Q&A John 11

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening again to the Q&A with the pastor. My name is Asher Griffin. I'm sitting down with Pastor Keith Goad. We've taken a couple of weeks away from Q&A, but. The last two weeks of Keith's preaching have all centered around one common theme leading up to Reformation Sunday, which is Christ alone. Keith, last week before Sunday's sermon you talked a lot about Christ's death on the cross, and this week the entire theme of the service was Christ's resurrection on the Sunday that you preached about the theme of Christ alone. Take us through how important it is to not separate Christ's death on the cross from Christ's resurrection from the grave. Yeah, there's no purpose. The resurrection interprets the death, and the death gives purpose to the resurrection. They have to be side by side. Of course, I mentioned the resurrection with the passage in the cross. The reason I broke it up that way is because sometimes Paul will focus on the death and the cross of Christ, and sometimes he'll focus on the resurrection. I really made two shorter sermons together. They made the whole gospel, just a simple meditation on both parts. So when Paul says, preach Christ and crucify, he doesn't say preach Christ and crucify and then his resurrection. Is the resurrection implied in his crucifixion? Or is that kind of reading too much into what he's actually saying? Yeah, I mean as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, right after that, according to scriptures, he has been risen. So the crucifixion He's just another man who died if he didn't rise again. The resurrection is the proof he actually died for sins. Now, how important was it for you to try to preach an entire sermon on just Christ alone? I mean, what was the driving factor behind that, the Solus Christus passage? Yeah, well, it just so happened last year I began being the pastor here on Reformation Sunday, and I thought, you know, I'll start out preaching on Sola Scriptura. And I figured, you know, every year we'll just do a different Sola. I think the church should have occasional doctrinal sermons. That shouldn't be the full diet or the regular diet of the church, but I think it's good to break up like our Genesis series with doctrinal sermons and, well, there's great doctrines in the Sola. There's scripture, there's Christ, there's glory, there's faith. But the reason I did Well, yeah, we could have gone different directions. I could have done the deity of Christ, the person of Christ, the natures of Christ. Since we did boasting in the cross of Christ, I just thought a nice complement to that for Reformation Sunday is a resurrection. And really, I mean, the way I try to package it in the intro is the fact that once you get the resurrection of Christ, everything else just flows right out of that. It's the most important belief. It's the most important doctrine. What's the difference, you said it just very briefly, what's the difference between a doctrinal sermon and an expositional sermon? And even I've heard you talk with other people about there's a difference between contemporary expositional sermons and more classical expositional sermons. Yeah, I mean John MacArthur has defined what expositional preaching is and is going through a book of the Bible very slowly verse by verse. You don't find that to be the pattern. for a Calvin, even a Spurgeon, the Prince of Baptist preachers, you don't find that as a pattern. They would typically take a verse and then do a theological or a spiritual meditation on it, and Edwards does this. Now, they would go through books of the Bible, but not in the same fashion that I'm doing. It's Sunday morning. I like MacArthur's definition of acquisitional, That isn't the only kind of expositional preaching there is. Teaching what scripture says is what's the most important. And so what I want to do is jump off the verse, I am the resurrection of life, Jesus says. And let's flesh out what does it mean that he is a resurrection? Why is that so important and how can we apply it to our lives? And then so a doctrinal type sermon, is that just bringing a lot of theological definitions and meanings, or it seems like you can make an expositional sermon very doctrinal. Yeah, right. You know, it didn't really get technical in terms of definitions and whatnot. I really just looked at five different verses and put together an outline from those five verses taught. Some of them taught the same thing, so the resurrection causes us to persevere in suffering. There's another passage in the resurrection that talks about hope after death. I just looked at a couple passages and meditated upon them and tried to, well, do a systematic doctrine of what do these passages say together. Okay. I won't tell anyone that you disagree with John MacArthur, apparently. Well, I agree. No, the thing is, his preaching became topical, so it was just what the pastor thought, and it wasn't even a doctrinal sermon. It was just how to do something. And there were a number of people who reacted to that and said, tight, hard, just verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter preaching is the only true preaching. Well, I think it's the safest preaching, but I wouldn't say it's the only true preaching because, well, Spurgeon didn't do it. Yeah, okay. Going along with one of your points, you said that Jesus' death and resurrection gives us a new identity. Someone asked me last week to ask you about the prayer life and how our identity changes the way that we pray. Specifically, how would this person instruct their child who is now a believer, how would they pray differently? Or let's say that a parent has two children. One is not a Christian, one is a Christian. Should we pray differently because we believe in Christ's death and resurrection? Yeah, so my daughter, She can come up to you. She likes to talk to you. She likes to talk about you. But she likes to come into your office and let's say she asks you for something. She's just talking to another guy. You come to the house a lot. She knows you. She's familiar with you. But you're not her dad. She knows when she asks me something, there's a whole other level of intimacy and love that she's approaching me with. So, when Adam talked to God, he didn't get to talk to God as a son. Adam was just a most beloved, gifted creature. But we actually get to call God the Father because of Jesus Christ. And so, in Adam, before Christ came, I talked to God as if my daughter was talking to you. Somebody who cares for her, somebody who she can ask good things from. Now I get to talk to God as if Lily talks to me. There's a more intimate personal connection. So if I'm trying to just explain to my child, I would say, do you ask so-and-so the same way you ask your dad? The answer is, of course, no. When I ask my dad, I know he's going to give me good things. I know he's going to have my best interests in mind. I know there's a more deep, intimate love. I think that's the analogy. Because talking to God now is is even better than talking to our earthly fathers. And so that's how that new identity of sons and daughters changes things. Does that make sense? Yeah, so if a non-Christian were to pray, they do not have a faithful dependence on God's interaction and God's answers. The world has basically picked up this idea that it's okay to call God Father because it makes him feel closer, but only in the name of Christ. okay can we truly is God truly our father so only only when we invoke the name of Christ as believers so that we're sons and daughters do we really get to approach him as a father so when the cliche ending to the Christian prayers you know we say these things in Christ's name I mean that's what that ending means it's not just a nice ending but it really it is turning our hearts towards we're not just praying to a God but okay all right you're praying with authority with his privileges. So if I'm trying to train my child up to think like that, I'm going to compare how they would approach me versus somebody else. Yeah, that's really the best idea I have at this stage of the game. Yeah, all right. Well, we may ask you again next week. What does it mean to embrace God's grace? You gave three kind of imperatives in interacting with God. One was to repent of sins. One was to embrace God's grace. The third one was to proclaim God's gospel faithfully. What does it mean to embrace God's grace as something that's not totally tangible? You know, embracing grace means that we allow the cross to speak the true word in our heart that we are forgiven for all sins. So, I think it's easy to embrace guilt. I believe it's easy to embrace bitterness. I believe it's easy to embrace anger. Those are kind of the sinful tendencies. Embracing grace actually takes effort to look at the cross, look at the resurrection, look at my sin in light of them, and embrace the fact that I am forgiven even though I may not feel forgiven. But Christ's word is stronger than my feelings. So, what I mean by embracing grace is to truly believe that I am forgiven because of Jesus Christ. Because it really goes against, it's really counterintuitive sometimes because we can be so overwhelmed with guilt or bitterness or anger. I would assume that kind of leads into, we'll talk about it in just a little bit, but the idea of reminding yourself of Christ's resurrection, embracing God's grace, remembering his gospel. We've said a lot in different classes in the Sunday schools, teaching ourselves the gospel. That'll come up here in a second. You talked about specifically, and you really, a lot of people said that you drove this point home when you talked about, when you asked the question, what is your goal for your children? You kind of compared it to contemporary culture where my goal for my children is for them to be more successful than me. You have children? No, I was speaking and I was representing the fallen people of the world. I see. So within that, what were you aiming to warn parents against within goal making for their children? I mean, there's different kinds of people who do different things with this than police. So there's one group, I could see their children's success as their idol. They want their children to fulfill what they didn't get. I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but the American dream is that your children always make more money than you do. We're supposed to be the first generation that doesn't do that. People seem to be all up in arms about that. As Christians, it shouldn't matter. Will we be the generation that's more godly and more loving? and more focused on the gospel. That's the pressing question. The other group would be, I want my children to have the same great experiences I had. Now, they may have grown up in a completely secular lifestyle where they had many great experiences and you have to ask, does that really congeal with producing and promoting godliness? Whatever those are. So, those are committed to a faithful Christian life There are sacrifices you make for your child. I use the word sacrifices very loosely there in the sense that they're not going to be able to participate in everything that the world does. If you're really committed to being involved in the body, being committed to raising a family with safety and with godliness. So, there's some that are just trying to give their children experiences, some that are trying to help live through their children. Those are the dangers that I foresee and scare me as well. Alright, well, you've made one statement within your sermon that Christianity is about Christ and who he is, not what we've done wrong. Now, I hear that and I go, absolutely. So let me be devil's advocate here. Isn't that kind of just a boring message for you to say over and over again? It's not about what you've done wrong, but it's about what Christ has done to overcome that. Yeah, so the context there is a couple weeks ago I said the reason you deny the cross is because you love your sin, which I think at the most basic level that is what's going on. But you know, given different things that churches go through, things that this church has gone through, people who are not Christians in churches, they can look and see that those who are confessing to be Christians, those who are leaders, they're still sinners, and they still fail, and they still do things that hurt and they're still hurt by others. The point there is that I don't want non-Christians to judge Christ based upon the failure of Christians. The whole point there is that you're judging Christ because of our sin. Whereas, really, we need Christ because of our sin and you need Christ because of your sin. That can never be a boring message in the sense that what we look at is that we're all on this this world, this world program, this movement of sin against God and that we all need Christ to rescue us out of it. Okay, let me ask this. How then do you as a church leader, amongst other church leaders, make sure that people don't look at Christ Because of the success of Christians, so we can judge Christ poorly because of your Lack of love or your discouragement, but how do we not judge Christ based on your success? But on what he's done through you I mean how do you set that up as a leader in the church? Well one I think confessing sin and confessing weaknesses and confessing failures to always remind people This is not of me, and I'm just a sinner that God is using right now And he may not use a minute from now uh... also making sure that uh... well john the baptist i think is the model whatever we do were pointing to christ and so whatever success may look like you know having number of baptisms you know we're giving all glory and praise to god one of the solos we'll probably do next year uh... for god's glory alone uh... so i think it's always praising god and never using ourselves as a positive model i don't Well, I try to keep away from it as much as possible in sermons. I only use myself as a negative model, in the sense that this is what I do sinfully, and I need to repent and trust the God who is good. How tempting is it, not just for everyone, because I'm sure it's tempting for everyone, but you as a sole pastor in a church, to not desire credit when people say, oh, Keith, great sermon, or Keith, he really did well here. You know, the yard looks wonderful. How do you intentionally make sure that that attention is directed towards God's goodness within this church. Are you ready for this? This is how you do it. I remember the resurrection. You know, that was going to lead me up to my sixth question. As Paul commanded Timothy, no matter if things are good or bad, remember the resurrection. It's all about God being good to us and all about us glorifying him. So, that's part of that counseling yourself with the gospel. Okay. So, if somebody says something, oh, it's great that we're doing this now or how great it is You know, last week they had a very encouraging baptismal service. Yeah, but that's God, not me. So you would openly remember the resurrection to them? No. Okay. Well, my last question is going to be, you talked about 2 Timothy 2.8, remember the resurrection. How much should you try to remember the resurrection? And we should remember it in everything. But I've asked before about how should we remind ourselves of the gospel? Is this something that we should do when we wake up in the morning? Should we do this so many times a day? How do we do this at a family meal? to where it doesn't become a religious practice. Or is it just a lifestyle, where you just have to constantly remind yourself? Yeah, immediately as you ask, I remember Gregory of Nazianzus talking, saying, we should think about God more often than we breathe. And the God we're thinking about is the God of the resurrection. So, there you go. So all the time. Well, I mean, I'm a very goal-ender person. I like thinking of what my end is and then how to accomplish it. And so when I define my ends, the resurrection needs to be the influencing marker of what my end is. So is my goal in life to have an easy and comfortable life? Well, that's not a resurrection life. Is my goal to glorify God? No, that's a resurrection life. Is my goal to deny myself? Is my goal to live my life for myself, for others? Those are resurrection goals. And so, as I think about what I do and what the purpose is, the resurrection plays a major part in it. Now, when I fail, that's when I withdraw, because that's where I see my forgiveness. Okay. Now, let me wrap this up with this. Just last month, we baptized nine people. How does that make you feel about the ministry of this church? How does that excite you about the future? And also, how does that remind you of what our job is and what our goal is as disciples of Christ. Yeah, I mean those services are so sweet mainly because of the testimonies that are given by the baptized, you know, baptism candidates and then that picture of baptism. It actually is a nice opportunity for me to sit back and let other people declare the glory of God and what He's done. So it makes me thankful for the strong Christian families that are here, the other godly leaders who are raising up their children, the other godly leaders who are caring for other men and women. Yeah, it's just nothing but a blessing because what they're testifying to really has nothing to do with me. I mean, I might get to be an instrument in it. Thankfully, they're oftentimes thankful for the preaching and the teaching and the leadership. But yeah, it was testifying to something God did. And it was me getting to sit back and watch and listen. So, yeah, it's humbling. It's very humbling to be able to be that person who gets to be involved in those people's lives at that level. How does baptism remind you of the resurrection? Well, when they come out, they get to breathe. That's important. Yeah, baptism to me is that beautiful picture of identifying with it. That's the hard picture of Romans 6. You identify with the resurrection. So as you're coming up, it reminds me that when I die, I will be taken up because I'm identifying with it. So, yeah, hope would be the beautiful part there. Cool. Well, it was a great thing to watch and be a part of, I know, just from in the crowd. What do you got coming up this weekend? What are you preaching on? We are preaching 45, verse 16, through chapter 47. So it's another buckle up and listen to some scripture read. We're going to be reading two and a half chapters. It's Joseph bringing his father to Egypt. More importantly, it's God bringing all of Israel, a microcosm of Israel, 70 people, to Egypt in order to build them up so that he can put them into slavery. All right, well, Keith, thanks so much for answering some of these questions about your last week's sermon. If you are listening and you have any questions from the previous sermon, please either ask one of us or you can email it in to congregation at jpbc.org. Or if you want any more information about the church, make sure you go to the website, jpbc.org. Thanks, Keith.