SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the SauceCast. Welcome everyone to another episode of the SauceCast. My name is DeAndre. I am the youth pastor here at New Life South Coast, and I am here with one of my favorite people in the world, Matt Mendies, who's a part of our church community security team, teaches our discipleship classes specifically with Always Ready, which breaks down apologetics. And we have a special guest here with us, who's not just here for this podcast, but he's speaking to our youth and young adults tonight. He's going to be teaching at our apologetics conference tomorrow. He's also going to be bringing the word both Sunday services. And so you'll be able to check that out on our YouTube channel as well. But we are here with Dr. Ben Shaw.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so excited about this weekend. It's been a long time since I've been in New England, about 20 years back when I was playing hockey. So uh happy to be here. Look forward to this weekend.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

It's awesome. It's awesome. So maybe give us a little bit of context to how you even got here. You're from Florida, you're here in New Bedford, Massachusetts. You guys made a connection. So, like, tell us a little bit of that story.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Well, Matt sent me an email and I was like, dude, just call me. Just call me is the long and short of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

What made you reach out to him?

SPEAKER_04 1:14

So um I sat down with Pastor Marco uh about this time last year, and we started talking about what the discipleship classes were gonna look like as we moved into 2026. And one of the things that came into the fold was an apologetics class. And at that point, he was like, hey, uh go start working on an outline and uh you know get back to me on on what it's gonna look like.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

And knowing you, you made a whole encyclopedia.

SPEAKER_04 1:36

It took about two months, I'll tell you that. Like I think we had the conversation in November, and um, I I didn't get the outline to him until like early January. So, but there was a lot of work, a lot of praying that went into it. And um during that time I ended up meeting Ben. So um I was I was just talking with you about this earlier, but I was I was gonna reach out to the pillars, right, in the in the faith, and all the top apologists. I was just gonna send them emails and say, hey, what's your top five arguments for the faith? And then that afternoon I was going into the gym and I put on Sean McDonald's um pot, one of his shows, and he had recently done that. And he was like, Hey, I just reached out to all the pillars. He's like, and um, I got the top five arguments in the in the faith, and I'm sitting there going like what? I'm like, oh wow, God, look at your work. In in that, and ended up leading me to a do a few different resources, and I ended up discovering uh Ben's book, and it led me to send him the email, and I forget exactly what I put in the email, but I was just like, hey, I got a few questions. Um, do you mind if uh you know I reach out and he was like, Yeah, call me. And uh he was nice enough to since that time, and I will say this we we are blessed to have him here this weekend. And even though this is the first time that he's present here on our campus, your presence has actually been felt over the last year. So I thank you for your mentorship. I thank you for everything that you've unpacked, the classes um from the phone calls to the guidance, even the live call in into uh always ready uh last spring. So his presence has been felt here over the last year. We're very, very thankful for having you up here this weekend.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Well, I'm glad to be here in person now, so that way it won't be uh uh just the presence, it'll be the physical body here. But uh I remember that too because I was in Orlando when you did call and we were walking in the parking lot. I'm like, oh man, I was not expecting a call from New England. Uh it was exciting at the same time. Uh so and then I found out you're a Liberty guy.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

So that was also good, and we uh we just got along really well too, which helps. So um but I'm looking forward to this weekend. Yeah, a lot of good stuff. I thought you were going somewhere else too, when you're like, I was trying to find some of the best apologists, and they weren't available, so then I found Ben and he was right. We went down on the other side of the table, right? And I'll say this setup was there.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

You know, the heart of our church is to be a church for the unchurched. And as soon as I heard that you were coming this week, I went and got a copy of your book. And I am thoroughly enjoying going through this. I'm on argument eight, trustworthy, 13 arguments for the reliability of the New Testament, and it's simple but profound. You know, you're going deep, but it's palatable that you can understand. And you say that at the beginning, it's for the doubter and the disciple. Yeah, you know. So can you share a little bit of your heart? What made you write this book?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Oh man, yeah. It's uh so I'm gonna try to back this up for a second. Part of my background was uh I got saved because my babysitter took me to church.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And how old were you?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Oh, I was probably I don't know, between five to eight, somewhere in that area. And um, I heard the Sermon on the Mount, recognized Jesus as Lord, but then I I didn't really get discipled after that. So God had oasises for me along the way, but I didn't have like strong discipleship. And uh went to a Lutheran middle school, public high school, Catholic high school. Okay, but I went to a Catholic high school because they had a hockey team. It's gonna be a theme here. And um because they had a hockey team, I really thought that would help me find a wife. That's part of the other story too.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

But long story short, I did come to Connecticut. Let me include this part. I came to Connecticut for three years. I played here. We had guys on our team from Mass, from Rhode Island, from New York.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Do you know Mount St. Charles?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

No.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Okay, they're really known for hockey in Rhode Island.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Oh, okay. Um, we uh I I drove through Avon here. Uh, they've got a prep school there, if I remember correctly. And uh my first junior team, we lost to them and we had to do a lot of skating afterwards because of that loss, but it still sticks with me 25 years later. Anyway, um I was trying to find out where I was where where I was gonna play hockey after junior hockey. And um, being from Florida, I realize it's really cold in New England. Not that not that, not always the warmest and inviting of weather. And uh went back, played for FAU for a year. Okay, and pretty I was pretty miserable uh by a bunch of different metrics there. And uh one of my friends told me about Liberty. I was like, oh, okay. I can learn about God in Florida, I don't need to go there. And then a couple weeks later, he's got they got a hockey team with a rink on campus, and I applied that night, and then I was going there. So God used hockey to get me to go to Liberty. How does that connect to trustworthy? It's a long, long way, but we're getting there. Um, Liberty makes you take classes about theology, about the Bible, and I didn't know, for example, that Paul wrote half the New Testament. So you start learning. I'm like, oh, that's significant. That's immensely significant. He was a persecutor of the church and he's writing all these letters. I need to be paying attention to these things because I had tried reading the Bible a number of times by myself, and you can imagine, especially as a youth pastor, you know, a middle schooler or a high schooler starting in Genesis, they're done by Leviticus. Yeah. So uh I had tried reading the Bible on my own, but didn't have that help or community to do that. Um but then at Liberty I was able to get more more uh more of that, and so I started learning Corinth, uh, about it's a city, that's important to know. Who's Paul writing to, who's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, how'd these books come together? Did the resurrection happen? And so, like, these are major questions. As I as I started getting them answered, I was like, oh my goodness, this is not like common knowledge, and it should be. It should be uh the churches should be helping equip people, having classes like these discipleship classes that help equip uh disciples because it's information that helps build the faith of disciples, but also answers the questions of doubters. Yes. And if you get if you have questions, that's normal. You're supposed to have questions. If you want to know more about Jesus, if you want to follow him, if you want to read scripture more, you're gonna have questions. So you gotta have someone you could go to, you gotta have someone who's gonna anticipate those questions and start giving you the answers. So then when you're in the position, you're like, oh wait, who's Matthew, Mark, Luke? Oh, I remember. Matt was telling me. Yeah. So that was the audience. So I know what it feels like to be biblically illiterate and getting that equipping. And I was like, okay, how do we take that and show the whole diamond of reliability? Because there's so many. It could be two dozen or so arguments.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

But each one of these could be a whole volume.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah, they're they're each one is a dissertation. And so it's what I wanted to do with that was introduce them to the different layers and levels of reliability, and then from there, if you're interested in it, you can go pick your topic. Like if you like archaeology, you go dig into that. It's a dad joke. But uh it's not the best of comedy, but it's what we got. It's what we got. Um, so uh I like criteria, I like creeds, um, those are some of the ones I like myself. Um, but then you got non-Christian sources, yeah, you got Christian sources outside of the Bible, all of these come together and just make a wonderful mosaic, I think, of the reliability of the New Testament.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

So before we get into some of the evidence that we know, I'm curious what is a Bible scholar and what makes someone an expert on the resurrection? Like you studied under one of the leading experts in the world on the resurrection, Dr. Gary Habermas, who you call is like the Michael Jordan when it comes to that field. Yeah. So what makes someone an expert? And as a Bible scholar, why is that important?

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Yeah, that's a really good question. Because there's a couple different ways you can answer that. Because we just talked about how I was a hockey player. And if someone goes, Oh, Ben, did you play hockey? Were you good? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was good. Oh, you should go play with Ovechkin, he's good too. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's levels to this. There's levels to this. Um, so, and it's like anything. Um, even uh with hockey, you have your first liners, you've got second liners, you got you, so you got guys in the NHL, they're all really good, but even they have their different roles. So Bible scholars have their roles, um, and each one of them studies different things. One of the unique things with Habermas, for example, is in the 70s they were doing these interesting degrees where you can have two specializations. So he is his specialty is philosophy and history of religion. So he's not just a philosopher, he's also a historian. Uh, but then you have guys like Lakona, who he is a strictly New Testament historian, and so there's some nuances there. Uh, I'm more like Habermas, I like connecting the disciplines and integrating them together, which I just think that yeah, I think I mean they're meant to be together, right? We don't want to just isolate them. Yeah. Um, so I think all those kind of come together, but then it just takes doing research. Um doing a lot of research, spending the time to do that work, because there's a lot of stuff on YouTube uh that you could just easily do. Anyone, you know, virtually today, anyone could have a YouTube, anyone could have a book, right? Because you can self-publish on Amazon in like 30 minutes. Um, and you can even pay to get a journal published if you want to. You can pay to speak at Oxford to say you spoke at Oxford, and then you can build these credentials. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Um without actually doing the real academic work.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yeah, but it could be academic sounding. Um you just put your pinky up when you say things, and it becomes, you know, it becomes very Yeah. Um, but it's like uh it's like jujitsu, because like you can go buy a black belt too. You're gonna look like one. But then when someone grabs you're also a black belt by the way. Right? So when someone grabs you, you know right away, like, oh, they've trained, or oh, this guy hasn't trained. So you can just tell. Yeah, bro. Uh I remember one time there's a guy, I had been to the gym for a while, and there was some new kid there, and I was like, Oh, have you trained before? He goes, No, not at all. And we start rolling, I'm like, You're a wrestler? He goes, Oh, yeah, I wrestled a long time. I'm like, and so uh it's the same thing. And if and if guys are good and they know their resources, that is good. Um, but then being able to integrate it, being able to take into account things like biases and prejudices as well. Yeah, that's one of the things I like about Habermass and the minimal facts approach, is it tries to take those things into account. So uh yeah, there's a lot of levels there. And then of course with Habermass, I mean he's been studying the resurrection longer than I've been alive. So I want to listen to what he has to say. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And and too, when it when it comes to certain academics, because there's levels to it, you know, there's there's Olympic swimmers and then there's Michael Phelps. Right. So I always joke and say, like, Habermass is the Michael Phelps of academia, because his mind, like if you name a book, he can nine times out of ten, he can tell you where it was published, what year it was, and and the uh the author's like where he got his degree from. And I'm like, oh my goodness. And I don't like I've like tested them. Like every once in a while, I'm like, I gotta say, we've never talked about this in 10 years, and he's like, Man, how do you how do you remember this stuff? And so uh, but what with our ministry, what we're passionate about is not everyone's gonna be a haber mass, right? There's not, but not everyone needs to be Michael Phelps either, but we need to be able to swim.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

And that's what that's what we're trying to do. Um, and I think that's what you guys are trying to do too, help equip every believer because God's gifted us all in different ways. Romans 12 has that. Um, there's different parts to the body, yeah, but they build one another. And so the the guys who are really good at this type of stuff and have patience to sit down and wade through things, even when you're like, why are we reading this? You do it, right? But then you've got other people who've got good patience uh in other areas, and then we work together and support and build one another because when there's questions, we need someone there to help with that. Because then you get those questions answered, and then you're even stronger on the other side. Yeah, and then you go into whatever discipline you are as a disciple, and then you're being a light to the world in that sphere that this guy was never gonna have.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

So that's what that's what like one of our goals, and that's where we want the rubber to meet the road, right? Like we don't want to just study these things and keep them up here, yeah. Like that's actually a good segue to getting into what apologetics is.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

So you want to touch on that for a moment? Yeah, uh, because I know everybody's gonna hear, oh, we get the apologetics weekend, and some people are gonna come in and sit and go like, what are we apologizing about?

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yes, no doubt, no doubt. Yeah, someone always says, What are we apologizing about? Yeah. Um, yeah, okay. So, and that is the thing, it's the weirdest word, it's been around for so long, um, and it's just the best word we have because it comes from the Greek word apologia, which is to make a defense. Okay. And it's from 1 Peter 3:15. Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you. And that's where you get it. But it's not like it's just this weird Christian word. Socrates gives a defense, and Plato, it's called the apology, right? So um the the word apologetics just means to give a response back. So we do we do jokes and stuff like this. I used to give a really nerdy definition of here's what apologetics is, and and Ron, the founder of Core Apologetics, he just had this really fun one, which I'll adapt for for us for here. But he's like, Oh, what's the best hockey team?

SPEAKER_04 14:58

Right, Boston Blue.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Oh my goodness. It's the Florida Panthers, uh, or the Capitals, just depends on on which bandwagon I need to jump on. But but if we start going wide, and I could be like, well, the Panthers have Marshan, so clearly they're a better team. I'm doing hockey apologetics right now, and I'm just giving you reasons why the Panthers are better than Boston. Yeah, and we're I don't know what the rankings are right now, but I mean I could just guess. Um it is the beginning of the season, uh, that's true. Um, but this is this is we do this every day so easily. If we go to debate, where are we going for lunch? Right. We're gonna be doing food apologetics really.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

So it's just giving a reason why, right? And so um, it's typically uh around a legal context, uh, but it can be more broad, especially in our culture.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

And so uh it's got nothing to do with being an academic, with being the Michael Phelps Phelps of academia. It's got nothing to do with arguing, although it can involve like arguing in the sense of like you're having a discussion or a dialogue with someone. It should have the idea of persuasion rather than arguing. Um and it's not apologizing, it's definitely not apologizing. So we want to avoid those things. But um, Pastor D, I know we were talking about kids before this. Yes, there is one way to think about these things, which I share with a lot of people. When it comes to children, children can be an apologetic, or we can be apologizing for them. So that's a good that's a just a different beast altogether, though. Um, but yeah, so that's what apologetics is. We're just given reasons. But who needs those reasons according to 1 Peter 3:15? It's everyone, yeah, and everyone includes believers and it includes unbelievers because sometimes believers have questions, like John the Baptist, and it's a pretty kind of a big deal. And in Matthew 11, he asks if he had prepared the way for the right person or if he was mistaken about it. It's kind of a big question now. And this is John the Baptist, this is John the Baptist, and he has got questions.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

So perfectly normal But shows us that God isn't afraid of our questions.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

He's not well the truth isn't, right? Because the truth doesn't mind transparency, um, but lies, love muddled confusion. Um man, if in Isaiah, I think Isaiah 59, it said it says um they trust in confusion because the liars, that's what they need to survive. But anyway, um, yeah, so it's it it helps build disciples because if we're giving reasons for the hope that we have, that's discipleship to new believers, right? If you're giving reasons for the hope that we have to someone who doesn't know Jesus, that's evangelism. So you're doing both of those things. It just depends on the context and how you're gonna kind of go about those elements.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

And a lot of people, when they hear like a Bible scholar, an expert, they immediately can become insecure because they think that it's too much information and I'm not that smart. You know, do you They'll come meet me and they'll realize, oh, I can do that. I can do you believe you have to be a Bible scholar to know the Bible?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

No, no, no, no. That's part of the reason we're trustworthy too, is because one of the things that that we are seeing is there's like an outsourcing of our discipleship to our pastors. And you guys aren't supposed to do everything, right? Believers are supposed to make disciples of all nations, not just past it doesn't say pastors, not even in the message, right? It doesn't say that in that Bible either, right? It's for everybody to do that. Um so everybody's gotta be equipped. You don't know have to you don't have to be Michael Phelps, but you gotta know how to swim. Yeah, because your kids are gonna ask you questions, and you have to be prepared to answer some of them. Because home's like a crucial place for discipleship.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

But um And faith doesn't dismiss us from actually thinking. No, you know it's a part of our worship with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yes, exactly. And again, you don't have to dig super deep. If you're there's some topics where I read, I'm like, oh, I'm good there. So then I pivot. And so you just want to make sure that you're equipped for where God's called you to be. And there are some fundamentals. This is why we're core Christian, there's some fundamentals we need to be able to address uh with our kids, with new believers, with co-workers, whatever the case may be. And then there may be some things where I'm like, okay, now what does it look like to live in the reality of the resurrection in say law enforcement? Uh, or as a business owner, or if I'm working in a hospital, what do those things look like? And so then you're now you're taking and applying the reality of being a Christian and living it out, and then it's starting to look like loving the Lord your mind with all your heart souls. Because you're doing it, you're thinking through those things and applying them to your culture.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

I know that you and I have had the conversations about how apologetics is personal because it helps you grow roots corporately. Could you just talk about that quick? I know you were just going over uh briefly a moment ago, but I love how you say that you know gaining an understanding of who God is and being able to communicate that and the faith that you have in him is key and it's functional to um evangelism. Right?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll I'll just from my background, I remember when I was learning about the resurrection, uh, and I was going through Habermaster's arguments, and I'm like, okay. And I there was a time or two I was like, Wait, but what about this? And then he emailed me and shot me down. He was like, A, B, C, D. I was like, let me try again. Okay. Uh and I tried that twice and I was like, oh man. And I remember driving on campus and I was like, the resurrection happened.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

And so that is a reality, no matter what I think. I can't get around it happened. So that's gonna change what I do in the present because it changes the future. Um, because I'm gonna have to stand before him, right? So that should affect the decisions I make in the present. So, but that comes from the deeper understanding of we don't just say it happened, but now it's a part of us. Like it's a it's a thorough understanding that it really did happen, a past event with present significance that gives us a future hope. So there's that personal element there, and then all of a sudden you're like, Well, uh, I I think of like Ephesians 2.10, which says we're created in Christ Jesus for good works. Well, I want to do good works, right? Yeah, yeah. Well done. Yes, not well intentioned. Yes, yes, exactly. And so um, we all have a lot of good ideas, um, but then like putting them to action is another part of that. Right. Titus, from what I understand, it it ties in um doctrine to action uh at least six different times in that short letter. So it's something that we're supposed to be doing, but having that personal element too is like when you're in trials or tribulation or temptation, yeah, but Jesus rose from the dead, so tighten it up. Yeah, Jesus rose from the dead, it's gonna be okay. And so that can help sustain you through these things. And if you look at like some missionary heroes and some heroes of the faith and the things they've gone through, it's it's because their worldview is shaped by these truths. And so they're grounded. So then when trials come, they're like the Lord gave it to me. I can take it. I don't know why this suffering is going on, but the Lord has me going through it and I'm gonna do it because. This world is not home. Yeah. And so then you're starting to put treasures in heaven. Uh a really good apologetics book um that I don't know if I'll mention too much this weekend, but it's called Imagine Heaven. It's on near-death experiences and it really gets you imagining heaven in a good way, hence the name. But it uses near-death experiences to get you to think about heaven in a way that most people don't because we think about the present. We're like, oh, things are good here. If they're good here, how much more do you think they'll be there? Right? This is a fallen world. And we're supposed to be Philippians 2, we're supposed to if I mean God took on the form of man and came and served and died on a cross. So if things are good here, well, how can we use that good that we have now to go serve others and help them? Because in the world to come, it's gonna be so much better. And just some of the stories there um that Burke has are phenomenal, and they've really provoked me to good works because I'm like, man, I want treasures in heaven. I don't want to show up like with nothing in my pockets. I don't want to see Ally Corinthians says all my work's burned up because there was nothing of lasting value. And so some of the near-death experiences can be pretty sobering. Yeah, yeah. And so um we've done, I mean, Doc and I have done some research on on them as well. Um there's some really interesting cases, but they do move you.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Um that's beautiful. Yeah, you know, I've heard it said for the believer, this life as we know it is the only hell we'll experience. And for the unbeliever, this life as they know it is the only heaven they'll experience.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Interesting. Yeah, I was trying to think of the way C.S. Lewis puts it. Um but it it's essentially what Paul says, it's just a momentary light affliction. And I've heard some NDEs where the people were undergoing wicked acts, like they were suffering at the hands of wicked uh people. And then they said during their near-death experience, they're like, Yeah, I remembered it, but it was like stubbing my toe. And you're like, but that horrible thing. Yeah, but I was like, Stephen being stoned in his face illuminating. He's with the pre when you're with the presence of the Lord, all that stuff is just a it's distant.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Uh and I love your analogy of the Michael Phelps, but you have to know how to swim. And I feel like we have a responsibility to yes, go deep, but as scuba divers, if you can't bring it back up to the surface, people will drown in the depths. And you do a beautiful job in this book. And I want to say it really is a calling and an anointing. On the chapter specifically, when you were talking about some of the evidence being the genres of the biographies themselves, I have never thought about this before. I literally had to stop and put on worship music because the presence of God from my office. You're talking about, well, you don't expect the same things from Star Wars as you do a documentary. And so the original audience reading the biographies, the gospels, they would be expecting specific things from them that they wouldn't if it was a fable or some tall tale. And when you were talking specifically about the fact that they would dare to even make a biography about a rabbi goes against what was happening culturally, because you didn't make biographies about rabbis. You would talk about how the rabbis would point to the Torah. But the fact that you are pointing to Jesus, you're saying he is the embodiment of the Torah, he is the law embodied. And that is beautiful because in the world of academia and scholarly works, the simplicity is the word, the logos, the supreme knowledge behind everything became flesh and dwelt among us. You don't get more simple and grounded than Jesus. And you did your best. You did a good job of bringing these deep theological things grounded for everyday people to understand.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Well, I appreciate that. I'm just stealing from those other scholars and I'm footnote. That's the positive of the book. Because if you want to go deeper, you just you just look at the footnotes because that's from a guy named Richard Burridge in his book, What Are the Gospels? And his book has been the definitive work. And since then, everyone thinks they are gospel. Uh the gospels are biographies, ancient biographies. Because up until that point, people would there was some question on what what genre are they? Um up until like the 1920s, it was thought that they were biographies. They kind of assumed, because they're clearly about Jesus and his life.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

And there were people that doubted that, that the gospels are not biographies of Jesus?

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Through the 20s through the 80s. Okay. Especially in the 70s and 80s. Yeah. Yes, that's true. Uh in the 70s and 80s, especially. And Burridge set out to write his dissertation for Cambridge against the Gospels being biographies. But as he went through the evidence, he got convinced otherwise. And then he wrote his book and then helped convince everyone.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Almost like Cates for Christ.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Yeah, yeah, very similar. Uh except one's a Cambridge dissertation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um but but uh Craig Keener, uh, so I was showing these guys the book before. Um Keener has a hundred-page book on that subject. And so what uh it's just a fascinating subject because the implications are important theologically, but also historically, because biographies they're not expecting people to just invent things, they're expecting them to use sources to talk to eyewitnesses, and Luke tells us he does these exact things in Luke 1, yeah, uh one to four. Uh but Burridge is one of the few guys that talks about the theological implications of this is God in the flesh, and following him is not idolatry because you're following God. Right. But if you do that for a rabbi, yeah, if we did that about, you know, any pastor today, like we're we're he's supposed to point us to Jesus. We're not supposed to follow and emulate him. Right, right. That starts to become, we call that a cult. Right, right, right. Right. So we see with Jesus, they're saying do this, and it's following God. So it's a really profound Christological argument, right? But it's also a historical one because now we're like, oh, these are intended to tell us truthful information, and we can see that they do when we look at other sections and other uh aspects of reliability.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Can you oh I know you're going. You're going.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

So I just want to I want to have them point out something. So you just use a term, you said Christological, so Christology. Yes. Right. So within theology, there are other ologies within that. So there's Christology, soteriology, eschatology.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

These are all nice sounding words. Right. Ology just means the study of. Amen. There we go. Yeah. Amen.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

And theology would be fair to say is kind of the umbrella for those, and then when you add all those together, like in a totality of the circumstances, you get systematic theology.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yes. And then you still have historical theology, which tells you what people were looking at throughout periods of time and things like that. So, but Christology is just the study of Jesus. Who is he? Um, what is his nature? How do we understand those things? And so the genre tells us a little bit about who Jesus is before it even tells us one word.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

And can you share a little bit of how biographies in the ancient world are different than biographies today?

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Oh, yeah. Uh well, one typical example is um they wouldn't always include a childhood. We give like a childhood, actually, um, tonight we'll be talking about a biography of somebody, and I was going through it this week, and it talked about not only his childhood, but it talked about his dad and his background, and then his birth, and then his growing up, and then it finally got to his life. But it's a biography. You don't typically see that in the ancient world. Well, you don't see that in all biographies in the ancient world. What's also unique, too, about um the gospels is that they are written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. That's not the case for a lot of biographies in antiquity. So they are given a really prestigious position in being written within that time frame because there were witnesses around who could validate, who could correct, who could challenge, and all those sorts of things. That's falsifiable. Yes. Whereas you have other biographies that are can be up to centuries later. And so you those guys aren't around, so you can't check them. So those are some uh some two unique elements. Uh I guess they're too unique, but uh some other elements too with ancient biographies is they try to highlight a moral aspect. Uh today, you know, we don't really find a moral aspect too too often in biographies. You can have the occasional one, right? Um but if we were reading a biography about it like a former president or something, we don't typically see that highlighted the same way. Back then they wanted to show you, hey, this guy was someone heroic, someone moral, someone to emulate. Um then you had histories, which just talk about events, right? Events in time. So those would be some of the kind of the differences, I think. Just two.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

And we have to be careful not to approach the gospels with the same expectations as we would a biography that came out today.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah, oh, yeah, a level of uh a level of precision is gonna be different. I mean, because we have like people today are like, if I don't see it on video, I don't even know if it happened. And uh you can see something on video and it may not be real during it. That's true, that's true. That's going out the window these days, too. Um but yeah, because we have good we've got phones, we can type things up instantly and get it written out and sent out. That was not the case back then.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

So, you know, think anything pre-printing press, anything, well, let's back it up. Anything pre, we have cameras in our pockets. Okay, then we got pre-cameras, and then pre-printing press. Like there's stages to all this. So uh the precision in those elements is gonna vary, and that's just the nature of it.

SPEAKER_04 31:16

So back in the first century, was there some type of an oral tradition that was going on?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Yes, there was. There was definitely oral traditions that were going on, um, especially within Christianity, but also within Judaism. Um, and the larger cultures could also potentially have different oral traditions that they would pass on. We have them today, though. Uh if we said something like uh row, row, row your boat, and everyone goes boat, you can't not do it, right? So that's an oral tradition. I don't think I've ever read that song anywhere, but I've heard it. Right. And so we've all heard it. So we were familiar with it. And in the ancient world, when you want to pass on information to people and not everyone could read and not everyone could write, you had to do it orally.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

And so there's actually a lot of studies on memory in antiquity, which is kind of interesting, but then um but there is also some dedicated time to study a tradition so that you could have it and it was a part of you, and you were entrusted with it, and then if I gave it to you, I could trust that you could go give it to Matt and he would do the same. And then you could pass off oral tradition. So it's got a formal, it's got a control to it, it's not just um something done haphazardly. And Josephus, who's a first century Jewish writer, he talks about how the rabbis would were known for doing this. And so you'd have to memorize, um, understand what it means, and then pass it off to others.

SPEAKER_04 32:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

So there's more to it than that. Yeah. I don't know if you guys want to go there or not.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

So yeah, I don't know how much you're gonna touch on where the credo traditions. Yeah. So if that's something you're gonna hit on this weekend, we're gonna save that then. Yeah. But I know that there is a specific Go read the book. Yes, yes, yes. Go get the book. Go get the book and show up this weekend. Yeah. There's a specific credo tradition that's on the table right now.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yes, there is.

SPEAKER_04 33:00

There is. You want to touch on that?

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yes. So this is an exact copy of, how can I put this bad boy? An exact copy. Where am I going? Right here. An exact copy of uh early Christian manuscript. It's from one of Paul's letters, 1 Corinthians 15. And it contains the earliest creed, or the most studied creed, I should say. It's dated very early, earlier than the gospels.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

How early? We're talking like the 30s, 40s, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:35

We're talking in the 30s. We'll leave it 30s or 40s, so there's some suspense. Um but that's gonna predate the gospels and Paul's writings. So it becomes a great uh testimony or testament to that because of how early it is.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

But in addition to that, um, this manuscript here, if Paul's writing 1 Corinthians 15, around 54 AD, this create this manuscript here, it's called P46. It's from the Chester Beatty um collection, which is at University of Michigan, it dates to about 125 to 175 years after Paul wrote. In the ancient world, that's incredible. Can you share how incredible that is compared to our compare that to like Plato, who most people are gonna be familiar with? Plato has about a 1300-year gap from when he wrote to our earliest manuscript.

SPEAKER_04 34:27

Or do they say his uh manuscripts are actually closer to us than they are to him? Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

So Plato's writings are closer in time to us than they are to when Plato wrote. Not the case with Paul. Uh, and we have this uh manuscript that has 1 Corinthians 15, which includes the creed on there, and then also goes all the way through verse 11, uh, which is important because it says, whether I or they preach, again, whether Paul or the apostles preach, so we do this, and so you believe. They're all preaching the same gospel. And the the this copy here goes through 1 Corinthians 15, verse 15, um, but it's part of a larger collection of Paul's letters. You also get um from this collection is Philippians 2, in which there's an early Christian hymn, which is considered to be part of an early Christian tradition dating to the early 30s or 40s. Okay, we don't know. Well, we we do know he was talking about the equality with God. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So we have resurrection, we've got deity in the earliest creeds, in the earliest manuscripts. Um now, if you want to see this in person, you can come this weekend uh and check it out. We'll have some other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

If it goes missing, it wasn't me. I know what I'm asking for Christmas, that is amazing. It's holding a piece of our faith in our hands.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

And it reminds you, like we were talking earlier, it's so easy for us to think you know, our views of Christianity just started like 20 years ago or something like that. We are part of a historic tradition of faith in Christ that didn't just fall out of the sky. It's not some cultural trend. Uh it was here, I mean, it's been here for 2,000 years. It's been in a multitude of cult cultures, it spread east and west.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Yeah. Um let's dive in the deep end. So the way that you even lay out your book, chapter, it builds upon the very first argument. You I love the analogy you use about Google Maps. Yes, you've got to zone out to get a big picture, and then you can go down to the specific street views. And your very first argument is how do we even know that the text that we read today are the texts that were written in the original manuscripts? Yeah, and so how do we know that in my Bible right here is the same right there? And can you break down this argument just a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yeah, yeah. Well, Matt could just read the Greek for us. That'd be great. Um, as you guys can could see too, there's no spaces in this. Um it's all capital letters. This is just a side note as I'm thinking about it. Uh there's no uh punctuation, it's just all um all bunched together. Yeah, but what scholars do, they're called textual critics. And again, uh we mentioned Plato earlier. This isn't something just specific to Christianity, it's every ancient work we have. And and these textual critics, their job is to find out what the original said because we don't have the originals. So the more copies we have of these, then we can see are there any differences between the texts? Um, and now that means, though, we want a lot of these copies because typically the more we have, the better, and the earlier we have, the better.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

How many do we have of the New Testament?

SPEAKER_01 37:42

When it comes to the New Testament, there's over 5,000 copies just in Greek.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Is that a big deal?

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Just in Greek compared to other text. That's a huge deal. That's a huge deal.

SPEAKER_04 37:51

That's a lot of evidence.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

We'll talk about this and how it compares to other figures from antiquity tomorrow morning. Okay. Uh tomorrow morning, second session, I think. Uh so we'll discuss that, and we'll even talk about what atheist New Testament scholars, which sounds strange, but there are atheist New Testament scholars, what they say about this, including one who his specialty is textual criticism. So this is his field, and then we'll give his statement on the numbers tomorrow. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Again, go read the book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

But he he it's it's it's quite common knowledge as to um what's the best attested source in antiquity, and it's not like it's just an idiosyncratic Christian position or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

Aaron Ross Powell But could you just touch on, I know obviously you're saying that we have 5,000, some rated all the way up to about 5,600. Um but it's not just we're not just talking about you know Christian biblical scholars, we're talking about skeptics that are affirming the amount of the weight of the manuscript evidence that we have.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

How can there be skeptics and atheists that are biblical scholars? And what is it like engaging to them?

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yeah, they some of them are just interested in Christianity, and so that's why they study it. Um I think it was Maurice Casey, he's passed away, he was an agnostic, and I think that was the point he made. He's like, I I've just been interested in these things. Um so there are atheist agnostic New Testament scholars out there. Um it's it's strange. There's I mean, and then you have Christians who are more conservative, and you've got others who take some different views to put it well, diplomatically put it that way. Um so you have a whole cadre, and then academia has is its own thing uh as well. Okay. And so, like there's this thing called the search for the historical Jesus, and it started like 250, 300 years ago. And scholars wanted to find out what the real historical Jesus was like. We know what the church says about Jesus, but what's the what's history tell us?

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Are there any scholars that believe that Jesus didn't exist?

SPEAKER_01 39:52

There's uh one or two. One or two. Um to my knowledge, they're not teaching at any college or university.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Um obviously.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

So the main consensus is that Jesus existed.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Oh, that's yeah, that's like that's um that's not really discussed. Dale Allison, who teaches at Princeton, uh, he says every once in a while when I'm teaching, I'll bring those skeletons out of the closet and then I throw them back in there. Uh just to let people know um what some of their arguments are and why they're not very good. And so there's a lot on that. I mean, there's there's a lot to be said um for the problems with that view. What's interesting is one of those atheist New Testament scholars, he debated uh a mythicist scholar on the subject. Uh Bart Ehrman debated Bob Price on the subject. And so that's kind of interesting. Um then you're sitting back and say, you're like, oh, who do we cheer for here? But uh actually, Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey both wrote full-length books against mythicists, and neither of those guys are Christians.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

So they're just highlighting uh Maurice Casey, he was a little more caustic, and he highlighted some more popular level mythicists, but he said one of them, this one just stands out to me. He's like, they try to draw these really bad comparisons. So this is like an extreme, very extreme one, but it's ridiculous. Um, where they I forget who they were drawing the analogy to, but they were trying to say Christians stole baptism from this group that would baptize um vegetables. And you're like, baptize vegetables? Maurice Casey goes, You mean they're washing their vegetables before they eat them? And you're calling this a baptism? This is not an analogy with what Christians are doing. Oh my goodness, I never would have even thought to put this in the case. And these are scholars. Yeah. Well, Maurice Casey was arguing this person was not a scholar. Okay, okay. That was um, I think the the Archaea S. Um anyway, that's much more popular level, but that was one of the more ridiculous ones. Maurice Casey is a scholar, but he wrote um a book, uh, academic book against that position, as did again Erman. So it's interesting to see um to see those things come out. But they do come up uh, you know, every once in a while. But a lot of that kind of what you were saying, um, because we were talking about the quest for the historical Jesus, a lot of that search was to find a Jesus that was different from what the church taught. So it had a bias. Yes, yes. And so um it really was a search for an alternative Jesus. And uh Brent Pittry just wrote a book on on Christology, the study of Jesus, and who was Jesus, and he's arguing why Jesus, why we can see Jesus being God in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Um because a lot of scholars don't like that because they think John clearly has Jesus as God, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke were early, so maybe it was a development.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

And well, Bot Erman likes to attack John.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Yeah, well, a lot of yeah, a lot of guys, uh John's kind of making a comeback now, but John has been looked down upon because he's the last one, right? So whenever you're last, it's just what it is, just part of the part of it. But he's still writing within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. Um but with uh with Pitcher's point, he goes, you guys don't like Matthew, Mark, Luke having very high Christology like we find in John, like there's no John 1, for example, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But there's other very powerful statements.

SPEAKER_04 43:23

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

But he points out the inconsistency of academia because they think the earliest Christology is the highest Christology, meaning Paul's letter to the Philippians in that creed. There's other Christian creeds which date to the early thirties, which have a very high Christology, very similar to that what we find in John. So if we have it here, and we have it here, why shouldn't we find it here? And so Petri calls that a paradox of contemporary scholarship.

SPEAKER_04 43:53

Christology.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Christology.

SPEAKER_04 43:55

Early Christology. Yeah. Early Christology is good. Yes. The Manuscript that we have that would be considered early Christology. Yes. Yes. So could could you just touch on that quick quickly?

SPEAKER_01 44:06

So yes, that's from F so Philippians 2 is a very um high Chris. It says Jesus, who although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. So right there, we could just stop there for the sake of the discussion. But um clearly a very high description of Jesus. Um so we see that if that dates to the early 30s or 40s, and that's what's being taught by the early church, then we have early Christology that's very high, very similar to John, because it puts Jesus um pre-existing, just like John does. Colossians 1:15 is another one that has Jesus at creation, very similar to John, early Christian creed again. And so we have those they show Jesus' uh deity, and we have John showing the deity, but scholars like to be dismissive of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So Petri's book is like, guys, there's plenty of examples in Matthew, Mark, and Luke where there's high Christology. Just one example, Mark II, where Jesus uh they bring the paralytic to him and they're like, uh, can you heal him? He's like, Oh, your sins are forgiven. Yeah. I'm like, that's blasphemy. Yeah. Only God can forgive sins. What are you doing? He goes, I'm doing that, so that you know when I tell him get up and walk, you know that I have the power to do that. So that's a very high Christology, because they interpreted it as blasphemy. And that's not the only time that Jesus is accused of blasphemy or making himself one uh with God. There's other examples, and then there's other examples where uh the things that Jesus does is the things that only God in the Old Testament would do. Right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:39

So the full circle moment here, because I think this is a really good way to tie this in, because you brought up Plato earlier in Homer, right? Uh early high Christology. We have early manuscripts that date back to very early to the death and resurrection of Christ. Could you tie that into how long the distance between Plato and Homer to their manuscripts?

SPEAKER_01 45:59

So Yeah. So Plato, so we have those writings, so we had Paul's writings, we mentioned that. Paul's writing um in the 50s, we have very good manuscript evidence from just over a hundred years. Say 150 just to keep it simple. Um hundred and fifty years. Plato's writings come about, was it 1300 years? 1300 years. And Plato and scholars are typically Homer's risk 400. Homer's about 400 years. Um my goodness, I'm trying to think of Tacitus, who's the first uh he's considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. I think he's about 700 years. Uh maybe 690 or so.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

And this is important because historically for us today, we know that Jesus' divinity isn't something that was made up as the church went on. Like the early believers believed what we believed in.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yes, exactly. It wasn't a later development. It's very clear in John, but it's clear in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it's clear in the creeds. Uh early church fathers all throughout to 1026. And that and again, that connects that historic faith that we have. And so that that to me is is very important because then you you don't when you hear those objections, because what we hear, this is something we hear all the time. We all know you know what happened.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Council Nicaea.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

We didn't even prompt, we didn't even prompt that. Council of Nicaea. Constantine, he decided Jesus was God, and that's it. That's urban legend for today. Thank you Da Vinci Code, right? Um I I mean I I've got a clip I saved of Gillian Michaels going over that objection with uh Victor Davis Hansen because she she's like, oh, this is what I thought. And because that's just what our culture kind of tells us. But it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like if Philippians 2, so Council of Nicaes 325 AD, if this manuscript, um not this one here, but it's the same collection, dates to the same period, of Philippians, which shows Jesus being worshipped and sung him as as God, um, if that dates to 175 to 225, that's a century before Constantine. Right. Um, there's a number of other pieces of evidence. Um I even said sung hymns as as to God. That's what Pliny uh the younger says about Jesus, who he's not a Christian, he's trying to figure out how to punish Christians, and he goes, these are some of the things they do. They don't tell lies, uh, they feed one another, they meet together really early, and they sing hymns to Christ as if he's a God.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

And that's about 200 years before Constantine.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

And that reminds me that, like since the beginning, our faith must be embodied in action. Come on. You know, the Bible says that knowledge puffs up, but it's love that builds up. You know, and in these conversations, it can be easy to become prideful. You know, look at what I know, but it's just like, no, that knowledge needs to become wisdom, applied faith, love. And that's what Christians have been doing since day one. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

And it needs to come too, like you we were just born with this knowledge. You had to learn it from somewhere, right? And uh, and I think that's one of the biggest, and then that that's a good question for academia too, because it is easy to get puffed up, or people want to compete to have Do you see that with a lot of your colleagues? Uh not with my colleagues, I only hang out with the best. Um, but it's a temptation. If it anywhere there's people, there's gonna be temptation, right? So it's a temptation for anybody. Uh, but like you said, um knowledge can puff up, so we don't want it to do that. And you constantly remember remind yourself that someone taught me this.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Um, I didn't just invent it or bring it up on my own, and so that keeps me humble knowing that especially when you see something like this, it's like I'm a part of something much bigger than me. Than me.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

It's not it's not just about me. And then to add to that too, like even jujitsu, like I didn't make up any of those moves. Like, and then if I start getting prideful, I get humbled really quickly. Yes, you do. But that's the difference there is one is just in in academia, it's just in thought. But in jujitsu, like you really feel it, and you have to tap, and you have a so I'm trying to I always try to think what's the jujitsu equivalent in academia of getting tapped out, and it's kind of tough to put that. Um, but James 2.19 says, even the demons believe and shudder. So there's a the mental ascent is only part of it. It's the faithfulness that goes apart because they're not faithful to him, right? They're in act of rebellion against him as the king.

SPEAKER_00 50:10

We'll never know more of this out of eternity than Lucifer did, the enemy.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Well, I think um oh, it was some some uh pastor from a generation ago he used to say Satan's the got way better theology than all of us, and he's still Satan. So it's that action that has to correspond to faithfulness. And then, you know, we look at Jesus and who he was and what he did. We look at those biographies of his because they tell us how we're supposed to follow him.

SPEAKER_04 50:35

But I think that that's humbling because you just brought up um, you know, was it uh Ju Julian Michael? Yeah, the way that she thought about, you know, or how she came to know what she knows, right? And uh Pastor Marco here has been going in, you know, pretty hard on you know, philosophical worldviews and our worldviews. And um, how important is your book, the work of apologetics, and just theology as a whole, important to you know, encouraging us to continue, continue to dive in, continue to go to the word each day, continue to study, to be be disciples of him, because that's what we're called to do. And how does epistemology or understanding what epistemology is, and and just for short here, epistemology. What does that mean? Epistemology is just the study of how we know stuff, right? How we come to know stuff, right? And you can't really know your philosophical worldview. Yeah, you can't really know your philosophical worldview unless you know how you've come to know stuff, right? So um, everything that we've been talking about here today is all about how we we research, we've come to know you've written a book. Um, how important is it to understand that, yes, that we all have a worldview, we all have a philosophy on life, and what the world is doing around us matters and how we allow it to influence us matters.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Yeah, dude, that's a huge question. That's like a whole nother podcast.

SPEAKER_04 51:52

How are we doing on time?

SPEAKER_00 51:55

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

All right, so appreciate it. Not 15 or 20? Okay. Um yeah, so that's a good question because like with Gillian Michaels, like that could be any one of us, too, right? If we if if we didn't have someone who came and shared the truth with us, or or and she had someone there giving her some answers, so I think that's good dialogue to see going on. Um, but that's one of the things I constantly think, as far as like humiliate God's grace is what started everything, right? And so that's not us, that's Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. We're talking about 10. So that's eight and nine. Um, and then us sharing with others that same gospel truths with others. But in the world, as we know, people always want to go against the grain. There's contrarians out there in the world, they're gonna want to give different interpretations just for the sake of giving a different interpretation. Um, this with this guy I know, he's got a book called Oikophobia. Anything that's the homeland, we're doing the opposite. The fear of the homeland, hatred of the homeland. So we're just gonna rebel, we're gonna rebel. Um so that that's another element. We also have there's spiritual forces at work, right? So we gotta take that into account. All those things um can go into shaping our worldview. So our culture, we're constantly bombarded with that. Right. And one of the things I'm gonna repeat a lot this weekend is Romans 12, 2 says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Don't be conformed to this culture, but be transformed.

SPEAKER_04 53:16

That's a good verse.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

That's a great verse. So um how do we get transformed? Um so there's a number of answers to that, but the key one is reading scripture. Yeah, right. You read scripture every day. And the same way, like if you just were working outside all the time, you're gonna conform to the smell of dirt because you're you know, if you're working hard outside, right? Uh you're gonna conform to that smell.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

You guys don't want to stink, right? You go take a shower. If you're doing it, if you're around that every day, you take a shower every day. Well, we don't want to spiritually stink, so we should read scripture every day so we don't spiritually stink. But our minds can also get twisted. We can be deceived. There's a number of verses about do not be deceived. So we need to be reading those, and then also in order to avoid being deceived, we have to know the truth. Because I mean, you guys can just watch uh one any day, you're law, so I mean you know plenty of cases. Datel. Uh you can just turn on the news and you'll see cases where Christians were deceived, and they went down a terrible path because of it.

SPEAKER_03 54:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:13

And so we don't want to be like that. We want to, I mean, Proverbs tell us we can we can gain wisdom by seeing things that go on around us. Um so when we stick in the word, that helps keep keep us grounded and anchored, uh, so our mind doesn't start to wander, and we want to bring that in and rein it in. But we also want to be cognizant and think about what we're thinking about. Yeah, just like if I read for five minutes a day, but then I'm engaged in like social media for like four hours a day. Right, that's good. That's not gonna go over very well for me. Um, and so we gotta be balancing that out. And I'm starting to see, you know, it's interesting. I didn't uh there's a well-known uh Christian, I won't say his name, but he told me he's just gone where all he's listening to now is the Bible when he travels. It's all he listens to. And he's like, I've gone through the Bible so many times. I'm like, you know, I I was thinking before TV, what do people do? Right. Because we have music and entertainment at our fingertips. What would someone do with their time? They'd read, they'd think about what they read, they'd reflect on those things. So they're being intentional with what they're filling their mind on, and they're being intentional with what they're meditating on. Right. And Philip uh Philippians tells us about this, Philippians 4. Dwell on the things that are good, right? Right, pure of good repute. Um dwell on these things. That's a that's an act, that's an intentional act you have to do. Yeah. And I used to always think about a good way to put it because I used to think, okay, don't sin, don't sin, don't sin. Right, right. But if you know, if you see a fight or a sports game, yeah, you can't just play defense. At some point, you have to take shots, you have to try to score.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

It's like imagine going home to your wife and be like, I didn't cheat on you today, didn't you? It's like, okay. No, that don't work. Just the bare minimum. You what are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 55:59

You actually had um, and just to shift for a moment, it was it, I believe it was last year, you did a whole sermon series on healthy habits for our youth. For the youth, yeah. And how important that was. Do you want to touch on that for a second? Like why you went into that? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

It's we all have habits. Are your habits, and this is C.S. Lewis, our habits are either forming us to the image of God or deforming us into the demonic. You are what you repeat.

SPEAKER_02 56:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

And where do your habits come from? It comes from your emotions, it comes from your thinking. You know, I always say to the youth, your thinking drives your emotions. Your emotions are what is influencing your decisions and your choices. Your decisions and choices, when repeated, become your habits and your lifestyle. Come on. And your lifestyle is your legacy, which is what? The story that's told about you at the end of your life.

SPEAKER_02 56:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

What do you want the story of your life to be? When it's all said and done, are you gonna hear well done, my good and faithful servant? Well, it starts back to what Paul tells us. You've got to take every thought captive because it's your thinking that drives your emotions, what drives your actions, what drives your habits, your lifestyle, and your legacy. And that was the whole part. And it's we don't have to wait until they're older to start getting this. No, it's like, no, you're a middle school, high school. Let's work on your holy habits, your spiritual disciplines.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Well, you think about too, when they're when movies, music, social media today, what are the influences that are pouring into our minds? Because I I like a lot of adults think, uh, that just applies to kids, not us. I'm like, man, I see a lot of politicians that just need to take a break from different stories. But but but they get affected too by social media in a in a negative way.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

We're all being discipled. Right, yeah. Right. And it's something. That's your point.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

How is the world discipling us, or are we letting Jesus disciple us? Yeah. And Romans 13, 14 says, make no provision for the flesh. Right. So making those habits that make that that starve the flesh, some people make, oh, that's legalism. No, I don't want to indulge the flesh. I want to find ways to make it difficult for the flesh to thrive. I don't want to like make it a great I don't want to have a nice field where I want it to be fruitful, and then I just let weeds grow. Or I invite weeds to grow.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

And we're all legalistic. I'm legalistic every morning about brushing my teeth. We're legalistic about certain things. We have a routine, how much more for our souls?

SPEAKER_02 58:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:20

There's a way to bring this full circle, too, because you brought up, you know, Romans 12 2, right? Which is my life verse. That's the reason why I said that's a that's a great verse. But Romans 12, one, right? So it's therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Live for Him. Yeah, right? Wake up every day, have healthy habits, build those into your schedules. Hit hit your knees when you get up in the morning. Go into the Word, allow that to wash over you. It matters with your healthy habits, outweigh anything else that you're doing in this world.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

And I'm really sensing that that's just something God's doing, not just in our church, not just even in our nation, just against the world. Like He's draw, like He's drawing people back to Himself. He's drawing people back to the Word. It's not enough to just skim it, but immerse yourself in it. Don't just read it because it's a book. Like, read it to get God, to encounter the God of Scripture. We don't go here for you know self-help, for goosebumps, or for just good vibes. It's like, no, you're coming to meet with the person of Jesus who walked the earth. This history, this evidence for that, and how he meets with us today is through this.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

It's interesting too. And the things you guys are saying, we find that too in the Old Testament. Say these things when you wake up, make sure they're in your mind, and then throughout the day, remind yourself and continually remind yourself.

SPEAKER_04 59:40

The Shema makes his way into the New Testament. Yeah. To love your love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

So let's try to land this plane and let's stay in this. Let's stay in this vein. As a Bible scholar, it's not every day I get to sit down, look a Bible scholar in his eye, and talk to him. He said that five five, six, seven times. As a Bible scholar, how confident in you that what we have in these 66 books is the inspired word of God. And for somebody that's going to show up to church this Sunday for the first time has no idea what this is. What is the Bible, and why are you confident that this is God's word to us?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

It's God reaching out to us. Come on. And it's the only it's the only worldview where we see God coming to us, not us trying to work our way to God. That's it. Because we all have, we all recognize Romans 2, the moral law within us, and we've fallen short of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:29

And like C.S. Lewis also says, we're really good at making excuses for our bad behavior. And that testifies to the fact we know it's bad because we don't do the same thing with our good behavior. Yeah. I had a good meal before, so that's why I was so nice to you. We don't do that. So there's something wrong, and we see a God who comes, cares for us, loves us, and dies for us. So that we can be in right relationship with him. We get his righteousness, which is like amazing. Um that's a love not like we find in the world. Right. And then through that, he invites us to be citizens in his kingdom. And so we want to be faithful citizens, living faithfully to that king, but it tells us these things. Um and it just there's a lot to unpack from a worldview perspective. That'll be tomorrow morning. So I won't get into all that. But just as we engage scripture, it's living and active. Uh just as the rain goes out and goes on the ground and doesn't come back without producing fruits, his word will do the same. And so people are at different places. We get that. People can distort script, we get that too, but there's a purpose for all of that. And so there's gonna be a purpose for um that person coming to church and getting that for the first time, trying to understand the Bible. But now they can, it's not just some book that they don't know about or there's too much for them to understand. No, you can get a you can get a handle on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

You don't have to be Michael Phelps. You can learn to swim, right? And why not today?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Yeah. And I even want to encourage somebody listening, don't be afraid of the water. Don't be afraid of the water. You know, maybe you're hearing all of this and you're like, there's no way I can remember all the arguments. Jesus simply asks us to trust him, to follow him, and to put our faith in him.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

At our very best, we're following forward by faith. You know, you can even read all of these arguments, you still gotta make a leap of faith and trust. You know, I think about the disciples after the resurrection. Jesus is walking with them and they don't realize it's him.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:30

And he's walking them through scripture, explaining it and how it all points to Jesus. And then after Jesus reveals himself, he disappears, and the disciple says, Did not our hearts burn within us? You know, Jesus himself, he says, My sheep know my voice. So you may not know all the arguments for why you believe what you believe, but you know that still small voice in your heart that is drawing you to your father, to your Lord, and stay right there, stay close.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:00

And that brings you to, I believe, one of the greatest arguments for the faith, which is the transformed life. You don't have to know everything in the book, you don't have to overwhelm yourself with thinking that you've got to go, you know, put a certain amount of hours every single day so that you can be the best, you know, present the best argument. Sometimes just presenting yourself as a a living, walking sacrifice to Christ. That's the testimony. Your transformational story, uh, when you're communicating um, you know, what Christ is doing in your life, that transformational, that transformational journey and what God is doing in your life right now matters. So when you're communicating to somebody and maybe you feel uh insecure about something, just tell them who you were, who you are now, and what God is actively doing in your life, and let the Holy Spirit do the work.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

We don't have to defend God.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

No, I do want to put out that is a chapter of the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, it is, it is. Because there's reality in that. And and you know, I think of um, you know, sometimes when when I'm talking to people, they'll say, Well, I can't I can't know all those arguments, or it's not for me to convince somebody. Well, it's it's not, but if you come across a field and you see weeds growing and you can pull one, come on, you can pull that weed so now that soil is a little more fertile for the next time the gospel comes around. But also, John 6, I think it's 68, when Jesus asks Peter, You're not gonna leave too, are you? And he's like, Where else are we gonna go? Your words have eternal life. Where else are you gonna go? Jesus' words have eternal life.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:36

Yes, and that just sparked the thought. Peter was a fisherman. Paul was studied. The more you study, I truly believe God can use that to reach more people, to make you more effective. That's good. You know, to whom much is giving, much is required. I don't want to be shallow. Yeah, I don't want to just be content with, okay, I'm just a fisherman, not bashing the apostle Peter. But I don't want to just be a fisherman. It's like, Lord, grow my understanding, grow my knowledge of you, because I don't want to just stay in Jerusalem. I want to be able, wherever you have me, to point people to you. And I truly believe that your book and people like you that are doing this work are helping to equip the church to do just that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:19

But that fisherman, 1 Peter 3.15, is the one who brings up to always be ready.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:25

Let's end with reading that verse. Amen. Instead, you must worship Christ as the Lord of your life. And if someone asks you about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in gentle and a respectful way. Keep your conscience clear. And if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ. So, Dr. Shaw, it's been a pleasure talking with you. I can't wait to unpack more in your book and hearing you speak this weekend. Would you mind closing us out in prayer?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:59

Yes, yes. Thanks so much. Again, I'm excited about tonight, tomorrow, Sunday. But let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, uh, thank you so much for this time. Thank you for these gentlemen here. Uh Lord, we just thank you for your son. We thank you that you love us. We thank you for your grace. Lord, uh we just uh pray, Lord, that as you've equipped the body and many different parts of the body to support and sustain uh in unity and diversity with one another, Lord, I pray that uh, Lord, as we love one another, they will know that we are disciples of yours. And so, Lord, we just pray, uh Lord, that we would uh have our behaviors follow our beliefs, and our beliefs would be committed to you, Lord, and that we would be faithful citizens of your kingdom. Yes, living out just lives full of love, of grace and truth, Lord. And uh Lord, help us to point people to you and do our good works in such a way that people glorify our Father as a result. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.