all over the wood and all over the sacrifice and then prays to Yahweh the one true living God Yahweh sends fire and the fire licks up all of the water and completely dries out all the sacrificial altar because always in the Old Testament the judgment was greater than the sacrifice but in the New Testament when Jesus suffered on the cross and cried out it is finished he took all of the wrath of God and after it was fully paid out he still was alive and he cried out it is finished because only one time in the history of the world has the sacrifice been actually greater than the judgment and that's the sacrifice of Christ so that's how that's possible I hope that answered that question

Bob:

yeah I love the First Kings 18 I remember having my eyes open to that in Lou Bird's Old Testament class at Eastern University Dr. Bird he read that and I remember tears being my eyes about yeah it's just amazing the Lord he is God the Lord he is God people turning their hearts back to him

Dave:

amen all right well thank you guys for the show. That's a wrap. Pastor Bob, anything else we want to talk about before we wrap it up? Nope, I'm good. Gotta go. Let's take a run. Thank you guys for watching today. We'll see you next time on Behind the Pulpit.