The guys discuss parachurch ministries and how they have often contributed to the confusion about what characterizes a strong Christian. Then, we talk more about the necessity of ordinary faithfulness in loving the weak in the church.
Giveaway: “Spurgeon’s Sorrows” by Zack Eswine
FREE EBOOK: theocast.org/primer
Scripture references:
Romans 15:1-4
Galatians 6:1-2
1 Thessalonians 5:14
Ephesians 4:1-3
Hebrews 3:15
John 13:34
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Semper Reformanda Transcripts
Jon Moffitt: Welcome to Semper Reformanda.
Justin Perdue: I’m going to launch us into this by giving a little anecdote from my past with respect to a buddy of mine. It would have been almost 15 years ago that I had this conversation with a friend and he was going here, there, and everywhere doing itinerant ministry with a youth organization. He was speaking regularly. His motivations, I trust, were good and all those things. I remember having a conversation with him where I encouraged him that he would be profited by doing a little bit less of that traveling and speaking stuff, and joining a local church where he can be anchored and rooted, where he can have depth of relationship, where he can encourage others and they can encourage him, and he can just be present. I thought it was going to be better for his Christian life long-term. His response to me —and again, very sincere, and I assume his motivations are good—was basically, “I’m out doing all this really good ministry and I’m out doing all this good stuff. If I tether myself to a local church, all that’s really going to do is slow me down.” And I looked at him and said, “But brother, even if that’s true, even if you joining a local church slowed you down, as you put it, have you ever considered that in God’s plan and in God’s economy, maybe he has set it up in such a way that he would use you to help other people?” We’ve been so conditioned to think that being strong or being mature is all about our own personal strength, our own personal growth, our own personal fruitfulness—however in the world, we define that—rather than looking to the New Testament to see that really what defines success and maturity and strength are these things that are corporate. They have everything to do with how we’re loving our brothers and sisters, how we’re bearing burdens, and how we’re being gentle and compassionate and seeking to restore those who have fallen. You just can’t do that when you’re living life in isolation and you’re in the itinerant speaking circuit and you’re not in a church. How do you do these things?
Jon Moffitt: Even Paul was an itinerant speaker, in a way, and he himself was cared for and was underneath the leadership of elders, was sent out by them, and had multiple men around him that were caring for him and that he was caring for.
Ravi Zacharias is another great example of a man who, I think, for many, many years openly has not been a part of a church underneath the church leadership and cared for. There’s so much that has been said out there and I don’t want to get into that. The one thing I want to say is I think if he was a part of a good local church that was caring for him, that maybe some of these sins and struggles would have been exposed as Galatians 6:1 says, much earlier than this longevity. I know a lot of people questioned his salvation and all that kind of stuff, and that’s not what this is about, but a man who was doing the work of Christ in isolation is just not the design.
Justin Perdue: Yeah, it’s not the design. For people that give their lives to parachurch ministries that are not also in a local church, that’s not good for them. I agree with that completely. Also, what I think is sadly, parachurch ministries have really served to do so often is just distract Christians from what really matters. Because peop
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Intro to Three Uses of the Law (S|R)
Jon and Justin consider how the uses of the law are often collapsed in our day and the resulting fallout of this confusion. In contending …
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Crusade for Glory
“What’s wrong with the church in America?” That’s a question many people are asking today. Underneath that question are a number of …
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Is the Whole Bible Really About Jesus?
Is the whole Bible really about Jesus? Here at Theocast, we believe that it is. Jon and Justin consider the pattern of Jesus and the apostles with regard to how they understood the Bible. The guys consider typology and how it is useful in understanding the Scriptures–and biblicism and how it is not helpful.
Semper Reformanda: Justin talks about the thing that has most impacted his preaching. Jon and Justin then discuss how important it is to see that every promise of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Jesus.
Resources:
Episode: Is Christ-Centered Preaching Dangerous?
“The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant & His Kingdom” by Samuel Renihan
“Preaching Christ in All of Scripture” by Edmond Clowney
“The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament” by Edmond ClowneyFREE Ebook: theocast.org/primer
SUPPORT Theocast: https://theocast.org/give/
https://youtu.be/KvOnPDF1P3M
Podcast Transcript
Justin Perdue: Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are going to answer the question, “Is the whole Bible really about Jesus?” We don’t like to bury the lead here at Theocast, and so our position is that yes, in fact, the whole Bible is about Christ and what he has accomplished on behalf of sinners in order to save us. We’re going to have this conversation from a couple of different perspectives. We’re going to talk about typology and how that works in the Bible. If you don’t even know what typology is, don’t worry, we’re going to define it and try to explain it for you.
We’re also going to talk about Biblicism and how it is unhelpful to understanding the Scriptures accurately. Again, if you don’t know what Biblicism is, stay tuned. We’re going to try to explain it to you and help you see how it relates to this conversation.
We really hope this is an encouraging and life-giving conversation for you, and that is a conversation that will open up the Scriptures and show you how from Genesis to Revelation, Jesus really is the point of it.
The title of the episode is Is the Whole Bible Really About Jesus? What we want to do today is answer that question. But we’re really just pulling the curtain back here and having a conversation about a couple of different things—and I’m going to try to explain briefly what we mean by these terms and then we’ll just kind of take-off and run with this.
We’re having a conversation today about typology and somewhat also about Biblicism. And so just briefly to define those terms for the listener: when we talk about typology, we are talking about the way that God reveals Himself, the way He reveals redemption—in particular, the way He reveals redemption through Christ in Scripture—where there are things that occur earlier on in biblical revelation, referred to as types, that are significant in and of themselves but they point to something that is greater, different, and ultimate. So those greater, different, ultimate fulfillments of the types are often referred to as antitypes. We’re going to talk about examples of some of that today. But if the Bible is read appropriately in a typological way, we are going to see types and shadows and pointers to Jesus all throughout the Old Testament before Christ even shows up on the scene in the New Testament.
If you think about, for example, the writer to the Hebrews and how he explains the fact that the sacrificial system, and so many of the other things that were revealed to Israel in the law, were ultimately about Christ. They were ultimately shadows and pointers to Jesus and the redemption that would be accomplished through him. That is a biblical example of typology. We’re going to talk about some other biblical examples of typology in this episode. So we’re having that conversation abou
