Daily Worship, Creation Days, and Feisty Presbyterians with Jonathan Gibson

Life and Books and Everything — Clearly Reformed

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Daily Worship, Creation Days, and Feisty Presbyterians with Jonathan Gibson

April 26, 2022

Life and Books and EverythingClearly Reformed

In this freewheeling conversation, Kevin talks to Jonny Gibson about his life, his books, and some of everything. Gibson, an Old Testament professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, opens up about the loss of his daughter in 2016, why he believes in 24-hour creation days, and the need for old forms and old prayers to help us in our daily devotions.

Timestamps:

Intro, sponsor, and guest [0:00-4:46]

The State of the UK Church(es) [4:47-15:34]

Edited Series on the Five Points [15:34-20:28]

More Biography [20:29-22:32]

An Apologetic for Discourse Analysis [22:33-29:22]

Creation: Literal Days or Literary Framework? [29:23-40:57]

God's Goodness in the Loss of a Child [40:58-54:10]

Be Thou My Vision and Private Worship [54:11-1:01:03]

Thomas Witherow and Essential Non-essentials [1:01:04-1:12:17]

Transcript

[Music] Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Life and Books and Everything Good to Have You with us. I'm Kevin DeYoung, the host, and I have with me a special guest, Jonny Gibson, who I'll say more about in just a moment.

Just want to thank Crossway for sponsoring Life and Books and Everything, and I'll be back with you. I mentioned today that ESV Men's Study Bible, which released about 10 days ago, and there's always need for another good study Bible. This one has a number of acclaimed scholars and pastors, it says, and lots of notes, thousands of notes, character profiles, biblical facts, daily devotionals, scripture application content.

So if you are looking for a men's study Bible for you or for a man in your life or Father's Day or something coming up, check out the ESV Men's Study Bible and thanks again to Crossway. So I have with me Jonathan, does anyone call you Jonathan? Only my mother, that's what I'm in trouble. Yeah, when you're in deep trouble, Jonny Gibson, PhD University of Cambridge has been a pastor, has taught on both sides of the Atlantic and currently is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in the Philadelphia area, and we're going to talk about a number of books that he's written.

You've yet to write a book that I don't like. So keep up the, I'm sure you have much higher standards than that, but I do appreciate you. You appreciate your brother, appreciate the work that you're doing.

So thanks for being on the program. Well, thanks for having me Kevin. Always good to talk to you.

All right, so start off, tell us a little bit about yourself. You're not from Philadelphia, I don't think. Where are you from? How did you come to this lovely country of ours? Yeah, I hail from Texas.

Very good. As you can hear from the accent. Now I'm from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

It was raised there. It was actually brought up as a missionary kid in Tanzania, East Africa. My parents were missionaries with MAF, Mission Aviation Fellowship.

But we went back when I was seven to Northern Ireland. There's three boys in our family so to give us all an education back home. And yeah, I became a Christian family.

I think I became a Christian in my few years after we returned from Africa. It started to really understand and believe the gospel, having heard it from my parents and also from the church that we were in. And then I did a gap year in South Africa, 96 to 97, and came across a reform Baptist pastor who introduced me to reform theology.

I've sort of brought up in a Christian brethren assembly that was dispensational and sort of Calminian maybe. But it was that pastor who really sort of put me on to reform theology. Studied to be a physical therapist or physiotherapist as we call it back in the UK.

Yeah, I've forgotten that part. Yeah, I worked for three and a half years in a hospital and then went off to more college in Sydney to study for theology and service in ministry. I met my wife Jackie, she's a Sydney girl.

We married and then went to Cambridge for PhD. And then it was in Cambridge. I came out of the closet as a Presbyterian.

I think I've been a closet Presbyterian for a while. And was that a safe place to do that? Yeah, I mean, I was at Eden Baptist actually at the time. Right.

So not so safe. That wasn't safe. But you found Ian Hamilton or he found you or something? Yeah, a bit of both.

Yeah. And then Ian asked me to be as associate minister for a couple of years. So yeah, I'm ordained with the IPC, the International Presbyterian Church in the UK, served there as a minister for a couple of years and then came here to Westminster for my sins.

And I, yeah, I've been here six years, I'm in the sixth year, can't believe it. Well, we're glad to have you. I don't know if we want your is it the fact that once your sins are atoned for, then you can go back to Ireland or this is the, I don't know what's the what's what's the punishment here or there? There I have to see, you know, how to get out, you know, yeah.

So before we get to some some books, tell a little bit. So it's very confusing. Americans are confused about a lot of things, obviously.

And the United Kingdom is confusing to us. Are you one country? Are you two? Are you four? And the church scene, and I've traveled around a bit. I'm certainly not an expert, but it strikes me that the the church scene in Northern Ireland versus Scotland versus England, I don't have as much just haven't had the opportunity there was many connections in Wales.

But how would you describe the difference in the state of the church and what's going on with the gospel? And do you see are any of those places more similar or dissimilar to what you see in the United States? Yeah, so United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. And I'd say the mainland as we call it in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, very pagan, very low church attendance these days. But in Northern Ireland, I mean, I last lived there in 2005.

So I am speaking with a bit of distance now and probably aren't up to date on the recent. But you probably have family there and go back there. And yeah, actually, my parents and I moved to Scotland to be near David.

So I have, you know, uncles and aunts and cousins. But yeah, so it's been a while. But Northern Ireland's like a Bible built within the United Kingdom.

So there's a church, evangelical church in every street corner, at least certainly when I was growing up. And generally, you know, the Protestant churches are Orthodox committed to preaching the gospel. And I think something like 10% of people in Northern Ireland would claim to be evangelical Christian.

And perhaps it's even more than that. So it's got quite a strong Christian influence. In fact, it has it did resist passing a same sex marriage bill or abortion right up until 2020.

It was during the COVID that the British government took advantage of the COVID emergency situation when the British government wasn't meeting, and they pushed through the same zig's marriage bill. So it was a little sort of conservative and enclave within the United Kingdom resisting some of the cultural progressive things that were going on elsewhere. So it's quite a unique little country in that regard.

The Republic of Ireland has got the least number of evangelical churches per square mile in Europe, I believe. And Northern Ireland has the most event out in churches per square mile in Europe. So it's, yeah, it's quite a contrast.

But you would say you're Irish and Northern Ireland, you know, and Ulsterman doesn't say he's British. No, the other way around an Ulster man would say he's British. No, yeah, yeah.

And I'd say I'm Northern Irish. Northern Irish. English.

But I'm for sure. And you wear a orange on St Patrick's Day. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I'm British, not English, but Northern Irish.

All right. But not Irish. But not Irish.

And the Irish don't want to claim you for Ireland either. Yeah, yeah, it's quite complex. But those of us who live there know exactly what we're talking about, but the rest of the world don't really know.

Well, I have really, I mean, it's a few times and for just a short period at a time. But I've loved the trips that I've had to to Belfast. And once I think once I even saw the sun and that was really encouraging for a couple of hours.

That's a big day for us. Yeah, that's a good summer. Yeah, it's very green.

My sense. I felt like obviously as a press material, you love Scotland, but Scotland has felt the most post Christian to me. England, of course, lots of pagans in England.

But with, you know, there's still Church of England gives a certain veneer and there are a number of good evangelical Anglican churches and free churches and, you know, the size of a man's fist Presbyterian work going on there. Northern Ireland feels a little bit like, ah, there are, there are Christians around and you don't have to just go under a rock to find them there actually. But I'm sure you would say there's there's lots of the same secularization that's happening in any Western country is happening in Northern Ireland.

Yes, it is. And, you know, there was obviously the push for same sex marriage, which kept being defeated in the parliament at West at Stormont. But then, as I said, it was pushed through.

So there was definitely a part of the community and society were pushing for it. But the majority would still be quite conservative on things like that. And the mainline Presbyterian Church has gotten a look more conservative, would you say over the last decade or two? I would say so.

I have some friends there, Michael McLean and Marty Kline. And I would say, again, I wasn't brought up Presbyterian. So I'm sort of speaking from a position of ignorance, really.

But listening to those guys and some other friends, I would say the conservatives have now been able to influence the college unions theological college increasingly. Stafford Carson is the most recent president he used to work here at Westminster. And he really helped build that up into a really good, strong evangelical faculty.

And I think they're doing really well now. And so, yeah, it's an interesting denomination in that it had a heresy trial in the late 1920s that didn't go the way of the conservatives. Some people left, eight churches left to form the evangelical Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the EPCI.

And to this day, the EPCI have eight churches or nine or 10 churches. So they haven't really ever grown. They came out or by the same time, Mechen came out over here.

And what was interesting, Mechen wrote to some of the ministers who were leaving saying, you're doing the right thing, it's great. And it's just interesting. History does repeat itself, but each country and culture is quite unique.

And I think the history there with the Presbyterian Church has been that the evangelicals who stayed within it played the long game. And in a sense of actually, I think, covered the denomination. I'd still have some issues here and there.

I'm sure still some elements of nominalism. They passed women ordination, I think back in the '80s. But I don't think there's a lot of women actually come through for ordination.

I think Stafford said when he was there, they didn't have any women come through union for ordination, which is quite remarkable. Yeah. And I think the answer to your question in short, in what was it, 2018, I think the Church, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland made a decision to cut ties, 400 year ties with the Church of Scotland over the same sex marriage issue.

And so they took a really bold stance. They lost their accreditation with Queen's University as a result. Yeah.

So I think that's that's usually how conservative they are to this day to make a stand like that. That's great. One last geopolitical question, a very American centric question.

You married in Aussie? Yeah. Yeah. And you're from Northern Ireland and your family in Scotland and you studied in England.

And now you've been in the United States. So what's the good, bad or ugly? What do we, who've grown up here, not see good, bad or otherwise about the Church situation in America that someone coming from the outside can see more clearly? Wow. I mean, that's like asking somebody to comment on their wall.

I know. Well, just to be fair, whenever I've gone, that's always like the first question. Hey, tell us, you've been in Belfast for four days.

What do you, you know, what do we need to know? What do you see? So it's a very self regarding question, but you have probably some good insight. Yeah. So on the positive side, Jackie and I really like the Church's very bold stance on against abortion, pro life, you know, stance that the Church has here.

I think it's fantastic. In the UK, I don't think we have that as much. And I think it's a real pity.

I think we could be bolder and more courageous. So I quite like that. I quite like that you have your own radio stations, your own Christian schools.

You know, Christians here do their own thing. If they don't like the secular school, they'll start a school. Whereas in the UK, probably because the history of the Church of England with, you know, they were church schools and they had Christian elements to even some still have remnants of that.

There hasn't been that feel for the need to do it. And yet I really like that idea of starting Christian schools, Christian colleges, liberal art colleges that are Christian. So we actually really like that aspect.

Other people in the UK are straight, you think, Oh, that's the polarization in America. That's the problem. Whereas I think no, if if you think Jesus is Lord of the whole of life, then why would you not start a Christian school? Yeah.

So we like that aspect. Again, it depends which church you're in and, you know, which denomination you're connected to over here. But I think that the danger with that, having your Christian school Christian college is of, you know, how much do you mingle with pagans, really? How much contact do you have with a non Christian? I think in the UK, we churches because we're surrounded by so much secular culture, we just have more contact with non-Christians and we're maybe more frequently thinking about how to do evangelism, whereas in the States, here, I think, and again, it depends which denomination and church, etc.

But I think it can become quite insular and, you know, inward focused. Yeah. That's good.

That's good. Well, if you have anything else you want to say before the end of a podcast, feel free. You can, you know, you can always fly back to Northern Ireland if COVID will let you.

Yeah. So we're talk about some of your books. We'll get to some of your more recent ones.

But I want to go back and talk about the big book that you and your brother edited on what why did you want to do a big book on limited Atonement from Heaven He Came and Saw Her? When did that come about? What was the impotence? Are you doing all five points? Yeah. So back in 2008, I was set, oh, yeah, I was set a paper at More College on limited Atonement. And at the time at More College, I would have said the majority of faculty were sort of four pointers or six pointers, depending on what you think of the five points.

And so they were sort of Amar Ali and or hypothetical universalists. Right. Braun Knox, who's the principal in the 70s and 80s, very influential, was very anti limited Atonement.

So there was that atmosphere around the college at the time. Anyway, I wrote a paper on it. And as I was studying for the paper, I thought, you know, there's nothing contemporary that sort of puts all the historical biblical theological arguments all together.

You have to sort of go and get the theological in this book and the historical over here and the biblical over here. And so I just said to my brother, when he was out for my wedding, I said, you know, I think there's a niche for a little book here, a little book, a little book. Yeah, we book.

No, we book. And he said, well, why don't you put together proposal? I asked him to edit it with me. He said, no.

And then I twisted it as his arm eventually. So that's how it sort of came up by through an essay that was set at theological college. And then it sort of grew from there.

And you know, I see what it is, what is it? 23 chapters or something from historical biblical theological pastoral perspective took six years to finally produce and get it in print. But we're very glad with the final product. And then yes, in for some strange, stupid reason, I decided let's do four more.

So they're all in the pipeline. And we are very close to getting the final manuscript for the one on Total to Gravity. So each of them is going to be aligned from a hymn, like from heaven, he came and saw her.

So the next one's going to be Lord willing, ruined sinners to reclaim human corruption in historical biblical theological pastoral perspective, chosen not for good and me on conditional election. Thine I diffused a quickening ray, irresistible grace, and see if in the arms of sovereign love on perseverance, preservation of the saints. So I mean, it's been a long couple of years and edited projects or somebody put it to me like hurling cats.

And they're horrible. I don't I've done just a couple, then I end up, I have a couple more that I'm doing. And it's, you know, no offense to the people who are doing but every time I've done when I thought this was horrible, please never do this again.

I should have would have been easier to just write the book. Yeah, I've actually, I'm pretty sure this will be the last edited volumes I ever do. It's, yeah.

And you know, they're their your labor of love as an editor, aren't they? They're what you're interested in and not right often exactly what the contributors are. They do a great job. They put the work in, but it's not their first love.

It's not where their labor is. And so you're, you know, you're having to ask them to write it in their spare time, basically, and they don't have a lot of spare time. No, almost nobody turns in things early.

Yeah. Yeah. You're always asking.

So the thine I diffuse a quickening ray on the irresistible grace from the Wesley him. But don't you think Wesley didn't mean that like we want him to mean it when we sing the song? I think he means it nigh and glory. He means it now he's he's had a very good seminar.

Yes. And he's all squared away. So his current authorial intent.

Yes. But but he probably meant Pervenian grace, you think? Yes, maybe. But I remember Packer in his book among God's giants on the Puritans.

He has a he quotes that part of the hymn. And he says, where is thine or meaning is a nigh friend? You know, because it is such a Calvinistic term, a phrase is not thine I diffuse a quickening ray. The dungeon filled with light I woke the chains fell off.

You know, it's hard to see that as just Pervenian grace. Yeah. Well, hey, I'm I'm with you.

And yeah, I love the hymn and we sing it. So tell us about you and your brother, who's a pastor in Scotland. You guys have a reputation for being what's a good word? Crazy? Trouble trouble trouble some irksome.

But but in a good impish. I don't know what is this a nor is this a Belfast thing? Is this probably a Gibson boy thing? It's probably an Ulster thing. Yeah.

And David still like that, even though he's you know, has to be a proper Presbyterian there in Scotland. Yeah, he's probably the least Northern Irish. There's we've a younger brother, Alistair, he lives in south of Spain.

I'm probably the most nostalgic and sort of loyal to the homeland than the other two brothers. But did you watch the Kenneth Branagh movie? I have not yet. Jackie there.

I haven't either. But I hear people rave about it. But yeah, Jackie and I are sort of trying to find a night where we can actually watch it in peace, but not fall asleep, Jordan.

But I hear it's very good. And I'm looking forward to it. I'm annoyed I missed it when it was in the cinema because I'd love to see it on the big screen.

Yeah. Yeah. So what are you teaching at Westminster? Because you're not you're not teaching systematic theology, but you're doing these you doing these five points of Calvinism? Yeah.

Yeah. No, I teach Old Testament. So I teach Hebrew three.

We go through Jonah. I teach advanced PhD classes on Hebrew discourse analysis and poetry where we went through lamentations and some of the Psalms or Psalms, as you say, Sam's. Yeah, that's Sam.

He's a good Hebrew. The Hebrews pronounce Sam. Yeah.

And what else I teach? Old Testament history one and two. So I go from Genesis. My OTHT one class is Genesis one to 11.

That's as far as I get. And then my OTHT two classes, Genesis 12 through to Ezra Nehemiah. So we speed up eventually.

So what am I what have I been missing in life? I had to do discourse analysis in seminary and it clicked with some people and it just unlocked the treasures of God's word. And for me it it just felt like this is just somebody's system that I'm having to find the right words for and the right sort of. And I'd like to think I do the legwork of it intuitively, but sell me on discourse analysis.

So you haven't really preached, Kevin, until you've done this course. Well, that's true. I'm always doing in the ministry.

Yeah. For me, yeah, there's there's more than one way to skin a cat, isn't there? So for me, it just gets you below the skin of the text of the English, you know, and there's different ways to do it. I have my own sort of method here.

And all I want is to encourage students to get into the original language and see things. The two analogies I use is reading the Bible in the in the original language. It's we all we always read in a second language more slowly and carefully, because it's hard.

It's a second language. And so you slow down. So I talk about it being like watching the sports bowl in high definition in slow motion.

You know, you watch the touchdown from all the different angles, it's slow motion. And that's what it's like, you know, doing a discourse analysis, or at least reading in the original language is like that. And then doing a discourse analysis, I use the illustration of it's like doing an x ray on a text, or putting the text into an MRI scanner.

You know, when I was a physical therapist, patient would come to me and tell me that pain in their elbow and I would be able to palpate it and sort of try to work out what was wrong. But if they handed me their MRI scan, I could see straight away where the inflammation was, where the issue was located, because I was getting in under the skin and seeing from different dimensions and angles what was going on. And I think that's what a discourse analysis does.

You're looking no longer at the words, you're looking, you're zooming out from words and phrases to clauses and sentences and asking how do these relate semantically, logically to each other. And I think that's where you start to see the skeletal outline of a text. And for me, it helps you then formulate your points quicker.

You start to see these four verses belong together. That can be my first point. These next five verses belong together.

That's my second point. So that's what I've felt. It's like a skeletal x ray MRI scan on a text that actually sort of unfolds it for me.

And just to translate skeletal is what you're saying. Skeletal, yes. Yes, skeletal.

No, that's good. Well, that makes sense. And I totally agree.

I will say that to students often that the big advantage, there's lots of advantages of learning the original languages and the big proponent of it. But it just forces you to slow down and just read more slowly, more carefully. I know John Piper loves arcing, which has some similarities to discourse analysis.

And he does his thing and look at the book and he finds it really helpful. So to other people, I've just it's never registered with me. But I'm glad people like you are doing discourse analysis.

And I think what you said is absolutely true for pastors out there. Anyone just wanting to get the depths of what the Bible's teaching, just whatever sort of mechanism is going to force you to slow down. And maybe some people do a lot of it intuitively, but some people many don't just to look at, okay, what is this connection? How does it because we we don't read well and we certainly don't read well anymore.

We're all used to just reading little snippets and we skim and even sometimes seminaries can enforce bad, reinforce bad habits because professors like us, we assign everyone assign so much, you just read through things really quickly. And then when you get to the Bible, no, you want to slow down and ask a lot of hard questions. What is this metaphor doing in? Is this parallelism saying exactly the same thing in this Hebrew poetry or they're trying to say something slightly different? So those are the benefits of whatever sort of tools you use.

Yeah, so I was preaching on Psalm 23 last week at chapel and the opening verse which we all know, so well, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So it's Hebrew parallelism. And the question is how does parallel line B relate to parallel line A? So how does I shall not want relate to the Lord is my shepherd? And it's a synthetic consequential parallelism.

The Lord is my shepherd, therefore I shall not want. Now, if you don't have those categories in mind, you sort of just pass over that opening verse, but actually the whole Sam is that verse and everything else after it is just unpacking that one verse. And so it was doing the discourse analysis and the parallelism in that case that really helped me.

It sort of unlocked the Sam for me when I realized actually the whole Sam's about Sam verse verse one. And if I can start there, then I can unpack my points from that opening verse. You know, the Lord is my shepherd.

What does that mean? It means he leads me besides to orders. What does it mean that I shall not want? It means that when I go through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with me. And how many of those categories in that skeletal work do you show in the pulpit? Are you are you giving? And maybe it's different if you were speaking at a seminary chapel, but are you giving those technical terms? In the seminary chapel, all I said was that, you know, the second line of verse one relates to the first as its consequence.

And I spoke, I spoke about the parallelism. These are parallel lines. And you know, I think a well informed congregation can cope with that.

I don't I wouldn't get more technical than that. There's also a lovely alliteration in Sam 23 of the Ra the evil for I will fear no evil. Raish iron.

Well, the first the word for shepherd in verse one is rho a rash iron. Hey, and so you have this lovely alliteration for every Ra we ever face, we have a rho a we have shepherd for every evil. There's a shepherd.

And that just that combined word alliteration gave me a lovely application in the sermon. So, you know, I sort of said, who would have thought that from alliteration there is application, you know, that's good. That's good.

Can I ask you and hopefully not, well, maybe I want to get you in trouble. I don't know. But you teach Old Testament and we've talked a little bit before.

So, as you've teach Old Testament, what are you thinking about the days of creation? Are you becoming more and more and maybe already were convinced of traditional seven 24 hour day creation? How do you see that as important and what's brought you to that firmer conviction? Yeah, I was brought up with that view. I then shifted towards a bit more of a day, genealogical view at one point. And then I came out a more not because they taught literal days, but just I came out actually more convinced the literal days the more I looked at it.

It was getting into the Hebrew, to be honest, and saying that it's not poetry. At best, it's highly stylized prose, but it's not poetry. So, it's no parallelism and symbolism in that sense.

And yeah, and then it's one of the things I teach here. I teach the Hebrew of Genesis one to three in my OTC one class, and I go through it in great detail. I've become even more convinced of it.

Yeah. And then there's the history of interpretation, the anti-nysine fathers, nice seen post nice seen medieval period. The only exceptions are that I find are Augustine, origin and ancelom and everyone else's ordinary days.

And then you get to the reformation without exception ordinary days, post reformation ordinary days, then a little thing called the Enlightenment happens just a small e. And then you have this proliferation of different interpretations. And I guess my question to people who don't hold to the traditional ordinary days view is, so did God, did God allow the church to be in the dark for 1800 years over what the true meaning of the first chapter of the Bible was? Do we need the, was it Meredith Klein, who's finally, finally unlocked the opening chapter of the Bible? Or actually is Klein a bit off because actually the church has been interpreting it this way for 1800 years? So the history of interpretations also I think a powerful reason for me to actually hold to the traditional view. But for me, the primary thing is the exegesis of the Hebrew.

It's hard to read it any other way. I was taught by my daughter, Vadar in Cambridge, my supervisor was R.P. Gordon, lovely Christian Mani Vanchalkel. And he taught Genesis 111.

I went to his class and he's not a young arthur, he's not a six day ordinary days guy. But he said at one point in class, he said, now let's not have any of the silly nonsense about the days, meaning anything other than an ordinary day in the text. So he just, but he just doesn't believe it.

Yeah, he doesn't believe it happened like that. But he believes that's what the text says, that it's talking about ordinary days. And if you try and lengthen the days to these indefinite periods of time, it doesn't make sense with the ordinal numbers, first, second, third, fourth, etc.

And yeah, and James Barr, Regis Professor of Hebrew at Oxford said the same. What's very interesting in my study is that post-enlightenment, the higher critical scholars, the German scholars, fell, how's an uncle, von Rad, they all read the days as ordinary days. They don't actually go with all these alternative views.

They just say it can't mean anything else than an ordinary. And then they're happy to say, but yeah, we don't believe that. Yeah, it didn't happen like that.

But that's the way the Jews understood it to have happened. So I think when you see the history of interpretation, even among higher critical scholars, James Barr famously said, the only people who have a problem with the Hebrew of Genesis one are evangelicals. He said that the liberals and the fundamentalists all agree that it's six ordinary days.

The liberals don't believe it happened like that. The fundamentalist believe it says it and it happened like that. And he says, it's the evangelicals who don't know what to do with these days.

I thought that's an interesting comment. Well, there is, and there's some parallels with issues of gender roles or sexuality, because the further left you get on say the question of homosexuality, some of those scholars will say, well, obviously, Paul meant to say that all types of homosexuality were sinful. You just you can't rescue him from that.

They're perfectly fine to say that's what Paul says. And they'll just say, well, Paul was wrong or Paul was a bigot according to his first century understanding or whatever. And conservative evangelicals are fun, whatever label we are, we'll say that.

And it's the people in the middle that want to say, well, I want to be true to the Bible, but I don't want the Bible to say what I don't like it to say. There is sometimes something refreshing the scholars that are so far removed from feeling the authority of God's word. Now, that's a huge problem.

But sometimes they'll be more honest with the text because, yeah, there it is. I'm not trying to find a way to like it or not. It's just there.

And that's what it is. And we should be honest about it. Yeah, I think so.

And for me, it asked me why do I want to teach it like that? Well, a because I think that's what the text says. But also, I think it sets your disposition towards scripture from the very first chapter of the Bible. Like, I'm going to take this book seriously, right from, you know, the first chapter.

And it's not like, I want to be careful here. It's not like those who hold up turn of views aren't taking the Bible seriously from the first chapter. But they end up with a hermeneutic that's overly complex in order to get to their interpretation of the days.

So the other way I think about it is, if I handed Genesis one, handed a Bible to a nine year old, to my son who's nine, I said, Ben read that. Tell me, tell me what Genesis chapter one says. He pretty sure he'd say, well, it says that God made the world in six days.

And I say to him, what are those days? And he, I think any nine year old would say they're just ordinary days. But can you imagine me saying, no, well, look, you're gonna have to wait till you're about 16. And then I'm going to explain to you this thing called the literary framework, where day one matches day four, a day two, and five, and three and six.

And you know, and when you're a bit older, I'll explain to you actually how this passage, what it really means. And these aren't literal days or ordinary days, they're literary days. And Exodus 20, looking back on Genesis one, it's, it's not actually saying it the way you initially think it says it.

And I just think it's a bit strange that a child couldn't read Genesis one and actually understand it properly until they're older, and have this more sophisticated, complex hermeneutic that actually reads the text in a very different way than the way you would read it the first time. Yeah, yeah. No, it's good.

And I've been preaching through Genesis for over two years now, I'm on Genesis 39 this next Sunday. And you know this, but you, you experienced it, especially if you're slowly preaching through the text or teaching through the text, that for understandable reasons, we set apart Genesis one through 11, and you might do a class that Genesis one through it is a unit in a way. And yet it's so clearly tied from Tara's genealogy to Abraham over to chapter 12.

There's there's no rational way for saying, well, this is some kind of mythopoetic, you know, pre history that the author Moses didn't mean for us to take seriously in the same way. Chapter 12, we sort of come down, and now we're right here on planet Earth, and this was all something beforehand, which every day would have understood was, but there's nothing. In fact, there's so much in the text, all of the total adults, the 10, these are the generations of, I mean, I've just loved preaching through Genesis, because every Sunday, you're, you're showing connections.

You see how this is a connection to chapter four, and this is repeating the Abraham story in the Isaac cycle. It's a it's an amazing piece, even if it weren't inspired, an intricate literary work that's connected and interconnected from start to finish. And I think that's really important for the preacher, lest we set aside one through 11 as something very different from 12 through 50.

Yeah, no, very much. So the genre doesn't change at all from Genesis 1 1, right through, as you said, from 11 to 12, chapter 11 to 12, doesn't change at all. And also, as you say, it sets the Theological Foundation for the rest of the book.

I also talk about how the pro-tology, the so-teriology maps onto the pro-tology. So on all the alternative views of creation, I don't think that those positions can give a reasoned argument for the or the creation of the ordinary day or the ordinary week, the ordinary day and the ordinary week just seemed to pop up in the history and Genesis out of nowhere. If you don't believe that it actually was a normal day in the beginning, the question is, when did the normal day begin, and therefore when did the normal week begin? But do you think about Genesis 17, God says to Abraham, "circumcised your son on the eighth day?" Well, that's so teriology mapping onto pro-tology.

The eighth day is the first day of a new week. So it symbolizes new creation, new beginning. But the question is, when did the week begin, if it didn't begin in Genesis 1, and yet the whole of the redemptive history is actually structured on the ordinary day and ordinary week.

So Jesus dies on a Friday the last day of the week, sleeps through the Sabbath, and he rises on the eighth day, the first day of a new week. So it's so rich when you actually see how the pro-tology is serving as the foundation for the soteriology. And I think you miss all of that if you sort of go into these alternative views of the days of creation.

And that first of the new week, and I think that's the Greek is the one of the Sabbath or the week plus one. I think there's a deliberate reckoning there even in the Greek of how we're to read this Sunday that we're thinking of a new creation. That's just that's not something that some seminary professor came up with that's that's suggested there by the Greek.

And of course you trace through what you said, Genesis 17, "circumcised on the eighth day, eight being this number of new birth regeneration. How many people are in the ark saved eight people in the ark?" It's really rich and it all goes back to Genesis. I want to this is a good segue because you talked about kids and I haven't gotten to the books that I actually told you I was I was bringing you on here to talk about.

But I do want to talk about your your book The Moon is Always Round, which is a very touching book. And it's a simple but brilliant metaphor for God's goodness and God's providence. Tell us what that metaphor means and why you wrote the book out of a very real poignant painful experience for your own family.

So when Ben was about three, we were living in Cambridge. It was me, Jackie and Ben and he loved to look up at the moon at night. So we would always hold him up at the window and look for the moon and say, "What shape is the moon, Ben?" He'd say, "It's a present moon, half moon, three-quarter moon." And then I'd say, "What shape is the moon always?" And he would say, "The moon is always round." I taught him to say that.

And then I'd say, "What does that mean?" And he would say, "God is always good." And so I was trying to teach him that, you know, even when you can't see the whole of the moon, the moon's always round. Even when you can't understand all of God's goodness in a certain situation in life, God is always good. But little did I know that six months later, it would be quite providential because we were expecting our daughter, Leila.

And she was due on the Lord's Day 20th of March, 2016. But on the Lord's Day of the 13th of March, the week before, 39 weeks in the womb, as Jackie and I slept on that Sabbath evening on the Lord's Day, she departed this earth. And the next day we woke up and Jackie said, "There's something not right." And so we went to the hospital and had the scan and confirmed that there was no heartbeat.

And, you know, our world fell apart in a sense. The bottom of our world gave way that day. We had always heard of these situations of a death of late term in a womb and stillbirth, but, wow, we just all of a sudden were thrust into it.

Leila was still born four days later on St. Patrick's Day, 17th of March, which today, to this day, we call St. Leila's Day in our home. And we go out and we celebrate her life on that day. But we brought Ben to the hospital to meet her, and we spent the afternoon with her, and I drove him home that night in the car.

And Jackie was with Leila and I was going back later that night. And in the car, I don't know where he's three and a half. And he says to me from the back, "Daddy, will Mummy ever grow a baby that wakes up?" And he had held Leila.

He saw that she was just very still, eyes closed. And I said, "Then I don't know, but let's pray that she does." And then he said, "Why isn't Leila coming home?" And I said, "Well, because Jesus called her name." And she went to him. And he said, "After she's been with Jesus for a few days, will she come to us?" And I said, "No, Ben, when you're with Jesus, you don't want to go anywhere else." And then he said, "Does she not like us?" And I said, "No, she does like us.

She just likes Jesus more." I said, "We're going to have to go to them one day. She's not coming back to us. We'll go to her one day." And he said, "Daddy, why isn't she coming home?" He was sort of just confused.

And I said, "Ben, I don't really know why." But I said, "Do you remember the moon? What shape is the moon, Ben?" And he said, "The moon is always round." And I said, "What does that mean?" He said, "God is always good." And I said, "You know, tonight Ben, it's hard to see the moon at all, really. But we've got to remember that God is good." And he has his reason why Leila's gone to heaven. And then I put him to bed, left him with a friend, and I went out and I thought, "Let me actually look for the moon tonight." And there it was, a half moon.

And it sort of captured for me that night what exactly we're feeling. It was actually quite a joyful day to meet Leila, nine months expectation. Got to meet her holder.

She's beautiful, full head of black hair. Looked just like Ben when he was born, but all the feminine touches. And we could see God's goodness in giving us a daughter.

We got to meet her, name her. But then there was this other half of the moon I couldn't see. And it just struck me and I couldn't believe the profound conversation I'd had with Ben in the car.

So I, in the days after her stillbirth, I wrote it on my phone. And I thought, one day I want to write this up somehow. I didn't know in what context, but I just wrote it on my phone.

And then when I came to America about a year after her death, I was procrastinating one night, Leila trying to prepare an old testament lecture. And I just decided to start writing this kid's story. I thought I'm going to write a kid's story about it.

So that's how it began. And then a friend, me at Morgan Lock, helped me with the structure of it. He said, why don't you change the content to be from Ben's perspective? Not a third person, a reader's perspective.

So that's what he did. And he said, put the refrain, the moon is always round, which I had in there a few places. He said, put that in on every page.

And I thought, that's actually very helpful. So hence was born the book, the moon is always round. And at her funeral in Hamilton, we held a full funeral for her.

And at her funeral, Ian Hamilton had this throwaway line where he said, her's, Leila's was a glorious testimony. She pointed us all to God. She pointed us all to another world.

And then he had this throwaway line where he said, Leila the evangelist. And that's what we call her, Leila the evangelist. And we hear quite often throughout the year, letters, emails from people who have been blessed by that book, who sadly had similar experiences.

And we just always think, Leila the evangelist, she being dead yet speaks. Yeah. Well, it's, it's a thank you for sharing that.

It's a, it's a wonderful book. I encourage everyone to get, I was just talking to Mark Deaver earlier this morning, heading out to T4G. He said, please give my love to Johnny and tell him that I just handed out more copies yesterday at church of the moon is always round.

So we have it in our book table as well. You had no, you didn't know there was sometimes parents know, there's a chromosomal abnormality, she's not going to live, but you had no idea until that morning when Jackie woke up in March. Yeah, no, no idea.

They did autopsy afterwards and find, find nothing wrong with her. 50% of still births are a mystery to the medical profession. And she's part of that 50%.

Because that, I think the first time I met you was at the church there in Cambridge in 2016. It was one of the last weeks I was, it must have been February. And I, because I remember hearing just a few weeks later and met you and your wife and expecting the child and, yeah, very grief.

So, good has come out of it. The moon is always round. Yeah, yeah, the Lord has used our sore providence to minister to others.

We still miss her greatly. We just had our sixth anniversary of her not being with us. If I can't ask just one more question about that, because as a pastor, I mean, I just think of friends and loved ones I know who have had similar situations.

One of the things that maybe people could think they would know better than to ever say this. But someone might think, oh, I'm very sad and that's just terrible that that happened. But why is, why is this still such a big deal? I mean, you didn't, you didn't, you didn't know her, you didn't spend time with her.

I mean, it was very grieved, but you're acting like you lost a child. I mean, no one would ever say that, but people could, in their dark parts of their heart, think that. And yet it's, it's, I've known from seeing this past orally so many times, it is profound.

And I'm sure you can't understand it unless you go through it. What, what are people who haven't gone through it? What, what don't they understand about losing a stillborn child that feels every bit as much as losing any child? Yeah, I mean, each, each death of a child's different, you know, early miscarriage is a mystery. And there's, there, we had grace given to us that we got to meet Leila, name her, hold her words and early miscarriage, you know, parents don't even know if it was a boy or a girl.

They don't need to get to name them, etc. So, and then us losing Leila at nine months, you know, we, we friends who just lost a son at 29 years. And I wrote to the father when it happened a few years ago.

And I said, I don't know what you're going through. I couldn't only begin to imagine 29 years of love and bonding. And then, and he sadly died.

So, you know, each, the way I described is each person's valley is their valley. And I think that's what people need to respect and be aware of that, you know, each person's valley is their own valley. And but as far as a person, well, I think with a stillbirth, you get to meet them, you get to hold them, you get to see who they looked like.

You, you carry their little body and a white coffin into church, you put that body in a grave. And in that sense, it gives them great dignity. And we went, you know, on, on my books, you'll see it says, Johnny, you know, I have four children.

And Leila is one of those four. Yeah, yeah. And we, we sort of, you know, only two people met Leila, besides Jackie, me, Ian Hamilton, and a friend, dear friend of Jackie Sarah Dixon.

And nobody ever gets to meet stillborn children. Like, you know, some family might, yeah, generally nobody gets to meet them. And that's one of the great pains for a parent is we all love to talk about our children.

We love to put photos up of them on Twitter, Facebook, you know, email them to people. But nobody gets to see your stillborn child. And there's a great sadness in that because you think you think I've only got three children.

I have four children. I held my daughter, you know. And so there's, you know, Doug Kelly wrote to me whenever Leila died, he had a stillbirth, a sixth child.

And he wrote to me, says you have just been given the the strange stewardship of a quiet grief. Yes, strange stewardship of a quiet grief. And I've never forgotten that line.

And so, you know, I've, I've friends at seminary here, faculty and students, and their daughter, six years old. And I'll often look at their girl and I'll think, well, Leila would be running around with you. Yeah, wind in our hair today, but she's not here, but she would be sick.

She'd be your height. She, you know, she'd be wearing a red dress today. So it's this hidden grief that's very hard to articulate at times, but it's very real.

And the encouragement I give to people is, if you know someone who's lost a stillborn child, ask them their name. Yeah, what was their name? Just to ask them their name and use their name in conversation. If you're talking about the child, don't just talk about the baby.

They lost or we're sorry for your loss. You know, saying no, we're sorry, Leila died. Yeah, that's what that's what meant the most to us at the time.

Like be personal and talk about them like they're actually a real person. Because they are. And that's the the dignity that they deserve as God's creation and image bears.

Yeah. Well, thanks for letting me ask about that. And I, it's a wonderful book.

And I don't know if that metaphor is new to you or you heard it from some of what I, when I first read the book, I thought that's, this is brilliant. This is wonderful for this occasion, but for so many occasions in life, where we have to explain to kids and to adults, that doesn't make sense at all. Well, that's right.

Look up in the sky. You can't see the moon tonight. You see just a sliver.

But it's not any less round. It's not any less brilliant than it always is. So thank you for that.

I want to talk about a couple other books. We're almost out of time. But I said I was having you on here to talk about Be thou my vision.

I have this nice leather bound copy. This. And I gave this out at our, so it came out right before Christmas.

And I gave, I got, we bought copies from Crossway right as they came in. And we gave it out at our staff Christmas party. We got a big staff at the church.

And people were so excited. And I got lots of texts and emails afterward saying, this is so rich. I love this.

This is helping my, my devotional time in the morning. So just walk us through. What is this book? Be thou my vision, a liturgy for daily worship.

What is it? What inspired you to put this together? So it came about during 2020 during the COVID lockdowns. I was reflected on my own quiet times as we were all sitting at home. With not much to do.

And I thought these are a bit bland, but boring, I'm being distracted. You know, we all struggle to read and pray every day. That's always been a struggle for me, I think for everyone.

And so I thought, is there another way I could do this to really help, you know, to help and enrich my quiet time. So I thought I had a friend and sitting who had put together a little liturgy for families and churches while they were in lockdown. And my son goes to a reformed Episcopal church and they do a little prayer book service every morning.

And I thought, why not make my quiet time a little like a church service, a mini church service, a cold worship prayer, veneration, reading of the law, confess my sins, having assurance apart and say a creed. Look at a catechism question, do my Bible reading, have a prayer of illumination before that prayer of intercession and some prayers of my own and then Lord's prayer. So that's what I did.

I put it together. I tried it for a week, really liked it. So let me extrapolate this side into a month.

So I prepared it for a month, tried it for a month. And I find myself greatly enriched in my own quiet time, spiritually fed beyond just reading a Bible passage, not thinking much about it. My prayers were more expansive.

I was more concentrated, less distracted. And so that's when I proposed it the cross way. And I said, what do you think of this? And then here we are with this lovely addition that they've produced.

And the idea is basically to just give people another way to think about how do they do their daily devotions. So I've called it a liturgy of daily worship. So I'm trying to give it the more vertical aspect, rather than just thinking of our devotions as being an edification for us.

So that's why I've called it worship daily worship liturgy. And I hope it's all I can say is for myself. If you're allowed to talk about one of your own books like this, it's not really my book, it's just a copy and paste job.

But it's been a real blessing to me. I've not had better quiet times for a long time. Well, thank you for doing it.

Some of the best books are copy and paste jobs. I mean, the Valley of Vision, what banner of truth never knew they were going to have, you know, their best selling book when Arthur Bennett put together those prayers that he drew from different sources. And then I know that cross way has been really pleased with how well this is done.

And so like today, day 18, there's a call to worship and then a prayer of adoration. And if you just read through it all, you know, it might take eight, 10 minutes. But of course, the idea is to then pray your own and then go back and read through some scriptures.

I love it because for years I've on and off, I've tried to use some of the book of common prayer or the Anglican. I've gotten really nice daily office books and not growing up. You know, and I appreciate a lot of about that tradition.

Of course, that's not all. That's not my tradition. And I didn't grow up with it.

So some of the big books like they're very, they're confusing at first to the uninitiated like me. And so you're flipping back and forth all the time. And what's this let alone someone who hasn't been dissiminary.

Okay, what's this weird Latin term for this thing? And then I got to go back and I'm sure if you grew up with it, it all makes sense of how it all fits together. But what I love about this is you taking this a similar kind of idea of a basic template of worship that's been around for a long time for both corporate worship and private worship and family worship. And it's right, it's right here.

You don't have to flip to you don't need 18 bookmarks to figure out where you're going. There are some readings in the back to suggest going through. So it's really a wonderful resource.

And there's a wonderful thing about our evangelical, more free church tradition in that we believe in extemporaneous prayers. And that's really rich. And yet I think that that leads us sometimes to miss that even in the gospels when Jesus and the disciples were talking about prayers or they went out to sing a hymn.

These were almost certainly very set patterns of things that they did. And they had certain hymns they were going to sing the halal Psalms during the Passion Week, during Passover, or they were going to have certain prayers that they did. We tend to think of it like they just all got in a circle and just popcorn prayer.

Okay, you take off, I'll close. And there's nothing wrong with that. We've all prayed like that.

And there's something rich about that intimacy and extemporaneous. But I think many, many people in many churches, they wouldn't, they don't know what they're missing by using a resource. It's not like it's not that you're saying this is the only way you should ever pray is reading someone else's prayer.

But I think that was the light bulb with the valley of vision when that came out years ago. Wow, I don't pray this well. And of course, they didn't pray quite that well either because those were written works that people had labored over.

Philip Dodgeridge didn't just always stand up and pray like that extemporaneous. They had put a lot of thought. So you're using the riches that the saints who have gone before have put together and allowing us to then pray.

And I think for a lot of Christians who've never tried to pray this way with their private or family worship, it's really an enriching experience. And you can use this one month and keep going through it and it still stays fresh. So thank you for this.

Can I ask you about one other book before I promise I try to keep you to an hour. But this is so my morning devotions for the last little bit have been very Johnny Gibson, eccentric. That may be a problem.

I may be the only one. Now don't worry, I got the Bible mainly in prayer, but I always try to so I have beat out my vision on my shelf. And I also try to read some old book or a book about something old as sort of a five to 10 minute warm up my engine when I get going in the morning.

And so I've been reading through, I will build my church, Thomas Witherrow edited by Johnny Gibson. And not being a Northern Irishman, I confess I didn't know anything about Thomas Witherrow. So this is published by Westminster Seminary Press.

And you did quite an extensive introduction. Introduction is a bit euphemistic for what you did here. It's its own book in the first half of this.

So just tell us about this book. I will build my church, selected writings on church, policy, baptism and the Sabbath. Why would anyone want to read in Ulster men from the 19th century on church, polity, baptism and the Sabbath? Who was Thomas Witherrow? Yeah, so Thomas Witherrow is a 19th century Irish Presbyterian minister who wrote in his own historical ecclesiastical context, words that he believed were sort of necessary for the time.

The first one he wrote was the Apostolic Church, which is it on Presbyterian church government. And he looks at church government more broadly. And he was writing in a time when the Church of Ireland was very dominant and bishops reviewed as the right and only way to do church government.

And so he wrote against that as a Presbyterian saying that he actually thought the Presbyterianism in its church, polity was more biblical than the prelacy is the way he discredited our episcopacy. He also critiques independence as well. And so that was his context there.

It was a bestseller. So why should you read Thomas Witherrow? It went through about four editions and it was a bestseller. It got the attention of BB Warfield and others in this on the side of this side of America, the side of the Atlantic in America.

And he was a he was a very interesting writer. He grabs your attention straight away. He's polemical.

So you either like what he's saying or you don't like it. He's very straightforward. He's right down the middle.

Yeah, there's no there's no clearing as throat. No gets gets in there and goes for it. I mean, his his opening section on the Apostolic Church called the statement of the question where he just talks about how polity whilst it is not essential to salvation, it is nevertheless very important.

Otherwise, why we've got to put so much in the scriptures about it. And he just speaks more generally about the distinction between essentials and non essentials. And I think that's a problem in modern evangelicalism.

We think non essentials really, really don't matter. Yeah. Yeah.

And to the point and then Witherrow makes the point, well, if that's the case, then the vast majority of scripture is irrelevant, because the salvation parts of scripture are not actually as extensive in some books or letters than we think. And so his point is that the non essentials are actually while not essential to salvation important for the health of the church. And if if you're a Christian and you're going to go to a church, which you ought to be in a church, you're going to have to decide which kind of a church you're willing to submit to its leadership.

What kind of leadership structure are you willing to submit to? And so that's a question that we actually all need to ask. The other question is when you ask is ourselves is if I'm going to go to a church, which kind of baptism am I willing to receive myself and also have my children receive? Is it believers baptism or infant baptism? And that's his second book, Scriptural Baptism, which he wrote out of exigency in his time because there was a the Ulster Revival happened in 1859. And he was seeing that all the converts, the Baptists and the Wesleyans were trying to proselytize them and say, you need to get baptized now that you've become converted.

And the revival took place in the Presbyterian church. There was a lot of kids who'd been baptized as babies were growing up as adults and getting converted. And they were being proselytized.

So he wrote to say, you don't need to get baptized, you've been baptized. So that was the context there. Scriptural baptism, the parable of the city park.

Have you gotten to that yet? Yes, that is really good. In fact, I was just thinking, if there's a way, I might obviously giving credit to it, I might try to rework it. It's gets quite long, but rework it into maybe 1200 words and do a blog post or something because it's really clever and as a Presbyterian, very compelling.

Yeah, very much so. And it leaves you laughing. You know, like, even as a Presbyterian, I'm saying, you know, we're throwing have mercy on the Baptists.

We get the points in a nutshell. What is his his metaphor about the park? It's about a city park that, you know, a landlord owned and gave access to families for generations. And then a family come to get access.

And there's a new gatekeeper. And the gatekeeper says, you are allowed in to the gentleman, the citizen and his wife, he says, but your children are not allowed in. So for generations, parents and children were allowed access.

And then a new gatekeeper decides there's a change in the structure and regime here. And it's only parents, not children, because he's received something from the owner of the park that says, like, all friends are are granted admission here. Yes.

Well, I don't know that your child has any proof of friendship. Yes. Yes.

And so he plays on the continuity of the covenant, basically, does a child have the right to access to the promises and to access this park. And they go back and forth the gatekeeper and the citizen. And the citizen just keeps pressing home the point that hang on.

If the children previously were allowed access, why would they not be allowed access now? And sort of keeps pressing that point home. And the absurdity of not allowing them access now if they previously had a big park now, it's a new and improved beautiful park. So now our kids can't come in.

Yeah. So I think it's very powerful. And it's got the great punchline at the end, you know, and the gatekeeper was an unabaptist.

As if we didn't know, as if we didn't know, thank you for drawing the conclusion. Like, right? Okay, thanks, Wethro. But yeah, it's very powerful.

But I think earlier in the book scripture baptism, he has some very quite poignant part arguments that I think Baptist need answer. Like, where do you baptize 3000 people on the day, a pending cost? When there is no natural source of water in Jerusalem, the Pulisalom is not big enough for them all. So how did they all get baptized in one day? You know, he gets quite practical about full immersion.

What you know. So that that's his second book. The third book is on the Sabbath, where he gives a strong argument for the continuity of the Sabbath with modification.

You know, it's no longer mosaic. It's now Christian. The focus is on worship and rest.

Whereas in the old Testament, it was more unrest as well as worship, but rest was the big thing. And yeah, it's a really good, I think, articulate view of the continuity of the Sabbath. We can all have our different views of what you can and can't do on the Sabbath.

But I wanted to put it in there as the general principle of the Lord's day is still in effect. And it's now the first day of the week and it will remain. The assign of the Sabbath has to be still in effect because a Sabbath still awaits the people of God Hebrews 4. And it doesn't make much sense for there not to be a sign of that future rest if there was a sign for it in the Old Covenant.

So you know, some of the evangelical circles in the UK, mainly in the Anglican circles with the influence from Sydney Anglicanism will talk about every day is the Lord's day. Jesus came to bring the rest. He brought the rest every day is the Lord's day.

But that's really over realized eschatology. If there yet remains a Sabbath for the people of God Hebrews 4, then there has to yet remain a sign of that Sabbath for the people of God. And that sign is the Lord's day.

So that's with Ruth's point. Yeah, it would be strange to so emphasize that point in Hebrews with the conclusion being, therefore, there is no sign. I mean, it's sort of like Jesus having the little children come to him.

Of course, that's not a passage about infant baptism per se, but he says, to such belong to kingdom, it'd be strange for Jesus to really be saying, well, to people like children belong to kingdom, but obviously not literally children belong to kingdom. No, he took them in his arms. He gave them a blessing, which would have to everyone had obvious covenant overtones and says to these like this, but also to these very little ones I hold in my arms belongs to kingdom.

They have entrance into the park as it were. So I will build my church and you did a great introduction to Withero and there's pictures. And it's just really nicely done here by Westminster Seminary Press and Be Down My Vision by Crossway.

And then we talked about the kids book and your massive work with your brother on the five points of Calvinism. So keep up all the good stuff that you're doing and blessings on your work at Westminster. Perhaps I'll see you in the next couple of days as we both head to Mecca, aka Louisville.

As I said to you earlier, there's like 10 11 plenary sermons. So you have to get your husband one or two. I mean, Sinclair's there.

So you're going to, you know, something's going to be good and worthwhile. Yeah. Well, Kevin, thanks very much for helping me on.

It's been good to talk to you as always. Yeah, grateful. So thank you all for listening, for watching wherever you are.

And until next time, glorify God, enjoy him forever and read a good book.

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