78. RFP Crossover Event with the Beers and Bible Podcast - The Sufficiency of Scripture

I do not mean to be mean. I do mean to be mad. Those that criticize this kind of preaching, they don't like authority! If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got... Hey, if you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. And it'd be surprised. Son, don't go to sleep while I'm talking. Hey, hey, hey, don't you lay your head back. I'm important. I'm somebody. I love you. You know I love you. Have I convinced you I love you? You better nod your head yes, are you? Come on, put it right there. Stay awake and you listen to me. I still believe if you have cold day and healthy, I get my balance to a woman. I'm a preacher. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom podcast. A podcast that is part of the RFP network that seeks to bring freedom in Christ from the spiritual abuse of legalism. Now here are your hosts, John Holyfield and James Saifert. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of Scripture. But the defining principle in Scripture is love. And now I'm not saying that all men who sit under that teaching will become abusive. But what I'm saying is the ones who are abusive will be drawn to that sort of teaching. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. But I think bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. I've never been on this end. Usually I'm the one hitting record. And Michael's the one that sees all that. I've named her Becky, though, for the record. I thought it was Betsy. Betsy, that's right. It's Betsy. Betsy tells us when to start. That's right. That's right. Well, welcome, guys, to the For Freedom podcast. And we are still continuing on with the RFP crossover event of the season, of the year, however we say that. Of the century, John. Of the century. Let's go, baby. This is bigger than DC or Marvel. This is the biggest crossover. That's right. It's the multiverse of madness going on right now. And so this is an exciting time for us. And we're glad to have Anthony and Michael from the Beers and Bible podcast with us on this evening. What kind of shallow person do you want to become? Recovering from fundamentalism or something. They're everywhere. And I think to myself, well, you were just stupid to begin with. If there's such a word, you're stupider now. Don't get flubbed up like us. And all you flubbed up people, you come and we'll all flub up together. Guys, how are you doing? Man, I'm good. Yeah, we're rocking and rolling. We're ready. We're excited. Yeah. So as we get started today and we're just going to jump right into it again, I hope you guys have registered for the meetup coming up next week. And so we will be heading to Danville, Virginia. Got a great lineup for that. We're all four going to be there. And so hopefully you can join us. And so we're doing this series to help all of our listeners get to know who some of the other network hosts are. And so Anthony, Michael, tell us about who you are and how your podcast of Beers and Bible came to be. So Anthony and I met while we were on staff at a large Southern Baptist church here in North Georgia. And we met in early 2018 and over the course of about a year or so became really good friends, worked very closely together. I say really good friends. I think Anthony is probably my best friend. And so, you know, we were sitting in our office one day. Our office is kind of separate from the rest of the staff for reasons I don't really understand, but whatever. And keep the heathens away. That's what that's what it is. And so we're sitting there. We're kind of getting burned out. It's that summertime where you're like in summer camp and VBS is and we're coming out of the coming off of that. And I look over at Anthony. I'm like, man, we need to do something or I'm going to lose my mind. And so we kind of like just kind of pitch a couple ideas back and forth. And I go, why don't we do a podcast? Because we both like we both love Jesus. What else do we like? And we realize that we both like beer. And so the Beers and Bible podcast was born. And what we do is pretty much every every week we will review a beer, rate it, talk about it. Not that we know anything about beer, really. But we will review it and suggest it or maybe not suggest it. And then we jump into a Bible discussion or a theological or doctrine discussion. And we've been doing that now for just over three years. So, yeah, we're y'all started by y'all had a voice change over your voice. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So when we started, we were still on staff at that church and our church was very like teetotaling. Our pastor is very like or the pastor. There was a very anti alcohol consumption or anything like that. And so we were like, well, we don't want to create any unnecessary division. We don't want to create any unnecessary drama. And so we just like came up with a pseudonames and. Put a voice modulators on our voices and. Then about, I don't know, a year and a half ago or so, decided to drop all that and come out and be out in the open. And here we are. Which for the record, when we did that, neither me nor Michael were on staff at that church anymore. Yeah, we had already left. So, yeah, that's that's the like really fast version of our story. We have we have we have an episode of like the whole story of like how we met our first day working together, which was fun. And then I try to kill me with a drill. Yeah, it was great. And then, you know, how we came up with the podcast. We have an episode back in. I don't even remember how long ago. Scroll through it somewhere in March of 2021. We tell a very detailed story of of what Michael just told. And it was, you know, it was it to to kind of add on to what he said there. Like the church was definitely teetotaling, but there was no like written requirement of you had to sign a document saying you wouldn't. And so, you know, we felt that in our hearts, we were still maintaining our integrity because we wanted to have these discussions. We wanted to have some kind of, I guess, bridge. You know, I don't know of a really better way to say it, but like a bridge to a lost and dying world. And, you know, I thought back to I think one of the things that I mentioned that I thought back to when we and Michael were talking about this was when I was in college, a friend of mine was in seminary and he had to by necessity had to get a job. Well, he ended up bartending in seminary. He was a bartender at a local restaurant. And, you know, he talked to a couple of professors. It's like, hey, I've got this job. It's the only job I can find. Is there a problem with this? And they said, well, you're not drinking alcohol. So I guess there's not. And so through his seminary days, he actually talks about and he me and him had a lot of discussions about how he was able to share the gospel with people while bartending. And so that thought had always kind of rolled in the back of my mind, really, from from back in the early 2000s and hearing his stories of going through that. And then that's kind of what I guess you roll all that together and then into the discussion that Michael and I are having almost 20 years later. And I'm like, you know what? What a better way to to try to reach out and give the gospel to people than to do what I mean, realistically, what Jesus did. He sat down with sinners and drunkards. And, you know, it doesn't mean that he was a drunkard. He was accused of it, but he wasn't. And so, you know, you take that mindset of I'm going to go be with the sinners. Well, you know, there there are some things that you can that are under the realm of Christian liberty that are not against what Scripture teaches. And so that was kind of that was kind of a forming thought of, man, what's something that that does fall under Christian liberty that we can do that would help bridge a gap to a world that needs to hear the gospel? Yeah. And just for our listeners sake, we've covered a lot of issues and sort of given like a biblical balance position instead of the legalistic sort of, you know, over against legalism. And what the subject we haven't covered is alcohol, beer, that kind of we just we just haven't covered it. But just so everybody knows, I mean, Anthony and Michael do stand on a position that drunkenness is a sin, clearly, scripture. And they also I've listened to them talk on other interviews and stuff. They have also very much a sensitivity to those who have experienced either addiction or who have family members have. They totally understand that it's not some kind of crass in your face type of attitude that these guys have. And quite honestly, I didn't really want to have them on to talk about this because I feel like that they really enjoy talking about the Bible instead of talking about legalism and alcohol, because that's normally what you guys end up having to talk about your guests on other episodes. So I was like, you know what? They'd rather probably talk about the Bible. Right. Yeah. It is. It's it's one of those things where because of our podcast, we kind of we're almost kind of forced. It's like, oh, your beer's in Bible. Well, you drink beer. OK, let's talk about, you know, so we'll get that. We'll get that through. But I would I would love to talk about the Bible. Yeah. Yeah. I've spent a lot of time studying it and and it's it's a lot of it's a lot of fun for me. But I also, you know, again, I think that we can find ways to bring the Bible, bring Scripture to a world in unique ways that that maybe other people would. And so a podcast that joins two things that that you wouldn't think beers and Bible, you know, you wouldn't think about those two things being together. But, man, if you can put those two things together, you may be able to talk with people. And I've had conversations with folks because of the podcast where they go, that's really weird, you know. And and why would you do that? Well, because it's two things that I enjoy. You know, the main crux is we're going to talk about the Bible. That's what the majority of our podcast is about. And, you know, if you go back and just flip through our episodes, we've done systematic theology studies. We've walked through books of the Bible. We've done series. We did a series on lament where we walked through lamentations. But we talked, you know, through what it means to lament biblically. You know, how do we do these? Because it's things that I guess the conversations that Michael and I always tended to have in our office was that were really, to me, the most meaningful conversations were, man, how do we deal with this hard part of the Christian life? And if you don't go back to scripture with something hard in your life, then then you're you're just throwing away the foundation of where you should be basing everything on. And so that, you know, taking taking something hard and saying, all right, this is really hard. How do I deal with this? And then saying, all right, the first place I'm going to start is scripture. What does scripture say about this hard thing? And then really digging in and really seeing what scripture says about that. If you're not doing that from the very beginning, then then you're you're starting on a loose foundation, in my opinion. Yeah. And you guys you guys are not shallow. That's one of the things I appreciate, because like you you you go deep in some areas and you you linger like you guys walked verse by verse through Philippians, too, didn't you? We did. Yeah. Through Philippians. But you also do things. And like you said, you've also walked through systematic theology. And so if we're thinking about this, this is what we are sort of getting into what we want to talk about. We think about theology. There's a lot of people doing theology out there. There's a lot of people trying to get people to listen to them, do theology. And there's a lot of bad theology out there. There is. And if we think of people that are coming out of situations of church hurt or, say, legalism, one of the things that they that is really struggling is like, how do I know what is good theology? You know, I feel like this was wrong. Well, what else was I taught that was wrong? And sort of like it can be almost a confusing and sort of like disorienting time of like, what? How do I know? So, you know, beers and Bible Bible is obviously very important to what you guys do. So how important is a view of the Bible to sound theology? I mean, I'd say it's the foundation. It's you can't you can't put anything else under it. If if scripture if scripture is not inerrant and if scripture is not sufficient, then there's there's I mean, you're you're building you're starting your foundation with sand instead of rock or solid something something foundational. And and when you when you do that, you you tend to lead off into things like legalism. You tend to go into things and, you know, the opposite of legalism is antinomianism. That's against the law. And and so you end up with this like one side that says do whatever you want. Grace is going to cover you. Then you end up with this other side that says if you don't do every jot and tittle of the law, then you're basically not a believer. And. I know for me personally, and and and I would think Michael would agree with this. The extreme is never the answer. And so you have to come to a place of. It's going to sound totally like Buddhist, but a center, you have to come to a center point. And it's it's a thing that says, yes, there's grace and I'm grateful for grace. And I'm so thankful for God's grace and mercy in my life. And yes, there's the law and I need to try to live my life as best I can to God's standard, which is to be holy. I mean, first Peter, he tells us to be holy because he's holy. It's a repetition of Leviticus. We're supposed to do that. So, you know, if if the law is what God gave us to try to give us a inclination toward holiness and that's the standard. God is the ultimate standard of perfection that perfectly fulfilled the law. And you're you're just don't really care what happens over here on the other side. Where's the middle? The middle ground is how can I find balance while trying to live in accordance to God's law, show grace and mercy, live to show grace and mercy in my life. And if that foundation is not based in Scripture from the beginning. To me, you're you're on a faulty foundation. Michael, you want to add something to that? No, I think you nailed it. No, really, I mean, Anthony, like is so theologically deep, like a lot of times I'll just sit here and listen to him talk and then he'll get to an end of a statement. And I'm like, do I need to add anything? And I don't. A lot of times I don't. There's just not. I think you. You nailed it there. Yeah. And I thought that was really good and very well said, very well articulated, better than I probably could have articulated as well. And which you did say you're the oldest among all four of us. So with age comes wisdom. We do. We do. And so we're we're glad to do that. But as we think through this and as we begin to process the sufficiency of Scripture and what it is in our life, we begin to really begin to see people who have and groups of people, not just a single person, but groups of people that have are way out there in left field or maybe not even way out there in left field. Maybe they're just a little off on some areas of Scripture, maybe some first or secondary issues. And so when those things begin to arise, what are some warning signs? What are some things that we begin to really begin to see the first thing that goes away in error when bad theology arises? What do you think are some of the first issues that they begin to to give up when bad theology starts to happen? I'm a hijack question, James. OK, do it. Because before we started recording, I think Anthony told a story that just really goes perfect with this point about Bart Ehrman. Oh, yeah. And if he wanted to give that, John, he could have. That's what I was setting the softball up for before you had to inject your foot into your mouth. Oh, get out of town. I was sitting here going, I think we already talked about that. But that was before you hit record. So never mind. Betsy told us to start. Oh, Betsy. Oh, man. Yeah. So when I was in seminary, you have to write a paper basically to graduate. And so I being the, you know, 30 something year old to 10 years after. So I did seminary 10 years after I graduated college. I took the 10 year break in between there. And it was one of those things where through my studies, I just I saw a lot of liberalism. And I'm going to use that word a little bit loosely right here, just kind of liberalism in general. And what would happen is these people would take what I would consider a liberal stance. And so I'm going to I'm just going to paint real quickly. Conservative versus liberal to me is going to be conservative is going to be orthodox, the creeds, the confessions, the church councils, the history of the church. Liberalism is going to be something that's trying to overturn that. OK, so that's that's kind of where I'm at. But I noticed a a pattern with people who would fall into what I would define as liberal theology or liberal stances on scriptural issues in that they they really had to devalue scripture to a point to where you say, no, that doesn't mean what it clearly means in the text. And this is where Michael and I often kind of harp on the refrains of exegesis versus eisegesis. OK, and so in my in my seminary studies, I noticed that. And so I got to this this closing paper and I said, I really wanted to tackle somebody or something. And because of people I've been involved with, I had become acquainted with the writings of Bart Ehrman. So I said, I want to I want to tackle this and I want to read some Bart Ehrman material and I really want to find out who he is as a believer. And so I went full bore into this. I subscribed to his website, got all the articles coming in on a daily basis, tried to read as many of them as I could. He writes prolifically for the record. And and he just I mean, he's just a I don't know how he does it and teaches full time professorship. But so I started reading this stuff and I noticed a pattern and I was like, there's no way that this pattern is that noticeable. And so I started purchasing some of his books and reading them for this paper. And I and I read he's written a lot more than this, but I probably read 12 books written by him cover to cover front to back and on a range of topics. He's real big into forgeries. He's real big into disproving the consistency of the New Testament. And so I was like, there's got to be something there is textual criticism is his thing. That's his like that's his what he harps on. And so I got to one of his books and he talks about what really caused him to question his faith. Now, again, Bart Ehrman is a guy who went to Wheaton College. He went to Princeton Theological Seminary. I wouldn't qualify them as really conservative, but they're not quite as bad as like a union or somebody like that. And so but I mean, he did. He went to me. He went to Moody, too. Yeah. And so he studied under Bruce Metzger, the guy who is like the champion of the authority of New Testament documents. Yeah. I mean, this this guy is and he actually has a book co-authored with Bruce Metzger. Read it. And so but what I found was where he started arguing with guys like Bruce Metzger and really arguing with scriptural authorities was he said, I can't trust scripture. I because I believe it wasn't written this way or wasn't written by, you know, first Corinthians wasn't written by Paul. And he went into all of these things. He has a book called Forgery and Counterforgery. That's really, really interesting. If you're into that kind of stuff, it's it's long and it's not an easy read. But it's he basically breaks down a lot of the New Testament, what he believes is forged. Really fun stuff. But what I found was he was saying one thing out of one side of his mouth. The reason he's leaving Christianity is because he can't deal with the problem of evil. And then. Two chapters later or even the next chapter, he's saying we can't trust scripture because, you know, God is this evil person. And I'm like, OK, so the foundation here is really the problem is scripture. And you're using scripture to say that God is evil and you can't deal with the problem of evil, which, you know, and the funny thing to me is he does that. But he doesn't actually ever deal with the problem of evil in any of his books. He never offers a solution. He just criticizes the Christian perspective of the problem of evil. And so because he never offered a solution and he continues to harp on things like forgeries and why we can't trust the New Testament and different things like that. I made the argument that this is really where Bruce Herman is grounding his leaving Christianity. He may not be admitting it, but I believe and I would argue that he is grounding it in the insufficiency of scripture. And so, you know, and I think Bart Ehrman is probably the best test case because this is a guy who. In his own words, doesn't want to leave Christianity, but because he can't trust scripture, finds it hard to believe the claims of Christianity. And therefore he he wants to leave. And so it's it's not so much a I can point to a doctrine, you know, we'll call it soteriology. You know, if you don't believe X about soteriology, well, you're drifting in the faith. I don't think it's it's so much that whereas it is you start to question the interpretations of scripture that have been. Tied, tried and tested in true over councils and creeds and tons of church history. It doesn't mean that they got it exactly right. They're not authoritative on the same level of scripture, but we can learn so much about scripture. from those things like that are that are in church history, that we can get a solid foundation about how we should be interpreting scripture. So what you're saying is we shouldn't unhitch ourself from the Old Testament. That's exactly what I'm saying. OK, OK. Just making sure that you were we're on the right page there. Yes, you should definitely not be unhitching yourself from any part of scripture. OK, OK. Michael, what are your thoughts? Where do you think that the error comes in at when bad theology begins to arise? Well, I mean, Anthony, again, had a lot of good insight there. But I do think like when they start offering up issues with scripture, when people start doing that, but they don't offer any kind of solution for many or they or they can't. You know, like like like the idea of like the with evil, no religion anywhere really offers up a good answer to that. You know, where's what's the source of evil? I mean, Christianity in general, like. Evil is evil comes from the devil and Satan and from our own sin. So like like like if they don't offer I feel like if they don't offer up an alternative, then they're just choosing something to harp on and not. I don't know. I have a hard time articulating it. Yeah, that would be it. If you can't if you can't provide a counter argument, a lot of times one of the things I'm really big on is logic. And if you a lot of times, if you can't provide an argument back towards what you're arguing against, then it's really you're just trying to say, no, that's wrong. And, you know, in logic, the burden of proof always resides with the person making the positive affirmation. And so saying, no, that's wrong is is it definitely leaves that burden of proof. But I also think that if you're going to say, no, that's wrong, then you have to offer a positive affirmation of why it's wrong. Logically. And so, you know, in the case of Bart Ehrman, Bart Ehrman just says, I don't like the way scripture is. And so I don't like the problem of evil. And so I don't like Christianity. And he just kind of leaves it at that. And it doesn't really ever go any further than that. And from what I read now, there may be I did not read every book. And so there may be another book that has that that argument in it. But I didn't see it in what I read. And so that led me to believe that it was really he's really just kind of kicking the can. He's saying he's saying this. It's the problem of evil when it's not really that it's I have a problem with scripture. And because I can't trust scripture, I can't trust what scripture teaches. And if I can't trust what scripture teaches, then the the the slippery slope starts right there. I like that you brought up logic because I feel like that those who champion a sufficiency of scripture position a lot of times get misrepresented, maybe or attack that that's not logical. You know, those are the ones that are saying like, oh, well, you know, you don't accept anything outside of that. And it's not I honestly I'm convinced that it is a logical position. It's a logical position. When you look at. You know, you think about the work that like either Michael Kruger's done or Stephen Boyce has done and it's putting out a lot of work. We're not illogical and trusting scripture. It's not an illogical position. And, you know, if you look if you watch that debate, whether you whatever you think of James White or not, watch the debate between him and Bart Ehrman. Oh, yeah. And when they get to the question answer time, he he destroys him. Yeah. Maybe from my perspective. But logically, like you said, Bart Ehrman's position goes out from underneath him. Yeah. Because then when you start talking about any other document of antiquity. It's not even a comparison when it comes to the Bible. Exactly. And and, you know, it's you know, Bart Ehrman says one of the things he touts throughout a lot of his books is that there are 300,000 to 400,000 mistakes in the New Testament. And because there are so many mistakes, we clearly can't trust that. We can't trust it. His thing is there's there's more variance in the New Testament than there are words. That's what gets a lot of people. That's yeah. And he says it in ways that a lot of people hear it and they're like, oh, my gosh, why would I trust that? That's crazy. Because he's a master of work. Bart Ehrman is a master of words. I will you know, I'll give him credit where credit is due. But if you think logically about his arguments, they really start to fall apart very, very quickly because he he makes this argument of there are 300,000 to 400,000 mistakes in the Bible. OK, so let's define what a mistake is. Well, in Bart Ehrman's world, a mistake is a comma in the wrong place or a missing comma or a period in the wrong place. Nothing that does any damage to the text. Nothing that changes a meaning of a word. Are there issues with the New Testament? Yes, there are some issues. Greek scholars have struggled for years with with fully understanding the New Testament. But because we have somewhat like 6000 copies of the New Testament, either in part or in whole, we can piece together with I think I heard one one Greek New Testament scholar say we can piece together with ninety nine point nine nine nine percent accuracy. Exactly what the text should be. And so and we know there's really no question because we have the ability to put all of these fragments into textural critical models inside of these computer programs. And and they generate they basically generate all this stuff out of all of these fragments. And it's I mean, it's the when you talked about antiquity, I mean, like the next closest thing has like five or 10 percent of the available knowledge. Yet we trust things like Plato and Aristotle and sorry, you know, we trust writings from them more than we trust scripture, even though we have multiply attested. Documents, writings, you know, is substantiated on so many different levels that it's I mean, it's it's really laughable to say that you don't have an accurate representation of the New Testament. Yeah. And so when we can trust that, then we go to it and we let it speak for itself. So when you come to passages like Psalm 19 or Psalm 119, you know, we gather doctrines that this is what God's given us, the revelation that he's chose to reveal to us within scripture that has been preserved. Mm hmm. It's sufficient. It's enough. Yes. And if if you if you don't believe it is, then you don't believe the words of scripture itself. And and this is I think, you know, going back to the logic thing, this is where people have a problem with logic. Well, why should we trust scripture? Because scripture says we should trust scripture. Well, that's circular logic, you know. OK, well, it's circular logic. All right. Well, what else are we going to trust? What else are we going to put it on? You know, where where is your logic to say that we shouldn't trust scripture because scripture says we can trust it? What's your argument against that circular logic other than it's circular logic? Yeah. Yeah. I like the old Greg Bonson debate where he's debating the the atheist. And in the question and answer time, he asked him, he said the guy was accusing him of circular reasoning. And he said, so what are you trusting in? Like, where do you come to that determination? Eventually, the guy said the laws of logic. He said, well, where did you get the laws of logic from? Yeah. And what he basically backed the guy into the corner to basically admit this. He has his own presuppositions. Yes. He has his own things and he can't sit there and argue from a higher ground against him because he's basically got to admit that he's coming up with something somewhere. It's like there's a parable somewhere about building your house on the rock versus building it on the sand. And I think Jesus talked about that somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So we've talked about text criticism. We've talked about the origins of evil and those areas that can cause error. Do you think there's any other issues that can cause us to have bad theology that are just standout issues? What do you think, Michael? We've covered a lot of stuff on our podcast. Yeah. I think about all the different areas we've covered. I don't know if that's what I'm thinking. It's more like a theological issue or not. But like people who are married to political parties. I don't know if y'all want to talk about that. That's a rabbit trail. We try to avoid it. We try to avoid, yeah. You're our guest, so we're at the whims of your answer. Oh, gosh. No, but like you have people who will be like they vote one way or another because they've always have and always will and they don't like. It's the same thing. They don't do the research themselves to see what the people are actually saying. I don't know. That may be a really bad example. Well, I bet he may be able to articulate it much better than me. I actually think it's a really good example. And here's why I think it's a good example. Because oftentimes we filter our scripture through our political views instead of our political views through scripture. That's good. That's good. You know, we try to say we should vote X or we should vote Y. And then we try to find a scripture to support our X or Y. Instead of saying, here's what scripture teaches. Scripture teaches X, so vote X. Or scripture teaches Y, so vote Y. You know, one of the, I guess, I try to keep myself under control on Twitter. But occasionally I will get a little rambunctious and troll people on purpose. And I love finding liberals on Twitter who will say stupid things and not know exactly what they're talking about. And, you know, I'll just go in and say, what about this? What about that? You know, is that really what scripture says? Is that really what that text says? I don't know if you guys have followed him, but there's a guy on, I think it's on TikTok, called the Red Pen Apologist. And he listens to somebody's argument and then he just takes it apart according to scripture. And so I think it's important to, from a Christian perspective and from a scriptural perspective, to number one, look at the text. What does the text actually say? And then once you know what the text actually says, then look into the history. How would a reader, and I think this is part of the problem that we get to when we talk about leaving or going into bad theology. We read scripture as if scripture was written to 21st century Americans. And we don't read scripture as it was written to a first century Jew or Gentile. And so because we think scripture is written to us and about us, we take verses like 2 Chronicles 714 and say, oh, if my people, well, that's obviously Americans who are called by my name. Well, God has obviously called Americans, will humble themselves and pray. Well, obviously Americans need to humble themselves and pray. I will heal their name. Well, obviously God's going to heal America. Wrong. You know, and one of, I think one of our favorite quotes is I can do all things through a verse taken out of context. That's good. Love it. Well, I would say this is just my opinion, just my opinion, guys. But I think a lot of times the people who struggle with the sufficiency of scripture struggle because of biblical illiteracy. Yes. Because they don't really have, they don't realize how much the Bible actually speaks specifically to things and can help things. Yeah. Yeah. And even on that point, even just last week, yesterday for when we're recording this, I spoke at our church on Psalms 28 and David's, this Psalm of praise and lament and thanksgiving. And I said, and I was challenging the church, put yourself in the situation where David would have been at when he's writing this. He's probably been chased by Saul right now. And he's writing, God is my rock. Yeah. I said, this flamboyant talk, he is legitimately saying God is his only refuge. Yeah. And I tried to put them in that mindset of where was this written at in the time period that it was written so they can really understand the context of scripture. Because if we don't, if we don't know that, we're already going to misinterpret scripture the way it's supposed to be read. That's a good point, James. Because, you know, we hear stuff on our, from our perspective, you know, like, does the Bible have anything to say about trauma? A hundred percent it does. Look at who, look at who wrote the Bible. You think about, like, James, David. You don't think David experienced trauma? Yeah. I mean, he was told, he was given orders by his superior officer, his king, to go out and kill Philistines and then mutilate the genitalia of their dead bodies. You don't think that's traumatizing? Yeah. And then you go and read the Psalms with that perspective and you can see and actually find there are some healing salves for trauma in the scriptures. Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't made that point, John, not as gruesome as you just did. But I made that point. Awesome. I made that point in Psalms 28, the first two verses. It talks about, he says, God, if I don't hear your voice, I'll be like those that go into the pit. And what he's referring to from what I got out of that was, God, if I'm not communicating with you, if there's not a relationship between me and you, my mind's going to begin to spiral out of control. Yeah. I'm going to begin to worry, where am I in standing with God? Mm-hmm. And I said, that is exactly what's happening with our teenagers these days. That's what happened in our world right now because they're nowhere near God's voice. They're nowhere near God's word. And they're wondering, God, where are you? I don't know what to do in my life. And in that point alone, we can see that David was dealing with these same issues because he's saying, hear my supplication so that I don't end up like the ones that are going into the pit. Yeah. You know, it's funny. It's coming in out of Psalm 27 into Psalm 28. If you read the last verse of Psalm 27, because in Psalm 27, he is absolutely fleeing from Saul. And these two were probably pinned together. And you get to the last verse of Psalm 27, and it says, wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. You know, a lot of times we think that our troubles and our problems are just, you know, oh, it's spiritual depression. Maybe, maybe, just maybe. It's just God saying, just wait. Just be patient and watch what I'm going to do. Don't try to rush ahead of me. Don't try to get yourself into what is the good life and what you've defined in your 21st century American context as what you think you should have. Maybe just wait and watch what I do. Watch how I work because I'm going to do something that blows your mind. And, you know, I can tell you time and time again through my life, through the people that I've met. I mean, even me meeting and becoming friends with some of my best friends that I know, Michael included, are people that I met when I lived in Georgia for two years. And some people may look at that circumstance and go, well, obviously, you know, you made a mistake. You moved up there and it was wrong and it was, you shouldn't have been there. But I can tell you with certainty, God put us there. We did what God had called us to do while we were there. And then God moved us away. And, you know, that's part of the reason that I still to this day and will continue to do this podcast with Michael and talk to Michael on a daily basis. I would have never met Michael if it wouldn't have been for God moving in our life that way. But sometimes you just have to wait. Sometimes you just have to be there and say, all right, God, I'm just going to sit here and just wait. And I think David does that a lot of times, you know, in the Psalms, you know, there's you read Kings and Chronicles, which if you're following along with beers and Bible, we're walking book by book through really the entire Bible right now. We've started Genesis and we're on. We're we're probably in Psalms ish when this when this is coming out. But it's as you walk through Kings and Chronicles, you read stories about David. He could have killed Saul. But what did he do? He didn't because he knew what the law said. You don't touch God's anointed. He knew that Saul was God's anointed. Wasn't a very good one, but he knew. And so he waited. He waited and he said, I'm going to let God do. And what did God do? God delivered him into the kingship through God's way, not through David's way. That's good. That's good. What a what a great quick example of how the Bible is, you know, to quote Hebrews for living and active. Yeah. And discerns the thoughts and intents of our heart. It's sufficient. Yes. You know, if that's a hill I die on, it's a hill I die on. That's right. Always. I'll put my armor guide on from Ephesians six and do it every day. Yeah. John, last question. Let's toss it up to him. I don't want to say we've already covered it. Did we? All right. No, we're good then. We're good. Wrap it up. You can obviously tell that this is being recorded late at night rather than in the morning. Yes. We normally record in the morning. We're a little bit more fresh. Unfortunately, Michael and I have day jobs. Yes. We're just pastors. We don't do anything. You make your own schedule. That's right. I've worked in churches and I've worked not in churches. And let me tell you something. I don't envy pastors. There are days when I want their schedule, but then there's days that I don't want their schedule. Because you know what? I've been on the receiving end of phone calls at two o'clock in the morning. And, you know, and I salute both of you guys because I know what pastors go through. And, you know, I may not work in a church today, but I work with churches and I've been involved with churches enough to know that the pastorate is a hard position to be in. And, you know, it's our pastor actually just put out a book on burnout, pastoral burnout. And it's there's a reason that the pastorship is one of the leading vocations that has burnout in it. And it's because of people. And honestly, I mean, it goes right along with what we're talking about tonight. So many pastors a lot of times just get so caught up in doing things for people. And the midnight phone calls and the, you know, hospital visits and trying to prepare a sermon and all of the work involved with all of that. Plus, you know, if you're not in a large church with multiple staff members, your pastor is also your treasurer and is also your plumber and is also your electrician and is also all these other things. And so you end up just giving yourself to all these things and a pastor can lose his way in the sufficiency of Scripture. He can lose what Scripture teaches us that we should be. And, you know, it's it. I love this last question. What is the source of theology? Well, the source of theology is Scripture. And so many times, even in the past, no matter what we're doing as Christians, we can let our source of theology become who we are or what we do or what gives us priority in this world instead of what Scripture teaches us that we should be. That's great. Love it. And thankful for you guys to come on. We're looking forward to meeting you guys face to face and being able to interact with you guys for a couple of days. And it's going to be a great time and looking forward to it. I hope our our family will be able to join us and our our friends that we've met through the podcast and just excited about the speaking, the topics that are going to be talked about, the breakout sessions that we're going to be a part of. I mean, the whole thing in a in a two day period is going to be spectacular. And so hopefully if you haven't gotten your tickets, you'll join us. But John, any closing words from you, my friend? No, I think there's been some great things said tonight. And I think the only thing left to be said is to God, not the pastor, neither glory. Thanks for listening to the Freedom Podcast. To find more content like this, please visit RFPNetwork.org. To find more podcasts like this one, resources and meetups to encourage you on your journey. Thank you. Thank you.

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