Q&A Genesis 38

All right, well, thanks again for joining us for another Q&A. We've basically taken a couple weeks off where Keith has taken some time off to not only plan the next year at Jefferson Park, but also took a little vacation. Keith, I know you and your boy band went and recorded another album. But we won't talk about that because you've got another year to produce it. Thanks for letting us borrow your clothes for the tour. Oh, that's good. But no, really, Keith, how was the time away? I don't need to break down the activity, but was it a good time? Did you sleep the whole time? What did you study, read? We went to the beach. It was just pure relaxation, not a lot of going around. Hang on, there was a tornado at the beach while you were there, correct? Well, it was technically called a water spout. A tornado over the water isn't called a tornado. It's called a water spout. So that was fantastic to watch. You know, we did a little bit of traveling around with the kayak, that would be the only real thing we did. Otherwise, it was relaxing. I read some sermons and articles on marriage and family. I think that's all I read. I took a light reading load intentionally. That's good. Probably a great time with your family. I'm sure they liked having you around. I think they did. Well, let's launch into this week's sermon. You obviously preached on Genesis 38. Can you give us a brief reminder of what Genesis 38 is in like 10 seconds? Oh, wow. Maybe 20. It'll take me 20 seconds to think of it. In terms of how to summarize it, I mean, what really stood out about this sermon was how it does fit so well within the Joseph narrative. And so, it is an anomaly in the sense that it's not about Joseph. It's the only story in here that's not about Joseph at all. But it fits the overarching theme, and that is God uses evil for good. So, in this instance, God uses a man seeking out a prostitute. The prostitute is actually his daughter-in-law tricking him to be a prostitute. He uses that gross episode to bring about the son through whom Jesus will be born in the lineage. So this is a fascinating story. So my first question for you, obviously a lot of bad things happened in this chapter and you spoke about within your sermon about guarding yourself and people around you whether by choosing the right friends or protecting yourself from obscenities. Keith, how do you guard your fleshly fleshly passions from temptation and sin and how do you go about guarding your spouses and your daughters as well? Yeah, so the the biggest thing there is your your heart your sinfulness will flare up when enticed by something external in many ways so obviously you want to avoid the blatant sexual images that are everywhere now. It's not just looking at pornography on the internet. But I mean, you go to the mall, there are just pictures everywhere. So we don't go to the mall. You're not mall walkers. We do not walk in the mall. That's correct. At all? Well, it's just thinking through everything that I see or hear or think about is going to affect my heart. And so I just guard. Hopefully, I'm more self-aware of my sin and the things that would tend to tempt me in a certain direction, and so I just try to cut those things out. As Jesus said, you know, cut off your arm if it causes you to sin. I just try to cut those parts of my life out that would tempt me to sin. But I also believe I'm self-deceptive, and so I try to have friends who know about my weak spots, and I talk about my weak spots, and then they're able to better help me uh, justify sin. You know, or help me from justifying sin, rather. I'm sorry, so. How do I bring them to life? Same way. I try to build them up. My daughter, we try to go through the catechism, I read her the Bible, and Elmo, but I try to read the Bible. Did you ever have Elmo read the Bible to her? No, I can't do that voice, and I'm pretty sure PBS does not allow that. They would lose government funding. So, yeah, we sing a lot. Augustine said that a prayer sung is 10 times more effective than a prayer said. And so, kind of following that, I kind of wonder if my daughter will pick up the spiritual truths more as she actually sings along with us. She hums, you know, the tune. That's great. It'd be interesting to see how much she actually gathers from the singing we do together. Anyway. Do you ever think down the road of, you know, hopefully when your daughter becomes 7, 10, 15, how you will directly try to guard her heart from things, whether it's restricting certain shows on TV, or how will you figure out who she's hanging out with and try to instruct her through that way? Have you thought through that yet? Yeah, we will only watch the Cosby Show. Because it's good. It's a good show. It is a good show. It's good fantasy. Well, no, absolutely. Guarding what she watches will be very important making sure she reads Augustine's confessions every year will also be very important And I know you're not joking All right, well within your own testimony It's obviously a correction there. I'm pretty sure it's God's curriculum. We just agree with God well I'm not gonna correct you and correcting me ever I Alright, so within your own personal testimony, how about within God's testimony of your life? We see God pulling you out of a lifestyle of rebellion and frustration How do you continually praise God for that while not dwelling on? That past in rethinking evil thoughts So like let's say if someone was was called out of sin with pornography in praising God how do they not remind themselves of pornographic images but celebrate what Christ has brought them into and Well, sin is always destructive. That's what sin does. It destroys. While it is fun for a season, there's some kind of delight and enjoyment in participating in sin, it is ultimately always destructive in terms of long-term goals and real good heart issues. And so, one of the ways to do it is to remind yourself, if you would have kept going without sin, how far the destruction would have gone. So not so much on the activity, but just where the heart is decrepit. Yeah. Knowing now where others are who are participating in the same things that I was doing, I'm able to see where this was going, where my life was going, broken relationships, in and out of jail, not able to hold a job, dependencies on drugs. And that's where it was going. And God saved me from that to a healthy marriage, a life that has purpose, not in jail. I can vouch for that. He's never called me from jail. Thank you. But yeah, the issue there is I think about purpose, where I was headed. and where I'm headed now are, not just eternally, but here in this world, enjoying life the way it was meant to be enjoyed. That's how I think about it, but I don't let it I don't let it turn into daydreams of what could have been. Or think about how much fun it was. Do you think that's dangerous, to kind of daydream in that way? Yeah. So you're catching me. I'm giving a lecture on Augustine's Confessions tomorrow night, so you're catching me here. But Augustine, he actually says in Book 2, I want to think about these sins, not because I love the sin, but because I loved you who saved me from these sins. I want me, I want this to help me realize how much those sins were dangerous so that I can love you more for what you've done for me. And so if you're thinking, whatever you're thinking about, if it's not creating in you more love for God, stop thinking about it. You know, if you can't think about it well yet. All right, well, let's talk about spiritual disciplines. Let's talk about how many times we can mention Augustine today. Well, we're two for two so far. Let's try to not make it three for three. But with spiritual disciplines, you said that Judah was easily distracted. He was allowing himself to mentally wander, emotionally wander. Is one way to stay narrowly focused on Christ done by practicing what we would call spiritual disciplines, prayer, personal quiet time, regular Bible reading with you or your spouse, or regular attending worship. Is that the answer for staying narrowly focused on Christ? How does that work into basically reminding ourselves of the gospel? How do spiritual disciplines? And don't mention Augustine. I was going to say yes. Yeah, so the whole thing goes back to what you dwell upon, you love. And so, it's not just stop thinking about these things. You've got to think about something better. That's what Paul said. Be transformed in your mind. Think about the things that are above. And the only way you can do that is by disciplining yourself to think about something different. Our sinful inclination is to think about sinful things. Our new added inclination from the Spirit is to think about godly things. But we have to make that choice to entertain one or two of those thoughts. and one of them will dominate the other. So, yeah, praying, reading scripture, talking to others. I can't emphasize the role of friends. The story this past week with Judah, it all is set up. The story is so intentionally well set up. He left his brothers and started hanging out with the Canaanites. That's where the snowball began. While that seems very insignificant, The snowball began there, and so by ignoring good, godly wisdom, and by ignoring the role of the church in your life, by ignoring gathering together as saints and hearing what the Spirit is going to say through the brothers and sisters, that's where the problems start. And so I think spiritual discipline is a community thing. Yes, I think people should be praying and reading Scripture by themselves, but what I really want to see more is people being able to have a culture and a community that talks about God well, and prays together well, and fasts together well. Just going along with that, you talked a lot about church membership. Not a lot, but you spoke directly about church membership within this sermon, particularly boldly, I think. Now, something that someone asked me afterwards is he's saying that joining a church ensures a healthy walk and does not joining a church basically plummet me into a lifestyle without any sort of accountability. I'm sorry, what are the two options being presented again? They're not necessarily side-by-side options, but does the first one, does joining the church ensure my healthy walk with Christ? It does not ensure it, but it promotes it. In what way? In what ways? Well, being part of a church means you're committed to going and hearing the preaching with other believers, and you're going to be watchful for other believers, and you're going to be watched by other believers, and you're going to be committed to participating in a certain body life together. I don't think you can actually obey all the commandments of Christ unless you're a church member. You can't fulfill the law of Christ and what he has committed us to do. unless you are setting yourself aside. Let me go ahead and say I mentioned in the sermon that DTR defined the relationship. This is something that your generation does. Definitely my generation. Where you're casually hanging out and all of a sudden one of you needs to define the relationship. I think church membership is kind of like that. You spend some time with the body, you grow to love them, and then you need to define the relationship by formally joining so that that is clear. So does it insure it? Only God insures your success as a Christian. But God has given you other brothers and sisters to promote that assurance. What was the second part of that? The second part of that was, you know, if I don't join a church, am I basically damned in a big way? Yeah. I mean, I know the issue that they were getting at. I'm not saying yes is in the affirmative, but I'm saying, yeah, good question. Very good question. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. How far can you push the envelope on isolating yourself from joining a church while still trying to say that, well, I'm within communion with God? Yeah, it's interesting how many people I meet in Charlottesville that they seem to think that the organization of the church or the institution of the church necessarily corrupts the authentication of the gospel. And it's almost as if they find these few exceptions. They've been burned by a church once. They see how the church has been corrupted in the past. They use these exceptions to overthrow the rule that being in a church is actually expected, I think, from the New Testament. Now that could be a home church, whatever it is. The New Testament does not know of an individual Christian. You have to have other brothers and sisters. the whole First John sermon or letter, I mean, I think it's more of a sermon, it's assuming you're part of a body that you can fulfill these commands in. So, am I damned? No, but you're a complement I set up for success. You're not on a good trajectory. You're not able to really fulfill the law of Christ. Now, we have people who come regularly and they're as committed as anyone else to this body and they haven't committed formally in membership, we try to take responsibility for them as much as possible. I don't think they're in no way damned obviously, but I just think it's very helpful to make that formal commitment. Why not make those promises and that formal commitment? It's kind of like I want the benefits without the commitment. What about college students or people who are here very temporarily? You know, a college student comes here, maybe doesn't even think about going to church again until a sophomore year, and they think, I'm only here for two more years. Why should they join? Should they join? Are they more of a burden on a local church? Um, or what about people who are here temporarily for like military or something? Yeah, you should ask this question at the, uh, the college lunch time. This is a good question. I think, so we have a fellow who's only going to be here for eight months. And I told him you, you shouldn't join. You know, you, you, we're going to introduce you so people know who you are and we care for you while you're here. But there's this, that's such a short period. Collin, he's, he's, he's older. He's, he's my age or. So like real old. Yeah, man. But college students, I think it's a good way of disciplining themselves to be committed to their local body. Baptists used to have this thing called associate member, that's what I call a sharecropper, where you kind of come in and you enjoy parts of the church, but you don't vote formally. I would really, I would highly recommend college students Because you're learning patterns of life now. To join a church, even if it's only for one year, even if you don't figure out that you should join a church until your junior year, your senior, beginning of your senior year, I think you should. Because I think, right now, you're setting and forming patterns that are going to define who you are and how you function in the future. One thing, if you don't mind me adding... These costumes are not a burden on the body. No, they're not. One thing, if you don't mind me adding, I didn't join the local church I was attending in college until my junior year. And I kind of pushed against it. One, it was Presbyterian, so I was having struggles with that. But also, I was telling one of the elders, like, I don't want to join. It's not, you know, I'm going to leave in a year and a half. And he reminded, or he told me for the first time I'd heard, He goes, we want you to feel like you can call on any one of us that you're a member with at any time. He's like, I don't want you sitting in your fraternity house at 1230 in a life crisis thinking, I can't call anyone local because I'm not a member. And, and now I don't, I don't remember having like a crisis at 1230 or whatever, but I knew that at that point after joining, I could really, join arms with other people and ask them hard questions or rely on them for certain ways. So it's... You joined a Presbyterian church, didn't you? I did, I did. That didn't show up on the resume. I did show up on the resume. Yeah, yeah. No, I joined. I tried to correct it. Just kidding. We'll talk later. Off the air. I'm totally in trouble. Alright, so you're in favor of church membership. I think so, yeah. You're in favor of everyone joining the church. regardless of temporary lifestyles or whatever, unless they're there for like months. Yeah. Um, I mean, even the people who haven't joined, I mean, they're, they formally committed. We're coming here. This is, this is our church. And so, uh, you know, I, I wrestled with how formal we've made, you know, the official membership, but, uh, I just go back and I look at first Corinthians six, if the church votes people out and you vote people in, you have to be able to commit to a body. and to fund that relationship. You know, the New Testament, when the Pentecost came down, you looked and you saw, okay, they're speaking in tongues. I know they're a believer, so I'm going to give myself to them. We just live in a day and age where there's churches everywhere and there's too much of a casual hopping for what I want now, a consumerism. I think it's helpful to say, I'm going to commit to being this body now. I recently read a quote from Eugene Peterson. The best thing that Christians can do for America is to join the church closest to them and shut up. That was the exact word. Shut up. Who is Eugene Peterson? He's a good popular Christian writer. I get what he's saying. The issue there is what if that church isn't like-minded? There's a lot of qualifications I feel there. But there is something there to say less not drive all the way across country for the most church that I think invests in me the best. That's how I think about how we can invest in the church more. Okay. And you want college kids to join too. Absolutely. By the thousands. Bring them in. Well, we only have a certain seating capacity, but yeah. We'll put up speakers outside. All right, last question. Let's talk about sin a little bit more. You said that sin should scare us. Now, do you mean sin in general should scare us or our own personal sin should scare us? And how can that happen and not emotionally oppress us? Sin, well getting back to what I said earlier, sin should scare you when you see where it's going to take you. It's going to create a pattern of thought, behavior, activity in you that's going to take you away from where you should want to be if you're truly a Christian. Pornography is going to destroy your opportunity to have a real relationship with a woman or a man. Thinking about the stock market constantly is going to ruin your opportunity to enjoy money as a gift from God and not be overwhelmed with greed. So, as we look at sin, we should see that it is necessarily destructive. It may seem like fun for a moment, but it is ultimately destructive. Having a beer casually over and over and over again, well, it turns into alcoholism, and it destroys your mind, it destroys your brain pattern, it destroys your love for others. So, sin necessarily is destructive. Now, there's something that's really scary. There's a book that one guy once wrote, and he talks about stealing pears. And he talks about stealing pears just for the joy of stealing pears. Just to do something wrong. That's how sick and twisted the heart is. Just to do something wrong for the thrill of doing something wrong. It just shows how rebellious we are. It shows how far our hearts have been bent the wrong way. What about doing something right just for the sake of doing something right? Yeah, I think we do that as human beings, non-Christians. I think non-Christians actually do that more than maybe Christians do. Just do things right for the sake of being right. Probably for justification reasons. You have to feel better. That's a little bit of that image of God that's still in us. That doesn't mean, total deprivation doesn't mean we can't do anything good. It just means everything we do is tainted by sin and selfishness. Well, Keith, that's all the questions I have or have been asked. Do you have any questions for yourself? Well, the question I will constantly have is, how do you preach? you know, text like that, in a way. This text had a lot of very graphic sin, sexual sin. And, you know, one of my, one of the families said, I don't want my child learning about the birds and the bees from this story. Maybe sung a song, but not this story. And so, it's very sensitive to making sure, you know, I believe every word is breathed and for our benefit and produced by God for us. So, this is something I'm, I don't have an answer for my own question or else it wouldn't be a question. But yeah, just wrestling through how to best present these kinds of texts. Thankfully, this text takes us right to the gospel. Alright, Keith, thanks so much for taking more time to answer our questions. We're glad you're back. Glad you're not on the beach, hanging out, doing nothing. And we will see you soon as you preach through Genesis 39 this coming Sunday.