Behind The Pulpit
Our weekly pastors podcast where we discuss fun new stories, church events, previous sermons. As well as answering interesting questions from you!
Behind The Pulpit
Justice Recap
This week, the team debriefs a massive ministry weekend featuring guest speakers Monique Duson and Krista Bontrager from the Center for Biblical Unity. From panel discussions to powerful teachings on biblical justice and racial unity, the weekend was full of rich insights and honest questions—and maybe just a little too much leftover bagel.
Dave and Bob recap the key themes, unpack Krista’s four pillars of justice (evidence, truth-telling, impartiality, and accountability), and explore how Isaiah 9 connects justice, righteousness, and messianic hope. You’ll also hear how God might be working in Gen Z through campus revivals, baptisms, and a surprising Barna study that’s flipping generational church attendance stats on their head.
The conversation continues with a spirited Book War showdown (with a possible dynasty in the making), the return of “House of David” and a surprising take on the gospel as told through decapitated giants, and an intriguing theory about whether Golgotha got its name from Goliath of Gath. The pastors also weigh in on recent controversies at Biola and the Andy Stanley conference, answer audience questions about prophetic parallels between Micah and Isaiah, and wrap it all up with a theology sprint on the “age of accountability.” Packed with news, theology, laughter, and more rabbit trails than you can count, this episode is everything you love about Behind the Pulpit—and then some.
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Hey everybody, welcome to Behind the Pulpit. We've had a such a busy weekend here at Millington Baptist Church. A lot of good ministry going on. It is October 6th. It's still sunny summer weather out there. We've got a great show for you. We're going to debrief a little bit of our Isaiah stuff. We're going to talk about the weekend and so much more, including answering your questions. Thanks for joining us on our show. And I'm here with the man himself, the Coals and Fellow, the legendary Bob Erbig.
Bob:Woof. I'm on I'm waiting on beta breath over here, Pastor Dave, for the questions you're going to throw at me, the thoughts you're going to bring. You're in the driver's seat today. You better watch out. It's always a little scary. It's kind of like uh driving into a forest. That's what we're going to find. Glad to have you guys.
Dave:So let's start out by talking a little bit about the weekend.
Bob:I was going to say I noticed you changed your shirt from last week, so that's good. Bro upset at me.
Dave:If you want the gloves to come off, there's a lot of material I could be using about you.
Bob:I did what I asked you like four times to do the uh the QA on Saturday night. Couldn't remember.
Dave:All right. So we had a big weekend here, Bob. What's going on?
Bob:Walking in unity. Big weekend.
Dave:Krista Bon Traeger, Monique Dusan, Saturday morning leadership training, Sunday evening underground sessions, panel discussions, Sunday morning. We made it.
Bob:We did. Not without some scars, but we made it through. It was a good weekend. It was a good weekend. As we were debriefing and staff meeting today, we were uh amazed at how much food is left over. So, Amy, if you if you were looking, if you're hungry, Amy Huber is the person to talk to because she loves to get food for And the food was good. And it was quite good. Pastor Dave enjoyed the food.
Speaker 00:What did you get that? Was that from Saturday morning?
Bob:Yep.
Speaker 00:No way.
Bob:That that is that is totally like that that Seinfeld episode with George Costanza and the uh and the ice cream. How long are we gonna have the picture on the screen? It's gone. It's never coming back. Well, that was I told you, we just we just drove in the forest and found something. It's like uh my friends at home.
Dave:It's like a trap. I'm here, I can't escape. They make fun of me from all angles. It's not right, man.
Bob:I'm like a punching bag. I'm just wondering when the uh when the cue the cue the the music for the for the day there. I think it already happened.
Dave:Everyone's favorite thing is to make fun of Pastor Dave. So anyway, anyway, okay. So sorry, Pastor Dave.
Bob:Amy, we did get so just a shout out to our local businesses. So we did get uh the breakfast from Obagel, uh Obagel down in Dewey Meadow. They they make some good food. Um and apparently, even if you don't like carbs, you can get some uh some meat down there. And then we got the Sunday evening dinner from Oyaz, uh Turkish Grill over in Millington. They have been very good to us uh for our last number of events. But it was it was a good weekend. We we talked, yes, Saturday morning. Uh Monique talked about walking in unity, the concepts in their book. How do you actually have proper biblical unity, especially across the race discussion? We had a good turnout, lots of good questions. Uh I learned quite a bit from that. And then Sunday night we had our underground, where Krista talked about uh about what what is biblical justice, and I thought gave a pretty helpful framework for that discussion. And we had a lot of questions that people wrote in that we we got to to get to the meat of some of those things. I couldn't get to all the questions, but I think we got to some pertinent ones. Um so I I was I was pretty pleased. It was exciting. By the way, I just I just very much enjoyed Krista and and Monique, and I would just encourage you to check out their ministry, Center for Biblical Unity.com.
Dave:Follow them on all of the socials.
Bob:They have and all the socials. You can maybe by TikTok, but everything else.
Dave:Are they on TikTok? Couple different shows.
Timp:I think so.
Dave:There's the Center for Biblical Unity podcast, then there's also the Theology Mom podcast. Monique has one herself. There's like a couple different ways you can get content.
Bob:They got lots of content. So if you need some help right there, boom.
Dave:They were going live Sunday afternoon from their hotel room talking about the Biola articles of faith regarding gender. They just they're feeding the beast.
Bob:That's another in the news thing. I saw Lisa Childers posting on that. It's Biola's uh Biola. Wow. Okay, we'll talk about it.
Timp:They are not on TikTok, but okay, good.
Dave:Yeah. Well, hey, Krista and Monique, if you're watching, it was such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for joining us, and uh, we hope you have traveled back safely to sunny California. Now, uh want to give a quick little commercial. This this podcast is uh some some sponsored by a certain uh group of or ministries here at Millington Baptist Church. The first one is our prayer room. All right, so make sure you have uh prayer room with the information you need to pray. We get together at 8 a.m. Sunday mornings, 202, 204. Uh calling all men, calling all women. We would love to have you join us to spend some time in prayer. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful and effective. Want you to be aware of that.
Bob:Sunday mornings. That's our most uh lucrative sponsor for our show, I think, Pastor Dave. Okay. Yeah. Spiritually lucrative right there. Are we a for-profit podcast or nonprofit podcast? I will take all the heavenly blessings we can get. All of our sponsors.
Timp:We are only sponsored by in-house ministries. Yeah.
Dave:It's kind of weird because you watch other podcasts, they actually are advertisers that are like, you know, supporting. We're just sort of, you know, highlighting things.
Bob:This is Dave's way of pushing back against your formatting.
Timp:You have no idea the offer that the prayer room put in to get on the show today.
Bob:Oh man, they did.
Dave:All right. Well, let's talk about our favorite segment, Bob's favorite segment. What's going on in the news? All right, Bob. It's hard to keep up. I know you had a couple stories that you wanted to highlight today. I think you texted me one or two. Why don't you kick it off? What's happening, man? We got revival around the land, we've got a government shutdown, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about.
Bob:What would you choose? Well, let me s let me start here. So I mentioned last week House of David season two premiered uh last night, the first two episodes. I only watched the first one. But I was disappointed to find out when I got on the Amazon Prime. Wait a minute. How late do you stay up? I mean, you were here till like at least nine.
Speaker 00:Uh well, we usually try to get away.
Bob:We we we try to s we usually are in bed by like ten, but we stayed up a little bit later to watch it. Wow. Um yeah, so Well, episode one, how was it? Episode one was the aftermath of Goliath's head getting chopped off. Big, big battle. Israel and Philistines. Okay. Israel won, of course. Um but I did find out that apparently you have to subscribe to the Wonder Project add-on to Amazon. They give you a free one-week trial, but I guess you're gonna have to pay to watch it this time.
Dave:Wait a minute. Are they gonna be releasing the episodes incrementally or are they all out?
Bob:No. They they released the first two. I don't know how many are in the season, but uh I think I think it's usually like eight. So this is not gonna be a free thing.
Dave:So wait, because I'm a Prime member doesn't mean I necessarily No, I guess you gotta pay for this advanced. So now subscription services have their own subscription services. Yeah, apparently.
Timp:It's I guess subscription.
Bob:This is the thing. This is how people are making their money now. But um I mean you only have to think about it this way. I guess if you want to watch it, you probably have to subscribe for a month or two, so it might cost you 16 bucks. Okay. Anyway, so the production quality still was quite great. I did not watch episode two yet, but it still is uh rather captivating. And uh at the end, um, they had a cliffhanger for episode two, which I'll probably watch tonight.
Dave:You know, back then, chopping the head off of your enemy was a common ancient war practice, and the reason was because there was no fingerprinting, there was no ID, there was no way to really prove that you actually killed your enemy. So if you had a military victory and you wanted to like, you know, either boast about that or just straight up share the good news, the Yuangelian, with your people, you would bring their decapitated skull back to your uh home camp. Because if you want to prove they're dead, you gotta bring the head. So David brought the head back and look at you at the poetic rhyme right there. Like we're we're inspired, and they were all energized by David's courage, right? And then they won the battle against the evil Philistines.
Bob:That's true. If if you want to prove they're dead, you gotta bring the head. That was yeah, that's the that's the title of the episode, right there, Tim. Think about it. We'll see. We'll see what happens.
Dave:All right. I got a weird, weird question. This is just like trivia, and I don't know if there's uh a way to prove this or not, but the incident where David brings Goliath's head back, there's a tradition, and the tradition is that Goliath was from Gath, and the place where David brought the skull back was later nicknamed Galgatha. Goliath from Gath. This is where David brought the head of his enemy Goliath. So there's a possibility that um perhaps the very place where Christ was crucified was the spot where David originally brought the head back of his enemy, Goliath. And literally that's where Jesus decapitated sin on the cross.
Bob:Yeah. Is that what you're saying?
Dave:That's what some people say. That's fascinating. I'm only found like sort of traditions, you know, ancient myths. I don't know uh if there's a real way that we can know for sure, but I heard about that. So anyway, pretty interesting. That's a fascinating, uh fascinating theory. Okay, so that's the first story. House of David. Make sure you watch at least the first two episodes. Those are free. You have no excuse.
Bob:Second news story. Second news story. So I this this caught my attention on uh on the social media, and the headline was Breaking Gen Z now attends church more times per month than any generation in the United States, according to a brand new study from Barna. And I found out also Barna and Glue, which we've used here, and the uh the ending statement is Gen Z has woken up. Um so I went to Barna and I found out that there's a little bit of uh further detail about this. So actually, the headline, it's it's part of their state of the state of the church initiative where they provide reports throughout the year. The press release was Gen Z and Millennials are now the most regular churchgoers. Gen Z just beats out millennials at uh 1.9 weekends per month, while millennials average 1.8 weekends uh per month. And uh the frequency of church going for millennials and Gen Z has nearly doubled in five years. Now, what's interesting about this is if you read further on, you you start to see that elders, those born before 1946 and the boomers have dropped in church attendance to m one point uh four times per month, respectively. Um and Gen X is staying steady at one point six times per month. So what's so this to me is more impressive, this is my commentary on my more impressive from the Gen Z perspective, because traditionally as as folks get married, they start having kids, that's one of the reasons they start going back to church, and a lot of folks in the millennial age range are in that young family um season. Uh Gen Z, maybe, maybe not. So the fact that the younger folks in their early to mid to maybe late twenties are leading the pack year is pretty significant, I think, that God's doing something in Gen Z. What do you what do you think? What's your what's your take on that? You got some Gen Zers, some Zzz Zoomers. I do. Yeah.
Dave:So there was a huge gathering at UT, uh, the University of Tennessee this weekend with 8,000 students that got together to participate in a revival. I posted about that. Um, hundreds gave their lives to Christ. Uh many of them were baptized in a public display of faith. That was very recent. Um, I remember um a couple days before that, there was a player on the Ohio State football team that was baptized in public last week. Um, forgetting the guy's name, but he was um also making a public profession of faith last week on that college campus, and God has been sort of working powerfully in the Ohio State football program for the last year or two, but um, that continues to go. A lot of spiritual leaders on that team. So I'm seeing some really encouraging stories, not just here in the United States, but other times uh I see things going on in England and other parts of the world where the Lord is powerfully at work, and I'm encouraged by that.
Bob:It it's a very it's a very cool uh perspective. So um yeah, so check that out. Keep praying for Gen Z.
Dave:Caleb Downs and Sonny Styles talk about how Jesus Christ changed their lives. Ohio State football hashtag Buckeye Nation. Hashtag go bucks. So keep praying. The Lord is working in a powerful way. We're happy about that.
Bob:Alright, so last uh story that I wanted to uh to bring up, uh I caught on Elisa Childers um post of this, but and not just her, but a lot of folks have been commenting on uh Biola and some policies they've been putting in place. The Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Christian University in LA, and we had Krista and Monique with us here this weekend who both attended Biola in the past. Um but apparently uh there is a new I'm trying to find the exact post here. There's there's a new policy about um how they're handling the transgender LGBT conversation on campus that some folks are not um are not happy with.
Dave:I think it's in their statement of faith, and it was about what they believe about m uh marriage gender, and specifically the transgender issue. Um so but that was like public uh knowledge. It was posted on their website and it was a little bit different than perhaps you might expect.
Bob:It's not uh okay, so it's not the statement of faith, it's the student handbook. Okay, so the statement was we also asked that transgender individuals refrain from the process of a medical transition during their time at Biola, and students desiring to live in biola-owned housing will be placed on their sex at birth. Uh however, as issues connected to sexuality and gender are complex and layered, we will walk with students on an individual basis who identify as transgender or experience dissonance with their biological sex and gender in order to provide helpful support to arrive at decisions around facility use and offer appropriate accountability. So I think some folks had issues with that uh statement and how they were handling that. Um Krista Monique, you said we're going live yesterday commenting on this, so maybe we can link to their podcast in the uh in the uh in the show notes so people can get some more information about that. But uh Biola's come under fire recently for different things they've done.
Dave:Language that seem to be less clear or perhaps even unnecessary from an evangelical institution around that.
Bob:Well, and I think the reason that Biola is a big deal is that there's uh certainly a lot of other Christian institutions that have gotten on board with that that uh agenda, if we can call it that. Um but by places like Biola and Wheaton and a few other places are are under fire right now because they are very much perceived as being solidly uh traditionally evangelical Bible-believing institutions, and it seems like they're now walking down a uh a problematic road. And and so they're they're coming under most fire. People are trying to call them back to uh fidelity. There you go.
Dave:Yeah, I have up their uh student uh handbook, Sexuality, Gender, and Relationships Policy. So um Viola's position on gender it says here each person was intended to experience congruence between the physical and experiential dimensions of their sexuality. And then here's this controversial sentence Because of sin, our sex and gender as experienced as men and women is not always our sex and gender as God the Creator intended. So that language, why they would need to add that uh has caused some people to raise their eyebrows.
Bob:Yeah, and uh this it's not uncommon for some institutions to be kind of playing both sides. So we want to affirm a traditional Christian sex ethic and marriage um between a man and a woman, but yet we're gonna add these caveat statements that are gonna make it a little confusing. Yeah. Um that that's what is breeding controversy.
Dave:Can we just keep on this topic for one second? Yeah. So you had sent me a link to the conference that was sponsored by I think it was the United Methodist last weekend. And there was a surprising speaker uh listed on the panel with a bunch of other speakers. Surprising might be a generous word, but why don't you tell us about that story?
Bob:Uh I forgot, yes, I forgot it was the exact details and what the conference was called, but yes, sponsored by United Methodist Church. And uh Andy Stanley was one of the uh speakers there. Um the topic of the conference wasn't surrounding the LGBT conversation, but a lot of the speakers that were gonna be platformed there were very pro uh LGBT, you know, Christians, I should put it that way. And Andy Stanley was there. So that uh sparked some some uh questions. I think that was on the Protestia website. I can go find the details. So Andy Stanley So what do you think he's doing? I think there's a lot of folks who um and I was actually having this conversation with uh with Krista this weekend. I think there's a lot of people that um what they believe in private they're they're not fully bringing in into public because it would uh uh it would it would ruin let's say their their fan base um and it could potentially have monetary implications. Um so whether that's what he's doing or not, I think there's others that are doing that. Um yeah, where's the I can't find the headline here, but it it was uh it was in there.
Dave:That's a concerning story.
Bob:Yeah.
Dave:Well, um a lot of things going on in the news, and uh let's talk about something else that's going on in the body. So we also wanted you to be aware of opportunities to serve. We have a safety and security team that's led by Steph Landau. We're looking for people who would want to serve on that security team. Uh also, if you'd like to help with the area of safety, meaning uh medical response team, if you've got some training, if you've got some interest in the medical field, if you are a nurse, or if you perhaps uh have CPR training, or uh perhaps if you have any kind of relationship to like EMS response um mobilization or that kind of thing, we'd love to hear from you so that you can be part of that team. So we're looking to build that and grow that. It's a cool team to serve on. Uh contact me, contact Amy Huber, or contact Steph Landau for more information about that safety and security team.
Bob:Now I found I'm sorry, I found the headline. So Leadership Institute 2025, it's the RISE conference, but it it is an uh United Methodist Progressive Conference, and the focus was leadership, so maybe that's why he's there. Um But as I was telling Dave, would you would you you know speak at a conference where you had a whole bunch of people that didn't agree with you theologically? Would that con create some mixed signals?
Dave:So remember Tim used to have the chart with like what level of disagreement are we talking about, like level one, level two, level three. I can't remember how many levels you had, Tim. This was a long, long time ago. The tears? Yeah. I think it depends on the level uh of disagreement that we have. Sharing the stage can send a confusing signal depending upon what we're talking about. I don't need to agree with everybody on the stage about everything. Um but there are some key things that I think it would be best to uh have agreement on if you're gonna be like giving some kind of joint conference b basic theme. So that's a little troubling. All right, so let's talk about books, man. It's time for the book war, and I see you have one that's kind of related to the theme for this weekend, so why don't you go first, Bob? Wait. We must we must discover oh, yep.
Timp:The score. So that's right. We have results.
Bob:Tim told me it was the closest book war in history.
Timp:This this week, man, was an absolute um nail biter. I was monitoring it all week.
Bob:We got Tim was waking up at three in the morning to check in.
Timp:It came down to um really a couple hours ago. We got our last cutoff. And that when's the cutoff? That broke uh now. Now is the cutoff. It it broke the tie and uh a little revenge on this episode for Pastor Dave as he will go to three and oh on the season. The tome, the tome wins, and here is the chart um of the voting. Thirteen responses. Hey, and down to the wire, the seventh went. So so Pastor Bob, how we how you feeling, man?
Bob:This is it's that's a I you as I I keep saying every week, I don't know who's voting, so I don't know how to I don't know how to do a uh a real poll.
Timp:So I what I started to do, which I'm officially starting this week, is we are gonna have a behind the pulpit fan of the year or fan of the season sweepstakes. Some of you who voted, the 13 of you who voted, may have noticed that there is now a name section on the form. Now we will never reveal them food. They'll get a free meal for maybe. We will never reveal who you are on the show. However, if you put your name in every time you vote, you will be tallied into the fan of the season competition and you will receive a prize if you have voted the most times at the end of the season. Because in my mind, there's no way of know the the best way of knowing how much you like our show is whether or not you vote. So Right. All right, there we go. You vote. They, you know, you decide. So what are you voting for, Pastor Bob?
Bob:Why don't you why don't you kick off this week? What am I I'm just gonna keep going uh and and if listen, if the people reject me, they reject me. You know, I will be me. Um so this week, my This is what Monique said this weekend. She said, You can't really care too much about what other people think. Bob, you're still a fan favorite in this league. All right. Well, maybe maybe not in the books. We'll see. All right. So my uh my uh my book recommendation this week was one that was referenced on Saturday morning um from Vodi Bakham. Vode Bacham was a uh sad to say he was a uh a pastor, um professor, uh just good brother in Christ, um, passed away about a week and a half ago. Uh and he's got a couple um best-selling books. He wrote a book called Fault Lines, which had it been in my office upstairs, would have been the one I recommended. Um, but then he had a follow-up book um talking about the LGBT um movement, and uh this book is called It's Not Like Being Black. And the subtitle is How Sexual Activists Hijack the Civil Rights Movement. So if you remember, part of the cultural conversation over the last number of years has been how transgender and a lot of the other LGBT stuff is is the civil rights issues of our day. And uh what he argues in this book is no, no, it's not it's not like the the civil rights movement of the sixties. And he makes a whole lot of arguments talking about um the history of of how uh uh folks in this movement tried to get um uh these two things equated, and he talks about why it's uh problematic and gives us a uh some some good biblical exhortations in the third section of the book. So Vodibacum is a uh great resource. Um this book is also good. I encourage you to pick it up. How about that? Look, check it out. Boom.
Dave:I think it's a great recommendation. I don't know if you guys caught what he said there, but what he said was had some other book been in my office upstairs, that would have been his tip. So let's just talk about that. A different Vody Buck of the Foods. If you want to win this book war, bro, you need to put some effort in. Like, just because it's not in your office, well, you should go get it, man. Go take a walk, get the book you think is gonna win.
Bob:Okay, all right, hold on a second. So, by the way, I have about 17 minutes left in this podcast because I turned over my foot and I have to go see the foot doctor here, and that's why I couldn't run back to my house. All right. Otherwise, I may have walked back to my house.
Dave:But no, where's the foot?
Bob:I want to be able to run again.
Dave:I need to see a doctor's note for this. I'm not sure we believe it.
Bob:I'll bring it up next week. All right, but heated. All right.
Dave:So uh John Owen, the vice-chancellor of Oxford University, who wrote in the 1640s in England, uh, 1650s. He was a scholar, he was a verbose writer. Was he a gentleman? All of the Puritans. Oh my gosh, they just didn't have TV. They just wrote, so this is what they did. So Owen is amazing. There's this brand new Owen set that's coming out, it's 40 volumes. They're they're like they're releasing it incrementally over the next few years. It's a beautiful set. This set is smaller and more truncated. It's got the classic translation from the 1800s by um William Gould. And um, what I love about this is it's like it's like an abridgment. So, see how small it is? Remember last week how big that was? This one's small. It's an abridgment. So the the editor took the time to take Owen and kind of remove anything that was unnecessary that you didn't really need because Owen is a slog, man. He uh takes a long time to say anything. So, what this series does is it makes it more practical, more digestible. So I have the whole set upstairs. I think it's six volumes. This one that I'm currently reading and I'm almost done, is called The Spirit and the Church as the Spirit Helps Us in Prayer. So Owen lived in a time where uh the Roman Catholic Church had very strict rules about what kind of prayers you were allowed to pray, and there was a book called The Missal that they would force people to use, and you did not just like make up prayers out loud extemporaneously, you did not do that. And Owen said, That's a problem. Um, God has given you the Holy Spirit, and one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit in your life is to allow you to pray. He, uh, according to Galatians, has been poured in your spirit so that we cry Abba Father. Zechariah says he's the spirit of supplication. So Owen is making the case here that um written prayers are inferior to extemporaneous prayers. And you may never have thought about this question before. Owen makes the case that we should primarily be praying um extemporaneous prayers. And I've been reading this and it's got me thinking about it. I've always liked written prayers. I like the Valley of Vision, I like prayer books, but Owen is um kind of making me think maybe the balanced diet of my prayer life should be coming from the Holy Spirit's um unction and the groanings that are uh coming from inside the Christian. So I recommend it. Owen's, and I specifically would say the digestible uh version um is is probably more up your alley. It's put out by Banner of Truth, and uh the translation's ghouled, and the abridgments by RJK Law. He did this in 2002. But you can get this whole thing for like, I don't know, 60 bucks or something like that for all of these. This is good. Um I'm almost done. The Spirit and Prayer. John Owen. If you don't know Owen, man, I don't know. You just need to get started. He's he's the man.
Bob:He did use the words slog and unction in his description of this book. So I love the word slogan. That appeals to you. You can slog through this green book.
Dave:Yeah, what I mean by slog is like in the 1600s they used certain words in English that we it's not that they don't make sense to us, but we don't use them. Like heretofore or whereunto or those kind of transitional words, and they make it harder to just read. So um this guy helps us out with that. John Owen, check it out the Spirit and Prayer. I think you'll like it. There's the books. We recommend you decide, you vote. So we'll We'll see, man. I got a feeling Bob's gonna win this time. I got I got a prediction. Thinking Voting is number one, he just passed away, so people want to know what did this guy say? Number two, that title is really provocative. It's not like being black. What is what is this? I gotta read this. So I don't know, man. I'm we'll find a week.
Bob:We will find out next week. We we recommend you decide. Yeah. Isn't that the tagline?
Dave:We will see. That is the tagline. And now we've come to another um highlighted. No, actually, we've come to our audience question. Somebody had an audience question this time. And um thank you for submitting your questions. We wish more people would submit questions, don't we?
Bob:We do. We we don't get enough questions.
Dave:So uh part of the reason is to make sure people get their questions answered.
Bob:Tim, is there any way we can get more people to submit questions? Can we can we coerce people to submit questions?
Timp:I find that the most questions get asked when you tell people that you can ask questions during your sermons for behind the pulpit. That's what I found the biggest Okay.
Bob:We should start to embed that several times every message. What do you think? This would be a good question for you to ask. Maybe we can actually recommend the QR code at the bottom left of every single one of your slides. By the way, I noticed on your on your announcement video that as Dave was doing it, you just let the QR code float. Well, I don't know. It's the jury's out because it was just floating, and I I I was realizing was that in relation to what he just talked about? There's just a random QR code floating up there.
Timp:So it was in the exact exact placement where Noah put the QR code in the in the code. You go fancy. Yeah. So the question is. The question is that's not the time for this. So sorry. The question is, why is that there? Do you think Micah saw the same vision to support the unity of God's message as in the parallel texts of Isaiah 2, 2 through 4 and Micah 4, 1 through 3? Alright.
Bob:Do you do you want me to take a stab here first? All right. So um I did go uh take a peek at uh one of the main commentaries we're using for the series, John Oswald, um uh New International Commentary in the Old Testament. So basically he says, yeah, uh well, first of all, yes, the two prophecies are uh almost identical, they're interrelated. The the question has been raised about authorship. So uh there's three categories that people look at. Did Micah borrow this from Isaiah? Did Isaiah borrow this from Micah, or did they both borrow it from some other common common source? And this is often a common question within the uh synoptic gospel um conversation. Uh basically what what he comes down to say, uh his I think his conclusion is the the um the one one scholar suggests that the original uh prophecy was spoken by Isaiah. It was written down by Micah, and then it was later incorporated into Isaiah's book in a truncated form, because Isaiah uh Isaiah's prophecy is a little shorter than Micah's. Um but most of the recent scholars, um, in light of what's been discovered about oral tradition and literary formation, um, doubt if there was a copying from each other, but rather it was more likely they had a common, uh it was a common, uh, common understood uh prophecy at the time within the nation, and these prophets were drawing from this this common heritage. So there definitely was an interrelated element to it, and it wasn't like they were copying from each other, was that was that conclusion. Um I haven't looked deep enough into it to decide what I actually think, but I think that it's uh all of those seem like plausible explanations. Would you add anything to that? I haven't studied that, but you also wanted to mention the reverse. Oh, the reverse was that uh Micah Connelly. Oh, Joel, that's right, Joel has that has it as well. Um But the opposite.
Dave:So Joel has like it's time for war. So like Isaiah and Micah are like, take your swords and your spears and beat them into plowshares and pruning hooks, and then Joel was like, no, no, take those plowshares and pruning hooks and beat them back into swords and spears because it's time to fight.
Bob:Yeah, so that's an interesting that was Joel uh Chapter three. Joel three, right? So that that that is most likely interconnected at some level too. Yeah.
Dave:Good question. Um, you know, we didn't really talk about the context of the prophets, but you know, there are a lot of overlap. So I always remember the acronym. I don't know if this is gonna help you. Here's here's I'm gonna try to help you out today. Ready? Uh the way you remember the southern prophets is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. And it goes like this H-I-J-J-M-Z-L, let us learn these prophets. Well, this is who God used to tell H-I-J-J-M-Z-L. Those are the initials of the Southern prophets, including um Isaiah, including Micah. So they were Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries, southern prophets.
Bob:They were contemporaries, yeah.
Dave:Around the same time. Yep. So the other ones are Habakkuk, Isaiah, Joel, Zephaniah, Micah, Jeremiah, and Lamentation. A lot of major prophets right there, Pastor Dave. H-I-J-J-M-C-L.
Bob:Yeah. Especially Isaiah, Jeremiah. And Ezekiel was earlier, right? Or later. Later, during exile. He's another long one.
Dave:Yeah. So, same vision, same exact vision. They must have seen something similar. Oh, yeah. It's a good question, John. Seems definitely related. All right. So the next part of our show is going to be the uh upcoming membership class. Let's talk about that. Six days from now, you can participate with us. Register now. Start Sunday. It's going to be three Sundays in a row during the second hour. If you are thinking about joining our church, you are going to want to come to this class. Uh, we'd love to have you. It's going to be great. Uh, Bob's going to be there. Amy's going to be there. I'll be there the next week, and you get a chance to meet some leaders, elders, pastors, directors. We'd love to have you there. Answer questions that you might have about behind the scenes issues of Millington Baptist Church, vision, vision, mission, values, the articles of faith, position papers. All that stuff. You can put Bob on the hot spot. You can just ask him the hardest question you could possibly think of. It's like a wonderful time. Bob loves to get those kind of questions. So come and ask. I promise I will do my best. Yeah.
Bob:That's what I can promise you.
Dave:Now let's talk about the sermon. Pastor Bob preaching in Isaiah for 60 seconds from gloom to glory. Pastor Bob has got three fingers out from each hand there. One, two, three, four, five, six, with two fingers back on each hand, and he's bringing the heat right there. So I don't know what you're talking about, but this is the gesture.
Bob:Apparently that was the picture. That was the picture that uh Tim caught me in. By the way, um, as as a uh side note leading into the sermon, so uh Krista and Monique uh had a compliment for our for our congregation saying they they really enjoyed being with us and they they wish that our church was in California so they could they could attend it. Um Krista actually grew up Conservative Baptist, which which we are, which is now Venture Church Network, and um just felt very much at home. So it was uh was good. Lots of lots of compliments. All right.
Dave:I think she said she wanted to join our church.
Bob:Not just right, sorry, that's right. She would have she would be going to the membership class if she lived here in New Jersey.
Dave:Okay, which in sixty seconds, Bob, tell us what your sermon was about.
Bob:All right. Well, indeed, I do have about five to six minutes left in my time here, Pastor Dave, so I'm gonna be very quickly uh uh mentioning uh my sermon. So, yeah, so we were looking at Isaiah chapter nine, and uh we ended chapter eight in darkness, and then by the time we get to Isaiah six and seven, we have found the light. The light has shown in the midst of uh the darkness. If I had more time in my section, because we didn't invite Kristen Monique to come up and uh talk about the justice and righteousness conversation, I would have covered more of chapter nine, uh, and maybe a little bit more lead-in from chapter eight, which is which is pretty fascinating. Um But yeah, God's people had turned away from him. They were turning to uh the idols of the day, the mediums, the necromancers, and chapter nine begins this turning where God himself is going to step into the darkness and pull us, uh pull his people into the light. And so we asked three questions. What is the darkness? Uh why does the darkness happen, and how do we overcome the darkness? So, what is the darkness? It's the absence of God, as we saw as God's people turned away from him uh intentionally. Uh, why does it happen? Well, he had some examples about oppression and war, and then how do we overcome it? To us, a child is born, to us a son is given. The very famous Christmas passage looks ahead to the future fulfillment of Messiah coming to set his people free. Boom.
Dave:So connect that together more carefully with the concept of justice. The whole weekend was about justice and those kind of issues, and we had an underground session about justice. How does Isaiah 9 relate specifically to that topic?
Bob:Well, it in Isaiah 9, particularly, is talking about how when Messiah's reign comes fully and finally, uh, he's gonna have he's gonna be the one who brings perfect justice and righteousness. He is the only one uh who is perfectly right. Now, uh Krista did a good job on uh Sunday night of talking about how righteousness, uh, the word that's used for that, is really about right living, and then uh justice is about uh accountability and how people judge others in terms of how they're living. And her main contention was that as we live more righteously, the idea of justice and judgment is much less needed. So I guess to your question, uh uh yes, we we should always look forward to the future hope of Jesus coming and bringing his kingdom fully to earth, new heavens, new earth, it's gonna be perfect one day. But until that time, we are still called to live rightly because as Christians our hearts have been changed and transformed. We've been uh moved from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, and we're to bring the righteousness of God here on earth and live righteously, so that his kingdom would be advanced until such a time that he comes back and brings it fully.
Dave:So I don't know if you know Jim Hamilton at Southern Seminary, what he says about personally, but I know who he is. Yeah, he says that the passages like this can be fulfilled in three ways. So you can look at it with a messianic fulfillment, and then you can look at it with a an ecclesiological fulfillment that the church also needs to be about the mission of the Messiah, pursuing justice, and then there's an eschatological fulfillment, which is that one day everything will be perfectly just when the Messiah comes to rule and to reign forever. So I think all three ways are valid ways to read the text. Um but I think what we were talking about was how do we as a church, you know, pursue justice? How do we as Jesus' followers live righteously and you know follow his example? So uh I think that's a really interesting question. And our as Krista said, our culture is confused about what that means and it's in need of some clarification, which I think she did a brilliant job Sunday night kind of clarifying those things. You know, I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court justice, who said, I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my very life for simplicity on the other side of complexity. That's what Krista did. She took a very complicated subject and made it simple so that we could understand what she was talking about.
Bob:So she had four ways of defining justice. Did you have that written down? I didn't bring my paper down with me. I know one was um first one was uh See if we can remember Tim, Noah. I know one was truth telling, one was accountability, one was uh the first one was evidence. Evidence, um truth telling, uh last one was accountability. What was the third one? Impartiality. Impartiality, that's right.
Dave:Yeah. Those are the four critical principles of put these into a chart? Wow, amazing.
Timp:Sorry. I couldn't help it. Do never don't ever apologize for making charts, Pastor David.
Dave:So the world's definition of justice comes from the concept of equity, meaning equal outcomes. And if there's unequal outcomes, then there's an injustice, period. Whereas God's standard of justice says, well, actually it's different. Sometimes there's not exactly equal outcomes, but these four principles are in place, and we need to relive righteously and you know uphold those standards of righteousness.
Bob:Part of the re way that we live righteously is by a by following God's law and and following God's law in our everyday lives. So one of the reasons that uh one of the main reasons that the Israelites or the Kingdom of Judah was walking in darkness at the end of chapter eight into chapter nine of Isaiah is because they specifically were rejecting God and his laws, and as you were asking the question the other week, who were they trusting? They were trusting in the king of Assyria, they were trusting in these idols, uh the these necromancers of the day, and and and very much disobeying God's law. And and the result was darkness. But God steps in to bring them into the light.
Dave:So who is this son that will be given this child that will be born? I tend to see that as Messiah, as pointing ahead to Christ. Just a straight line with no immediate fulfillment, just like this is about Jesus.
Bob:I tend to lean there.
Dave:The language is so it's so big. It's hard to imagine any earthly son of David being referred to as the mighty God.
Bob:Yeah. You have the you have the you have the titles, you have the the government is perfect justice and righteousness. Right.
Dave:So it's like Isaiah's giving us these Easter eggs, right? Like there's gonna be this stump and this holy seed, and like this virgin's gonna be with the eyes.
Bob:And you're gonna talk, you're gonna do chapter 11 this week, right? So you got a little bit of that in there too. Right. The stump is shooting that comes out of Jesse.
Dave:David is back. So Isaiah's kind of putting together a picture of the coming Messiah, and we're putting it together piece by piece.
Bob:Of course, not the last time that he mentions it within the prophecy.
Dave:No, not at all. The beginning. It will continue to come up again and again and again, and we're looking forward to as we continue this series. Anything else? I know time is short, but you wanted to highlight from the sermon before we move on. I think I think we'll pause there. It was a good conversation. Tune in next week. We will um pick it up with Isaiah 11. Although I hate the break of Isaiah 11.1 is the worst chapter break in the Bible. It should start with the last verse of chapter 10. So we'll start at the very last verse of chapter 10, and then we will continue with chapter 11.
Bob:Come come on Sunday to hear Pastor Dave complain about the breaks in the current scriptures. I will do that. A little curmudgeon.
Dave:All right. Well, we have um that time in our show where we do a little sprinting. Although last week we balked and we we did our Uno reverse card. So we need to come back to that and then do a new sprint. Or how do you want to handle it, Noah? If you want, we can uh come back to that one, but I do have one ready for this week as well.
Bob:Was this the H of Accountability one? Yes. Oh, yeah, let's let's come back to that one next week. We were talking about that before. Okay. I forgot that I needed to get a better opinion on that. I did do a little bit of research. Do you want to do it? Yeah. You can take it if you want to. I don't mind. All right.
Dave:Okay. So there's a lot of different um, we can do two if you want. Yeah. There's a lot of different stuff in the Bible that you can look at here, and it's not as simple as you might think. Um, so here is an article from Steve Wellum who said, here's five biblical truths that you need to uphold. Number one, the scripture teaches related to our sin that we're responsible before God. And I think that that's true of everyone. Uh, the entire human race, Adam has fallen, and we are in Adam, period. That includes children, that includes adults, that includes all of us. It's universal. Number two, God rightly demands obedience and devotion from each of his children, but those with more revelation are more accountable. That is also taught in the scripture. Like in Romans 1, it says that God, who's clearly seen through his creation, uh, because of that, uh, people know about him and we suppress that knowledge, and then we're without excuse because we know things. And so then you could say, is it possible that some people don't know things? Some young people or some people who are maybe disabled and unable to understand certain things? That's a good question. Number three, Christ alone accomplishes our salvation and acts as our redeemer. That's important because if you want to say there's an age of accountability and those people that are younger than a certain age are um spared by God's mercy, you still have to say he does that by Christ. You still have to say that Christ is the only way. You can't say that they're somehow innocent. That's not true. Uh, number four, under normal circumstances, we only benefit from Christ's work by repenting of our sins and trusting him. So we want to like teach people the normal way. The normal way is repent in faith. Number five, and this is the last one, while a combination of these hints and other truths, these hints and other truths lead us to find comfort in God's mercy in the exceptional cases, we must not allow it to drive us beyond scripture in the normal cases. So uh we have some verses like, you know, David's son, I will not go to him. I will go to him, but he will not return to me, those kind of things. Uh so the scripture hints at the fact that perhaps there's a certain age where we're held accountable. Some people say that's 12. I saw in the comments on the YouTube channel last week that age 12, the bar mitzvah, mot mitzvah is the age. I don't know that the scripture is totally clear on that, but some people surmise that. And so there's uh some different views on that, but a lot of people have held this view that are well-known scholars John MacArthur, um uh John Calvin, um, I think Charles Hodge. So a lot of people down through church history have said there's a certain age of accountability where God uh now holds us accountable to respond to his revelation. And then before that age, we are children are recipients of God's grace and mercy. So there's my answer. You want to add anything?
Bob:I think that's great. All right. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, you want to do another one? Uh if you're gonna do another one, you're gonna be by yourself. Let's do it next week. All right. Let's do it next week. All right, next week. Wait.
Dave:Well, hopefully that was enough sprinting for you guys. Um, thank you guys for joining us today. It's been a great show. And uh join us next week on the Behind the Pulpit podcast. We'll be back. All right, half of David season two.