40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Podcast Network Celebration Episode

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

The 1517 Podcast Network is 3 years old! Chad Bird, Daniel Emery Price, Erick Sorensen, Scott Keith, and Caleb Keith sit down and have a conversation about scripture. Enjoy this special episode and please consider supporting the network. Donate to the Podcast Network A Field Guide to the Bible Podcast HWSS Las Vegas Regional Event

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you go over to the events page, check out the upcoming event that we have going on in Las Vegas. That is a regional event. It's October 15th and 16th. It's only $65 to come hang out with a whole bunch of us. It's going to be a great time. We'd love to have you there. Just go to 1517.org and you can get all the information about that there. But this is going to be a different kind of episode. It's a special episode

because this is an episode that we recorded from the NWA regional event. We recorded with Scott Keith and Caleb Keith, and Chad's there, and Eric's there. And what we did is we had a conversation about Scripture. When we recorded this episode, we knew we were going to release this this week because this month is actually a very special month for 1517 Podcasts. Believe it or not, this May marks the third anniversary of the 1517 Podcast Network. This network of shows, which started out with just two podcasts, thanks to the supportive listeners like you, we now have 20 or so podcasts in the network and hosts all across the nation,

and we focus on all kinds of stuff. You know 30 minutes, and you know 40 minutes, you know, doing exegesis and biblical commentary, but we do cultural engagement, we do exploring the Lutheran confessions and other podcasts, there's preaching commentary, there's all kinds of different stuff, there's history podcasts, all of this stuff, and this is all dedicated to a single thing, delivering Christ centered gospel content to you. So as we celebrate the podcast anniversary, we hope you will celebrate with us and consider financially supporting the network. You can learn more about the network and make a gift by visiting 1517.org slash celebrate. Again, that's 1517.org

slash celebrate. Now, before we begin, I'm going to play a short message that we recorded from our network, and then we will dive right into this special episode. Faith, as scripture tells us, comes from hearing. And so at 1517, audibly proclaiming the gospel to individuals like you is the very heart of what we do. Our podcast network was created so that the gospel would always be within earshot. In your car, on a walk, at your office, at home, or anywhere else. No matter where you are, we want you to know that God now gives you His peace on account of Jesus Christ's finished work on the cross. Over the past three years, we've developed nearly 20 different shows on everything from

biblical commentary to cultural engagement, theological discussions, and guided explorations of the confessions. In every case, the laser focus is forgiveness, life, and salvation for you through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And the impact? The impact is that we hear a steady stream of thankfulness from a truly remarkable group of listeners. Listeners new and old to the Christian faith. Listeners from across the generations, across denominations, and across the world. In fact, with you in mind, we are also thrilled

to launch our newest podcast, A Field Guide to the Bible, with the first 17 episodes available today. This series will provide a broad overview of the entire Bible, especially designed for those who are brand new to the Bible or those who want to review the grand narrative of redemption. Join us in celebrating and extending the reach of the 1517 Podcast Network by making a gift today. You can learn more about our network and make a donation at 1517.org slash celebrate. Hello and welcome to the Thinking 30-40 Minutes Podcast. I don't know how, Dan, How do you introduce the shows? I do it the same way every time.

I started changing the way I introduced the shows. I just kind of mixed it up and actually got complaints. We were like, no, no, no. It's been like hundreds of episodes. You have to do the thing that you do. Because I can spout it off in like 30 seconds and get the whole thing done, and apparently me changing it up was not a good thing. So I stopped doing it.

I just went back to give them what they want, and that's what they were used to. They want to hear what the show is and who's on it, right? That's it. That's it. That's it. So this is the 1517 Podcast Network anniversary special featuring two Thinking Fellows, the host of 30 Minutes and 40 Minutes. That's what it is. The Thinking Fellows meet the Bible boys.

That's it. The Thinking Fellows meet the Bible boys. You're going to think about the Bible. In the Bible belt. It's a systematic exegesis throwdown. That's it. That's it. Yeah, so we're doing a crossover episode.

The subject, I thought, you know, we put it in the Thinking Fellows court. That's right. And we would make Scripture systematic, and so we would just do the category, the Bible, as the episode. I'm glad it's specific that way. I spent the last two weeks just preparing for this episode. Oh, awesome. Dan just spent the last 1,000 days preparing for this episode,

as he noted in a recent talk. Dan, how many days in a row were you in the Bible, according to your Bible app? 1,000 days, apparently. I intentionally did not read the Bible the next day because I had a moment or moments. Did you have withdrawals? No, I did. I was fine.

Now, when you said that during the conference, I saw Chad visibly roll his eyes to the ceiling. A thousand, a thousand, try 2,000. Yeah, I really wasn't that impressed. I mean, come on. Chad's like, nice start, youngster. Yeah. I just got a 10-day notification. So I feel pretty good about that.

I feel pretty excited. What are these notifications you get? Yeah, what Bible app are you using? It's just the, whatever, what is it? It's the first one that pops up. It's like a brown little Bible thing. I don't know. I don't have any more.

I deleted it because of all the righteousness I was extracting from that notification. I was like, I can't have this in my life. Yeah, I'm like, come talk to me when you read the Bible in Greek or Hebrew for a thousand days in a row. There we go. There it is. There we go. I'll throw the Vulgate in there just for you guys. Oh, that's fantastic.

Oh, wow. So talking about Scripture, one of the reasons I wanted to do this is we're going through the small catechism and the large catechism right now. And one of the points we have tried to make is that the catechisms are fundamentally built on the Scriptures. We reference your guys' shows as much as we can to encourage people to go to the other thing we do over at the Podcasting Network, which is Exegesis, reading the text. And then occasionally, you know, I'll get questions about Scripture, Lutheran view of Scripture. How does Sola Scriptura work when it's, you know, evident that Lutheranism is a tradition and has things to say within the tradition as well? Right.

Um, and so how do we begin to work these out? And then recently got a, uh, question about, uh, the phrase sedes doctrinae, seat of doctrine, um, or a reference to those verses or those sections, or maybe even those whole books where particular, uh, doctrines rest more strongly. And the, uh, the idea that yes, the scripture is a whole and speaks as a whole testifies about christ as a whole but the particular pieces uh find their roots in maybe just verses something like the descent into hell for instance uh yeah not a whole lot of particular yeah yeah backing for that except for one or maybe maybe two but you have to kind of read into the second one yeah

yeah it's funny i was talking to a guy at the conferences today who went to your church for a long time he's got a british accent yeah little guy um aaron that's me saying that um and he he's been um let's say at a a residential sort of christian place he said for the last six months and they study the bible every day and he was explaining to me that it's not a lutheran place but that it's i think he said probably baptist influenced and he was i mean speaking of satan's doctrine and actually sort of seen seen the bible through lenses he was saying that it's interesting to him because he was at your church um dan for a couple years maybe um and he said it's he wouldn't have picked up on this before but that he he now sees

the bible through i guess i'd say like a christ lens and that that actually gets him in some trouble there because that's you know they are sort of picking out proof texts and change change your life by this and change your life by that and this text says do this and he's actually he said he's actually uh poking the bear a little bit and saying oh that's that that text actually about christ you know that's actually about christ and it's i think that's one of the more interesting things sort of about the crossover between what you guys i mean you guys both do that in both of your shows it's christ and all the scriptures and the old testament and the new testament and then when we do shows on like biblical interpretation one of the things that

um we'll say all the time is that you know biblical and no matter how you sort of look at this one of the first steps to this is to find out i mean to kind of get the big picture right what why was this thing given to us um and then once you start seeing that it's given to you to reveal christ um christ for you then your lens is different from that point on and it's not that you're not sort of letting the text speak for itself, it's the opposite. You're letting the text speak for itself. You're just sort of letting the entire text speak too. Well, what you've been given is really the interpretive key by Jesus himself on the road to Emmaus with the disciples, where he says, all of it is really about me. And so now as Christians, we come to the text,

no matter what it is, Old Testament, New Testament, which really guides our podcast to say, okay, how does this indeed talk to us about Christ? So it's not as if it's just something we, you know we want to be there or that we're trying to find right in the in the scriptures it's what our lord tells us to look for well it's the gospel reading today too right was it a matthew 24 uh luke 24 yeah i mean that was just blatant in there i mean it's the same thing as the road to emmaus it opened up to them how all of the law and all of the prophets um were written concerning him yeah when you look at the bible that way you know you could say like all the scriptures about christ and people could say and come on dude there's some like really weird stuff in the bible

or some obscure things in the bible like not every word is about christ which is not exactly what we mean what we mean is that all the scriptures are trying to get you to one person right so you can have discussions about narratives and there's this this stuff going on but even even stuff that's that seems like it would have nothing to do with christ is part of a story that is is going to bring you to christ yeah so you still get to talk about christ in that narrative like well how does what role does this play in whether it's the lineage of jesus or how israel is uh developed or how it's rebellious it has to be delivered by god again it's all ultimately going to get you to christ and so how'd you say yesterday in the q a you look might be looking for the whole council

of god but if you look for the whole council of god apart from christ you're gonna you know be mistaken because the whole council of god is christ yes so yeah once if you're if you're trying to say like let's talk about the whole concept of god you actually just have to start with the cross and then you can work backwards from there and you can work forward from there but you can't start anywhere else i mean if you wanted if when you're talking about the full council like what god finally wants to reveal to you is his son crucified for the sins of the world that's what he's so if you're talking about the full council you got to start there and so i mean so if you listen to chad and i talking about the old testament we're not waiting to get to the

cross to ever bring up the cross no we talk about the cross all the time right and eric and i are largely in epistles and the cross has already happened but we're talking about the cross all the time because i mean the apostles are as well but um so yeah you can't there is no there is no whole council of god apart from the cross because that's that is what he's ultimately wanting to reveal that's the god that is the god that god has chosen to reveal this is how he's decided that He's going to reveal himself to his creation. And this is why I think it's possible, and we see this in pulpits a lot, for someone to be preaching the Bible, reading the Bible,

but not be preaching biblically. Because they can be talking about, let's say, if they're going over the Proverbs or something, and they are taking from that eight tips for living a more wise life or a better life. You could do that, but ultimately, to preach biblically, you're going to have to find out how that points your hearer, indeed, to the cross again. Or else you're just reading from the Bible without preaching the point of the Bible.

Yeah, you can't really preach biblically unless you preach Christologically. Otherwise, you're not really doing what the Bible itself is pointing you toward. I think a couple of examples that drive home what it means for us to talk about Christ being everything the Scriptures is about is, one is, steal it from Irenaeus. He uses the illustration of the mosaic where you have all of these jewels that are made up of the various parts of Scripture. And the image is of that of a king. And he's talking about what the heretics do.

The heretics come along, and they take all these individual jewels, and they rearrange them into the image of a dog or a fox. And, of course, you can prove almost anything from the Bible. You can prove there is no God if you want to rip that out of context. Sure. You could take that. Take some from Ecclesiastes. Yeah, the fool says in his heart there is no God.

Well, you just quote, there is no God, and you prove from the Bible there is no God. You can prove anything, basically, from the Scriptures. But you can't prove it if you look at it in, of course, the whole counsel of God and from the perspective of Christ. And the other example I was going to give is you take a novel, a classic novel, and every single sentence in that novel is part of the entire story. It might be tangentially part of the story, but it's still part of the story. It's all leading to whatever the denouement, this climax, conclusion is going to be. So you can't take any part of that novel and say, well, this isn't about the story.

Sure it is. That's why the novelist included it. And it might take you a couple of steps to get to how it's part of the central message. But you can do that. And it's the same with the scriptures. I think central message is a good point here in the conversation that I was recently having about sameness or um or the way that particular verses or even particular types of scripture speak differently where you're not trying to challenge the idea that the that all of the scripture is

inspired uh given to us uh by god when you say something like the key to reading scripture is actually a verse that's a recorded line from christ you're not trying to red letter bible here and say those ones are are the real scripture everything else is kind of scripture you're saying there's a particular person who claims to be god we all believe is god and then god told you this is the reason and so now this allows you to use uh the rest of scripture for their given reasons and within within the broader book of the bible and then the smaller books uh throughout the bible each one's given for a different purpose to a different group that is interesting to me because you have within so largely this is a conversation within orthodox christianity right so

within orthodox christianity um everyone acknowledges that christ is lord and most of those two would acknowledge that the bible is the inspired word of god right so christ is god the bible is the inspired word of god then in multiple spots you have the god who inspired the bible coming up and say hey in case you want to know like you said the sort of secret decoder ring to this thing this is what it means it's me um like the law the prophets um they were all testifying about me and like dan said it's insane that you're not saying that um every single story is going to say jesus in it right um but what you are saying is that if you sort of look at the purpose for why all of the stories are there why all those tales are there why the teachings are

they're um it's all a point to christ when you might or you can say some things are more direct than others right like i can say that yeah um you know the gospels are more direct about the life and times of jesus christ than ecclesiastes right like that is or esther or esther right it's you know uh does that make uh any particular book uninspired if it is less clear on particular issues than another or even another verse uh no yeah well i mean the truth is that everybody reads the bible with a presupposition i mean you can't not and the trick is to have the presupposition that god tells you to have which is this book is about christ and so if you read it with that if you're going to read it with a presupposition which you are uh read it with that one i mean the

most common comment that we get you know in 30 minutes in the new testament or 40 minutes in the old testament particularly in the new testament podcast because i guess people read the new testament more um and so they sure so they don't feel like they they can argue with the old testament stuff that much the old testament they're like i need someone to help me with this yeah the new testament they're like oh i thought i had this figured out but the most common comment is man you guys are explaining like what these texts mean it's kind of frustrating because all you're doing is reading the text and then when you explain it i say yeah of course that's what it says it's because that's what it says.

It makes so much sense. And then I try to do it on my own, and I don't see it. And what that is is that someone is guiding you with a presupposition, with a Christ-centered hermeneutic through it. And then when you get back on your own, you have all this other stuff that you've heard about the Bible and things that pastors have said and books that you've read. You have all of that flooding in, and you start reading these texts.

And it is something that you have to be trained to do a little bit. It doesn't happen overnight. You have to change the way that you think, the way that you see the text. And it doesn't happen just because someone told you one time, oh, it's all about Christ, and that undoes 25 years of horrific Bible teaching or whatever. Well, think about, I mean, I don't know if you guys have ever heard this abbreviation, but the B-I-B-L-E, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, was a very popular phrase in some circles.

basic instructions before leaving earth well what is that what's the presupposition there this is a book telling me how i'm supposed to live my life that's the point here and that's kind of big for basic yeah i know yeah but but it's this this idea i and i think it's just the natural d natural default place that all human beings start when they come to the bible is they think that this book is going to tell them something about them and it does but it's telling them why they need christ um and so it's not primarily about you and this is the deprogramming that needs to happen to say no no it's not about you it's about christ for you which is a very big difference if you read the bible of looking for instructions for how to live your life you will

find them sure and if you follow them to the best of your ability you will probably lead a better life and then you will die and go to hell that's what happens if you if you don't seek that christ for you is the point of the scriptures and it's trying to get you there i mean you can find go read proverbs and like go practice all that stuff and i don't know your your 80 years here will probably go better than it would have if you didn't but it won't it won't affect your eternity if you read it that won't save you this is important when it comes to things uh that we use or employ or categories uh that we assign uh like law and gospel as well that when you're reading the text you're not going law verse in this bucket gospel verse this bucket law verse

yeah gospel uh that well that the law and the gospel describe uh who god is yeah um and describe who you are before god and how that situation can come and does come to change um and so uh when it's a statement about who god is that the text is is law and gospel not just law verse gospel verse gospel verse again that's it those are difficult concepts i mean that's not something that you naturally sort of come to the text with that takes some training to see that yeah well this gets to uh something i thought of earlier when you were kind of introducing the topic and that is what do we mean when we talk about sola scriptura because i think that's often misunderstood to mean that all you need is the Bible, and that's it exclusively.

We've been talking a lot about, you know, presuppositions and hermeneutics. We should define that. So when we talk about Sola Scriptura, we don't mean that, oh, you don't need any education or any training. You don't need any kind of guidance. That's not what Sola Scriptura means. It means that we base our doctrines upon Scripture alone, But that doesn't mean that we approach the scriptures as if, you know, we don't need any wisdom and guidance and often kind of untraining of the bad training that we have received. We don't approach them as if nothing they say is confusing.

Yes, exactly. Because some of it is. And a lot of it's, you know, it's ancient history. And so there's some context that you need to know. And all of it was written in different languages. And you speak on a day-to-day basis. So there's some training that you need to know in those languages. And Dan mentioned hermeneutics. That's just a fancy way of saying, you know, what are your interpretive principles when you look at this? You interpret anything you read, even if you're not going to teach it, you interpret it as you consider it.

But especially if you're going to read something and then try to teach that thing that you read, you use anything, newspaper, you know, book, whatever, you use interpretive principles that you either are aware of or not aware of to then bring that out. I mean, that's part of the process of going from grammar to rhetoric and sort of how to do things. And not all interpretive principles are equal, right? And so it does take education and study and listening and understanding sort of the various ways that people have done that throughout time in order to land on the ones that are the most effective to getting to the truth and then to communicating that truth. Yeah, I think that the idea that you can just be, you know, you just have the Bible and that's all I need. I'm just going to have the Bible and I'll figure it out for myself is you probably are going to figure out very little. I mean, if you're not willing to sort of stand on the shoulders of the people that have come before you, read what they thought. I mean, Chad teaches me a lot of things in 40 Minutes in the Old Testament.

And every once in a while, I think, I will pull out something that he hasn't thought about before. He tells me that anyway. So even in those scenarios, that's what happens, right? So people can show you something that you're like, oh, wow, okay, I didn't connect to those dots or I haven't seen that before. and and then you know having this like the law gospel thing law and gospel are the kind of ways that god speaks but if you have this sort of reductionist attitude where you try to figure out what what verse is law and what verse is gospel all the time and we and we could say things that are true like the law is command and the gospel is promise and that's that's good

categories but just because jesus is saying something that sounds like a command doesn't necessarily mean that it's law like if jesus says come to me all who are weary you're like well that's law you know he said to do it so it's law when it's actually like this gracious invitation for him to take all your burdens away and have you rest and that's why it's important to know that like something like the entire scripture testifies about me means that even when you're saying long gospel it's about who god is and so yeah yeah god god is the one who commands and god is the one who promises and so when those things are occurring through scripture and they occur throughout the entire scripture it's telling you about him the the other thought that i'm having is

is uh when it comes to you can't just hand somebody a bible right it's got to be preached it's got to be taught i think this is why uh again coming back to sola scriptura when you know the confessions talk about this they'll say that these these doctrines rest in the scripture or they come from, but that they then are laid out outside of that for teaching and preaching. And so there's a way of getting somebody processing the text to then return it back to people in a way that can be received in preaching and in teaching.

Yeah, I mean, when you think about, I mean, you initially started out talking about because you're going through the small and large catechism, but when you think about even like the formation of creeds, you know, in the early church what are they what's the attempt there you know the the hope is that you're packaging the biblical data the biblical information in such a way that people can recite it and thus by reciting it own it as being what they confess to be true it's not adding to the bible it's trying to summarize this big book and say this is what we have determined is true from it at least at its very basic level and then you're offering what your standard is too so

that somebody can say you know read the uh the confession on the doctrine justification and then say i don't see that in the scripture and now you have the basis from which you're going to make your argument or the place where you two are going to have this conversation about this you're not going to just have this conversation in the way that it's worded in let's say the august or confession, but about now where it is located and if it is located there truly. I think one of the things when you talk about Scripture alone that you have to acknowledge,

there's a couple of good Christian authors that have talked about this, but that even if you're saying that everything that you teach is drawn from Scripture alone, you have to acknowledge that there are other sources of authority that inform you too. and they're going to be people other books religious traditions maybe other religious authorities you know pastors bishops whatever that kind of thing by saying scripture alone what you're saying is that everything that you believe teach and confess is drawn from scripture

alone in that it serves as the ultimate arbiter yeah right at the end of the day that if you somebody says something one of your religious authorities that might be uh you know one of your your sources of authority says something and you question whether or not that piece of theology that they just shared is true what you try to do is either ask them you know okay you said x y and z where in scripture is that found i'm confused on that or you go to scripture and you try to sort of uh measure that against it confessions you know i think one of the beauties of a confession be it a creed, one of the historic creeds, or a confession of a particular church body, like our Lutheran confessions, what they do is they acknowledge that even when people sit down

in a solo scriptura mindset and read the Bible, they sometimes come to different conclusions about what it says. Yes. Yeah. Or all the time. And this is where I think where this high-end filter comes about. I mean, take for instance, like confessional Lutherans and confessional Calvinists, right? They sit down and they read the text on the Lord's Supper and, you know, doing so mindfully, they come to different conclusions onto it. Lutherans typically come to a conclusion of the real presence, that with the bread and the wine, you receive the true body and blood of Christ. And confessional Calvinists will say,

you know, with the bread and the wine, you receive something. Maybe a spiritual presence of the body and blood of Christ. It might be a representational presence, but they have sort of a background filter in there that has to do with just some high-end philosophical axioms that prevent them from, when they see that in the text, seeing, kind of as they did at the big colloquy, where is is just is. Yeah. And axioms, which, to be fair to Calvinist friends and listeners of the show, are wrapped up in them trying to have a true expressions about Christ and in Christology that. No, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's it's tied into what they confess about Christ as trying to protect protect the humanity of Christ. Right. It's it's it's all well, well-meaning. And I don't even think for sort of your out your average person in Pew, it's, you know, I don't think they're saying, well, this is going to violate. this axiom i mean it's just they read it all and they and they and they see something different than what we see yep and so what helps with our confessions is is you can say you know well where

do you stand on this that's scriptural and you can say we'll go to the scripture and do that and they say well at my old reformed church we went to those same verses and we got something different and say well this is how we interpret it and you can send them to the oxford confession or to the catechism and say and then you can explain kind of why you know that at that at the end of the day we understand that there's tension here right we understand that this seems impossible but there's a lot of things about the incarnation that seem impossible that we kind of hang our hat on and so when christ says this is even though it doesn't really sort of make sense to our mechanical philosophical mind we believe it which is a little bit too much of a stretch for some

other systems and that's i think that's the i mean if you want why confessions came about that's kind of why they came about um that's why they were a thing they're helpful for more reasons than that now just as far as like almost like a systematic text to help us explain certain doctrines too but i mean that's sort of the intention for why most of them are written is to give sort of that further explanation of this is what we think the bible says and this is where we get it from and this is why we think it says it i was gonna say just listening to you talk about the the confessions and the reason that we have them i mean you really have the background of in the scriptures themselves if you if you read the torah for instance so you're going to read the

the foundational story of israel and creation but then when you begin to read the psalms you'll hear expositions or we might say inspired confessions that are based upon creation based upon what happens in the exodus you get to the prophets and they'll often depict the coming salvation the messiah in terms they're drawing from creation or from the exodus so they're taking this foundational narrative or foundational truth and they're expounding upon it they're confessing it but in in a different way yeah then it was originally sometimes more explanatory yeah sometimes more explanatory and then of course you get to the new testament the same thing's happening i mean what is paul doing but he's taking what happened in the life of christ

and he is confessing in an expansive sort of way as to what the implications of that are whether He's writing to Corinth or Colossae or whatever it might be. So all we're doing in creeds and confessions is perpetuating that. We're not saying the creeds and confessions are inspired, but the basis for that is found already in the scriptures themselves. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're not saying that they're inspired by God, but that they rest on the inspired scripture.

And that without them, they have no authority. So whereas these scriptures don't need anything else other than the fact that they are God's word to hold that authority, anything else that's written that might be true theologically is only true because that truth rests on already established biblical truth from the inspired word of god and the the other interesting thing too you brought up you started this with the idea of sedes doctrinae which is just the seat of doctrine and all that means is that anything that you teach is um let's say lord supper right is going to have a seat where we get that teaching in scripture um and the idea why

it's called the seat is because you want that seat to be as sturdy as possible and the only way you make that seat as seat as sturdy as possible is to have enough support underneath of it so that it can support your weight or the weight of its own teaching um and so with really important doctrines like the lord's supper it's important that they have a sturdy whatever you teach has this dirty seat yeah and there's a there's a principle which the reason this came up is just because uh people in lutherans have uh stopped talking about sedes doctrinae in order to try to preserve or promote the idea that the entire scripture is inspired that by boiling things down uh to one or two verses that you start to question that the entire scripture is

clear or testifies but it really is important because not everything actually speaks about everything like defending the lord's supper from uh you know a story about uh baptism is probably a little uh sideways you can get there but you're gonna have to get there and you're gonna go or from saying or from christ simply just saying i'm the bread of life right which is one of the things that happens with that it was great we went to church today at faith lutheran church in bentonville arkansas i think i got that right and when it was time for the lord's supper he he actually put up on the board the Lord's Supper and then he actually put all the seed of doctrine

for their teaching on the Lord's Supper on there. All the sections from the gospel and the sections from Corinthians so that if you're wondering why that church believes what its statement in the bulletin said about the Lord's Supper which is basically that they believe that

with the bread and the wine is given the true body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. If you want to know why they believe that you can go to these texts that they've listed on the board and you can check it out and that's why they believe it. That's a strong seat for those because those are all of the direct accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper by Jesus in their sort of various lenses through the various inspired authors. And that's a strong seat. One of the things that happens, and I'm talking too much so I'll shut up after this, but one of the things that happens a lot in our day and age is that we sort of do a string of pearls theology, right?

where every sort of sub-doctrine we can think of is sort of equally weighted, whether or not it's got great support in Scripture, whether or not it's sort of historically controversial because it doesn't have great support in Scripture, whether or not it's a little bit more philosophical doctrine or a little bit more biblical doctrine. And the string of pearls means that the way this whole thing, they've constructed this whole thing is if you pull one,

like a string of pearls, it's all strung with one string. If you pull one out, the whole thing collapses. and i don't think that's how the bible um when the bible teaches doctrines that's not what it does it starts i think like we've already talked about with sort of the strongest main doctrine that's the doctrine of the personal work of christ for your salvation and works out every other doctrine from there um and again the stronger sort of the seat that usually the more important doctrines we try to find the strongest seat possible in the text or let the text breathe that to us and try not to sort of make a a huge um sort of confessional turning point on doctrines

that don't have as strong a seat you mentioned at the beginning christ ascended to hell right right well we confess that and we confess it's true based on the fact that it's confessed in the scriptures but when pressed it's got what two verses and maybe some psalms if you're reading exactly yeah no that doesn't mean it's not true it just means that if you're going to get into an argument about its truth you're going to be relying on um a seat that's not as strong as something like lord supper well and conversely there's uh doctrines that you know might provide some good secondary support for something or even speak towards something i think like jonah being in the belly of the whale right jesus testifies that this is about his uh resurrection but you

wouldn't purely make an argument or a case for jesus resurrection out of jonah only on its own Yeah. Right. That's a great sport, though. It is. Yeah, it is. But it's one that you have to be enlightened to. If you just read Jonah, you don't know who Christ is yet.

You don't know that that's going to be the resurrection from the dead from the cross until you've got other verses in view. And so you can't. Until Jesus gets up and says, just as. Yes, just as. That's right. And he does this. Yeah. And so, and this can even be like whole books or whole type of literature, right?

Like the formula of Concord in its introduction makes a distinction between apostolic and prophetic books and then poetry or perhaps books where we don't know where the authorship is, the Antilogomena and things like this, where doctrines must first begin in places that are very clear and that we know who and what wrote them for what purposes. That's actually something that's really jarring to a lot of people. uh so if you grow up in the bible belt yeah or grow up in around biblicism yeah uh if you start talking about yeah i believe that scripture is inspired they're like and all scripture is exactly equal you're like i don't i don't take it all exactly equal yeah there's there's there's certain

like if you're like which book like if i had to pick a book on a desert island i assure you like there's certain books that aren't even in consideration right where you're like well i don't even know who wrote that so i got but i'm gonna go with something from paul or and so that's that's part of it too is when you're when you're forming doctrines you are asking okay well where is it text to support this doctrine let's do that and then there's a hierarchy of the text you know and that and that's that's part that's an important question to ask even too is like why would it matter who uh wrote it well there's some people who are a little closer to jesus than others right Like who we know were called by him to go do particular things.

The same with prophets, you know, people who God came and spoke to and told to do particular things. I'm going to go with those. Well, we act like the cannon floated out of heaven and it wasn't actually a bunch of guys sitting around trying to figure out where's the cutoff line, what makes the cut, what does it. They didn't have any criteria that they were following. This is not the case.

I mean, there was books that were in and out, depending on the council. And there's books that everyone said, yeah, absolutely. Like the Gospels were pretty much universally being used. There's a bunch of stuff that everyone said was good to go. There's other stuff that everyone said, nah. And then there's some stuff that is disputed. Like some people said yes, some people said no. And at the end of the day, you know, we're accepting the canon.

but you know if if if you're if you're struggling with a position you know there's certain things where you're like well this seems to contradict this and because there's the truth is you're going to read the bible especially if you just pick it up for the first time you read through it you're going to be like there's things in here that don't seem to line up right that this guy seems to be saying something different than this guy you know like paul's using the story of abraham to talk about justification by faith alone. James seems to be using the same story to say something different. And what you do is you say, well, I've got an apostolic author here

that's completely undisputed. We're going to go with this. That doesn't mean that these things contradict each other necessarily, but what it means is when you're deciding who to really look into, like what is this guy really saying and where to really sure up that doctrine with a text, that's the one you use. that's stuff you have to be taught though if someone just hands you a bible and you just read through it

it's like staring at the sun for too long or you go to shop1517.com and buy Bob Hiller's Christ in the Straw help you navigate it and this is the thing that's good about creeds and confessions is that

creeds and confessions are not inspired however if you if you think about the scriptures as like the sun and you're just like, I'm just going to stare at that sun until I understand everything about it, this will burn your eyeballs out of your head. The moon, however, draws all its light from the sun and reflects it well,

and you can stare at that as long as you want to. And this is sort of how confessions and creeds work, is that all the light that they have, they draw from the inspired word of God, and it's easier for you to look at. It's easier for you to digest. well and that's in that way all the truths that they teach is drawn from the exactly exactly and the thing is is that they're really they're really vocational and that they recognize that the faith doesn't just pass itself down by osmosis the people in every era are going to have to preach

and teach this to two other people it's going to have to be done you do not just hand people a book of the bible and say there's the faith uh you actually you instead hand them the faith which comes from the scriptures this is a good time to plug their new little podcast because that's sort of i i think a lot of what we've been talking about is great i think we can um kind of be a little overwhelming too i mean but that's why we have the podcasts that we have right we the various uh thinking fellows helps kind of think through the theological thoughts of this the new uh 30 minutes in the new testament goes through the new testament verse by verse 40 the old testament the old testament verse by verse and they've these guys been working on

another podcast that kind of is what you just said where it's kind of hard for somebody who's not been exposed to the bible before just to jump into uh chad and dan going through leviticus verse by verse without without any context right um even the names are overwhelming at that point like even if they're not yeah even if they're not hearing anything else that these guys are saying You know, they throw around 30 names, and somebody's like, I'm out. It's like my wife trying to watch Game of Thrones. It's like, it's out. It's done.

So you're doing a new podcast. I have nothing to do with it other than the idea, but you guys are doing a new podcast. Yeah, we've begun a new podcast called The Field Guide to the Bible. As this podcast is released, we will be releasing a series of episodes that go through the entire Old Testament. And what we've done is really try to just tell the overarching story of the scriptures, taking numerous characters from the Old Testament and using those characters to not only describe their significance, but then the significance often of the time that they live, of how they fit into the overall biblical story.

We'll be releasing the Old Testament side of that podcast very soon, and then we'll complete it with the New Testament. And altogether, it should be about 26 or 27 episodes. and the goal of it though is for somebody who really has never engaged with the Bible but at least have some curiosity as to what's actually going on in those pages

this is what that's for and then be sort of more equipped to jump into the other two through the Bible that's right, yeah, because sometimes it's easier if you have the big picture you know, see this is going to give you the big picture of the entirety of the scriptures, the whole story

and then once you And you might even know it, but it might be a good refresher. Kind of get the whole thing in your head. And then you can jump into 1 Samuel. You can jump into the New Testament somewhere. And you're able to see, okay, this is where I'm at in this big story, and it's going to make a whole lot more sense. So it's written, you know, we're doing it for people who know nothing about the Bible

or for people who've studied the Bible but just want a good overall review of the whole message. Yeah, a good frame for how to think through these things. I think it'd just be valuable. We have a new member of the family who, when coming to church, because he is less familiar with the Bible and the stories therein, or even Christian categories, we've been sitting at some services, and I hear a word said, and I feel embarrassed. Because I feel like everybody's assuming that everybody understands what's being said. And for the first time, I realize somebody in the room might not or actually doesn't. and it's it's actually embarrassing like somebody will say like the prophet somebody said it's like that means a lot to me who is that that means absolutely zero to that person there yeah yeah

my wife used to do that to me all the time where uh if i would be proud i'd preach something and thought it was pretty good and she's like you cannot you assume way too much you cannot say just drop this name and this word and this church father you can do that stuff without qualifying it So I think that this podcast will, you know, help you because it's hard not to do that. I mean, even in the 30, 40-minute podcast, there's a certain level that we assume. Yeah. Because, you know, Eric and I might be talking about something, and we might say, well, you know, when Moses, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You don't explain who Moses is.

No, we do not explain who Moses is. And you couldn't. I mean, you guys already go slow enough. So this will help with that. You'll know exactly who that is. you'll know uh and how he fits in and that goes for all the other major characters um of course we're doing this i mean just to kind of wrap this thing up we're doing this uh as that this is the anniversary month of the podcast network for 1517 and so what is it 15 is that right 15 shows yeah

so 15 different shows i'm covering all kinds of things but at this at the core of all of them uh is christ for you and so what we're trying to do is get people to use this month as an opportunity to show if they've you know if the podcast has been helpful to you uh any of them um all of them i don't know if you're just a really into podcast and you listen to all of them great but this is we're just trying to to raise support for yeah for the network and uh for 1517 as an organization so we you know i recently had somebody ask me what's unique about 1517's podcasts and you want to you know your default is to say that it's it's christ-centered uh it's you know these lutheran doctrines sort of ring through whether you're doing exegesis or this and

that's particularly unique without getting uh caught up in other side issues but one of the other things that's unique about it is none of the shows are running ads and i know that um i've gotten many notes from listeners that they appreciate this especially people who listen to lots of podcasts, you know, the more and more you listen to podcasts, a higher percentage of the time is ads. One of my favorite podcasts that I listened to, uh, you either have to listen or skip through about five or six minutes of advertising to get, uh, up front. We have been lucky to avoid that, uh, through, uh, listener support, but, uh, that remains difficult. And so if you appreciate, um, the 1517 podcasts for being different in the respect that they do stay

particularly christ-centered and christ for you but also that we've been able to do that without dipping into the generic paid advertising model of podcasting we could greatly use your support to continue uh this unique approach to podcasting we haven't made the shows paid yet or anything like that and so and we would love to be able to keep it that way and the way that we do that is through listener support it's 1517.org forward slash donate where you can do that and the shows always have a link to the support page at the top of their show notes. The other thing I've been telling

people is if you have a question about donating to the shows, if you have concerns about what that would look like or where that money goes or how it's used, you can always email me using the contact form at the 1517 website. You hit the podcast button and those go straight to me and I'd be happy to answer your questions or concerns.

Yeah. It's no paywalls. No paywalls. No ads. And I want to try HelloFresh. fresh i mean you'll get that email and they want to be a sponsor i mean i want i want to try it uh but i don't want you to have to listen to me talk about how great it is or what if it's not great and then i'm trying to tell you that it's great now i'm a lie i don't want to do any of that stuff yeah what is it hello fresh me undies all of this stuff can't be great so i don't want

to have to tell you it is and i don't want you to listen to it and so yeah keep uh keep podcasting at 1517 free of all of that nonsense. That should be a sticker. Keep 1517 Podcasts free. That's right. That's it. By willfully making it pay. That's right. Thanks for listening to this episode, guys.

We'll catch you next time. I'll see you next time.