The Reformers Can't Minister To Us!

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The Reformers Can't Minister To Us!

September 10, 2023

While the Reformers may not be able to minister to us, they can influence us and teach us. We ought to be men of OUR time, not men of a past time! Thanks for listening, I hope this was edifying.

Key Text:

* 1 Chronicles: 12:32

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Transcript

Hello, For The King listeners. I am not your host, Rocky Ramsey. My name is Will Drzymski, a brother in Christ and friend of Raku's, whom he has generously invited onto the show in order to verbally showcase my artwork to you in 50 seconds.

As an artist, I strive to accurately reflect the glory of God in everything that I paint, and through that process, I hope to flood as much of the earth as possible with paintings, which accurately proclaim the undeniable fact that Jesus is Lord and the creation which he made commands us to worship him. So if you would like to join with me in distributing clean, refreshing artwork showcasing the creativity of the God who made us, I would be overjoyed to have your help. I run my own website called Reflected Works, where I showcase the artwork I've done in the past, sell original paintings and prints, and take requests for unique commissions.

Once again, that's ReflectedWorks.com, all one word, and I'm looking forward to helping you further the kingdom of God right now here on this earth by putting some of your free wall space to productive use. Thank you very much for your kind attention, and now enjoy the show. I apologize for this God of the Bible.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the For the King podcast. I am your host, Rocky Ramsey, and on this podcast, we declare the edicts of the king, namely and chiefly Yahweh reigns.

I'm getting good so far, too. This is actually take two. I kind of screwed up, but that's Bryce Laffin.

Bryce, welcome. Hello. And Jason, hello.

Welcome to the podcast. We are sitting around a round table, which is fitting to be discussing heavy origin on owls and alcohol everywhere. And by that, I mean sweet tea.

We got sweet tea. We're just chilling on the back porch. So, gentlemen, thank you for joining me.

This episode, we're going to look at 1 Chronicles 1232 and make that the base of our discussion here, and then we'll work off that. So, 1 Chronicles 1232, I'm sure you've heard this, which states, hear the word of the Lord. The sons of Issachar, men who understood the times with knowledge of what Israel should do.

That's it. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but we have this text here where during whatever trial Israel is going through, these men, the sons of Issachar, knew exactly what the times called for, and they had knowledge of what they ought to do. So, why do we choose that text? What are we discussing today? Bryce had brought up something recently to me, so he's just a content generator.

He's just making me content, and I appreciate it. So, he had electrons. He's literally a generator.

So, Bryce had brought up that what we've noticed in some of the circles that we run in, I guess, like the reform circle. There's a lot of men that want to idolize to some extent or desire to sound like or replicate in a wrong way what the reformers did or whatever era of church history that they think is best, I guess. So, we're kind of thinking about the guys on Puritan boards that are sitting there arguing about, like, honestly, completely useless things and not understanding the times they're in or the battle that they need to be waging.

So, kind of like time wasting stuff on issues that aren't important. So, that's kind of what I'm trying to set the stage with here. Any other thoughts on how we can kind of keep this going? Yeah, the way the discussion, me and Rocky, what we were originally talking about before this podcast was, we were talking about how the Puritans and the Reformers ought to influence us, but they can never minister to our time and period.

And why is that? Obviously, because they're dead. They're literally dead. But though they're dead, like Abel, they can still speak and they speak through their writings.

They're witnessing to us and we ought to... Essentially, we need to have more funnels to deal with this diesel or this gas. If you're going to properly put gas into your car, you need some sort of funnel, some sort of conduit to get it there properly. So, instead of just taking a bunch of gas from putting it in a five gallon bucket and trying to fill it into your car, why not use a gas pump? Use something super simple like that or a funnel and it's easier to get you to use the gas and put it in there.

That's the same thing with the Reformers. We need to be conduits. We need to be funnels and be able to use the Reformers and the Puritans, let them influence our lives, our devotion to the same God that we worship as them.

And then we need to minister in our day and age as they would have, but they can't because they're dead. So, you're using that analogy of like the car is the modern day church. So, where to be the funnel through the gas of all church history and the word of God, that is going to make the church go in today's age.

Sure. I mean, yeah, that works. I'm just kind of curious how you're using that analogy.

I was just saying we need to be funnels. I was trying to hone in on the funnel. Okay.

I see what you're saying. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So, we need to be taking in their information and what they regard them in that have a great example, take that in and then contextualize it and apply it to our day and age. Yeah.

That makes sense. And that would become the church. That's good.

Jason, any thoughts, any initial thoughts on that? I think you can take and also just imitate me. I think we can look at Paul's boldness, his wisdom and how he spoke in the situations, but it's from a different context and cultural setting. We can imitate him in the way that he would boldly proclaim the gospel no matter what situation he was in.

But he was wise to be able to do it. He spoke differently when he spoke to Felix the governor as compared to he was speaking to maybe the Judaizers of the day. Like he knew his situation, knew where he was at.

Yeah, that's good. I think that we need to be able to discern as well the cultural context that we are in and know how to speak into it with wisdom as Paul would do. So, I think we'll learn how to imitate the imitate biblically like how to whatever your cultural setting is.

Yeah. Right. So, like the equivalent of poking the Vatican's eye like the reformers were doing would be us poking the liberal, atheistic, materialistic worldview.

You know, we don't we're fighting a different battle now in a sense. It's the same battle ultimately against the dragon and sin. But now in our age, there's a whole different scheme of wickedness that we need to enter into.

Yeah. So, I don't see a lot of like men necessarily like trying to make the same arguments against whatever John Calvin or whoever was arguing against. But I think sometimes we do miss the mark and like forget like we need to find like what's the biggest battles we need to be picking and not picking poor battles.

So, that was part of our conversation leading up to this. What are some thoughts there on my battle picking for men in our day and age as we are funnels of the truth of what the reformers had regained for us, you know? Yeah. So, what are some thoughts there? Yeah.

I mean, I think picking bad battles. Yeah. Fundamentally, like not necessarily picking bad battles, but the way that you fight the battle is important because when the Puritans were writing vehemently against the Papists, right? They were writing against the Pope, against his practices.

The Pope's completely different nowadays. He is not the same sort of Pope. Obviously, the Catholic Church is way more liberal than what it once was.

So, like just even the way that they would even argue against the papacy nowadays wouldn't have been on the same ground. Yeah. You know, so we cannot also use the same argumentation, meaning using the same just words that they used.

That's not how, like, for example, the former SBC president, Ed Litton, when he stole J.D. Greer's sermon, like he was not actually ministering to his people, right? He was using, if he had wanted to take, you know, I don't like either of the dudes, but if he thought that J.D. Greer was a good pastor, he should have imitated him in a godly way by seeing maybe his zeal for his preaching, the way that he would deliver the messages to the hearts of the people. And then imitated that instead of just literally stealing his sermon. So, it's the same way with the Puritans and the Reformers.

Just because they considered it a big battle in their day, that doesn't mean it's the same sort of battle. That's just maybe another precursor to what you're saying here. We need to pick battles not based upon what the battles, the Reformers were fighting, but the battles that are before us today.

So, we need to have discernment of the Reformers and the Puritans in our own day and period. We're just not doing the same thing. Tell me if you guys think this rings true, because I'm just kind of riffing here, but there is a, it's obviously in Scripture, justification by faith alone, but do you guys think there's an overemphasis in Reform communities about, like, trying to, you know, reclaim this, like, justification by faith alone, when maybe there's, like, kind of what we're talking about, there's other battles in the culture.

Like, for the Reformers, that actually was a point of contention against, like, the world. It's, like, basically, non-justification by faith preaching and workspace salvation versus justification by faith alone. That was their battle to be picked.

Do you think sometimes Reform people are, like, way too focused on, like, being Calvinistic and all this when it's like, yeah, you need to be Calvinistic, you know, you need to be reformed in your thinking. That's fine. But we don't need to emphasize that in the text.

We might need to emphasize something more like, hey, don't be gay, being gay is a sin. You know what I mean? Do you guys see how I'm getting at? Well, I think you can, you can... Do you think I'm off base on that? I think you're 100% right. And that just reminds me of, if you can have a woman like Jen Wilkins preaching justification by faith alone, you have something wrong.

Yeah, there's another issue. Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of that.

There is. Like, Jen Wilkins, Amy Bird, all these feminists who say that they're conservative Christians who all, all these quote unquote conservative denominations and conservative institutions are putting them up on a pedestal and letting them preach justification by faith alone. Yeah, actually, we have a huge problem here.

Yeah, that's a good point. Because she has no business teaching or preaching. Yeah.

No business at all. Yeah, there were social issues in the reformers times, obviously. There were.

But the main contention was theological because they were fighting the Catholic Church. Nowadays, it's not, yes, we need to have right doctrine, obviously. We're not saying that.

But we are saying, what is the main battle that we need? It's the social issues. It's women preaching. It's homosexuality.

It's transgenderism. It's atheistic materialism. It's occultism and UFOs and aliens.

Communism. Yeah. I got a little weird at the end there.

But those are the main issues. I mean, honestly, I do think like, I just hear ad nauseam the whole like, let's be Calvinist and justification by faith alone. And let's just keep teaching that over and over again.

And it's like, you get to a point where you've arrived. You're there. I'm a Calvinist.

I'm reformed. And then what's been happening to me recently as a Christian, God's really been teaching me through a lot of, you know, the people he's put on earth to teach. But it's how big the Christian worldview is and how many things it dominates.

And when we go to the preach at the pride parades and stuff, it's like, wow, the Christianity has something to say about this. You know, we don't need to sit there on the corner and preach these people justification by faith. I mean, we do.

That's a part of it. That's a part of the gospel, obviously. But we need to call them to repent from their sin mainly, you know, which is homosexuality.

And then obviously, you can be justified right now today, friend, as you pass, you know, go to the pride parade. And we will preach that obviously, that's important. But I don't know, am I off base there? I think there has to be an opportunity to be able to practically apply what God's word says to the culture here today.

I think I don't think it's across the board. But I think that sometimes, you know, you can all you got to do is look on the social media and you can see that there seems to be these inner battles amongst Christians about certain topics all the while. You know, you've got abortion clinics down the street, you've got, you know, pride festivals going on down the corner.

And yet we're not, they're not speaking into those situations. So you're missing the boat, you know, you're fighting all these inner battles that 98 to 90% of the population has no idea what you're talking about all the while. Your society is going to hell in a hand basket.

That's so true. So I think that there needs to be practical Christianity. And that doesn't mean just that every person has to be out the abortion clinic or at the pride festivals.

But how are you conducting yourself in the workplace? How are you conducting yourself around your family? How are you? You have to be able to know scripture to be able to speak into the situations that people are facing each and every day. You have to be able to give the defense for the gospel. Most Christians cannot, a lot of Christians cannot do that.

They can't speak when someone comes to them and says, I'm struggling with this or that. My dad died. You know, whatever.

And they don't know how to speak into it. And all they can say is, well, I'm going to pray for you. That's not, they're looking for some practical answers.

And we're talking about these things that are going on in the culture today from UFOs, aliens, evil. If you don't have a biblical response to it, I mean, people are just going to be turned off by it. They don't have nothing to do with it.

So if you don't know, if you don't have enough, if you're not, people say, well, I don't get involved in politics or what's going on in the world. Well, do you? I'm like, what world are you living in? You're like, you're okay with everything. You think you're in heaven already? Yeah.

You're in exile, but you're an impact to culture in the kingdom. So that was really good, Jason. When you were talking, it just kind of disconnected more dots.

The Young Restless and Reform Movement did not, kind of what you're saying, like being godly in your workplace and being a good husband and a father. That wasn't emphasized, really, in the Young Restless and Reform Movement. It was all like, sociology.

It's all like the Calvinism, what's the justification by faith. And what happened? We got, you know, Amy Birds and all this stuff with the SBC. It never actually revived the Western church, specifically in America.

It didn't really, the fruits were not really like reviving us back into a robust Christianity. It was, we didn't have the full picture. We really didn't.

Yeah. It's like somebody come up to you and they say like, hey, I've been watching porn. Like, help me.

How do I get through this issue? Well, brother, don't you know that whether it's famine or hell or angels or demons or nakedness and nothing can separate you from the love of God and Christ. It's like, no, that is not at all how you ministered in that person. Like, yes, these realities are true, but you have to know how to apply different realities and different circumstances.

So yeah, like we need to be Calvinistic. We need to be reform in our sociology. But like Jason said, we actually have a huge epidemic of how do we actually counsel somebody? Because we have an epidemic of wisdom.

And what are we, what are we commended? When we lack wisdom and when we pray for it, what does God tell us is going to happen? He said, he'll give it. So we're just a foolish, dumb, silly people who are unable to counsel, walk aside one another, live life with one another because we're just fools. Nobody seeks for wisdom.

The modern reform movement is a appearance of wisdom. Just because you have all the knowledge, it doesn't mean you're a wise man. It can counsel every situation because justification by faith only gets you so far.

Paul says too, I don't know what it's about, but it talks about being puffed up with knowledge. It seems like there's a lot of knowledge that we have. But if it's not with love, if we're not loving our neighbors enough to have the courage to share the gospel with them in their sin, then we're not really loving them.

We're just puffed up with knowledge. Yeah, that's huge. We need to be able to just to tell the truth.

I think it's for this reason that there's been a huge exodus of men within churches is because men want to know how they ought to live. What should they be doing? Right? We are motivated by duty and by virtue and by honor. And honor and the glory of God has departed from these churches by just having doctrinal preaching.

Why did people love hearing the preaching of John Ellen or Charles Spurgeon so much? Because these were practical men. You know, John Bunyan didn't have any education or degree. He had the education and degree of being locked up in prison and just having him in his Bible and that's it.

And his prayers with God. And his doctrine was still amazing. And it was impeccable.

Yeah, it's crazy. And same thing with Spurgeon. All Spurgeon had was his Bible and I mean a great library, but he had no formal education.

Well, that's why there's certain feel or certain brothers from the past that people look to like John Knox and some of these guys they look so how did he respond to the civil authorities on that day? They're looking to these guys for like examples of like how did he respond in that day? You know, and we do have certain brothers that are engaged in that. And I can think of guys that currently do that here that are engaged in it and they're boldly going before the magistrate. They can proclaim the gospel and they're being vilified for.

But we praise God for those brothers because they're doing it. But, you know, we have examples of old reformers that we can look to as examples, but it was a different context for them. We have to be able to apply it today to what we're dealing with.

What we're dealing with is not what they were dealing with. We need to be able to speak into that. And, you know, John Jacobs is one of those that just comes to my mind.

It just had to occur. He's had to encourage and the boldness to go in there. They proclaim the gospel and then there's to just wickedness, you know.

He's an example of someone that is taking from people in the past and he's applying that. So let me ask you guys a question. Why do you guys think that most people are, I mean, you have a lot of Arminians or even just like people who are just, you know, a couple point Calvinists who they don't like this.

They don't like the reformers at all. And even though they've never read them, they still don't like them, you know. Like why do you think that is? They naturally have an aversion to them.

Yeah, why do they have an aversion? Why do they hate them so much? Why don't they like the reformers of the Puritans? I mean, what I've conventionally heard is they think it's the cold, dead version of Christianity. But why do they think that? I don't know. Yeah, because they just haven't read them.

Or even today the people that are supposed to be downstream from them don't replicate. That's what I think it is. That's what I'm thinking.

I think the reason that you have people who, I mean, there's some guys in our church who they don't say they're Calvinistic, but they are Calvinists. But essentially, these people are Calvinists, but they don't like the reformers or the Puritans, not because they've read them, but because we have people who are saying that they're following the reformers and the Puritans teaching a doctrine. And they're actually not entirely.

We have people who – this is the problem that we have in academia. You have a bunch of people who are reading secondary sources about the Puritans, what John Calvin taught. I remember when I had a former pastor of mine told me that John Calvin really liked a monarchy.

Nope. Nope, he actually didn't read Book 4, Chapter 20. What he liked was an aristocracy, not a monarchy.

But I guarantee you, he read that from a secondary source. I guarantee you that. We just have people who read secondary sources.

They don't read the primary material. We have all these fake faux Calvinists who don't even – they literally have no clue what biblical Calvinism actually even is or what reform theology is. But I also think, I'll cut you off before I forget it.

I think it's also important to where your local church body can't fight every battle that's going on across the nation of the world. So I don't think it's – it's not every battle is for us to engage in our past. We shouldn't be engaging in theological debates or disputes with a church that may be in California.

If it's – his main responsibility is our church body here and making sure the wolves don't come in here. So it's easy to get into these debates online, you know, and start getting into these topics in the LA. Because certain things.

But his main responsibility is keeping the wolves out of his local body in church and casting them out. And if he's given the opportunity, I think, to speak into maybe a debate overseas or wherever it may be, then yeah, I think that's rightfully good. But his primary responsibility is to keep the wolves out and keep the doctrine sound in the local body.

There's a lot of pastors that they do want a social media presence and stuff. And I doubt – I mean, I just thought of it as a thought experiment. Would Martin Luther or John Calvin have a Twitter? You know, would they be on there? I mean, I just – I doubt it, you know.

Maybe. Maybe they would have utilized the tool, but they – I think I would. Yeah, they may have utilized the tool, but I just doubt, like, as much fighting and just bickering 24-7.

Yeah. Well, and that's the problem. Like, is the utilization of the tool proper? Like, this just reminds me – That's more of what I'm trying to get at.

The whole argument between the G3 guys and whoever else about Christian nationalism can end up all these things. Like, I mean, the G3 guys are just plainly and obviously wrong. They're acting stupid and foolish.

But that doesn't mean that we should be using social media to vilify brothers in Christ, you know, openly before the pagan world, you know? Yeah, I know. Because Twitter is public. That is what's silly about it.

Like, the whole Twitter – I do think that's so silly. It's weird how there are Christians who are fighting culture wars against one another. Yes.

It's like, what? We're of the same culture. What are you fighting a culture war against one another for? It really is a joke. Like, the Twitter battles do make us look like silly, you know, before the watching world.

Because anybody can go on there and just comment and see what's going on. It's literally two ships flying a banner of Christ coming next to each other and releasing the cannons on one another. Like, that is so stupid.

It is foolish. So, I guess that's kind of the last thing is there's a lot of disunity or a spirit of disunity in the church in the West, like, through mediums like Twitter. But, you know, people don't like the semantics or the way you're saying things or X, Y – you know, whatever.

And it's like, okay, do we have time right now to be arguing all the semantics and stuff? It's good to talk about that stuff. You need to know what you believe, obviously. But, I mean, we spend a lot of time on that versus just kind of the things we were starting with.

Just like, be a good husband, be a good father, and do a good job at work and proclaim the gospel through a watching word and, you know, utilize technology well because everybody can see it, you know, like, be wise with that. So, I think we need to focus on those things. You can get so pumped up even in your own theology that you're missing the battles, the spiritual battles, the struggles that people are actually facing in your own congregation day in and day out because we're so focused upon some of these, you know, these battles of certain things of, you know, of doctrine that we're missing the struggles that people are going through.

And that's, I think that's a warning to everybody in every congregation is like, yeah, fight and contend for the faith and the truth of it. But don't get so caught up that, you know, and miss that, hey, there are people that are struggling within your congregation that want practical means or what the word says to apply it to their lives. How do I get through this loss of a child? My husband's left me or, you know, I'm depressed because of circumstances I'm in, whatever they may be.

How do I respond faithfully? And yeah, hold scripture high, but be very practical in how you minister to people and just don't forget that we are to love our brothers and sisters and to carry burdens and to speak truth into them first and foremost before we go and speak into the world. Yeah, that's good. All right.

Well, let's end on that note. Thank you, fellas, for joining me on this episode. We hope that was edifying and encouraging to you guys.

And you can take something away. If you have any thoughts or questions, you can reach me up for the King podcast at gmail.com. Or if you're on Spotify, there's like a function now or you can like leave a little reply. So if you're listening on Spotify, you can do that, too.

Check out the substack for the king.substack.com. I think there's going to be a link in the show notes. So I'm trying to beef up my blog more. She can go there and check out what's going on on the blog.

And we appreciate you guys listening. So to the King of the ages of mortal and visible, the only God we honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.