Live Free with Josh Howerton - The DANGEROUS Ideology Behind the Trump Assassination Attempt (ft. David Nasser) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

What does it actually look like to share your faith with someone like Jordan Peterson, and what do four assassination attempts on a sitting president reveal about the state of the American soul? Pastors Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Paul Cunningham sit down with Pastor David Nasser for one of the most wide-ranging conversations in Live Free. From Josh's eye-opening trip to Greece retracing Paul's footsteps in Acts, to the seven I AM statements of Jesus, to the difference between a presenting cause and a root disease, this episode moves from theology to culture to the street-level art of winning your one more. David Nasser pulls back the curtain on what happened when Jordan Peterson came to Liberty University, then the team tackles Saturday night's assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and makes the case that political violence is not a political problem. It's a spiritual one. In this episode, you'll learn: Three categories of proof that Jesus claimed to be God: things he said, did, and knew that only God could What happened when David Nasser hosted Jordan Peterson at Liberty University and why hospitality is evangelism Why political violence is a presenting cause with a spiritual root disease, and what Christians need to understand Practical, real-world strategies for moving your one more closer to Jesus in everyday conversations Why the answer to what's broken in our nation is not political, and never has been Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free. 💬 This week’s giveaway: Comment HAT 🧢 Want a Live Free hat of your own? Visit LiveFree.shop 📲 Looking to grow deeper in your faith? Check out the Lakepointe App to access our Discipleship Guide, daily Bible reading plan, and more. Text APP to 20411 to download

There was the fourth legitimate assassination attempt on President Trump's life. We have a lot of politically aware Christians who listen to Live Free. And I want to keep saying the same thing. Politics cannot fix what politics did not break. You can have outrage at what happened last night. But eventually it's got to turn into outreach. Could there have been someone in the life of these individuals who end up being the harmers when somebody could have been their church community?

Well, hey, Live Free Nation, before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas. as Texas, but the live free nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this, we want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our church online platform, and it's more than just watching a service. There are a live host in the chat, prayer team's ready to stand with you, and people all around

the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, church online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend. And now, enjoy the podcast. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast. My name is Carlos Arrasen. I'm here with Pastor Josh Howard and Paul Cunningham. And today we have a special guest.

Bishop David Nassar. Come on. Come on. Back with us. I've never been called Bishop before. He's the Bishop. He's back. on he's back baby

last time he's on the episode exploded yes and so it's like we gotta have him back he's our Iran expert wow I'm the only one do you know hey hey expert it's Iran oh it's Iran is it is it really it could be whatever you want it to be carless hey David you know what would you like for me to be

English is American language that's okay Varsian Mahmadan International relations going out right now now you're Cuban no oh okay oh wow

We're even now. Are you going to him? I'm just saying. Wait, hold on, hold on. You're Canadian, right? No. I just thought, I just thought, since we're just throwing out parts of the world and everyone belongs. I look like I'm from Canada.

Yeah, I just thought we're going that way. He knows what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. That's great. That's great. David, welcome back. Thank you, buddy. Hey, today we're going to have a great episode.

We're going to be talking about different things. Also, Pastor Josh, welcome back from Greece. Hey, man, it's going to be about a little jet lagged. Yeah, are you doing. It's going to be back. Hey, actually, let me brag on the pod real quick. in stinking Greece. I'm not joking.

I've never felt the lake pointers who were with me. We had like 45, 50 leg pointers. We were doing a journey of Paul trip and visiting sites from the Book of Acts, 16, 17, 18 primarily. And, you know, I think their estimation of our church skyrocketed in Greece. I'm not joking.

I would conservatively estimate 20 people stopped us and we're like, legpoint church. We watched legpoint church. Wow. So, dude, this is no joke. We're on the top of the acrockets. and some of our teams up there, and they see, there's a Greek street preacher outside of the Acropolis. By the way, he had a great little message. He did, what did he do? He did one savior,

two nails, three days. It was like a legitimately good gospel-centered street preacher. It was awesome. Like, love of God, it was awesome. And he sees the little Lake Point Landlord on Soar of People, and his accent, he's like, you, Lake Point Church, Dallas, Texas. I don't know how to do a Greek accent. That's okay. Lake Point Church, Dallas, Texas. They were like, yeah, yeah. They said, yeah, he said, yeah, He said, I watch your podcast. That's amazing. Wow.

It was insane, man. Mars Hill? Yep, right there. So, okay, actually, we'll probably do this more when I get back into Acts and we're teaching. So I didn't know this because I had never been to, you've been to Mars Hill? Yeah. I had never been to Marseille. I didn't know.

Mars Hill. So for listeners, Acts 17, Paul, it does a deal at the beginning of Acts 17 where he's looking around Athens. And he goes, his spirit was provoked within him because it's, was full of idols. So then right after that, he gets accused of, quote-unquote, promoting foreign gods. By the way, here's a little fun fact about it. We didn't plan to do this. Here's a little fun fact about that. The reason that would have sent a chill down his spine is because just like a century or two earlier, the major event in Athens was Socrates was forced to drink to Hemlock, capital punishment. Why? Because he was accused of promoting foreign gods. So I didn't

know in Acts 17, the language there is the exact same language that was used to convict Socrates and get him killed. So then, I have a point to this. So then Paul goes up on Marseille and he does the whole deal of, hey, men of Athens, you got all these idols here and all this stuff. I didn't know until this trip, and this is, I'm the dummy. I didn't know the Ariopagus, Mars Hill, is literally at the foot of the Acropolis. So, Paul, have you? He has not been. No, I have not. This is a running the free joke. But he will, One day. He will one day. He will one day. I didn't know that Mars Hill is literally right at the foot of the Acropolis. So when he's telling them, hey, the city's full of idols, literally he's looking right at the Parthenon. There's 22 either statues or temples to the demonic pagan Greek gods there. And that's why he says that. So there's a bunch of stuff like that on that trip. It's like, bro, I didn't, it all just starts to click. And then so literally when he says line, like God is not live in temples made by human hands. It's exactly.

It's like visuals. Yeah, like visuals right here. So then you start to think. So even today, I mean, 2,000 years later, the whole city of Athens revolves around the Parthenon. That's amazing. Like the whole city is about the Parthenon. So you go back 2,000 years,

and Paul's telling these dudes, the Ariapkis was like the Supreme Court of Athens. He's telling them, hey, God's not in those temples made by human hands. Like, you've got to imagine the courage and conviction that that would have taken Paul. I mean, stunning, man. Well, we're going to talk about that, how to share our faith. In just a second, you're also going to share a little bit more about your trip, Greece. We're going to be addressing the pastoral response to President Trump's assassination attempt at the White House correspondent dinner.

That's crazy. Literally, as of the recording of this episode just happened last night. We're going to talk about some different ways to share the gospel. We have David Nassahiri, the expert from Iran. Man, I'm learning. He got it. See how quickly I fix it? He did it, but.

Thank you. It was Cuban accent. And my Cuban accent, sure. Actually, usually it's Mexican, but that's okay. People will say that. You're from Costa Rica? No, no. Hey, if you're part of the Live Free Nation, if you've never been here, we love to meet you in person.

Come hang out. If you ever want to come and you want to ask Chad Gipal, see if you're a tattoo in Hebrew actually says what you think it says. You can go ahead and do that. I've received at least 20 messages on social media for people to proofread their Greek and Hebrew tattoos. No kidding. Come find us. First-time guest stands. We got a gift for you also.

Oh, I got this tramp stamp. Oh, boy. You can pay years with Paulus is that I mentioned on the podcast. That's a joke. That's a joke. Neither of them have that. Every single week we have a giveaway for a live free merch. You can see it right here.

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Multiple winners. To find our daily Bible reading plan plus the weekly sermon plus an early release of the live free podcast. Download the Lake Point Church app, text the word app to 20411 or go to Apple or Google Play Store. David Nassar. Wait, wait. Oh, you're right. Can I do one more, again from Greece? Yeah.

You've been, right? I have been, yeah. Did you go to Philippi? We did. All right. So of everything we saw, this was the thing that was like, oh my gosh, my heart's saying. All right, so here's the one, and I'll do more where we start preaching the book of Acts again in a couple weeks. Trini, will you pull up that one picture that looks like it's just from rural Texas?

Okay, so this, seriously. It's like my crink down the road over here. There's nothing Grecian about this picture, really. Okay, so of everything we saw, at every spot, I'll stop and do a devotional. and that kind of. So this is, I'd never seen this before. So this is right outside the ruins of ancient Philippi. This is in, if you go to Acts 16, I'm going to read it. This is the likely baptism site of Lydia, who was the seller of Purple Clause. She was like total baller, wealthy, probably in the Roman fashion industry. Most Bible scholars assume because of two verses in the book of Philippians

that she leveraged her wealth as a gospel patron to fund Paul's ministry. There's two verses in Philippians that make it clear they were a financial backer of his ministry in a way that other churches weren't. And a lot of people think, yeah, that was Lydia. Yeah. So in Acts 16, I'm going to read real quick, and this has a good payoff. Just stick with me. Kind of thing that's like, you don't see it if you just read real fast. So act 16, it says, and on the Sabbath day, we went outside of the gate, outside the gate to the riverside. So notice the details. And we sat down and spoke to a woman named Lydia. Now, the reason they're like, hey man, that's, that's legit where Lydia got baptized. is one, it's outside, it's at ancient Philippi, number two,

it's outside one of the city gates, like the verse said, and number three, there's only one river there. So you connect the dots and it's like, bro, that's, I mean, I just read that verse, you just stepped into the book of Acts when you're standing there, and it's Lydia, okay. But here's what kind of made my eyes sweat when we're standing there. So I start studying these passages, you probably preach it a million times, I start studying these passages before we go,

because, you know, I don't want these to be trips, I want them to disciple people. So there's this prayer. They're called the Burk, I want to pronounce it correctly, Burkot Hashikar. There were prayers that Jewish men in the first century would frequently pray, and I'll just, I'll read it, what they would pray, is frequently Jewish men, especially Pharisees like Paul.

They would pray three things. It was a series of professions of thanks. And they would pray, oh, man, this is going to make my eyes sweat, just saying it. Paul very likely grew up, and every day, he would pray, God, I want to thank you. Then I'm not three things. I'm not a woman.

I'm not a slave. And I'm not a Gentile. All right. So he grows up praying these things. Then Paul gets saved earlier in the book of Acts, and he becomes a spirit-filled church planner. And this little spirit-filled church planner, former Jewish dude, he walks into Philippi.

And if you read Acts 16, 17, 18, there's three people that God immediately saved supernaturally under Paul's ministry. He saves, hang on, he saves Lydia. He saves, God saves this, it's a little, a slave girl that was filled with a demonic spirit of divination. And then number three, the Philippian jailer. So let me, so he is amazing. Paul grows up, his whole life, for him, God, thank you, I'm not a woman, not a slave, and I'm not a Gentile.

Then he wanders into Philippi, and God goes, you know what, Paul, I'm going to use you to save three people right off the bat. a woman, a slave, and a Gentile. This thing, man, listen, man, is a movement for all people. Wow. Anybody can get in on this thing. So, dude, I'm standing there, and I'm like, I'm like a eight-year-old girl. I just thinking, man, God's so good. That's awesome.

Wow. Well, I'm sure there's more of that you want to share with us. Oh, this is a ton. We'll save it. We'll save that. But David, thank you so much for your sermon, man. Thank you for being here with us this weekend. That's such an honor to be here.

What an amazing group of people that have gathered together and call this their home church. Just to be out in the lobby and meet your people, so many of them on mission, so many of them burdened for their one more. So many of them have come to Christ through the faithfulness of this church body by someone else. I met a young lady who was a former Muslim who had given her life to Christ last night. And man, she said my mom and my dad are not Christians. But then standing right beside her was this sweet elderly couple. And she points to them, they're in your church.

She goes, this is my spiritual mom and dad. And we were just hugging. And I thought, oh, when I think about Lake Point, I always think about like my friend Josh Howardton. But really, now when I think about Lake Point, I'm also going to think about that sweet couple who just stepped into the life of this, you know, young convert and are like, we got you. I was going to give you a ton of fathers and mothers.

You know? And so it's just been a joy. It's been life-giving to be here, man. Thanks for trusting me in the pulpit and be able to open God's words. Thank you for doing it. That that's one of the best messages that's been preached while I've been here. That was insane. Yeah. That was insane. Well, it's funny. It was full circle for me because, you know, I tell a story. The first time I've ever heard you preach, I was sophomore in college. Yeah. And you did one verse. Yeah. You went word by word through John 316. Yeah. And then this one, you went word by word. It's John 6. About 635. 635.

And it was just word by word sermon. It was, that was fire. Thank you. Yeah, man. Praise hands. Fire, fire, fire. So, David, as we do here in the live free podcast, we tend to ask whoever preaches that weekend, we will be like, hey, what did it make it to the sermons?

Let me ask you what additional things. I'm sure you got more to share from your sermon. Yeah. I mean, obviously for someone who's yet to hear it, and hopefully you'll have time to make it a part of your schedule this week to go listen to the sermon. It's about that moment where Jesus says. the undisputable truth about himself. He says, I am the bread of life. If you come to me, you're not going to be hungry. You're not going to be thirsty. I'm going to shift everything

about your identity. It's not that you're not going to have longings. You're just not going to be identified by them anymore. I'm going to be your everything. And then everything else is going to find this proper place if you make me your greatest obsession. And so I did John 635, kind of broke that down a little bit. And it's more than just, I'm the one true religion. It's more like, I'm everything. I want to be on the, I want to be on the throne of your life and not. on the top shelf of your life. I want your wife to take a distance second, your kids to take a distance second,

your job, your ambitions. If everything else, if I'm your one ride and die, right or not. If I'm there everything, then everything else will make sense. And so then I talked about how that happens about a day after

Jesus had actually physically given people physical bread. By the way, I did not know that. I felt so dumb. It was one of those things and I was like, I had never connected those dots. Didn't you say 21 hours?

Yeah. Do you know why they say that? Well, they believe Jesus, Jesus feeds the masses. Yeah. And in between that, by the way, in between that is then he goes on, he just goes on the boat by himself to a solitude. He goes to be by himself and pray. The disciples, I'm sorry, in between the feeding of the masses and the John 635 is the Peter walking on water moment and all that. So a pretty traumatic night where the guys just kind of had all that.

happened with the feeding. Then Peter walks on water and all of that. Wake up the next day. They're on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And I know you've been to Israel. Have you been to Israel? I'm sorry. Anyway, so if you go to the field, he will. Yeah. He will. Is that the joke? Yeah, that's the joke. The guy who knows the most about it's actually never been. He knows more than the three of us combined. Right. He knows the most, but he's no. Oh, I'll bet. Come on. That was well play. So if you go, you know that the next day they wake up and the same people that he fed the day before, and you know how you get, you actually are hungrier when you eat a big fat meal?

Like your stomach's kind of stretched. They wake up the next day and they're physically hungry again. And that's when they come around the bend. And so they believe by the time they'd had a late afternoon meal to the next morning when they wake up and they find them around lunchtime, it's about 21 hours. So no one knows for sure, but it's the next day. So they come to him and they're looking again for him to meet a night. another moment. Like, hey, we're hungry again, physically. Feed us again. And that's when Jesus says,

man, you must eat of my flesh, drink of my blood. I mean, that's when Jesus just lays the gauntlet down. And he says, look, this physical hunger that you have is nothing but an earthly illustration that as the creator, I made you to make you wake up to the reality of your actual greatest hunger, your eternal hunger, which is this longing for me. And all the banquets of the world are going to leave you wanting. It's either going to be false bread or it's going to be temporary bread. And it's going to always leave you unsatisfied. And so only I'm going to be able to really satisfy you.

But the heart of this message was investigating Jesus was the strategy by which Jesus over and over again went after how he won the one more by figuring out a way, how he won more, W-O-N, the one more's, O-N-E's. And how he did it so often was Jesus would find a momentary need, and he'd step into that momentary need. And talk about the humility and the tenacity and the focus of like, I'm not going to pander to the need. I'm going to position myself to serve. So Jesus would meet that momentary need so that he would earn the right

to speak eternal truth into the life of people. And so that was the heart of the message. And I think the one thing I would say that didn't make it in the message is it's never lost on me. Honestly, being at your church, bro, it's not lost on me being at one of my very favorite preachers because you really are. I'm not just saying that to you just because we're in the same room and sitting on the same side of the table. Like you are at this moment, one of God's anointed voices that he's risen up. And it's all God. but you've been the crooked stick that he's sitting some pretty good licks with right now.

And you, but it's not lost on me sitting right beside one of my favorite preachers, that the greatest preacher of all time, who is not Josh Howardton, it's not Matt Chandler, it's not Francis Chan, it's not Tim Keller, it's not John Piper, the greatest preacher of all time. Jesus. I mean, listen, sometimes people like you because they like your content. Jesus had the best content because he made all, the creator of all content. Like in the beginning, before there was a beginning, there was a beginner who began beginning.

Before there was creation, there was the uncreated one who created all creation. So like Jesus says, in the beginning was, was, already was the word. That's Jesus, the word made flesh. So the content creator of all creation, to talk about someone who has good content. The one who holds all content. Like, we're fishing off AI and off our, you know, our software. Like, tell me something about a fish in the ocean that I can use. Jesus made it.

That's right. So the guy who had all content, who had perfect timing, you're coming off jet lag. I'm older than you. I came from Tokyo last week. I'm still getting off jet lag. Like, Jesus 24-7 has perfect timing. Jesus has 24-7 all content. Sometimes you'll speak and somebody will say,

it felt like you knew exactly what to say in my life, Josh. You know, they'll be sitting on the fourth row and they'll think, does somebody hand you a sticky note? Like about all my secret? And you don't know. But Jesus knew, on a Sunday morning, Jesus knew every Sunday that they've been through. Jesus knows every Sunday Carlos is ever going.

You don't know five Sundays from now. Jesus does. So the one who holds all content, all knowledge, all wisdom. it's fair to say Jesus, there'll never be anyone near Jesus as a communicator. That's right. Greatest storyteller, parable,

you know what I mean? Like, are you kidding me right now? The greatest preacher of all time finds 15,000 people on a mountainside and he doesn't go, somebody with skinny jeans sing three Maverick City songs and get me a mic.

He doesn't polish a sermon off to him. The greatest preacher of all time finds 15,000 people and their most immediate need, not their eternal, their most immediate need is they're hungry. And he goes, let's feed them. Amen. Amen. I'm just telling you, man, I think sometimes preachers, we try to solve everything with a gathering. Yeah, that's right. You know? That's right. And we try to mobilize everybody with like, give me a mic and let me, you know, and God's going, like, just note that like Jesus knew how to communicate. And he decided first to show compassion. And they're hungry, let's give them a meal.

Let's put our best, let's be hospitable. And then the next day, he didn't skirt the issue. So I think some churches are really good at meeting needs, but they never share the gospel. Some churches are really good at sharing the gospel, but they never meet needs. And Jesus comes in the middle and he's like, why do those things have to contradict one another?

That's right. It's actually the way, I call it the tension, not even the tension, the reality of the Great Commission, you know, go tell, and the Great Commandment, love well. That's right. And so how do you do both at the same time? And Jesus models it right there. Dude, we're going to get to that in a second.

I want to talk, because you gave some stuff about, I don't care who you are, man. If you love Jesus, then your heart starts burning for somebody else you love no Jesus. Yeah. So, and that's what you did in that message. You did that thing at the end of the message where it's like, hey, raise your, and or stand, you know. And that just hits different. It starts to hit different when you start falling Jesus.

I want to get to that in a second and just get real practical. Everybody's got somebody that's close to you but far from God. Okay, how do we as disciples? How do we move the needle? I want to get back in a second. You did something at the beginning of that message where you just walk word by word through that verse where it was like you did the I Am and then you did the IMV,

which was as a preacher I was going, that was brilliant. That's right. As a preacher, I was like, that's so good. Can I just interrupt you and just say, is it sirloin or wagu? And here's what I mean by that. And I'm not saying some verses are sirling. I'm just saying like, I don't know about you guys, but I roll different.

Like, I don't get a lot of woggyu. I get a ton of sirling. And so when I'm at dinner and somebody says wog you, I don't take big gulps. I don't take big. They're giving me four ounces. Oh, that's great, dude. They're slicing and calling it Carpaccio, which is like, I think Carpaccio is Italian for like, you don't get a lot because you can't afford it.

So like, if it's, if it's, If it's Wagyu, you savor it. And I just feel like versus sometimes get gobbled up. When we need to slow down and go, look, layered inside. So like before we just read really quick, there's plenty in the eye. And then I feel like I'm fast forwarding through it. I don't know how you feel, but sometimes like you'll do 10 weeks in Luke and Luke. And people are like, why are we going to be in Luke for 10?

I mean like, because I'm rushing through it. I was going to say 10 weeks, if you really wanted to do Luke Wright, it would take two years. Right. I'm apt to, I'm apt it a couple years ago. It would take two years. Totally, man. Frank Lloyd Wright, he did Galatians in five years. Yeah, yeah.

And felt like he was rushing. There's, this is a whole, like we could do a whole podcast, just like a preacher-nernered podcast. But there's paragraph preachers and there's sentence preachers. Like, if you go read a Charles Spurgeon sermon, every Charles Pergin sermon is literally either one sentence or one phrase. in one sentence and he does what you did. And then there's paragraph preachers. That's a little more of what I do. There's a lot of guys that that's

that's what Jobby Martin does. Jobb Martin's a paragraph preacher. But man, it's really nice. I love when you can sentence preach. It's really nice. So anyway, so that's what we were doing. We were saying, I am. It was fire.

Duh. Yeah. Okay. So the point you made is that what you did is you hit the I am statement. And a lot of people don't know this. When you read the book of John, there's like a spine to the book of John. and you alluded to this that the book of John hangs off seven I am statements.

And obviously for people who are maybe not as initiated, it's not called the tetragrammaton. The tetragrammaton is what gets translated to Yahweh. As Lord, yeah, as Lord in our translations. Yep. Yep. But the I am statements are explicit claims to deity. Because obviously the Old Testament when God reveals himself to Moses,

hey, what's your name? Tell them, I am sent you, I am who I am. And Jesus is very obviously. very obviously. So the reason I want to hit this, let's just do this real quick. We're going to throw it over to chat, Chetee for a little Bible and everything.

Here, what I want you to do, Paul, real quick, is can you, like, give a quick overview? So what Jesus does throughout his ministry is he will explicitly imply his equality with the father and his deity. But what you'll get is because he mostly does implication instead of explication. What you'll get is you get news like Bart Ehrman

or a lot of guys who are, are, you know, sort of critics. And, like, listeners will get this thrown at you. Jesus never claim to be God. Constantine made that up in 3.20? You know, you get that stuff. So Nasser alluded to it real quick. Paul, will you just babble nerd out real quick?

Give us a quick overview of Jesus claims towards deity and that we can chip in. It's good. Yeah, three broad categories. Jesus said things only God could say. He did things only God could do, and he knew things only God could know. I've never heard that before. That is so good. fantastic.

That's why he's Joshi Palsy. Do that one more time. That's really good. Jesus did things only God could do. He said things only God could say, and he knew things only God could know. I think we're done here. Podcast was great. Thank you guys.

Appreciate it. Okay. Keep going. And so like, let's just kind of break these categories. And this is, yeah, wait in and things that I leave out. I mean, we could really be here for hours. Yeah, you could do all the categories. But let's just go a few things.

Things that Jesus said. So the most explicit you were referring to one was in John 858. Jesus says before Abraham was I am. But this is, where you don't have to always do this. You can read your English translation and get plenty from it. But this is actually where it is helpful a little bit to know the Greek of just what Jesus was saying. And when the people who wrote the gospel of John were trying to say, John who wrote the gospel of John was trying to say. So in the Greek, it says before Abraham was Ego A Me is what it would have said in Greek. He is referring to a specific thing that you alluded to, and that is from Exodus, Exodus chapter 4. I've got here the, what's called the Septuagint. We only have one, I mean, Nassar might be able to do this, but there's only one guy at the table that I'm aware of that can literally read from his Greek New Testament and then his Septuagint. But explain what the Septuagint is real quick.

The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew O Testament. So actually we will get into this in an upcoming episode where we talk about, we converse with Father Mike, not in person, but just via video, in terms of what's called the Apocrypha. And so you have the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Heroa Testament. Carlos, you don't read the Septuagint in your free time? No, I do not. Do they have a Cuban translation? Did they have it in Puerto Rican? They don't know.

If you're listening from Cuba, we love you. Shout to all the Cubans joining. I'm sure they listen to this podcast. All right. So this is from the book of Exodus, how most read it in Greek because you were making fun of me. Do it. Do it.

I was going to say. I should read it. Kai Apen, Hothéos Prosteusin, that is God spoke to Moses. Look at this guy. And then it says, Legon, ego, a me, saying, I am. Ooh. And so last week, Paul was flexing his tricep.

Today he's flexing his language skills over here. Stop. So it's like right there. I mean, literally, so Jesus is speaking to these legislators. It's before Abraham was, I am. And by the way, they immediately want to kill him because they know what he's doing. It's because he's referring directly to this where God says Moses, I am. And then just after this guy who says, I am the god of your forefathers.

the God of Abraham. So when Jesus says before Abraham, as I am, he is directly going back to this and quoting that. Also, you get like you mentioned another way, one of these. In John 1030, Jesus says, the father and I are one. He doesn't mean, oh yeah, we're like on the same team or we agree on things. Like again, when he says this, the people that listen to him immediately want to do what? They want to kill him.

They want to stone him because he had committed blasphemy. Let me give you one more. There's this great thing in the book of John as well where the disciples are on the boat and they're freaked out. And Jesus appears and he says, it is I, don't be afraid, which is kind of just a weird thing to say, just like listening to it. What he says in the Greek is, ego, am, I am, don't be afraid. And he is referencing Psalm 108.

So many people miss this. This is Psalm 108, 27 through 30. Then they cried to the Lord in the trouble. Kind of like when the disciples all of a sudden when the storm, it says they cried out, Lord, Lord, you know, kind of a thing. And he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed. then they were glad that the waters are quiet and he brought them to their desired haven.

And in the context, who is doing this? Yahweh. God himself is doing this. So Jesus says things that only God could say. He also did things only God could do. For example, like I just mentioned, he walked on water. Only God could do that. In Mark 257, he forgives sins. That's a big one. It's a huge one. This is a big one. Explain this real quick. Your average Bible reader will read past this and there's that confusing little phrase like, which is easier to say get up and walk or to say your sins are forgiven. And your average Bible reader doesn't realize what's happening there. Exactly.

See, yeah, talk about this real quick. Yeah. And so even like going back to the Psalms, the Psalms that talks about, man, one of the reasons that the Lord Y'allway is amazing is because he is the one who not only heals our diseases, but he does what? He does what? He does what? He does our sins. And so in Mark two, Jesus is with the paralytic. This is that story where the guys bring him, they lower him down the mat.

And he just looks at him. And even though, like, he has an immediate felt need, but which, by the way, he addresses. He said, your sins are forgiven. And the people listening are ticked off like, who can forgive sins but God alone? That's literal of the verse is. Yes. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And Jesus is going, I'm him, bro.

I'm him. And so Jesus obviously at that point, because he's early in his ministry. And if he says something like that, it's immediately going to come to a head and it's not his time yet. And so he basically says, okay. And so then he says, well, what is easier to do that or to forgive? And so he forgives the guy. Both the implication is like, he never denied that he couldn't forgive. He didn't say, oh, my bad.

Yeah, only God can forgive. He's like, no, I'm going to heal the guy. I'm going to meet his immediate. physical need, but I also still forgave him of his bigger need that I forgave him of the sin. So I just want to make sure, because that one is significant. It's massive. So for listeners, like if, and I'm not making a joke, I'm just an analogy, if Carlos punches Paul and Paul's mad about it and I say to Carlos, I forgive you.

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make it. Hey, the sin wasn't against you. You can't forget. So the implication of Jesus saying, I forgive your sins, the obvious implication is, It's from Psalm 51. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

And Jesus is explicitly claiming there every sin you've ever committed was against me. Because I'm Yahweh. Exactly. Another thing. And then I'll move to things that Jesus knew. So these are things that Jesus did that only God could do. He received worship. So in Matthew 14, it says those in the boat worshiped him saying, truly you are the son of God.

Now, other places in scripture, people are tempted to worship angels. and do other worship other things like that. And immediately what do to always angels do? Like, no, no, no, no. Worship is reserved for God alone. So it says, truly you are the son of God and it says that they worship him. And then this is the next verse.

And when they had crossed over, they came to the land at Ganesar it. So what you don't get is Jesus saying, nope, nope, nope, no, no, no, no. This is inappropriate. This inappropriate. Do not worship me. He receives their worship.

Because he is the only one worthy of worship. Some things that Jesus knew that only God could know. He knew the thoughts of religious leaders in the book of Mark. It talks about how he knew their thoughts and he knew what they were thinking. There is no other example of a prophet in the Bible that had insight into the thoughts of a person is there. I can't think of one.

Not as they're having it, no. Yeah, okay. And then also in John 1, it says this, talking about a guy named Nathaniel, Jesus saw Nathaniel, Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, behold, in Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered him, before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. And this isn't like, oh, like from a hundred yards away. He was not there.

Only God is everywhere, and only God knows all things. So he knows things that only God could know that he was under this fig tree. And look at Nathaniel's response. He answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God. So Jesus did things only God could do. He knew things only God could know, and he said things only God could say. I may have left out some things that you loved. There's a million of them.

Yeah. So let's, if there's one that we miss, let's chime it in. Because here's why I'm doing this for listeners, you will 100% get a question, either from your one more that's got a legitimate question or from somebody that's like the biblical term

for this type of person is a scoffer, somebody that's trying to, they're doing reverse evangelism on you, you're going to get this. So I'll just try me in a couple of them that are like my favorite little inceptiony deep cuts.

So one of my favorite ones is John 9, where there's the dude this born blind. And it's the whole, hey, who's in? This guy or his parents. And the guy comes up. And Jesus, like, I can, I'll heal you.

And when you read it, the first time you read it, you're like, what the heck? This is so stinking rude of Jesus. Why is he so rude and nasty? Because it says that he spits in the ground and makes mud with saliva, remember? And he puts it on the eye, dude, I'm gonna get emotional. And he puts it on the eyes of the guy,

and the guy can see. And at first you read it, you're like, what the heck, man? But then if you remember, you go back to Genesis 1. And when God, the Father Yahweh created mankind, he created him out of the dust of the earth.

And so Jesus, when he does that, he's going, hey man, let me take some dust and put it on those eyes and it was a revelation moment where he's putting dirt on this guy's eyes. And it's essentially like that moment in the movie where he turns to the camera

and goes, I have done this before. Wow. That was me in Genesis 1. one that did this. It's recreation too. That's it. That's it. That's it. The other one, well, you do one. No, man, girl. So, so good. So you got, the other one is that I love. Seriously, we do this all day. The Bible just, there's layers to this, man. There's levels to this. The transfiguration account is the obvious one. His face transformed like lightning, you know. And remember the two dudes that are on the mountain. You got Moses and Elijah. Okay, well,

there's two levels to that one. One, both of those guys had encounters with the Father Yahweh on a mountain. Moses encounters God on Sinai. Elijah encounters the father on Horrib. And so it's like, it's honestly, you're getting this moment where it's like, let's have a reunion. We've met on top of a mountain before, and it's Jesus. But then the other one, dude, this is, I love it so much.

So Moses, to my knowledge, only has two requests in his entire life. Exodus turned down by God. One, remember he goes, hey, show me your glory. And God's like, hey, man, I love you. I can't do that. And remember what he says, he says, no man shall see my face. No face. No face.

He turns back to him. No man shall see my face and live. The other request Moses has declined is, man, I really want to enter the promised land. And God's like, man, because of your disobedience, you can't. But then you fast, oh, dude, the Bible's so great. But then you fast forward to that moment on the, transfiguration account and Moses appears and he's talking with Jesus his face is

transfigured like lightning and what's Moses seeing the face of God and he's in the promise land. Come on it's just like it's so good dude well and I'll show this could be a good segment because this is tied to what David preached you know so some people point out as well that in Luke 9 the feeding of the 5 000 it seems to nod to the good shepherd in Psalm 23 And so Psalm 23 says in the original language, Jehovah is my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. In other gospels, Jesus sees the crowd, and the Bible says he had compassion over them because they're like sheep without a shepherd.

In Psalm 23, he says, he makes me lie down in green pastures. In Luke, Jesus literally makes them lie down in green pastures. In Psalm 23, it says, my cup overflows. In Luke 9, it says 12 baskets of leftovers were picked up. There's an overflow. Wow. In Psalm 23, it says, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Luke 9 says, all eight and all were satisfied. Why didn't you tell me this before I did? Why didn't you get there in the sermon? That would have been in the sermon, Carlos. Jesus is a good shepherd. That's so good. Jesus is Jehovah. Come on.

I don't know. I'll give one. Because I think this would be a good segue back to in terms of when we were talking about sharing your faith and just meeting needs. So it was a huge part of that. I got to get around my eyes. Yeah, go on my favorite stories. Can I actually say this?

Yeah. I'm sorry. as people are hearing this, they're like, they're about to turn the corner and now sales pitch us to have to go and share our faith. And it's not lost on me in the story that Jesus doesn't need the fish and the bread from the little boy. He doesn't have to physically hold fish and bread to do them. Like, he doesn't like, the only way I got, guys, all you've got is, you know, pork. And so I'm just going to have to get to multiply pork because you don't have to. Jesus could have, but the little boy brings the little bit that he has.

as insufficient and he invites him into the story. He gets to be a part of the bigger thing than him. Jesus always did that. You bring water to me, I'll turn it into wine. You bring the insufficient little bit that you got and I'm inviting you to. So I want, as we start to turn a corner of like, how do you win your friend to the Lord? It's not like, oh man, now they're going to turn it on me. It's like we get to participate.

We get to be the little boy. Wow. People miss this detail on Luke. I love it because basically the disciples like, oh, there's all these people. And Jesus is like, you give them something to eat. Yeah, that's right. He's like, I want you to be a part. He's like, I want you to be a part of this.

Yeah, the story from Luke, it just a place that again just shows, I believe Jesus is divinity, but it also just shows his compassion, meaning of needs. There's a story where he goes into this town, I believe it was name. And he's going and there's a funeral procession. And it's this woman who has just lost her only son. And she was a widow. And so in this culture, that means she would have been destitute. and vulnerable, no way to support herself,

and could have been taken advantage of. And it says that when Jesus saw her, he had compassion on her, but the Greek literally says, his insides turned. His insides turned. And he said, woman, do not cry, which is, it seems like a very sensitive thing to say. But then he touches out and he puts his hand on the coffin,

which in that culture, is the big thing here. In that culture, if you touch a coffin, you're unclean. A while. Like you're unclean, never touched that unclean. And yet Jesus reaches his hand out and touches the coffin and he raises the son back up and it says he gives him back to his mother

as a way to take care of her. And so not only did Jesus have compassion on this woman, but what's interesting is when Jesus did that, he didn't become unclean. He restored life back to something that was dead. And only God can do that. Again, Jesus can do only things that God can do. And he met that need in that moment.

Those three things you just, can you just do them at a time, we just spoke like. Just stop. He did. Jesus said things only God could say. Stop. Forget the Bible stories. Jesus said to David Nassar, to Carlos, to Josh. Jesus said to me, can you testify to this? He said it to you in Spanish. He said it to me in Texan. But Jesus said to me only things that God could say. Yeah. What's the second one? Jesus did things only God could do. I mean, if you're on a treadmill right now, listen to this podcast, did Jesus do things for you that only God could do? Forget everybody else. Amen, dude.

This ain't 2,000 years ago on a dusty hill in places that you have not been able to go yet. This is like, this is like Jesus said things to David Nassar that only God could say. Jesus did things for David Nassar that only God could do. And what's the third one? Jesus knew things. Only God could know. I mean, can we personally, is that true about him right now in your life? This guy's got some preaching.

He's got some preaching. I mean, I just want to say like, my goodness. I can testify to that. Amen. Let me put a bow on this. And then what I do want to do is let's get real practical because if you have a spiritual pulse, then you care about people coming to know Jesus. And every one of us, I got people that every time I talk about makes my sweat.

I'll pray for them until my, I'll pray for them 50 years until the day I die, wanting them to come to know Jesus. Everybody's got that. So let's get real practical here in a second. and just like, cookies on the bottom shelf. Here's what a normal dude, normal girl can do to move the needle in somebody's life. Let me just put a bow on this.

If you're listening to this, you're like, all that stuff's really cool, okay, but, you know, Jesus is God, are you sure? What I'd say is, if you zoom out, this is really what the whole book of the gospel of John is about, and I just want to point this out. There are seven I am statements.

He already hit it, Ego Amy. That's the same name for God in the Old Testament. There's seven of them. Obviously, in Hebrew, Hebrew language is all about, it's alpha-numeric. Numbers are a big deal. Seven is a number of, perfection. So just want to point this out, you have seven I am statements. He's Jesus very,

very clearly gone, man, I am the perfection of the character of the Godhead personified in human form. So you just zoom out and you got it right there. Now, let's just get real practical and I don't care who starts. Actually, Dave, why don't you start? Let's just get real practical. Cook is in the bottom shelf. Maybe each of us go, I've got a, I've got, you know, everybody's got there like your go-to move. I've got my go-to move on here's how I help somebody. move them from here to here towards Jesus. Let's kind of maybe go, what should you go to move or a practical tip? Dave, you want to start us?

Because you had something really actually like super interesting happen at Liberty. That kind of actually encapsulates something. So you want to do your little thing here? Yeah. I mean, if you're asking me just the normal day-to-day strategy that I hold is blood of the lamb, word of our testimony. And I don't know if that's what you were asking about. But to me, that's the one to punch.

I mean, you need lost, to do evangelism, you need lost people. You need the good news. And you need a way to present the good news. And so the blood of the land, word of our testimony. So like to me, it's make sure that you tell your own life story, that it's not always about Bible stories of what happened to them, but like what happened to me? I can tell you that I know that this is, so share your story. And we all really have one story to tell.

Jesus is the hero. We all meet at the foot of the same cross. And then make sure you get to the blood of the lamb. Make sure you share the good news of the gospel. And when it comes to gospel presentation to me in a conversational sense with somebody, I'm typically trying to just bring them to the reality. The other day I was talking to someone

and I was just, I'm literally sitting with them on a plane. So we're kind of side-looking at each other. And I'm like, man, I start with like, you exist. I'm like, do you believe you exist? Like, this is not a thought. You're not an emotional gas. You're like a human being and you exist. He's like, yeah.

If he'd have said, no, I'd have pinch them or something. You know, like, well, maybe not. An Iranian pinching people on a plane is probably different than you pinching someone. But, but, you know, like you exist. Like, you exist. And so, like, you start with, like, you exist. Like, okay. And then you have to convince people.

Like, you exist and you're a sinner. Like, no one has to teach you how to sin. You grew up in this world born at this. born Adamic by nature. Like I like to take people to like take a baby and those of you who are fathers know like you don't have to teach your children

how to lie. I don't care how sheltered they are. So like you exist and you exist. The sin that you're committing is just the evidence of who you are. You exist born in this world of sinner. So get people to understand

their depravity. That's good. You know, and get that they exist and they exist unable to save themselves. They exist in need of a savior. year so that you exist in your sinner. So however long that takes, it doesn't take a whole lot, by the way, to convince people that they're sinners. And you're not pointing at them in all

their sins. You're pointing at yourself and saying, like, we've all sinned and fallen short. So you exist and then you go, and then like, then you take them like, and then God exists. That part sometimes people go, well, explain it. And so you're just like, man, even if they believe in creation, well, then, well, you believe in a bang. Okay, well, then what did the bank come from? It came from a nucleus. Well, where did the nucleus come from? It came from, you know, an atom, it's a nucleus. Well, it's a nucleus.

I don't know. Nuh. Like, you break it down, break it down, break it down. Eventually, there had to be a causer who caused all things to begin. So, so like, can you just, unless you know all things, which would then make you a God, then you have to presume at the very least that it's big enough, it's bigger than me that all of this was not circumstant. So you exist, and there has to.

to be a God who exists. You exist as sinner. God exists as sinless. And because of that, we've got a problem. And the problem is God exists as perfect, you exist as imperfect, and that separates us from God. So now you've created the dilemma, which is actually the reality. That's an MRI of where we are. God's real, we're real, and we have a real problem. Boom, sin. Then you go, you can't go to church enough, You can't sing loud enough. You can't write a tithe check big enough. You can't, to remove that barrier. And that's what most religions are.

Most religions are, how do I climb? How do I remove or how do I work instead of worship? How do I try instead of trust? How do I, you know, earn instead of yearn, in all these things that we say. So God exists, you exist, sin exists. Sin separates us from God. And then you go, and then God so loves you that he sins one way. He sends his son.

Every other religion in the world is man climbing up and trying to figure out how to remove the barrier on its own. God is actually the latter. God come down. Emmanuel, God with us. He comes down. And Jesus comes and lives the perfect life and then dies a sinner's death on our behalf. And so I like to really simplify it.

Like you can take someone who takes the word of God as valid to the Roman road, but that if they don't believe in the source that God's word, is in there. Then how far can you go with them if you're taking them through the Roman road and they don't believe in the road? You know, but to me, I like someone who's investigating Jesus to kind of come down to the reality of like, you're real, God is real, sin is real, it's a really big problem. And the Bible actually says the problem isn't that you've got to clean up. Problem is you're dead. And you need resurrection. And then I like to show them, that's how God made one way, his son. And then that's what I began to explain the gospel. And so

usually that's a fun conversation because you're breaking it down and you're actually asking them questions. You're giving them pieces of it one bite at a time. And so again, and then don't forget, it's the blood of the lamb, which is the gospel that I'm just sharing there, but it's the word of your testimony. Then you testify to it in your own life. And so that's the formula I like to use. Some people use a beaded bracelet. Some people use a track that predictably opens up into a cross. All of those work. There is no way. wrong method, but the truth of the matter is you testify to it in your own life, because no one can ever discount the fact that like this is what God did in Carlos's life, in Paul's life,

in my life. And then you bring in the gospel. You share about a Jesus who lived the perfect life, he who knew no sin, that became sin, so that you could become the righteousness of God. So that's the way I normally share the gospel with people. Well, hey, Lake Point family, Baptist Weekend here at Lake Point is coming up on May 2nd and 3rd. And if you're part of our church family here in any of our DFW physical locations, and you have not yet taken that step of baptism, hey, we would love to invite you to do so. Text the word life to 20411 to sign up today.

And by the way, if you're not within driving distance of any of our physical locations, we would love to encourage you to get plugged into a local Bible-believing Jesus-loving church and take that step of baptism with a local community as well. Also, you're welcome to join us for church online to celebrate those getting baptized here at Lake Point on May 2nd and 3rd as well. And now, back to the podcast. David, how have you applied that framework to literally like some of the relationships you've had? Some people might not know this, but you've had a lot of relationships. High profile, high influence, people like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Bernie Sanders.

How have you applied that framework to, you know, those relationships? Yeah, well, first of all, I didn't always do it right. You're talking about my old job at Liberty University when I would host convocation was an interesting job because convocation, the word convocation means to convene, we'd bring people together. And convocation was a gathering of our student body at Liberty, but it wasn't chapel. If it's a chapel, it's always a pulpit. And we're always bringing in the Josh Howardons of the world, which we brought in, by the way, and our students loved. But when Josh is there as a guest speaker for us, guest preacher for us, it's a pulpit. because he's preaching. By the way, we're violently guarding who we put up in the pulpit,

which is why I don't take lightly that you would trust me in yours today, Josh, you know, and I don't know it's God's pulpit, but you know what I mean? So that's a pulpit. And so that's different. But there were days when we're convening and it was actually a platform, not a pulpit. And what we wanted to do was we wanted to bring in people that didn't share our faith, that we could actually learn from. I wanted to build the immune system of our students, spiritual immune system of our students, by platforming people we didn't agree with, not just when it came to the matters of faith, but matters of politics, matters of life, matters of theology, philosophy, sociology.

I wanted to bring in people to let them learn from people that, like, hey, he's got four points. I adamantly disagree with one, kind of don't know about the second, and agree with two. Great. Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson. Exactly. Something like that. So when we brought in Dr. Peterson, it was an interesting moment.

Like, I remember I really admired what he was doing. He had become a prominent voice at that moment. And his book was the best-selling book in the world. Like Michelle Obama's book was number one. His book was number two. Wow. Wow. And so at that moment, like everyone was reading his book. A lot of our men were reading his book.

And so we were hearing from our students. We wanted. And so we had two things in mind. Number one, I thought he has things to say that we want to learn from. Number two, he doesn't share our faith, and I cannot wait for him to get the best of liberty. And the best of liberty was not the way we did hospitality or the way we took care of tiny little details. Those things were fine. It was our students.

We had lovely students. Like, I couldn't wait for him to be. That guy was going to places where literally people were taking bricks, Paul, throwing him through the stained glass window at Harvard to try to silence him for speaking. So everywhere he was going, he was meeting hostility, hostility, hostility, hostility. And I was like, I can't wait for him to come and be around hospitality. So you were like leveraging those moments as evangelism for those guys. Bro. Big time.

The week he was coming, our students knew whenever I pulled up a stool, like, oh, we're about to turn the camera off. So I remember like we get done with, I don't know who the convo guest was that day. But like everybody, they go, hey, one more sign. They'd see it. It was almost like Pavlov's like, he's got the stool. He's having a heart to heart. And so I'd pull the stool and they knew to turn the cameras off. And our students knew like, hey, 99% of you with me, you 99% hold the 1% accountable.

Don't get your phones out and record and I would say, hey, and I remember telling our students, we have Dr. Jordan Peterson coming next week. This man's either going to be the C.S. Lewis or the Nietzsche of our general. This guy's seeking, he's a deep thinker. I just want you to know how we hold ourselves, our witness on this is going to be pivotal for us. for us. And so just remember we got company. And when mom and dad tell you, you got company, you know, like, you're just like, and they're not asking you to be fake. They're just asking you to like, hey, they're valuable. So treat them with your best, put your best for it. So then by

the time, so then Dr. Peterson comes. By the way, he, he lets us know last second his mom's coming, which was awesome. Wow, that's amazing. So his mom no one or never can. So all of a sudden, we're not getting this highbrow academic. We're getting who she calls Jordy. That's awesome. And he's saying big words at dinner and she's like, Jordie, don't say three syllable words. It's awesome. It's amazing. And he's just hanging out. He only is red meat.

So we're like, hey, if you want to come hang. So he had three meals with me. All three were only red meat. My wife does that. She's car more. Yeah. And so he comes to our home. Is this him?

That's his mom. Look at that. That's his precious mom. Oh, wow. That's his precious mom. That's a steak. Come on, bro. That's a tomahawk.

That's a steak. And they told us, by the way, his book. agent said, they said, hey, please don't put him in a weird position. Don't ask him to come eat with you because he's on a strict diet and stuff. And I was like, of course. But we're sitting there and we're cutting up, you know, I'm picking him up. And as we're driving, I mean, we're getting to our venue, you know, the night before. We're cutting up. And I can tell like he's kind of actually, he's not being polite. He's into the conversation. His mom is into the conversation. I think honestly his mom being there helped us get warmer quicker.

And then she goes, I'm hungry or something like that. And I said, hey, I said, Dr. P, I know you're supposed to say no. I'm not even supposed to ask you. But I just want to tell you, I've got three fat Delmonicos. Like they're yubba do. He goes, what do you mean? I said, they're like Flintstones. They got that bone sticking out.

I said, they are from an organic place, organic farm. No one's touched them. And so I know you like it clean, sir. I said, there's no salt on it. There's no pepper. and do what. I said, if you want to come to the house, we'll just grill a steak and we won't go long. Was that the house that I came up, ate at y'all? Okay, that's awesome. And so I was like, but no pressure at all, because I know you probably got your own food. And he was like, okay.

So he came for an hour, he stayed for three and a half. That's wow. And by the way, then we're just like, most of it isn't philosophy. And we're just cutting up and we're talking life. And he's asking me, by the way, he's asking me like, who are you? Because I'm weird. And I'm telling them my story, you know, and we're sharing the, I'm telling them the gospel. And we're talking about other guests that have come and he's talking about stuff. So, um, this is like super effective. This is evangelism right here. Yeah. So we're just, we're just hanging. Yeah. By the way, can I just brag on my team? I wasn't going to tell you this part. But I'm also stalling a little bit because we didn't know his mom was coming. Okay.

But now we found out his mom's coming last second. So while he's at dinner. Yeah. Okay, while he's at dinner, our team was so good at hospitality. Hospitality is love for the stranger. It's the best. I've spoken in a lot of great places that have been amazing. Nobody's ever topped what y'all did when I came to spoke of liberty. Yeah, and when you say y'all, it's them, not me. I was getting credit a lot of time for our team.

This was them. They've good hospitality sometimes is borders on stalking. They're just Googling like D'Oteron Peterson's mother, da-da-da. They find out that she had said in an article, like now that your son is like a millionaire, because he's written a book that's 12 million people have purchased. And she had mentioned, maybe he'll buy me

an Irme's scarf. Oh, that's so good. We're in Lynchburg. There's like two RBs and a T.J. Max. There ain't no Hermes. You know. So while we're eating dinner and we're stalling, one part, they have called someone in D.C.

who is driven to Tyson's corner, who is face-timing and picking out a tie and a scarf from Irme's. That's incredible. They're buying it, okay? They're driving halfway down to Charlottesville, while another one of my team is driving up halfway to Charlottesville. They meet, they're driving back. I'm getting texts like 13 minutes away, 14 minutes away.

By the time they ended up in their room, there's an Irme scarf sitting down her crazy. And that, I'm not talking about being boozy. I'm talking about being intentional. Yes, right. So the next morning, when he came up the elevator, you know what he said to me? One of the greatest compliments. You got him.

Elevator door opens up. His mom's wearing her scarf. He's wearing the tie. And he goes, how did you know? I go, what do you mean? He goes, how did you know my mom? Like, see, the stuff that's on your contract, which you went on the stuff that's not on your contract. You went on like, your mom matter.

to you, she matters to us. That's good. And it wasn't about the expensive scarf. It was about the fact that we valued the opportunity to win the right to make him feel at home. And sometimes it's not a scarf. Sometimes it's actually the opposite. Like spending a lot of money can make somebody feel distant.

But this one was like, this was fun. And our team was nerding out on it. When she goes, how did you know? Honestly, the answer was I didn't know our team knew. But they thought, so then we're already like warmed up in it. Well, we're sitting on stage. We're doing the Q&A. And I'm trying to talk to him about these things.

But again, he's not a believer. He's using different kind of language than us. You know, he talks, he calls the supernatural, the psychedelic, for example. You know, the psychedelic. And I'm like, what do you mean? The things that are unexplained. And so we're having this dialogue. And while we're having this talk, Josh, this young man with pink hair,

college age student this is why he's on stage he's on stage people can Google it it's at like 10 million hits you know the video I'm listening to him in the Q&A so I'm looking this way Dr. Peterson's here a couple other are on our

on our Q&A panel and I'm looking and I see this I see this man coming walking this young man walking down the steps and we have 12,000 people in the room and he's got hot pink hair and the next thing you know this guy jumps on stage I'm looking at right now. And when he jumps on stage, I just go towards him. And I'm like, what just happened? And in my

mind, I thought, he had something behind his hand. So I thought, is it a gun? What is it? You know, so I thought, I get into protect mode. Like, I've got to protect our students. And he jumps on stage, and he starts screaming, I need help, I need help, which freaks me out even more. Then I see that it's, what he's got on in his hand is actually a phone. He's dialed 911 already. And it's, so I thought, Does he have a bomb? Does he, you know, just you're uncertain. He's freaking out. Well, so the next thing, you know, you realize, like, he's in this moment, this young man just is a, his methodology is horrible.

But he's actually honest enough. He's crying out for help. Yeah. And he wasn't even a liberty student. He'd just come to the room because he loved Jordan Peterson. And he jumps on stage and he's just crying out for help. Well, anyway, so then we get him off stage. I'm telling the security, you do not take this guy to the police.

take him to the hospital. Like this guy's not trying to harm people. He's crying out for help. And we get to that moment and everything. But when I was praying for him on stage, I looked to my left and Dr. Peterson had gotten out of a seat. He was standing there, and he was weeping. And so sometimes, I'm telling you that story to say,

sometimes God will use a trial. God will use trauma to fast forward testimony. That's right. So my goal was, we're going to get there, we're going to have a good conversation, we're going to inch forward. I hope that in years to come, I'll be able to have a relationship with him and our students can talk to him about the Lord. But buddy, all that got incubated in a greenhouse called some guy just jumped on stage. Next thing, you know, like we are like, and then at lunch, we are having a gospel.

Literally on stage, we escort that young man off stage and everything. I sit down beside him and he wasn't in my Q&A's and I said, Dr. Peterson, I need to ask you, what do I tell this young man? Like, he, I don't think he needs any more rules. That's the name of his book. Nice. I think he needs the ruler. Wow.

That's great, dude. And he wore salad through that. I mean, even though he's amazing, I'm sure he made sense above my grade level and everything. But there's moments where, like, you developing with somebody for three years, but then all of a sudden the doctor tells them, the bump is back. They've got cancer and they're coming to you. Yeah. You thought it'll take two years to get there. They're like, this is bigger than me.

You're the only Christian I know. So what do I do? Like when I'll listen to your story, you know, we need a, we got to, this guy's got to preach. We got to move on. So a big idea there is like when I listen to that story, he left going, nobody treated me better than the Christians. Yeah. Yes. But bigger than that, I didn't have on my docket that we're going to have deep gospel conversations.

I was going to naturally go at the pace of the relationship. That's right. But the relationship, you're forged by fire. all of a sudden we're like, oh, and then I'm like, well, I got the window now. I didn't think I was going to get a lane. Now I got a lane. So then lunch became about gospel. About Jesus.

That's amazing. So I'll do, like, if I'm giving my, I've got a, here's my go-to move, and then we can round-rob it. Yeah, I'd love to hear you. And then if you want to do the Bernie thing, I'd love to, we can do that real fast. So my go-to move, the same thing I did this week on the plane, is you go, is, here's, just to help people remember. You go three questions deep to find out how you can pray for. them and then usually they're going to ask you something. So, like, I do the same thing every single time.

I'm playing this week with the guy named Scott next to me. We just start talking and it's get three questions deep. We live in a culture where everybody stays surface level. How you doing? Good. That's it. My goal is go three questions deep. How you doing?

Good. Oh, man, tell me what's going on that makes you say that. And then, like, so okay, so now I'm two questions deep. Well, man, I said good because, like, this guy this week, he was traveling back from a ski trip. I think he was in Austria or something like that. So I got this thing, going back with my son. I don't want to do details too much in case he figured out what I was and listens.

Got the thing going on my son. And I got to give one of my son's good news and one of my son's bad news. Oh man, do you mind me asking? Now I'm three questions deep. Oh, dude, I can tell this matters to you. Do you mind me asking? What's the bad news you got to give your son? Do you mind me asking?

And now all of a sudden he gets to something where his eyes start sweating. Now I'm three questions deep. And when somebody gets to emotion, the reason God puts emotion in you is to put you in motion. So when he gets to the spot where now there's at least a little bit of emotion. Now I've got my window. and I just always do the same thing. Hey, do this may sound weird. I'm a pastor.

Do you mind if I pray for you? Or I'll just say, man, I'm going to be praying for that. And here's what I don't always get to the spot where I'm explaining the gospel in that conversation. But what I'm trying to do is move them from maybe they're a negative six. I got them to a negative five. They're going to leave that going, man, that Christian was a thoughtful person. He cared about me and he's praying for me.

And then this is a little cherry on top. I started doing this recently. Who did I get this from? I can't remember I got it from. Oh, I got it from R.T. Kendall. I got this from R.T. Kendall. And he told me this and I added it to my little thing. So after I pray for him, or I tell him I'm going to pray for him, I'll say something like this.

I did this to this guy on the plane. I was like, hey, man, I feel like sometimes, I don't know why God does this with me. He'll put me in a place to talk to somebody at a pivotal time in their life. I've just seen, he does it a lot. And I got this from R.T. Kendall. if anything happens in your life in the next few days that confirm for you something that I'm praying for or the work of God in your life, you need to know that the God of Jesus Christ did this for you and you need to take that as confirmation from the Lord.

That's amazing. And it's almost like you're planting this little time bomb. And then from there, I'm just trusting the sovereignty of God is going to do what he does. And he does. And he does. How can God be like, oh, I'm not going to do anything about that? He's for sure we'll just get in there and do whatever you do. What's so powerful there is all of what you just said is you're sitting down and you're actually like a high level mega church pastor.

I never tell them that. But you're not trying to be interesting. No, no. You're being interested. Yes. And so instead of trying to be impressive, you're trying to make an impression. I'm about you. I'm interested in you.

Tell me about you. What's going on with you? You're curious, curiosity. And it's amazing how people will quickly open up to you. Wide open. Yep. Yeah. You guys got a go-to moves?

I got a quick one. I mean, mine's very simple. I've learned more and more. Whenever I'm having one of those potential opportunities, whenever I'm potentially going to share my faith with somebody, I just pray. And I'll pray. I've learned that people are not products.

And sometimes what I used to think, if I'm going to, if I have like my strategy one, two and three, I'm just going to figure out which one to apply. You know, sometimes people are in a different spot. I just don't know them.

I had a mechanic come here, me at the parking lot like a month ago for my car. And I just had that sense, man. I need to share the gospel with this guy. And so I'm praying, I'm like, God, well, how? I just don't want to force it. I don't want to be awkward. I just, if it works, it works.

And again, just one prayer, God help me. I want to do this. And so literally, see his, he has a cross tattoo. Immediately, the Holy Spirit is like, that's it. Hey, bro, I like your tattoo. Thanks. Are you a Christian? Nah, I'm not.

I just like the cross. Oh, like, you know, come, tell me more about that. Oh, well, da-da-da-da-da. We go. And back to what you said, Josh, about confirming. You know, I'm asking him, it's like, oh, so, you know, I said, having those conversations about his faith, and he said, man, that's funny that you're asking me this, because literally I have not been to church in a long time.

I'm in a church parking lot right now. My wife this week told me I need to consider coming back to church, and here you are asking me this conversation about this. And it's exactly what you just said. So this John Wesley had this, he called it the doctrine of prevenient grace, where John Wesley, I think he pulled it out of Acts 8, Ethiopian Union, where he said, hey man, what will force multiply? your evangelism is if you begin to believe, prevenient grace means to go before. And he was like, if you start believing that every person you talk to,

God has been at work in their lives before that moment to prepare them for their encounter with you, your evangelism will radically change. Yeah, love that. That what you just did, that's pervenient grace. My job is not to... Everything becomes a divine appointment. That's right. When you believe it that way. That's right. And I learn

this from you. My job is not necessarily to close the O right there. My job is to do whatever I can to help you move in the right direction towards Jesus. 100%. Paul, you got to go to? Really is really just a variation. And then we'll emotional gear shift

talking with the Trump assassination. It's a variation. And then I can lead into the connected dot to something you said that was so great in terms of how you approach people. But I'll get there in a second, which is just learning to ask good questions. It's really what you said

and really in essence what you did, which is just learning to ask good questions. Some of it can just be about their life. And so if you're building relationships with people, it's just if I'm at the ball field with someone and we're at the same place two or three times a week as me asking like,

I can ask how, life going. That's very generic. That's like, hey, how's your family doing? And if they mentioned something, then you get two or three layers deep to what you're talking about. But then at some point, when you get to beliefs, especially around God and things like that, or even around things like politics, you don't want to ask either with these words or with this tone, how could you believe that? That's going to shut it down real fast. Instead, you want to be more inquisdom, say, oh, like, why do you believe that? And then keep asking them, there's a great book on this, Greg, I can never get his last name around Calcol or K-O-U-K-L. He wrote a book called Tactics.

Yeah, cool. Cool. See, that's why I can't get it right. It's just like silent K apparently. Anyways, he- I could be wrong. Go ahead. His whole thing is basically it's learning to ask good questions that you don't have to have all the answers.

It's actually learning to ask good questions of them. And so it's like, yeah, like why do you believe that? And then doing follow-ups. And what you will learn is, a lot of times people don't even know why they have the perspective they have. It's just they've adopted or for whatever reason. So learning to ask good questions is one of my go-tos. Because that way I'm not having to do the heavy lifting of trying to convince them of something. I might actually help lead them to convince them that they don't even believe what they say they believe kind of a thing.

But it's connected out to what you said, David. What I love is you started with, hey, here is kind of my go-to for sharing the gospel and then using my testimony as well. But then to connect the dots, then when you shared about what you did, Jordan Peterson, and there's also you told me a story about Bernie Sanders. That's about the posture. That's about saying, I'm not coming in to try to win. So you can approach the conversations like these. Like, I'm coming in to try to win and convince you. right and you're wrong. Instead, what asking questions does, doing the approach that you did,

and also the approach you did, you're trying to win them over. And that's best going to happen when you treat them with hospitality. And when you learn to ask good questions and try to, instead of trying to win an argument. And in asking those questions, the truth of this, like, you actually have things to learn from them. Yes. There's something really powerful about the guy you sit by on the plane who's like a real estate guy or the guy who's the, who's the, who's the, they actually have things to teach you. You actually, when you ask questions and put them in the authority seat,

like I'm the student, you got something to teach me. Like, because I genuinely like don't know as much about this as you do, Dr. Peterson, or you do senator, or you do. It opens the heart.

Yeah, and actually puts them in the place where a lot of times we go to do missions and we're the ones doing the serving. Sometimes you can do missions with the people that, like, you get the plumber to come. And he's, he doesn't know the Lord, but he's actually the expert plumber.

So the first 10 questions are actually you asking him questions. Now, how do we plumb this and how do we serve this? Question number 11 is, now do you know the Lord? But for 10 moments, he's been the authority. That's right. So then he doesn't feel like you're a know-it-all because you don't know it all. Exactly. And so there's something beautiful about like asking questions simply because they actually have better answers, which then opens it up for you to be able to ask gospel questions because you might be the one who actually has the bigger arrow to point to the gospel. Yeah. Mr. Josh, you got a word on assassination attempt. Okay, all right, hard emotional gift. Hard work. Let's do this. So as the, yeah, first of all, this is, I'm going to just say this. These guys have no idea what I'm going to say, and especially this guy. I never want to put somebody in a position where they're on the hook for the dumb thing I'm going to say.

So that's a quick preface. So as the recording this podcast, it was 16 hours ago or so, there was the fourth, fourth legitimate assassination attempt on President Trump's life. There's two things that I honestly do think that we need to take away from this. And one of them, doctors call it the difference between a presenting cause and a root disease. Presenting cause of root disease. So let me hit this real quick and then we can, you guys can, whatever, how about you want to disagree with me? Let's do it.

So for those who don't know, go ahead and pull up that first pick Trinity. So this is last night, it like, my phone started blowing up. This is the moment at the White House correspondent's dinner. that the shooter dude Caltech grad assembles a rifle in the lobby, if I understand correctly, and just starts this video now where he just like bolts,

like 40-yard dashes into the room, attempting to fire on people. Now, actually, about an hour before we started recording this, the manifesto that he wrote assuming he was going to die came out, and sure enough, obviously it was confirmed.

He was aiming for administration officials. He said his goal was to start at the top and go down so that he was going to try to take out whoever starting with the president and go down. That's the fourth one on President Trump's life. Now, let me just point a couple things out. Richard Weaver, you guys probably heard of Richard Weaver before.

Richard Weaver, I think he's kind of a cookies in the bottom shelf philosopher kind of guy. People use his little phrase that he coined ideas have consequences. That's Richard Weaver. What you have right here is I think you have a presenting issue and then a root cause. Kind of the same way that if somebody's got,

they got bone cancer, they may actually go into the doctor because, man, I got soreness over here, or this is a little rash, and they think their rash is the issue, it's not the issue. That's the presenting cause. There's a root disease.

I think you get both those things going on here. So first of all, let me talk presenting issue real fast, and then I want to talk root cause theologically, and then, you know, we can wrap it up. So first of all, again, let me just point this out.

That is the fourth, assassination attempt on that guy's life, fourth. I also want to point out some really uncomfortable realities. Trini, will you pull up those graphs? There's an incredible amount of mounting evidence that is, you know, for anybody that's got your eyes open, you can start to feel this, but it's like in data form. And by the way, all this stuff that I'm getting ready to show,

these are not like Christians, these are not like conservative. This is not like, this is not like Newsmax data. Like this is just like, you know, just generalized stuff. So number one, you got this. This came out, I think, last year. Very liberal people are eight times more likely to say political violence is justified than very conservative people. It's 25% to 3%.

Okay, go to the next one. This is, this dude, if you know who this is, his name is Destiny. He is a massive progressive influencer. He's got nearly a million YouTube subs. You know, he's all over the place, does a lot of stuff. This is a direct quote. Like, this is an actual quote. you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events.

Right now, they don't feel like there's any fear. Now, this is not like a fringe voice. This is a dude with a million YouTube subs that is regularly interviewed by the New York Times. Okay, let me just let that sit. Go to the next one. This is one you can kind of, if you just, it's hard to see. The question that was presented in this study was how much do you feel it is justified for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country? You know, it's kind of like correlation is not causation, but it looks pretty correlated.

It's like the farther you go left on the graph, you get extremely high affirmatives, and the farther you go right on the graph, you get extremely low. Now, I'm driving at something. I want to talk about why. Again, we're going to Richard Weaver. Ideas have consequences. And what's the theology that's underneath ideology? This is where, and I think we got one more.

Yeah, yeah. This is political polls. Again, I'm not showing you newsmax, like friend. right data sets. This is political polls. Like this is, you know, if you're not familiar, I think most people would say that's like a center left outlet. 77% of Republicans believe it is always unacceptable to feel joy at the death of somebody they oppose while only 38% of Democrats share this view. That's UGov. So again, we're talking UGov. This is not like a fringe thing. And then last one, and I don't want to get too incendiary here. But if you just zoom out in the last

six, eight years of our nation. On the left is what happened in our nation after the death of Charlie Kirk. On the right is what happened in our nation after the death of what became a high profile, somebody that was coded left. So you just start to see, I think people who are paying attention

they're going, hey dude, what's going on, man? It seems like there's a really different response in these two things. Now, what I want to point out here, oh, actually, and then show this video. This is Hassan Piker. Now, before I show this, Hassan Piker, again,

Matt, like very, you know, honestly, mainstream, popular, progressive commentator. In fact, this is an interview on a new, with a New York Times, I think in the last seven days. So this is not, again, not French. This is New York Times the last seven days.

It's a 60-second clip. Listen closely to the language. I'm going to tie some things together. Listen closely to the language he uses. What he's doing right here is he's getting asked, You guys remember that the insurance company CEO got assassinated. Dude was like a, yeah, United Healthcare CEO, got shot in the back. This is like a dad with two young kids.

And they asked him about what he thought about that. So this is a mainstream dude with the New York Times giving his response to the assassination, again, political violence. And Washway says, 60-second clip, Hassan Piker. Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. Pause. Okay. So let me just verbally highlight this.

So he's introducing a concept. I'm not talking about Marxism here in a second. He's introducing a concept called social murder. What he's saying, I don't have time to, what he's saying is, hey man, yeah, somebody was shot in the back. But honestly, that guy actually committed, you know, murder because of the systemic nature of, you know,

what's happening in our society, really the way that he used the way that our economy set up, he committed a form of what's called social murder. That's kind of, it's embedded into the systems is actually murderous. That's what he's saying. So let's keep going. Hassan Piker. And Brian Thompson, as the United Health Care CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder, the systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty,

the for-profit paywalled system of health care in this country. And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me because America is very draconian about crime and punishment. They're very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive, pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.

Okay, now just pause and let that sink in. This is not a fringe. This is not French. That is a Hassan Piker, mainstream progressive commentator on what is arguably the largest progressive platform in America, New York Times. Wow. And he's going, hey, man, social murderer. Actually, I kind of understood. I kind of understood it's rational and justification.

Now, Josh, can I interrupt you? Yeah. LP team is freaking out. Are you okay if I are? Get out of great. I was actually kind of hoping this would happen. This is fantastic. I don't want to rush you because I know there's a lot. So bad. They said 210. Well, I know, but then there's like a little bit of a mic up and I'll insert you. Oh, so we love you, man. Love you.

Love you. Lord, use you today. Appreciate it. Big way, buddy. Love you, man. You're amazing. This is amazing. All right. It's good. Crush it. Crush it. Love you, Carlis. All right. Then last one. So then you go out.

That's amazing. Then, last night outside of the correspondence dinner, as people were walking out after the assassination attempts, those were the signs people were holding up. Death to tyrants, death to all of them. Okay. Now, what people need to understand, let's go back to Richard Weaver, ideas have consequences. So, listen, Matt, it's a little uncomfortable to talk about, especially in the pastor world that I come from.

The thing that you're never supposed to do is violate the. neither right nor left. That's like a, it's an unspoken doctrine that you're not supposed to violate. But honestly, you simply have to start noticing reality. Reality is undefeated. What you're starting to notice, what I would say is that political violence is in some measure, it's a feature, not a bug of secular progressivism. If you take secular progressive ideals, the foundational tenets of secular progressivism all the way out to the natural consequences, you are going to end up with political violence. The reason I say that is, Progress, secular progressivism in particular, it's built on top of a critical theory lens

that is various forms of critical theory. They all come together, queer theory and anti-racist, all the things. A critical theory, it views the world through an oppressed oppressor lens. Everything is viewed through an oppressed oppressor lens. What you have right now at war in our society, there's ideas underneath, people call it the culture war. The culture war is downstream of a spiritual war. It's not one to one, but there's correlation. So critical theory sees the world through an oppressor lens. Christian theology on the other hand, it sees the world through a right versus wrong lens. What's right?

What's wrong? Okay. Now, the reason, let's lead to why that data shows what it does. The reason you start seeing political violence take place like that is if I view the world through a right versus wrong lens and I see that you think something different than me, I just think you're wrong. And so I want to reason with you and try to persuade you. But if I view the world, you know, but if I view the world, you think you're wrong, and I see that,

the world through an oppressed oppressor lens, and I think the people who disagree with me, they're not just wrong. They're actually evil oppressors. That, by the way, is where you get rhetoric like, he's literally Hitler. He's a fascist. By the way, that was what was on the bullet casings in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Hey, fascist, catch. This is Marxist language. He is an existential threat to democracy. Literally everything and everyone is racist. Okay. Well, what that's downstream from is viewing the world through an oppressed oppressor lens. And here's a deal. If you disagree with me, and I don't just think you're wrong, I believe you're an evil oppressor,

I'm not going to try to persuade you. I begin to feel a moral obligation to stop you. And if you won't stop yourself, then someone or something needs to end you. Yes. You lie to yourself and tell yourself, I'm actually a hero. That's it. That's exactly. Someone's got to take one for the team.

and I'm willing to to stop Hitler. That's it. This modern day Hitler. And the father of lies, who's so good at lies, convinces you that this is actually you doing the most noble thing. That's right. That's right. Call good evil evil good.

Yeah, by taking the life of Charlie Kirk. By trying to walk into a correspondence dinner and just letting bullets fly. That's it. And then on top of that, so it's not just progressivism. Remember, it's secular progressive. So as Christians, there's a moral guardrail. If you have a worldview that's built on top of Christian theology, there's moral guardrails built into our views of opposition. Hey man, man, you're not allowed to live by the sword. That's Jesus. You shall not murder. That's,

so there's these, obviously in secular progressivism, if there is no moral law giver, well, now I don't have any moral law. This restraining me taking life. And the ends, justify the means. It's just, it's sheer Nietzschean will to power. So one thing, again, that's not the root cause. That's the presenting issue. What Christians need to learn to think better at a worldview level. And then when you see that stuff, what you're seeing is a clash of worldviews. You're seeing critical theory and it's not, it's logical outcomes, the logical implications of the tenets of the worldview versus Christian theology. Now that, that's presenting cause. If you want to go root cause, I do think, I just want to keep saying the same thing over and over and over again.

Okay, listen, we have a lot of politically aware Christians who listen to live free, and I want to keep saying the same thing. Politics cannot fix what politics did not break. And mankind was broken long before any political system was ever put in place. There is one thing and one thing only that can fix what is wrong with mankind. You need Jesus Christ. Yeah. Amen. So let me just, I'll just put a bow on this. And I'll love to hear y'all's thoughts where we may just shut her down because Carlos is going to start preaching. Okay. So if you're a Christian, you're looking at like what's going on in the world, I think what you got to learn to do is, hey man, let's apply our theology to like what I'm seeing. Bible as lens. One of my favorite passages is a sermon on the Mount Matthew 5. When most people think it's just about lust, Jesus does the, hey man, if your hand caused you to sin, cut it off, I cause you to sing, gouged out. And, uh, no, that is, in my opinion, that is the single most misunderstood part of the entire sermon of the

mount. So Jesus looks at the dude and he's gone, him and you got a lust issue. Now remember, he begins that little section by saying if you look less at a woman, you have committed adultery with her in your heart. So he names a body part. This is really important. He names a body part. Then he starts going, hey man, if you're struggling with his lust issue, you need to try to cut off the body part that's causing this issue. You know, if your hand caused you a sin, cut it off. If your eye caused you a sin, gouged out. And a lot of people think that, hey, man, what he's doing there is he's going, hey, man, if there's a sin issue in your life, be willing to commit a radical amputation of something in your life to prevent yourself from that sin. And that may be true.

Theology is sermon on the mount. The entire sermon on the mount is, hey, man, the root of of every single problem you got is a heart problem. So here's what Jesus is what Jesus is doing. and you start, I'm going, I'm going, hey man, I want you to imagine this is a guy that really just strolled lust. And every time he lusts, he tries to cut off the part of him that makes him sin. So he looks at something lustfully, maybe pornography or whatever, and he gouges out his eye. And then the next day, he walks down to the city square and he realizes he can still purchase a prostitute and he can sin, and he gets lust with his hands. And he's on, I'm going to cut off my hands. And the next day he walks somewhere and he just, let's say he listens to something that incites lust.

He's like, oh, I'm going to cut off my ear. And maybe the next day, you know, he walks somewhere just to feel something. He's like, man, I can still walk to places that enable me to lust. I'm going to cut off my feet. And you started imagining this guy who keeps chopping off body parts trying desperately to cut off the part of him that causes him to lust. And he goes, no matter what I cut off, I still can sin. and Jesus is saying, in order for you to get rid of this issue in your life, you're going to have to cut out your heart. And Jesus is saying, and I can do that for you.

And if you go back to Ezekiel 36, it's a prophecy about what the coming Messiah will do when he establishes the new covenant. And he says, a new heart I will give you. Come on. And a new spirit I will put within you. It's the core, not the branches. I will remove. It's the root, right? Not the fruit.

Yeah. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And so, man, again, presenting issue, man, do we need, obviously, to be engaged in political processes? Do we need to see things? Of course we do. Of course we do. But listen, I just want to make you a promise. You need to disabuse yourself of the notion that there is a political solution to what is wrong with this nation.

because what's wrong with the nation is that there's something wrong in the human soul. And without repentance and reformation that lead to revival and a return to Jesus Christ, Christ is the only way out of the chaos. Any final thoughts? Agree, disagree, additional comments. I'd like to actually connect it to a thought. Last night's assassination attempt, the other three assassination attempts on President Trump, Charlie Kirk's assession.

I view them as a sanctity of life issue. And here's what I mean by that. It is not, it's the anti-pro Charlie Kirk's life. It's the anti-pro Donald Trump's life. And so when you show me a stat

that says 38% of the progressives see this as a viable option, I'm actually surprised that it's only 38%. When you go back to the unborn, the sheer amount of people that they're willing to click and drag out of their life for convenience. So it is someone who says, well, I've got my whole life ahead of me. I've got a baby in the womb. I'm just going to get rid of this baby because I've got a life to live.

How do I remove a human being who's in the path of what I want? So if 90%, 80%, I don't know that stat, but if the overall, the overrule, the overrule, the overwork, The overwhelming majority of progressives don't really hold the sanctity of life with the most vulnerable who is the child in the womb. Then why are we surprised that they would hold no sanctity of life for someone that they don't agree with? If you kill an innocent child, you'd definitely kill a guilty adult. That's kind of the logical implications. And so the root of that is that they don't see another person made in the image of God. They don't see a human being as a human being.

And maybe it's because when they look in the mirror, they don't see themselves that way. And so it's like, does that person truly hate Charlie Kirk? They truly hate themselves. At the end of the day, what is the ultimate root of that? And we can get really outragy about this really quickly. And I think a lot of people are prone to just get super outragey about this when all they think about it through is the lens of politics. But if you look through it through the lens of scripture, you can have outrage of what happened last night.

But eventually it's got to turn into outreach. Ah, that's so good. Who could have stepped? Who in California? I heard that this young man is in California. That's right, yeah. This weekend I'm going to be in California. I wonder what part in California, and was he near Sandals Church?

Was he near Andy's Church at Saddleback? Mariners, shout out. Was he near? Yeah, was he near Mariners Church? Like, was there a church nearby that could have loved and, you know, could have stepped then downstream into the life of this individual so that if they knew the Lord, they had community, they wouldn't see the taking of a life. That's great, dude.

And the lie in their mind that this is a solution. That's great, dude. And so I think it's not just sanctity of life as in the assassination, the person attempting the assassination doesn't see that. I'm also thinking about the sanctity of the life of the assassinator. Like how do we value that person and go upstream and say, how do we love them? That's seeing Muslims, not as the enemy, but the prize. That's seeing like Hitler killed six million Jewish people.

Talk about, like last night was an attempted assassination that failed. Talk about a person who six million Jewish people were killed, innocent people because of Hitler. But I hear the stories that Hitler's father was a watchmaker and that some Jewish gentleman hired him to fix a clock and when he fixed it, the Jewish gentleman didn't pay him for it. And they spent a winter. When Hitler was a young man, he spent a winter with his feet cold, his nose cold, his house cold.

They ate only cabbage. They were hungry. So when you're going to bed every night, hungry, and your father's screaming, we're hungry tonight, we're freezing the night because the Jewish people didn't pay us well. Those seeds of sanct, you know, someone. So then, but what if Hitler had had a community of believers? I always think through, like, could there have been someone in the life of these individuals who end up being the harmers when somebody could have been their church community? This guy in California, how far is he from a local church who needs to look at that and go, this guy was walking distance to us? Can we at least, it's not somebody's fault because they live, but could we at least ask that question as well?

That's a good spot to land. Yeah. Chejee-Balti, would you close us in prayer, sir? Yeah. God, as Pastor Josh just said a few moments ago, ideas have consequences. And we just want to recognize right now that your word says that every human is made in your image. Every single person, including the people we disagree with, including people like the people we saw in those videos who have ideas that are completely opposite of the ones that we believe your word says. But God, they're made in your image just as much as we are.

And so, God, I pray that you would help us to now put that view out there, that Lord, in this word, competing views, you would help us to be Christians be salt and light, that we would be people who see everybody as made in your image, and that we would be people who move from outrage to outreach, that we would want to bring to them a message that there is a God who made the universe and made them in their in his image, that even though they've sinned against him and its cosmic treason, God loves them so much that he sent his only son to die for them. So God, would you help us to flood the streets with that competing message, Lord? And God, I do pray that, it would transform individual hearts and minds, but the God, because of that, it would transform

our whole nation, including our political system and our entire world. Give us a heart to reach the one more for you. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. David Nasser, thank you for joining us. Love you guys. Love you, man. Live free. Well, hey, live free nation. We just finished this episode with David Nassar today. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, this Thursday, May 30th at midnight, we're dropping a bonus episode with special guest Tim Barton. And we're going to be hitting American history, how America's founding an early education system were far more explicitly Christian than most people think. What does separation of church and state actually mean and how slavery has been revised over time and more, trust me, you don't want to miss it. It's an amazing

conversation between Pastor Josh and Tim Barton. We will see you there.