Ragtown Reformed Forum Episode 1: God-Centered Gordan Runyan: All right, y'all, welcome. We're glad to have you with us. This is our maiden episode of what we're calling the Ragtown Reformed Forum. We're in Tucumcari, New Mexico, which back in the cowboy days was called either Ragtown or Six Shooter Siding. Ragtown is a lot easier to say, so we're going to go with Ragtown Reformed Forum. My name is Gordan Runyan. I'm the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church here in Tucumcari, New Mexico. And from right to left on your radio dial, I'm joined by my music minister, David Morris. How are you doing today, David? David Morris: I am good, sir. Thank you. Gordan Runyan: And also next to him, we have a longtime preacher and pastor, my good friend Tom Miller from First Christian Church here in Tucumcari. Good to see you, Tom. How are you? Tom Miller: It's good to be anywhere at my age, but this is particularly gratifying. John Train: Amen. Gordan Runyan: I won't say that he will be the curmudgeon of the group, but if he does, you should not be shocked. And then on my far left here is the youngest person in the cohort, my deacon at Immanuel, Mr. John Train. How are you, brother? John Train: Howdy. Doing better than I deserve. Gordan Runyan: Better than I deserve. All right, so our plan as we work our way episode by episode, I guess I don't know the right way to say it, but we are using... The book by R. C. Sproul called What Is Reformed Theology? It's not a book review. It's not a book club. We're just kind of generally using the structure of the book as a suggested outline for our discussions. We recommend the book to you, but we're not here to repeat what the book says or anything like that. So we are just here to talk, and we wish you could be here with us. We generally have a lot of fun. We gather together pretty often with coffee and have wide-ranging discussions. And generally nobody leaves injured, so we're looking forward to replicating some of that today. So the question at hand for this episode is the statement that Reformed theology is God-centered. Anybody want to take a stab at what that means? John Train: It means that our perspective starts with our knowledge of God. It's theocentric, not anthropocentric. Instead of starting from man and looking upward toward our Creator, we're starting from Him and then knowing ourselves rightly in light of that. David Morris: Right. Right. And so we have to understand it is Christians are God's—His thoughts from the beginning was that we were to be God-centered. And yet we, here we are. You know, Jesus still had to tell us, If you love me, you will follow my commands. So we know that it's not all that easy to stay God-centered. John Train: Right. It's our natural sinful proclivity to focus on ourselves, right? Gordan Runyan: Right. John Train: We are the center of the universe, not God. Gordan Runyan: We center. John Train: Yeah. Tom Miller: It is incumbent that we are going to make these kind of statements, that we establish what sets us apart. And as I was contemplating that yesterday—well, actually it was just in the evening— the Lord made me sit up in my recliner and pay attention. And I found a scripture that, to me, binds this together and is the foundation of my God-centered faith. God is not a man, that he should lie, true, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he not spoken? And will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good? We establish several things here about who we as Reformed theologians see God. Number one, God is not man. God created man. Man did not create God. And so there we establish immediately God's sovereignty. He is the sovereign creation— excuse me—creator of all his creation, man being the crowning. Creation. Gordan Runyan: So that right there, you're automatically disqualifying all our Mormon brothers, right? John Train: God is not an exalted man. Tom Miller: There are a cult of many kinds, and that is one of them. And in today's theological atmosphere, feelings trumps everything. But in God's real universe, God trumps everything. He has no need to lie. And since He's not the Son of Man, He also doesn't have to repent. And don't throw Genesis 6:6 at me, where it says He repented He made man. It says He was sorry that He put man on the earth. He was apologizing to the earth for us being such poor stewards of what He had entrusted to us. David Morris: I love it. That's good. Tom Miller: So He gave the earth a wash, as we say down home in Kentucky, and reestablished through a man who would be a good steward. So we have established, number one, His sovereignty. And in this, since He cannot repent and has no need to repent, we establish God's holiness. He is sovereign, He is holy, and lastly, He's immutable, which means unchanging. What He has said, He will do. What He has promised. He will bring to pass. And if you are a believer in Jesus Christ and therefore a child of God, it is incumbent that the God who saved us is also the unchanging, immutable, uncapricious God that is going to keep the promises that He has made to us. That is the foundation of my theocentric opinion. Gordan Runyan: Yep, it's very good. John Train: It's thoroughly biblical, right? You know, Sproul brings up the incident with the golden calf, how along with the rest of the pagan nations, Israel wanted a God they fashioned, they controlled, they can localize, right? They're over this God. They fell into the idolatry that is so— we're so ready to just fall headlong into, you know. And so that was man-centered versus God-centered theology, where our God cannot be localized. He cannot be controlled. We can't dictate to Him what He must do. That's His job for us. David Morris: And in that instance, see, they wanted the calves, or that calf of gold. That was something they could hide when they didn't need a God. John Train: That's right. They could put Him away. David Morris: They could put Him away, Gordan Runyan: throw a tarp over. David Morris: And yet when they was ready to do some worship, they could get it out. And what they realized not was that that calf was just about as good as throwing dirt in the air. Tom Miller: That's right. David Morris: It was nothing that calf was going to do for them, and that's why God told Moses, Get yourself down off this mountain and go down there and, you know, get in front of them people, because I'm going to kill them, you know. Well. That's because he understood their situation. Your John Train: people have quickly turned away. David Morris: Your people. That's right. Tom Miller: An unseen but yet omnipotent and sovereign God is not convenient. A God that you can stick in your pocket is convenient, and you have a God you can tote around. And when you don't want to tote him, you can leave him at home, like the lady committing adultery with the next-door neighbor, and her husband is out to work, so she puts a cloth over his photograph so that her conscience cannot zero in on the promises that she has made. We want a God that not only can we make, we want a God we can control. David Morris: That's it. Gordan Runyan: When I'm in trouble, I like knowing that God sees me. When I'm just having fun, I'm hoping that he doesn't see me John Train: right now. Just like in the Psalms, we're trying to convince, the Lord doesn't see. Gordan Runyan: Right. Right. John Train: Does he know what I'm doing? Gordan Runyan: Well, for me, as I was thinking about it, the scripture verse that kept coming to me as I'm thinking about God-centered was just the first phrase in Genesis 1:1, In the beginning, God. For me, that encapsulates the whole thing. John Train: It doesn't start with, In the beginning, man. Man discovered God, or whatever. In the beginning, God. David Morris: Yeah, and if you keep going on, it says, The world was void and without form. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, that's right. David Morris: So where did all this come from if it wasn't God? Because it says, In the beginning, it was God. Gordan Runyan: He stumbled across it somehow. No, he had to make that. Tom Miller: Yeah, and that whole story reaffirms what I've just said about God, man wanting a convenient God. Man sinned, and he discovered he was naked, and he knew that God knew, that God knew, and so he was hiding in the bushes. And God said, Where are you, son? He says, I'm over here in the bushes. What you doing over there, boy? Well, I'm naked. You see, an unseen but yet all-knowing God knows when you're naked and when you're naked. Down south, naked means you got your clothes off and you're up to no good. David Morris: And he also knew right where he was. He didn't have to say a word. God already knew where he was. Gordan Runyan: That's kind of a hint in your Bible reading, right, that when you see God asking a question, it's not because he doesn't know the answer. David Morris: That's Tom Miller: right. Gordan Runyan: He wants you to know the answer. David Morris: That's right. Tom Miller: Or confess it. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, that's right. John Train: Yeah. And so what Sproul says that sets Reformed theology apart from all other theologies. So he says, you know, so the Reformed, if you read our confessions and you read like maybe a Methodist confession, we're pretty much confessing the same things about God. You know, God is a spirit, doesn't have a body. He's eternal, unchanging, omnipotent. We're agreed on those, right? But then Sproul says that what sets Reformed theology apart is our doctrine of God. It's the things we confess about God. Because when we shift to other doctrines like soteriology, we don't depart from what we just said about what we believe who God is. Gordan Runyan: Amen, right? Tom Miller: Yes. John Train: We relentlessly hold on to those things and bring them with us through the rest of the doctrines the Bible teaches. David Morris: But there are some interpretations in theology Tom Miller: of God and who he is. is the same as ours, but God's limited, not permitted. In other words, in some Arminian theologies, God is limited and he cannot be disappointed. He can't be angry. He can't enforce what he has edict. He can only put it out there. It's like taking the permission of a parent away from a child to say, You either eat your dinner or you're going to your room, and by the way, you're going to take that food with you. They want to take his parental prerequisites away from him, because that's really what it is. It's a parental thing. Prerogative. John Train: Prerogative. Yeah. Yeah, so like those who do an Arminian theology, they would confess God is sovereign, but the difference between them and us is they put a little asterisk there, you know, that qualifies that as they talk about other things, particularly about how God saves man. Tom Miller: He only has a prerogative as long as they permit him to do so. David Morris: Right. John Train: Right. David Morris: Well, when you were saying the confirming our belief, you know, that's the first thing that popped into my mind too, was I think it's also because God wants us to confirm or to put Him first in all things. And so I think every time that we confirm our belief, it is encouraging our souls that we can do better, and it helps us through. It helps us to stay grounded to the fact that Christ is all in all. John Train: Yeah, right. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, that's a good point. Reminds me a little bit of the opening chapters of Calvin's Institutes, where he has a little discussion with himself about which should come first, the knowledge of God or the knowledge of man. And he decided to, because you could make a case for either one of those being where you need to start, but I think he did right by starting with God and concluded that as we know more and more about who God is, then it's in that light that we figure out who we are, and really can't do it otherwise. There's no way. No true knowledge of God or of man apart from true knowledge Tom Miller: of God. Gordan Runyan: Yeah. That's why God waited six days to make man, because everything was already made. Man didn't have to do anything, but it's also so man had to understand that he wasn't— he wasn't. Yeah, you just got here, buddy. You just got here. Everything's already done. So you can't claim anything. That's interesting. So I have a couple of questions that I'd like you to toss around if they spur you on to anything. One of the critiques that is sometimes leveled against the God-centered theology is the, well, this is the charge. If you and I met a guy who really believed he was hot stuff and he's better than every other man you ever met and he deserves all the adoration and Devotion of the world. You would think that guy was just the biggest jerk you ever ran into and stuff. But here you Reformed guys are saying that's exactly what God is, that, you know, why does your God demand and seem to have this insatiable need for worship and adoration if your God is self-contained, that he's the self-actualating one? If you met a man who thought he was like that, you'd say he was a terrible person, but this is the God that you want us to worship. John Train: It comes down to the creator-creature relationship. You know, a potter makes a pot. If the pot could speak and it was denying that there was such a thing as a potter, there's something wrong there, David Morris: right? John Train: The potter should expect, hey, you know, I made you. Right. You're here because I brought you into this world. Tom Miller: There has to be a standard. And that starts with the Creator. He is the standard. David Morris: That's right. Tom Miller: Man is not the standard because he is the creature. He is the created being. God is the ascetic being. He is self-existent. So there never was a time he didn't exist, and there never will be a time he doesn't exist. So who else is going to be the standard? Gordan Runyan: Right. Tom Miller: In his universe, because it's his universe, not mine. Gordan Runyan: Right. David Morris: One thing that popped into my mind was—The fact that, see, God is a demanding God, that he wants us to—he wants us to prove our love by following his commands. But he is not the kind of God that's going to stand over you with a baseball bat to make you do it. He gave us free choice. And so we have the free choice to believe that our God is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do. And if we choose not to believe that, that is the same as rejecting our Holy Father, and there will be a penalty at some time. John Train: It's a moral crime. Yes. The reality of our existence, and this is for believers and unbelievers, is we're totally dependent upon God for everything. David Morris: That's right. John Train: So it's right for him to demand our recognition of him. Yes, right. Tom Miller: And whether we like it or not, God does all things in his creation for his glory. When we receive him as the center of all that we are and all that we want to be, he gets the glory. When he saves our scrawny little rear ends from ourselves, he gets the glory. Gordan Runyan: Yeah. It does occur to me that the accusation that, well, if any man acts like that, you'd say he was a bad guy, but you don't mind God acting like that. It's kind of like you were saying, creator-creature distinction. But it really boils down to this: the reason we would think that guy is a bad guy is because none of that that he thinks about himself is actually true. Right. He's not the center. He's not even better than anybody at this table, and it would be wrong for us to heap all sorts of praise and glory on him. God, on the other hand, is that. Why is it wrong if he deserves all the glory? Why is it wrong to give it to him? David Morris: There you go. John Train: The guy praising himself, you know, what does he have that he did not receive? His pride is a denial of God, is what that is. Yeah. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, my point is that God is so perfect and so glorious in himself and before he made anybody else, that the only right answer is for the creature to give him all the glory and the praise. Anything less than that is obviously not taking all the facts into account here, right? This is the being that we're dealing with. Tom Miller: Well, if this puffed up person, he wants all the glory for being puffed up, but yet at the same token people are calling him a jerk. Who created the standard? Who says he's a jerk? By whose standard is he a jerk? Yeah. Gordan Runyan: And I Tom Miller: cannot sin without the law. Gordan Runyan: That's right. Tom Miller: And God is the law. John Train: Otherwise it's just your personal opinion. Tom Miller: Right. John Train: Different strokes for different folks. David Morris: And you have to help me with this verse, but I know in James it's the lust of the eye, the pride of life, Gordan Runyan: lust of the flesh. David Morris: Lust, lust, lust of the flesh. So whenever, and James says that's all bad. Not one part of that is good. So if you think about this puffed up individual, what part does he fit there? He fits lots of pride, lust of the flesh, he fits every one of those. So what makes it, if he fits those things, it's not good. Why should we glorify Him whenever there is a God who walked on this earth? His name was Jesus, and He had no sin, period. And so that's one thing that we've got to keep in mind, that He did it perfectly, and so He does deserve everything we can give Him glory in every way. Gordan Runyan: That's right. Tom Miller: Yes. Gordan Runyan: The other part of my answer was, if you don't buy that, then God really deserves all that. If you're still upset about it, I think the doctrine of the Trinity saved God from the accusation of self-aggrandizement. You know, the Holy Spirit isn't demanding a lot of worship or glory for Himself. He's aiming you at the Father and at the Son. The Son's not even looking for glory for Himself. His intention is that you would worship the Father. The Father is joyfully giving the kingdom to the Son. John Train: Points to the Son. This is my Son. Listen to Him. Gordan Runyan: That's right. So even if you're going to accuse God of being whatever, I don't know, super prideful or narcissistic or whatever, I really think it's the unity and diversity within the Trinity that keeps that charge from sticking. Because there's really no member of the Trinity that's trying to gather glory for Himself. David Morris: I love that statement, unity of the Trinity, or in the Trinity, because it's just like you said, Spirit points to Jesus, Jesus points to God, and God hugs all three of them, or you know what I'm saying. So each one of them is very special in their own... Tom Miller: Christ did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but yet He set aside, as Paul said, veiled His divine prerogatives for the benefit of man. That's not a super prideful. Gordan Runyan: That's like the opposite of narcissism. David Morris: Way, way, way opposite. Gordan Runyan: So why are we God-centered in our theology? Well, it's because the Bible is theocentric, right? He is the focus of the entirety of the revelation. That's right. What He's doing in the world. What His plan is. Tom Miller: Yeah. Yeah, I have a little trick. It's not history; it's His story. Gordan Runyan: Stories. Beginning to end. Yeah. David Morris: It goes back to the cross when Jesus said,' It's finished.' That meant His story was finished, but it didn't stop there at the cross. That story started when the world began, and it will end when the world ends. Tom Miller: Well, now that we've established that God is entirely what we say as Reformers that He is, that He is the center, then when we get together, where and to what do we worship? Is there a centristic aim in our worship today? Gordan Runyan: Oh, that's a good question. There ought to be. Yeah. Because what do you find visiting just a random church? What are you going to find? You're not going to find—you're probably not always going to find a lot of God-centeredness in that worship service. David Morris: Unfortunately, even in the church, it would be pretty hard to find it sometimes. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, that's right. So many people choose a church based on what they think it's giving them or, you know, I go one time to see if I like this church. Well, how did I feel about it? What did it do for me? Tom Miller: Is that the proper measuring stick? No. We as Reformers say no, and there must be a reason why we say that. And I am reminded, the late Dr. MacArthur said, The higher your view of God, the higher your worship. David Morris: Amen. Tom Miller: That was his measuring stick. David Morris: Amen. Right. Gordan Runyan: So how many times have you come home, you're driving home from a church service and tossing it around in your mind what you just experienced and what was going on? How consistent are we with thinking that, you know, as long as we prayed and sang songs that really glorified God, and we prayed decent prayers and we fellowshiped and the Word was preached in a manner that was honoring to the Word and to God, that's a successful worship service, regardless of how I felt when it was happening or anything like that. David Morris: Yeah. Tom Miller: Well, where does feelings come in in the first place? Gordan Runyan: I'm not anti-feeling, but I just— Tom Miller: I'm not anti-feeling either, but I don't think it's a proper measuring stick. David Morris: Oh no, absolutely. Gordan Runyan: It doesn't measure truth, David Morris: absolutely. Gordan Runyan: But everything working, right? I think that feelings should flow. Joy. David Morris: Yeah. See, I think that's exactly right. When your spirit, your mind, and your heart's all in tune with Christ, then that feeling that we get of joy—and guess who it's pointing to? It's not pointing to us, but it's pointing to Christ because it was only through Him that we were able to receive this joy and this wonderful moment. So everything that we do will point back to Him. Tom Miller: I've always wanted anybody that attended my morning worship service to go home and have lunch and say,' Oh yeah, just another hour and we get to go do it again.' John Train: Right. Eagerness. Tom Miller: Right. If we'd done, as Gordan says we've done, then there is a want more. David Morris: I'm sorry, brother. Those days ended in the seventies. John Train: Sure does seem like it. David Morris: It sure seems that way, yes sir. Tom Miller: Well, that may be a perfectly good excuse. John Train: I love it. Come on. I love it. Tom Miller: But someday I'm going to have to stand before the one passing out medals. John Train: Yes, sir. Tom Miller: And I'm not going to kick him because I didn't get that one. John Train: No, that's right. Gordan Runyan: That's right. Well, I'm sitting at a table with a bunch of preachers and teachers. What does it mean to be a God-centered preacher? John Train: He's the prime judge of everything you're doing and teaching, right? You know, he's the one you're answered to, David Morris: and John Train: no one else. Tom Miller: Right. David Morris: Besides, how can you do—how can you do anything good without God in it? If you are not a God-fearing preacher, what kind of words are you saying? They're dead. John Train: Right. A preacher who steps in the pulpit trying to— David Morris: That's right.— John Train: you know, please his audience, and that's his prime motivation. You know, I got to put on a good show. Tom Miller: There you go. That, that just— I want to hitchhike on that. How do we determine that what is a good God-centered sermon, for instance? Well, it's got to be from the Word, doesn't it? David Morris: That's right. So, yep. Tom Miller: You know, Paul's admonition to Timothy, a young preacher, was,‘ Preach the Word.’ David Morris: That's right. Gordan Runyan: Is there a technical way—I'm asking a leading question of you, Pastor— is there a technical way we can know if a particular sermon was God-centered or not, based on its use of the Word? Tom Miller: Well, I say, number one, it has to be textual. And I believe it needs to be expository, because we haven't come— they haven't gathered for my opinion. Gordan Runyan: Right. Tom Miller: They have come together for God's opinion. Yeah. Topical preaching is fine on the fly. But if you're a pastor, you're a shepherd, and you don't take a snack for the flock. David Morris: Yeah. John Train: Now Sproul's favorite, you know, what's wrong with you people? He followed that up with saying, you know, our problem is that we don't know who God is and we don't know who we are. Right. So any sermon should really include that kind of information, right? Right. Gordan Runyan: Is that a mouthful? John Train: Yeah, right. David Morris: That we don't know who God is, and we do not know who we are. And as Tom was quoting earlier, Jesus didn't think it robbery to be equal. And yet Jesus doesn't think it's robbery for us to be called his brother. John Train: That's right. David Morris: So we've got to truly understand who we are to be able to worship fully Christ and all him and his Trinity, because without God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we're nothing. And so we've got to understand who we really are. Gordan Runyan: That would solve a lot of our problems, I'm just guessing. You know, we go through dry seasons in terms of our prayer life or life of prayer and find it difficult to pray. It may just be that we've lost sight of who God is. David Morris: Yeah. Yeah. I hate to spell this word out there so everybody can hear me, but it's L-A-Z-Y. That falls into place a whole lot of times. And if you want to know how I know, you can ask me. Tom Miller: Well, David Morris: I can tell you many times I was too lazy to do something. Tom Miller: If we go back to my initial text, if we need to know who we are, we first have to remember and be cognizant of who God is. And that's why God says to Balak in this passage, Listen to me, you son of Zippor. God is not man. Gordan Runyan: Psalm 50, you know, You thought that I was just like you. I will rebuke you and state the case in order before you. Tom Miller: Yeah. And how about Job, who had the unmitigated gall to tell God he didn't do it right, and he says, Well, where were you when I was creating the world? When did I seek your counsel? David Morris: Yeah. Yeah. He helped Job right out of his skin right there. What? What? Gordan Runyan: Yeah, Job felt like he was a worm for the first three dozen chapters. Yeah, God shows up and proves Tom Miller: it to him. Proves David Morris: it. Yeah, proves it to him. That's right. Gordan Runyan: Well, so that passage that you've highlighted there, Pastor, if God is not a man that he should lie, or a son of man that he should repent, that has implications for our view of the Word of God, the Bible. Tom Miller: Yes. Gordan Runyan: It would be a huge inconsistency, contradiction for somebody to claim—To know God, and yet still believe that the Bible is corrupt or untrustworthy Tom Miller: or... John Train: Yeah, I saw a pastor today, a United Methodist Church pastor, saying there are portions of Scripture that were never true. Oh, and he's a pastor, preaching that to his congregation. Tom Miller: Yeah, well, there's the famous one that built the big church in Orange County, California. Being a Californian, I'm familiar with that. And he wrote a book and said the last thing that modern congregation needs is another Sunday school lesson. Well, he needed several. Gordan Runyan: Christianity 101. Tom Miller: That's right. That's right. Gordan Runyan: So you're saying we shouldn't unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament. Tom Miller: Absolutely not. Gordan Runyan: Absolutely not. John Train: We're whole Bible Christians. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, I like that. Tom Miller: How do I know in the morning that I'm a grown man? I look in the mirror and shave. Irrefutable evidence. David Morris: You know, if you're going to do away with the Old Testament, you might as well just do away with the New Testament too, because you're not going to have sense enough to figure out what he's talking about. Tom Miller: Nor do we really understand God's—and we'll get to this, of course, later in the topics— but how are we going to understand God's consistency if we disconnect the foundation? He not only is not man and doesn't change his mind and keeps his promises. Well then what he said here to Balak and Balaam, he's also saying to you and me. Gordan Runyan: True. Absolutely. John Train: Same God, Old and New Testaments, right? Gordan Runyan: That's right. Tom Miller: And we had a saying in the army, there's always somebody that doesn't get the word. David Morris: Yep, and I bet that was a good excuse too, wasn't it? Tom Miller: That's always the guy somewhere on the road stopped in his vehicle screaming on the radio, Where is everybody? David Morris: What, is this a bombing area? Tom Miller: Yes, that's right. I took the wrong turn at Albuquerque. David Morris: Yeah. Gordan Runyan: Another critique, I don't know if this is the place to do it, stop me if it isn't, but another critique that often gets leveled at the Reformed for supposedly exalting God too highly in our theology is that it winds up putting everything on God, including all the bad things that happen and evil itself. Ultimately, if God's in charge, the critique is, if God's ultimately the source of everything, how can that not include evil? He must be the ultimate cause of evil. John Train: He uses secondary, tertiary causes, so I mean it's hard for us to wrap our minds around the entirety of God's multi-layered decree, you know, if that's what it is. But his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. Tom Miller: Well, I think that that is best explained by one word: forbearance, the forbearance of God. Dr. Sproul in the first chapter of that book talks about occasionally God will let us go ahead and do a wrong thing. Even though, like, he commanded Balaam, you know, not to go, but Gordan Runyan: then he let him go. Then he let him go, and then Tom Miller: he was mad at him because he let him go. That was the forbearance of God. He let him go, but he didn't like it. John Train: Told him not to. Tom Miller: He was consistently unchangeable. David Morris: And also God saw his mind. He saw what was on Balaam's mind whenever he said, Okay, you can go. So that really did frustrate him. Tom Miller: Well, let's take David, okay? David and Bathsheba. David Morris: Hormones, Tom Miller: okay? David Morris: Hormones. Tom Miller: God should have, according to the law of Moses, had David stoned. David Morris: That's right. Tom Miller: Because not only did he commit adultery, he committed murder. David Morris: That's right. Tom Miller: But instead, he sent Nathan. Right. And in God's forbearance, yes, he will let a bad thing, an evil thing, happen in order to not really fix the situation, but drag it back in the line, on down the line, Gordan Runyan: to bring redemption through it. Tom Miller: Right. John Train: Gordan, at the root of your question there is kind of the age-old problem of evil. Gordan Runyan: Sure. John Train: Bahnsen, when he dealt with that, he said, Okay, premise one: God is sovereign. Premise two: evil exists. Conclusion: God has a morally sufficient reason for the existence of evil. David Morris: Right. John Train: That's as far as it goes. David Morris: Yeah. John Train: You know, Calvin talked about, you know, when God's Word makes an end of speaking, so should we. Right. So we have to just rest in that. David Morris: Yeah. John Train: God is good. He has a reason for it. Tom Miller: Yeah, there are times when we don't want to overthink it. Gordan Runyan: Right. John Train: It would be sinful to overthink. Right. Gordan Runyan: And just be speculating. John Train: Right. Tom Miller: And also, it's wrong to underthink it. You know, we become—when we underthink it, then we become promiscuous. John Train: Right. Gordan Runyan: Oh, that's a good word. Tom Miller: We're John Train: to believe all that God's Word reveals, right? Tom Miller: Yeah. Gordan Runyan: That'll preach. It's wrong to underthink. Tom Miller: If you said go wrong to me, you'll be talking like a Southerner too. Gordan Runyan: Well, my vast experience arguing with non-Reformed theologians, one of the things that I eventually realized is when they try to put our God on the hook for being the author of evil, the truth is that there's nothing in their theology that gets God off that hook. Their own theology has God allowing evil that He knew was going to happen, and of course they would defend it and say, Well, He knew it was going to happen, but He had a purpose. So they get to use this overarching purpose as an excuse, but they don't let us use that. And so they don't like God being the ultimate one who makes a decision about whether an evil thing happens or not, but what's your option? They John Train: might just move it down the layer and attribute all evil to the devil as the original cause, right? But then who created the devil? David Morris: Yeah, right. Right. So you said it just right, because about the—they're what they say, but what we know is God made us a promise. He made Israel a promise, Deuteronomy chapter 30, and He's got 13—Thirteen things. It says, If you do this, I'll give you this. If you do this, I'll give you... And it's just a few things, but it's all good. But then from, I believe it's verse 13 to 30, something, 28— yeah, Gordan Runyan: whatever, Deuteronomy 29. David Morris: Yeah, I can't remember. Anyway, it's all the curses. So see, he gave us that promise right there. And you have to understand that that promise was for Israel, but it's also for us today. So when there's something evil happens, there was a precursor to that. In other words, Jesus made a promise: If you follow my commandments, then you will be—this is what's going to happen. But if you reject me, this is what's going to happen. So you have to put those things into that type of perspective, that if evil is in the world, there is a precursor to that. Tom Miller: Those promises are fulfilled in Christ. John Train: That's right. Tom Miller: You can't say God didn't deal with evil because he did. He did. He sent his only begotten Son. John Train: That's right. Tom Miller: All those promises are all wrapped up in him. John Train: That's right. Tom Miller: In his finished work on the cross. So God may, in his permissive will at times, he has allowed evil to blossom, but it is judged in Jesus Christ. It was judged on that cross. Gordan Runyan: Amen. That's right. When people come to me and ask, Well, I just don't know why God doesn't do anything about all the evil, my answer is, So what exactly should God do to you? You know, if you think he should take action against the evil, what do you think he should do to you? How much evil have you done? You want God to act in some kind of one-for-one way. Tom Miller: Well, when someone asks me that question, I say he did. Gordan Runyan: Yeah, exactly. Tom Miller: And you say you have faith in that that he did. Right. Are you not telling me that your faith in Christ is wore out? Because that's what... David Morris: That's true. Tom Miller: It's like, I can resist the gospel. No, you can't. It's irresistible, because Christ did not shed one single drop of his blood in vain. And if God has not dealt with the evil problem in Jesus Christ, then why did Christ die? Gordan Runyan: Exactly. David Morris: That's right. Gordan Runyan: Well, I think that about says it. John Train: Yeah, we pretty much got through the introduction. Gordan Runyan: Good. So what I would like to do, you may not have this on the top of your head right now, so I'll go first. But is there a book in particular, other than the one we're talking about, is there a book in particular that you would recommend to somebody who needs to know these sorts of things or be reminded of them, or is there a scripture text or something? John Train: You mentioned Calvin's Institutes, that it can seem like an arduous task jumping into that. It's a large book. Tom Miller: Yeah. John Train: But it's, you know, get a modern translation of it from Banner of Truth or something. Dive into that. It'll bless you. Tom Miller: Yeah, John Train: put in the work. Tom Miller: If you're a real diligent one, I say you need to get John Gill's The Body of Divinity. Oh, yes. Because there is not another book written in English. That we can read that will be more detailed about who God is and what he does than Gill's Body of Divinity. Now, you have to buy both of them, also the companion book, but I can't recommend anything more, and it's probably available in paperback today. John Train: Yeah. Also, Joel Beeke's Reformed Systematic Theology. It's very devotional. It's not dry and heady. He applies it to everyday life. Tom Miller: Yeah, and it's in normal English. John Train: Yep. Very helpful. Tom Miller: You don't have to have a PhD to understand it. Gordan Runyan: Well, I was just thinking Bible-wise, and I'm thinking about it just because I recently read through it in my own reading, but you hit about Isaiah chapter 41, 42, and read through 55, 56. My goodness, that's a wonderful dozen chapters or so, hard to beat. Yeah. But I was also thinking the book that we did in Sunday school that one time, was it the Attributes of God, John Train: A. W. Pink? Tremendous. David Morris: Yeah, John Train: that'll challenge you. Gordan Runyan: It will. It's a good book. A. W. Tozer has a really concise book on the attributes of God called The Knowledge of the Holy. That's also really impactful if you're not a big reader. John Train: Sproul's The Holiness of God. Oh, man, I read that in one night. I couldn't put it down. Incredible book. Yeah. Gordan Runyan: I haven't read that. Is it— John Train: That really focuses on what we've been talking about today, you know, how God is so exalted above us. Gordan Runyan: Right. Is it an exposition of Isaiah 6? John Train: Yeah, yeah. But all through it is kind of Sproul's conversion story. Gordan Runyan: Oh, okay. John Train: When he was converted to come to know this exalted God. Right. That he hadn't known previously. He had been a Christian, but didn't understand God's sovereignty and otherness. Right. Right. But man, that's an awesome book. Gordan Runyan: Good deal. All right. Do we have anything else to say before we go? We've been at this for a while. We should have mercy on our listeners and shut it down at some point. All right, y'all. Hope you enjoyed this, and we enjoyed it just hanging out. We'll probably wind up doing more after we're done here. But God bless y'all, and look for the next episode coming soon of the Ragtown Reformed Forum. Reformed Theological Forum? John Train: Reformed Forum. Reformed Forum. Concise. Gordan Runyan: All right, very good. God bless y'all. Talk to you later.