There was the 4th legitimate assassination attempt on President Trump's life. We have a lot of politically aware Christians who listen to Live Free, and I want to keep saying the same thing: politics cannot fix what politics did not break.
You can have outrage at what happened last night, but eventually it's got to turn into outreach. Could there have been someone in the life of these individuals who end up being the harmers when somebody could have been their church community?
Well, hey, Live Free Nation, before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Pointe Church in Dallas, Texas, but the Live Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this, we want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our church online platform. And it's more than just watching a service. There are live hosts in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, Church Online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Pointe. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend. And now enjoy the podcast. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free Podcast. My name is Carlos Erazo and I'm here with Pastor Josh Howerton and Paul Cunningham.
And today we have a special guest, Bishop David Nasser.
Come on, come on back with us.
I've never been called Bishop before. You're the Bishop.
He's back. Come on.
He's back.
Baby, every last time he's on, the episode exploded.
Yes.
And so it was like, we gotta have him back.
He's our Iran expert.
Wow.
Hey, hey, hey, expert.
It's Iran.
Oh, it's Iran. Is it?
It could be whatever you want it to be, Carlos.
Hey, David, you know what?
What would you like for me to be?
English is my second language. That's okay.
Farsi and Mohammedian.
International relations going on right now.
This is awesome. Now you're Cuban.
No, we're even now.
Are you trolling him?
I'm just saying.
No, hold on, hold on, hold on. You're Canadian, right? No, he's making it even. I just thought since we're just throwing out parts of the world and everyone belongs—
I'm from Canada.
Yeah, I just thought we're going that way. You—
he knows what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. That's great, that's great. David, welcome back.
Thank you, buddy.
Hey, today we're gonna have a great episode. We're gonna be talking about different things. Also, Pastor Josh, welcome back from Greece.
Hey man, it's good to be back. Little jet lagged.
How you doing?
It's good to be back. Hey, actually, lemme brag on the pod real quick. In stinking Greece, I'm not joking, I've never felt the Lake Pointers who were with me, we had like 45, 50 Lake Pointers who were doing a Journey of Paul trip and visiting sites from the book of Acts, Acts 16, 17, and 18 primarily. And I think their estimation of our church skyrocketed In Greece, I'm not joking, I would conservatively estimate 20 people stopped us and were like, "Lake Pointe Church, we watch Lake Pointe Church." Wow. So dude, this is no joke. We're on the top of the Acropolis and some of our team's up there and they see there's a Greek street preacher outside of the Acropolis. By the way, he had a great little message.
He did— what did he do?
He did one Savior, two nails, three days. It was a legitimately good gospel-centered Street preacher. It was awesome. Like, love of God was awesome. And he sees the little Lake Pointe lanyard on some of our people, and his accent, he's like, "You Lake Pointe Church, Dallas, Texas?" I don't know how to do a Greek accent.
That's okay.
Lake Pointe Church, Dallas, Texas. They're like, "Yeah, yeah." They said, "Yeah." He said, "I watch your podcast." That's amazing.
It was insane.
Wow.
That's crazy.
It was insane, man.
At Mars Hill?
Yep, right there. So, okay, actually, we'll probably do this more when I get back into Acts and we're teaching. So I didn't know this. Because I had never been to— you've been to Marseille?
Yeah.
I'd never been to Marseille. I didn't know Marseille. So for listeners, Acts 17, Paul, it does a deal at the beginning of Acts 17 where he's looking around Athens and he goes, his spirit was provoked within him because the city was full of idols. So then right after that, he gets accused of quote unquote promoting foreign gods. By the way, here's a little fun fact about— we didn't plan to do this. Here's a little fun fact about that. The reason that would've sent a chill down his spine is because just like a century or two earlier, the major event in Athens was Socrates was forced to drink the hemlock, capital punishment. Why? Because he was accused of promoting foreign gods. So I didn't know in Acts 17, the language there is the exact same language that was used to convict Socrates and get him killed. So then, I have a point to this. So then Paul goes up on Mars Hill and he does the whole deal of, "Hey, men of Athens, you got all these idols here and all this stuff." I didn't know until this trip And this is, I'm the dummy. I didn't know the Areopagus, Mars Hill, is literally at the foot of the Acropolis.
So Paul, have you been? He has not been.
No, I have not.
This is a running creed joke. But he will one day.
He will one day.
He will one day. One day. I didn't know that Mars Hill is literally right at the foot of the Acropolis. So when he's telling them, hey, the city's full of idols, literally he's looking right at the Parthenon. There's 22 either statues or temples to the demonic pagan Greek gods there, and that's why he says that. So there's a bunch of stuff like that on that trip. It's like, bro, I didn't— it all just starts to click.
And then so literally when he says the line, like, "God does not live in temples made by human hands," it's like visuals.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, visuals right here. So then you start to think— so even today, I mean, 2,000 years later, the whole city of Athens revolves around the Parthenon. That's amazing. Like the whole city, is about the Parthenon. So you go back 2,000 years and Paul's telling these dudes, the Areopagus was like the Supreme Court of Athens. He's telling them, "Hey, God's not in those temples made by human hands." Like, you gotta imagine the courage and conviction that that would've taken Paul. I mean, stunning, man.
Well, we're gonna talk about that, how to share our faith in just a second. You're also gonna share a little bit more about your trip to Greece. We're gonna be addressing the pastoral response to President Trump's assassination attempt at the White House Correspondent Dinner. That's crazy, man.
Literally as of the recording of this, episode just happened last night.
Yeah, we're gonna talk about some, uh, different ways to share the gospel. Uh, we have David Nasser here, the expert from Iran. Uh, man, I'm learning a good thing. You see how quickly I fix it?
You did it.
Oh, thank you. It's Cuban accent and my Cuban accent. Sure. Actually, usually it's Mexican, but that's okay. We're gonna—
people will say you're from Costa Rica.
No, no, I'm sorry. Uh, hey, if you're part of the Live Free Nation, if you've never been here, we love to meet you in person. Come hang out. If you ever want to come and you want to ask ChatGPT if your tattoo in Hebrew actually says what you think it says, you can go ahead and do that.
I've received at least 20 messages on social media for people to proofread their Greek and Hebrew tattoos. No kidding.
Come find us. First time guest stands, we got a gift for you also.
I got this tramp stamp.
Oh boy.
Neither of them have that.
Every single week we have a giveaway for, uh, Live Free merch. You can see it right here. You can go ahead and if you're on YouTube or Spotify, comment hat. Is that, is that fun? You like hat?
Yeah.
Okay, comment hat and, uh, we'd love to select.
We want to give away hats, multiple winners. Comment hat.
To find our daily Bible reading plan plus the weekly sermon plus an early release of the Live Free podcast, download the Lake Pointe Church app, text the word app to 20411, or go to Apple or Google Play Store. David Nasser.
Wait, wait, wait.
Oh, you're right.
Can I do one more nugget from Greece? Yeah, you've been right.
I have been.
Yeah.
Did you go to Philippi?
We did.
Yeah.
All right, so this— of everything we saw, this was the thing that was like, oh my gosh, my heart sang. All right, so here's the one, and I'll, I'll do more. We start preaching the book of Acts again in a couple weeks. Trini, will you pull up that one picture that looks like it's just from rural Texas? Okay, so this— seriously, down the road over here, there's nothing Grecian about this picture really. Okay, so of everything we saw at every spot, I'll stop and do a devotional. And so this is— I'd never seen this before. So this is right outside the ruins of ancient Philippi. This is in— if you go to Acts 16, I'm going to read it. This is the likely baptism site of Lydia, who was the seller of purple cloth. She was like total baller, wealthy, probably in the Roman fashion industry. Most Bible scholars assume because of two verses in the book of Philippians that she leveraged her wealth as a gospel patron to fund Paul's ministry. There's two verses in Philippians that make it clear they were a financial backer of his ministry in a way that other churches weren't.
And a lot of people think that was Lydia. So in Acts 16, I'm going to read it real quick and this has a good payoff. Just stick with me. Kind of thing that's like you don't see it if you just read real fast. So Acts 16, it says, and on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside. So notice the details. And we sat down and spoke to a woman named Lydia. Now the reason they're like, hey man, that's legit where Lydia got baptized, is one, it's at ancient Philippi. Number two, it's outside one of the city gates, like the verse said. And number three, there's only one river there. So you connect the dots and it's like, bro, that's— I mean, I just read that verse. You just stepped into the book of Acts when you're standing there and it's Lydia. Okay. But here's what kind of made my eyes sweat when we're standing there. So I start studying these passages. You probably preach this a million times, but I start studying these passages before we go because I don't want these to be trips. I want them to disciple people.
So there's this prayer, they're called the— I want to pronounce it correctly— Birkat HaShakar. There were prayers that Jewish men in the first century would frequently pray. And I'll read it. What they would pray is frequently Jewish men, especially Pharisees like Paul, they would pray three things every morning. It was a series of professions of thanks. And they would pray, ah man, it's going to make my eyes sweat just saying it. Paul very likely grew up and every day he would pray, God, I want to thank you. Then I'm not three things. I'm not a woman, I'm not a slave, and I'm not a Gentile. All right, so he grows up praying these things. Then Paul gets saved earlier in the book of Acts, and he becomes a Spirit-filled church planter. And this little Spirit-filled church planter, former Jewish dude, he walks into Philippi. And if you read Acts 16, 17, 18, there's 3 people that God immediately saves supernaturally under Paul's ministry. He saves— hang on— he saves Lydia, He saves, God saves this, it's a little slave girl that was filled with a demonic spirit of divination. And then number 3, the Philippian jailer.
So let me tell you, this is amazing. Paul grows up his whole life praying, "God, thank you. I'm not a woman. I'm not a slave and I'm not a Gentile." Then he wanders into Philippi and God goes, "You know what, Paul? I'm going to use you to save 3 people right off the bat." a woman, a slave, and a Gentile. So this thing, man, listen, man, is a movement for all people. Wow. Anybody can get in on this thing. So dude, I'm standing there and I'm like an 8-year-old girl. I mean, I just think, man, God's so good.
It was awesome.
That's amazing.
That's awesome, man.
Wow.
Awesome.
Well, I'm sure there's more that you want to share with us.
Oh, there's a ton. We'll save it.
We'll save that. But David, thank you so much for your sermon, man. Thank you for being here with us this weekend.
It's such an honor to be here. What an amazing group of people that have gathered together and call this their home church. Just to be out in the lobby and to meet your people, so many of them on mission, so many of them burdened for their one more. So many of them have come to Christ through the faithfulness of this church body by someone else. I met a young lady who was a former Muslim who had given her life to Christ. Last night and man, she said, "My mom and my dad are not Christians." But then standing right beside her was this sweet elderly couple. And she points to them, they've been your church. She goes, "This is my spiritual mom and dad." And we were just hugging. And I thought, oh, when I think about Lake Pointe, I always think about like my friend Josh Howerton. But really now when I think about Lake Pointe, I'm also gonna think about that sweet couple who just stepped into the life of this, you know, young convert and are like, we got you. God's gonna give you a ton of fathers and mothers. And so it's just been a joy.
It's been life-giving to be here, man. Thanks for trusting me in the pulpit and be able to open God's word.
Thank you for doing it. That's one of the best messages that's been preached while I've been here. That was insane. That was insane. What's funny, it was full circle for me because I tell a story, the first time I ever heard you preach, I was sophomore in college and you did one verse. You went word by word through John 3:16. And then this one, you went word by word. It's John 6, uh, John 6:35. 6:35. And just, just word by word sermon. It was, that was fire. Thank you.
Yeah, man.
Praise hands. Praise hands. Fire, fire, fire.
So David, as we do here in the Live Free Podcast, we tend to ask whoever preaches that weekend, we will be like, hey, what didn't make it to the sermon? So let me ask you what additional things, I'm sure you got more to share from your sermon.
Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously for, for someone who's, who's yet to hear it, and hopefully you'll have time to make it a part of your, uh, schedule this week to go listen to the sermon. Um, it's about that moment where Jesus, uh, Jesus says the undisputable truth about himself. He says, "I am the bread of life. If you come to me, you're not gonna be hungry, you're not gonna be thirsty. I'm gonna shift everything about your identity. It's not that you're not gonna have longings, you're just not gonna be identified by them anymore. I'm gonna be your everything, and then everything else is gonna find its proper place if you make me your greatest obsession." And so I did John 6:35, kind of broke that down a little bit, and it's more than just, "I'm the one true religion." It's more like, I'm everything. I wanna be on the, I wanna be on the throne of your life and not on the top shelf of your life. I want your wife to take a distant second, your kids to take a distant second, your job, your ambitions. If everything else, if I'm your one ride and die, ride or die, if I'm the everything, then everything else will make sense.
And so then I talked about how that happens about a day after Jesus had actually physically given people physical bread.
By the way, I did not know that. I felt so dumb. It was one of those things I was like, I had never connected those dots. Didn't you say 21 hours?
Yeah.
Do you know why they say that?
Well, they believe Jesus feeds the masses. And then in between that, by the way, in between that is then he goes on, he just goes on the boat by himself to a solitude. He goes to be by himself and pray. The disciples, I'm sorry, in between the feeding of the masses and the John 6:35 is the Peter walking on water moment and all that. Pretty traumatic night where the guys just kind of had all that happen with the feeding, then Peter walks on water and all of that. Wake up the next day, they're on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And I know you've been to Israel. Have you been to Israel? I'm sorry. Anyway, so, so if you go to—
he will, he will. Yeah, he will.
Is that the joke? Yeah, the guy who knows the most about it has actually never been.
He knows more than the three of us combined, right?
You know, he knows the most, but he's—
no.
Yeah, uh, come on.
That was well played.
So if you go, you know that And the next day they wake up and the same people that he fed the day before, and you know how you get, you actually are hungrier when you eat a big fat meal? Like the next, your stomach's kind of stretched. They wake up the next day and they're physically hungry again. And that's when they come around the bend. And so they believe by the time they'd had a late afternoon meal to the next morning when they wake up and they find him around lunchtime, it's about 21 hours. So no one knows for sure, but it's the next day. So they come to him and they're looking again for him to meet another moment, and like, hey, we're hungry again physically, feed us again. And that's when Jesus says, man, you must eat of my flesh, drink of my blood. I mean, that's when Jesus just lays the gauntlet down and he says, look, this physical hunger that you have is nothing but an earthly illustration that as the Creator, I made you to make you wake up to the reality of your actual greatest hunger, your eternal hunger, which is this longing for me.
And all the banquets of the world are gonna leave you wanting. It's either gonna be false bread or it's gonna be temporary bread. And it's gonna always leave you unsatisfied. And so only I'm gonna be able to really satisfy you. But the heart of this message was in investigating Jesus was the strategy by which Jesus over and over again went after how he won the one more by figuring out a way, how he won more, W-O-N, the one mores, O-N-E-S, and how he did it. So often was Jesus would find a momentary need and he'd step into that momentary need. And, um, talk about the humility and the tenacity and, and the focus of like, I'm not going to pander to the need, I'm going to position myself to serve. And so Jesus would meet that momentary need so that he would earn the right to speak eternal truth into the life of people. And so that was the heart of the message. And I the one thing I would say that didn't make it in the message is it's never lost on me, honestly, being at your church, bro. It's not lost on me being at one of my very favorite preachers, because you really are.
I'm not just saying that to you just because we're in the same room and sitting on the same side of the table. Like, you are at this moment one of God's anointed voices that he's risen up, and it's all God. But you've been You've been the crooked stick that he's hitting some pretty good licks with right now. And you, but it's not lost on me sitting right beside one of my favorite preachers that the greatest preacher of all time, who is not Josh Howerton, it's not Matt Chandler, it's not Francis Chan, it's not Tim Keller, it's not John Piper, the greatest preacher of all time.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus. I mean, listen, sometimes people like you 'cause they like your content. Jesus had the best content because he made all— the creator.
That's right.
Of all content. Like, in the beginning, before there was a beginning, there was a beginner who began beginning. Before there was creation, there was the uncreated one who created all creation. So like Jesus says, before— in the beginning was, was already, was the word. That's Jesus, the Word made flesh. So the content creator of all creation. To talk about someone who has good content, that's right. The one who owns all content. Like, we're fishing off AI and off our software. Like, tell me something about a fish in the ocean that I can use. Jesus made it.
That's right.
So the guy who had all content, who had perfect timing. You're coming off jet lag. I'm older than you. I came from Tokyo last week. I'm still getting off jet lag. Like Jesus 24/7 has perfect timing. Jesus has 24/7 all content. Sometimes you'll speak and somebody will say, "It felt like you knew exactly what to say in my life, Josh." You know, they'll be sitting on the fourth row and they'll think, "Did somebody hand you a sticky note?" Like about, like all my secret. And you don't know. But Jesus knew on a Sunday morning, Jesus knew every Sunday that they've been through. Jesus knows every Sunday Carlos is ever going. You don't know 5 Sundays from now. Jesus does. So the one who holds all content, all knowledge, all wisdom, it's fair to say Jesus, There'll never be anyone near Jesus as a communicator.
That's right.
Greatest storyteller, parable. You know what I mean? Like, are you kidding me right now? The greatest preacher of all time finds 15,000 people on a mountainside and he doesn't go, somebody with skinny jeans sing 3 Maverick City songs and get me a mic. He doesn't polish a sermon off to them. The greatest preacher of all time finds 15,000 people, —and their most immediate need, not their eternal, their most immediate need is they're hungry. And he goes, "Let's feed them." Mm-hmm.
Wow. Amen.
I'm just telling you, man, I think sometimes preachers, we try to solve everything with a gathering. Yeah, that's right.
You know? That's right.
And we try to mobilize everybody with like, "Give me a mic and let me," you know? And God's going like, just note that like Jesus knew how to communicate and he decided first, to show compassion. That's right. And they're hungry. Let's give them a meal. Let's put our best, let's be hospitable. And then the next day he didn't skirt the issue. So I think some churches are really good at meeting needs, but they never share the gospel. Some churches are really good at sharing the gospel, but they never meet needs. That's good. And Jesus comes in the middle and he's like, why do those things have to contradict one another? That's right. It's actually the way I call it, the tension, not even the tension, the reality of the Great Commission at the same time. Go tell and the great commandment, love well. That's right. Yeah. So how do you do both at the same time? And Jesus models it right there.
Dude, we're going to get to that in a second. I want to talk, because you gave some stuff about, I don't care who you are, man, if you love Jesus, then your heart starts burning for somebody else you love, know Jesus. Yeah. So, and that's what you did in that message. You did that thing at the end of the message where it's like, hey, raise your hand or stand. That just hits different. It starts to hit different when you start following Jesus. I want to get to that in a second and just get real practical. Everybody's got somebody that's close to you but far from God. Okay, how do we, as disciples, how do we help? How do we move the needle? I want to get back to that in a second. You did something at the beginning of that message where you just walked word by word through that verse where it was like you did the I am, and then you did the I am the, which was, as a preacher, I was going, that was Brilliant. That's right. Like, as a preacher, I was like, that's so good.
Um, can I just interrupt you and just say, is it sirloin or wagyu? And here's what I mean by that. And I'm not saying some verses are sirloin. I'm just saying, like, I don't know about you guys, but I roll different. Like, I don't get a lot of wagyu. I get a ton of sirloin. And so when, when I'm at dinner and somebody says wagyu, I don't take big gulps. I don't take big They're giving me 4 ounces. That's gray, dude. They're slicing and calling it carpaccio, which is like, I think carpaccio is Italian for like, you don't get a lot because you can't afford it. So like, if it's wagyu, you savor it. And I just feel like verses sometimes get gobbled up when we need to slow down and go, look, layered inside. So like, before we just read really quick, there's plenty in the eye. And then I feel like I'm fast-forwarding through. I don't know how you feel, but sometimes like you'll do 10 weeks in Luke and people are like, "Why are we going to be in Luke for 10 weeks?" Like, because I'm rushing through it.
I was going to say 10 weeks. If you really wanted to do Luke right, it would take 2 years. I mapped it a couple years ago. It would take 2 years.
Totally, man. Frank Lloyd Wright, he did Galatians in 5 years and felt like he was rushing.
This is a whole— like we could do a whole podcast, just like a Preacher Nerd podcast, but there's paragraph preachers and there's sentence preachers. Like if you go read a Spurgeon sermon. Every Charles Spurgeon sermon is literally either one sentence or one phrase in one sentence, and he does what you did. And then there's paragraph preachers. That's a little more of what I do. There's a lot of guys that— that's what Joby Martin does. Joby Martin's a paragraph preacher. But man, it's really nice. I love when you can sentence preach. It's really nice.
Yeah. So anyway, so that's what we were doing. We were taking I, I am. It was fire. Duh. Yeah. Okay.
So the point you made is that what you did is you hit the I AM statement. And a lot of people don't know this. When you read the book of John, there's like a spine to the book of John. And you alluded to this, that the book of John hangs off 7 I AM statements. And obviously for people who are maybe not as initiated, it's not called the Tetragrammaton. The Tetragrammaton is what gets translated Yahweh.
As Lord. Yeah. As Lord in our translations.
Yep. But the I AM statements, are explicit claims to deity because obviously in the Old Testament when God reveals himself to Moses, hey, what's your name? Tell him I am sent you. I am who I am. And Jesus is very obviously, very obviously. So the reason I want to hit this, let's just do this real quick. We're going to throw it over to ChatGPT for a little Bible nerd thing here. What I want you to do, Paul, real quick is can you give a quick overview? So what Jesus does throughout his ministry is he will explicitly imply his equality with the Father and deity. But what you'll get is because he mostly does implication instead of explication, what you'll get is you get dudes like Bart Ehrman or a lot of guys who are sort of critics of it. And listeners will get this thrown at you. Jesus never claimed to be God. Constantine made that up in 326. You get that stuff. So Nasser alluded to it real quick. Paul, will you just Bible nerd out real quick? Give us a quick overview of Jesus' claims towards deity and then we can chip in.
It's good.
Yeah. 3 broad categories. Jesus said things only God could say. He did things only God could do. And he knew things only God could know.
I've never heard that before.
That's so good. That's fantastic.
And that's why he's the OG Paul. Do that one more time.
That's really good.
Jesus did things only God could do. He said things only God could say, and he knew things only God could know.
I think we're done here. Podcast was great. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Okay, keep going.
And so let's just kind of break these categories and this is, weigh in on things that I leave out. I mean, we could literally be here for hours. Yeah, you could do hours. All the categories, but let's just go a few things that Jesus said. So the most explicit, you were referring to one, was in John 8:58. Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am. But this is where you don't have to always do this. You can read your English translation and get plenty from it. But this is actually where it is helpful a little bit to know the Greek of just what Jesus was saying. And when the people who wrote the Gospel of John were trying to say, John, who wrote the Gospel of John, was trying to say. So in the Greek, it says before Abraham was ego eimi. Is what it would've said in Greek. He is referring to a specific thing that you alluded to, and that is from Exodus, Exodus chapter 4. I've got here what's called the Septuagint. We only have one.
I mean, Nasser might be able to do this, but there's only one guy at the table that I'm aware of that can literally read from his Greek New Testament and then his Septuagint. But explain what the Septuagint is real quick.
Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. So actually we'll get into this in an upcoming episode where we talk about, we converse with Father Mike, not in person, but just via video in terms of what's the Apocrypha. And so you have the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Heroic Testament.
Carlos, you don't read the Septuagint in your free time? No, I do not. Do they have a Cuban translation?
Do they have it in Puerto Rican? They don't.
By the way, if you're listening from Cuba, we love you.
Shout out to all the Cubans joining Live Free, bro.
I'm sure they listen to this podcast.
All right, and so this is from the book of Exodus. This. I almost read it in Greek because you were making fun of me. Do it. Do it. I was going to say you should read it. Kai epen ho theos pros Mauhsen. That is, God spoke to Moses. Look at this, guys. And then it says, legon ego eimi, saying, I am.
And so last week Paul was flexing his tricep. Today he's flexing his language skills over here.
Stop. So it's like right there. I mean, literally. So Jesus is speaking to these religious leaders, says, before Abraham was, I am. And by the way, they immediately want to kill him. And because they know what he's doing, it's because he's referring directly to this where God says to Moses, "I am." And then just after this, because he says, "I am the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham." So when Jesus says, "Before Abraham was, I am," he is directly going back to this and quoting that. Also, you get, like you mentioned another one of these in John 10:30, Jesus says, "The Father and I are one." And he doesn't mean, oh yeah, we're on the same team or we agree on things. Again, when he says this, the people that listen to him immediately want to do what? They want to kill him. They want to stone him because he had committed blasphemy. Lemme give you one more. There's this great thing in the book of John as well, where the disciples are on the boat and they're freaked out and Jesus appears and he says, "It is I, don't be afraid," which is kind of just a weird thing to say, just like listening to it.
What he says in the Greek is, "Ego eimi," "I am, don't be afraid." And he is referencing Psalm 108. So many people miss this. This is Psalm 108:27-30. "Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble." Kind of like when the disciples all of a sudden were in the storm, it says they cried out, "Lord, Lord," you know, kind of a thing. And he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters are quiet and he brought them to their desired haven. And in the context, who is doing this? Yahweh. God himself is doing this. So Jesus says things that only God could say. He also did things only God could do. For example, like I just mentioned, he walked on water. Only God could do that. In Mark 2:5-7, he forgives sins.
Yeah, that's a big one. It's a huge one. This is a big one. Because in the book of Psalms, it says— Explain this real quick. Your average Bible reader will read past this and there's that confusing little phrase like, hey, which is easier to say, get up and walk or to say your sins are forgiven? And your average Bible reader doesn't realize what's happening there. Exactly. So yeah, talk about this real quick.
Yeah. And so even going back to the Psalms, the Psalms that talks about, man, one of the reasons that the Lord Yahweh is amazing is because he is the one who not only heals our diseases, but he does what? He forgives our sins. And so in Mark 2, Jesus is with the paralytic. This is that story where the guys bring him, they lower him down the mat and he just looks at him. And even though he has an immediate felt which by the way, he addresses. He said, "Your sins are forgiven." And the people listening are ticked off like, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" That's literally what the verse says.
Yes. "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" And Jesus is going, "I'm him, bro.
I'm him." And so Jesus, obviously at that point, because he's early in his ministry, and if he says something like that, it's immediately going to come to a head and it's not his time yet. And so he basically says, "Okay." And so then he says, "Well, what is easier, to do that or to forgive?" And so he forgives the guy, but with the implication is like, he never denied that he couldn't forgive. He didn't say, "Oh, my bad. Yeah, only God can forgive." He's like, "No, I'm going to I'm going to meet his immediate physical need, but I also still forgave him of his bigger need that I forgave him of the sin.
I just want to make sure, because that one is significant. It's massive. So for listeners, and I'm not making a joke, I'm just using an analogy. If Carlos punches Paul and Paul's mad about it, and I say to Carlos, I forgive you. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't make it, hey, the sin wasn't against you. That's right. You can't forget. So the implication of Jesus saying, I forgive your sins, the obvious implication is from Psalm 32, Psalm 51, "Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." And Jesus is explicitly claiming there, "Every sin you've ever committed was against me because I'm Yahweh." Exactly.
Another thing, and then I'll move to things that Jesus knew. So these are things that Jesus did that only God could do. He received worship. So in Matthew 14, it says, "Those in the boat worshiped him saying, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'" Now, other places in scripture, people were tempted to worship angels. Or into other worship, other things like that. And immediately what do always angels do? Like, "No, no, no, no. Worship is reserved for God alone." So it says, "Truly you are the Son of God." And it says that they worshiped him. And then this is the next verse. "And when they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret." So what you don't get is Jesus saying, "Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. This is inappropriate. This is inappropriate. Do not worship me." He receives their worship because he is the only one worthy of worship. Some things that Jesus knew that only God could know. He knew the thoughts of religious leaders in the book of Mark. It talks about how he knew their thoughts and he knew what they were thinking.
There is no other example of a prophet in the Bible that had insight into the thoughts of a person, is there?
I can't think of one. Not as they're having it, no. Yeah. Okay. No. And then also in John 1, it says this, talking about a guy named Nathanael, Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit." Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." I see you. And this isn't like, oh, like from 100 yards away. This is literally, he was not there. Only God is everywhere and only God knows all things. So he knows things that only God could know, that he was under this fig tree. And look at Nathanael's response. He answered him, Rabbi, you are the Son of God. So Jesus did things only God could do. He knew things only God could know. And he said things only God could say. I may have left out some things that you thought.
Well, I mean, there's a million of them. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, if there's one that we missed, let's chime it in. Because here's why I'm doing this for listeners. You will 100% get a question either from your one more that's got a legitimate question or from somebody that's like— the biblical term for this type of person is a scoffer, somebody that's trying to— they're doing reverse evangelism on you. You're going to get this. So I'll just chime in a couple more that are my favorite little inceptiony deep cuts. So one of my favorite ones is John 9, where there's the dude that's born blind and it's the whole, "Hey, who sent this guy?" Or his parents. And the guy comes up and Jesus is like, "I'll heal you." And when you read it, the first time you read it, you're like, "What the heck? This is so stinking rude of Jesus. Why is he so rude and nasty?" Because it says that he spits in the ground and makes mud with saliva. Remember? And he puts it on the eye. Dude, I'm gonna get emotional. And he puts it on the eyes of the guy and the guy can see.
And at first you read it and you're like, what the heck, man? But then if you remember, you go back to Genesis 1, and when God the Father, Yahweh, created mankind, he created him out of the dust of the earth. And so Jesus, when he does that, he's going, hey man, let me take some dust and put it on those eyes. And it was a revelation moment where he's putting dirt on this guy's eyes. And it's essentially like that moment in the movie where he turns to the camera and goes, "I have done this before." Wow. Yeah. That was me in Genesis 1 that did this.
It's recreation too. That's it. It's a new creation in Christ. Wow. That's it. The other one.
Wait, you do one. No, man. Go ahead.
This is so good. So you got the other one is that I love. Seriously, we can do this all day. The Bible just, there's layers to this, man. There's levels to this. This. The transfiguration account is the obvious one. His face transformed like lightning. And remember the two dudes that are on the mountain? You got Moses and Elijah. Okay, well, there's two levels to that one. One, both of those guys had encounters with the Father Yahweh on a mountain. Moses encounters God on Sinai. Elijah encounters the Father on Horeb. And so it's like, it's honestly, you're getting this moment where it's like, let's have a reunion. We've met on top of a mountain before and it's Jesus.
But then the other one, dude, this is, I love it so much.
So Moses, to my knowledge, only has two requests in his entire life in Exodus turned down by God. One, remember he goes, hey, show me your glory. And God's like, hey man, I love you. I can't do that. And remember what he says? He says, no man shall see my face. No face. He turns his back to him. No man shall see my face and live. The other request Moses has declined is, man, I really want to enter the promised land. And God's like, man, because of your disobedience, you can't. But then you fast forward. Oh dude, the Bible's so great. But then you fast forward to that moment on the transfiguration account and Moses appears and he's talking with Jesus. His face is transfigured like lightning. And what's Moses seeing? The face of God. And he's in the promised land. Come on. It's just like, it's just like, it's so good, dude.
Well, and I'll show— actually, this could be a good segment. 'Cause now we can— wait, before, one more, one more.
'Cause this is tied to what David preached.
So some people point out as well that in Luke 9, the feeding of the 5,000, it seems to nod to the Good Shepherd in Psalm 23. Mhm. And so I've never heard this. Psalm 23 says, uh, in the original language, Jehovah is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd. Um, in other gospels, Jesus sees the crowd and he— the Bible says he had compassion over them because they're like sheep without a shepherd. In Psalm 23, he says he makes me lie down in green pastures. In Luke, Jesus literally makes them lie down in green pastures. In Psalm 23, it says my cup overflows overflows. In Luke 9, it says 12 baskets of leftovers were picked up. There's an overflow. Wow. In Psalm 23, it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Luke 9 says, all ate and all were satisfied.
Why didn't you tell me this before?
That would have been in the sermon, Carlos.
Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
Jesus is Jehovah.
Come on. I don't give a— because I think this would be a good segue back to, in terms of when we were talking about sharing your faith and just meeting needs, that was a huge part that. I gotta care about my eyes. Yeah. Stories.
Um, okay, can I, can I just say this? Yeah. I'm sorry, as people are hearing this, they're like, they're about to turn the corner and now sales pitch us to have to go and share our faith. And it's not lost on me in the story that Jesus doesn't need the fish and the bread from the little boy. He doesn't have to physically hold fish and bread to do them. Like, he doesn't— like, the only way God You've got to— guys, all you've got is, you know, pork. And so I'm just gonna have to get to multiply pork because you don't have— Jesus could have, but the little boy brings the little bit that he has, insufficient, and he invites him into the story. He gets to be a part. That's right. Of the bigger thing than him. Jesus always did that. You bring water to me, I'll turn it into wine. You bring the insufficient little bit that you got, and I'm inviting you to— so I want, as we start to turn the corner of like, how do you win your friend to the Lord? It's It's not like, "Oh man, now they're going to turn it on me." It's like we get to participate.
We get to be the little boy. Wow.
People miss this detail in Luke. I love it because basically the disciples are like, "Oh, there's all these people." And Jesus is like, "You give them something to eat." Yeah, that's right. He's like, "I want you to be a part." He's like, "I want you to be a part of this." Yeah. The story from Luke, it's just a place that again, just, it shows, I believe, Jesus's divinity, but it also just shows his compassion and meeting of needs. There's a story where he goes into this town, I believe it was Nain. And he's going and there's a funeral procession and it's this woman who has just lost her only son. And she was a widow. And so in this culture, that means she would've been destitute and vulnerable and no way to support herself and could have been taken advantage of. And it says that when Jesus saw her, he had compassion on her, but the Greek literally says his insides turned, his insides turned. He said, "Woman, do not cry," which is, it seems like a very insensitive thing to say. But then he touches out and he puts his hand on the coffin, which in that culture is the big thing here.
In that culture, if you touch a coffin, you're unclean. Oh, wow. Like you're unclean. Never touch that unclean. And yet Jesus reaches his hand out and touches the coffin and he raises the son back up. And it says he gives him back to his mother as a way to take care of her. And yet, and so not only did Jesus have compassion on this woman, but what's interesting is when Jesus did that, he didn't become unclean. He restored life back to something that was dead. That's right. And only God can do that. Again, Jesus can do only things that God can do, and he met that need in that moment.
Those 3 things you just— can, can you just do them one at a time? Just real quick.
Just, just, he did— Jesus said things only God could say. Stop.
Forget the Bible stories. Jesus said to David Nasser, to Carlos, to Josh, Jesus said to me— can you testify to this? He said it to to you in Spanish. She said it to me in Texan. But Jesus said to me only things that God could say. Yeah, that's what's the second one?
Jesus did things only God could do.
I mean, if you're, if you're on a treadmill right now listening to this podcast, did Jesus do things for you that only God could do? Forget everybody else. Amen, dude. This ain't 2,000 years ago on a dusty hill in places that you have not been able to go yet. This is like, this is like Jesus said things to David Nasser that only God could say. Jesus did things for David Nasser that only God could do. And what's the third one?
Jesus knew things only God could know.
I mean, can we personalize? Is that true about him right now in your life?
This guy's got some preaching in him. Yes, he does. He's got some preaching in him.
I mean, I just wanna say like— My goodness. I can testify to that.
Amen. Amen. Let me put a bow on this. And then what I do wanna do is let's get real practical because if you have a spiritual pulse, than you care about people coming to know Jesus. And every one of us, I got people that every time I talk about makes my eyes sweat, I'll pray for them till my— I'll pray for them 50 years till the day I die, wanting them to come to know Jesus. Everybody's got that. So let's get real practical here in a second and just cookies on the bottom shelf. Here's what a normal dude, normal girl can do to move the needle in somebody's life. Let me just put a bow on this. If you're listening to this, you're like, all that stuff's really cool. Okay. But Jesus is God. Are you sure? what I say is, if you zoom out, this is really what the whole book of the Gospel of John is about. And I just want to point this out. There are 7 I AM statements. He already hit it. Ego eimi. That's the same name for God in the Old Testament. There's 7 of them. Obviously in Hebrew language is all about— it's alphanumeric.
Numbers are a big deal. 7 is the number of perfection. So just want to point this out. You have 7 I AM statements. Jesus is very, very clearly going, man, I am the perfection of the character of the Godhead personified in human form. So you just zoom out and you got it right there. Now let's just get real practical. Practical and who— I don't care who starts. Anyone want to start? Actually, Dave, why don't you start? Let's just get real practical cookies on the bottom shelf. Maybe each of us go, I've got everybody's got their go-to move. I've got my go-to move on here's how I help somebody move them from here to here towards Jesus. Let's kind of maybe go, what's your go-to move or a practical tip? Dave, you want to start us? Because you had something really actually super interesting happen at Liberty. Strategy that kind of actually encapsulates something. So you want to do your little thing here? Yeah.
I mean, if you're asking me just the normal day-to-day strategy that I hold is blood of the Lamb, word of our testimony. I don't know if that's what you were asking about, but to me, that's the one-two punch. I mean, you need lost— to do evangelism, you need lost people, you need the good news, and you need a way to present the good news. And so the blood of the Lamb, word of our testimony. So like, to me, it's make sure that you tell your own life story, that it's not always about Bible stories of what happened to them, but like, what happened to me? I can tell you that I know that this is— so share your story. And we all really have one story to tell. Jesus is the hero of all. We all meet at the foot of the same cross. And then make sure you get to the blood of the Lamb. Make sure you share share the good news of the gospel. And when it comes to gospel presentation to me in a conversational sense with somebody, I'm typically trying to just bring them to the reality. The other day I was talking to someone and I'm literally sitting with them on a plane.
So we're kind of side looking at each other and I'm like, "Man," I start with like, "You exist." I'm like, "Do you believe you exist? Like this is not a thought. You're not an emotional gas. You're like a human being and you exist." And he's like, "Yeah." And if he had said no, I'd have pinched them or something. You know, like, "Well, maybe not." Iranian pinching people on a plane is probably different than you pinching someone. But you know, like you exist, like you exist. And so like you start with like, you exist, like, okay. And then you don't have to convince people like you exist and you're a sinner. Like no one had to teach you how to sin. You grew up in this world, born Adamic by nature. Like I like to take people to like take a baby. And those of you who are fathers know, like you don't have to teach your children how to lie. Like, I don't care how sheltered they are. So like, you exist and you exist, the sin that you're committing is just the evidence of who you are. You exist born in this world a sinner.
So get people to understand their depravity. That's good. You know, and get that they exist and they exist unable to save themselves. They exist in need of a Savior. So that you exist and you're a sinner. So however long that takes, it doesn't take a whole lot, by the way, to convince people that they're sinners. And you're not pointing at them and all their sins, you're pointing at yourself and saying like, we've all sinned and fallen short. So you exist. Exist. And then you go, and then like, then you take them like, and then God exists. That part sometimes people go, well, explain it. And, and so you're just like, man, even if they believe in creation, well then, oh, who— you believe in a bang? Okay, well then where did the bang come from? It came from a nucleus. Well, where'd the nucleus come from? It came from, you know, uh, an atom and its nucleus. Well, so then nucleus, the— I don't know, nuh, like you break it down, break it down, break it. Eventually there had to be a causer who caused all things to begin. So, so like, there— can you just— unless you know all things, which would then make you a God, then you have to presume at the very least that it's big enough, it's bigger than me, that all of this was not circumstance.
So, so you exist, and there has to be a God who exists. You exist as sinner, God exists as sinless. And because of that, we've got problem. And the problem is God exists as perfect, you exist as imperfect, and that separates us from God, right? So now you've created the dilemma, which is actually the reality. That's an MRI of where we are. God's real, we're real, and we have a real problem. Boom, sin. Then you go, you can't go to church enough, you can't sing loud enough, you can't write a tithe check big enough, you can't— to remove that barrier. And that's what most religions are. Most religions are, how do I climb, or how do I remove, or how do I work instead of worship? How do I try instead of trust? How do I, you know, earn instead of yearn? You know, all these things that we say. So God exists, you exist, sin exists. Sin separates us from God. And then you go, and then God so loves you that he sends one way— he sends his Son. Every other religion in the world is man climbing up and trying to figure out how to remove the barrier on its own.
God is actually the matter, God come down, Emmanuel, God with us. He comes down and Jesus comes and lives the perfect life and then dies a sinner's death on our behalf. And so I like to really simplify it. Like, you can take someone who takes the word of God as valid to the Roman road, but that if they don't believe in the source, that God's word is inerrant, then how far can you go with them if you're taking them to the Roman road and they don't believe in the road? You know, but to me, I like someone who's investigating Jesus to kind of come down to the reality of like, you're real, God is real, sin is real. It's a really big problem. And the Bible actually says the problem isn't that you gotta clean up. Problem is you're dead. Yeah. And you need resurrection. And then I like to show them that's how God made one way, his son. And then that's when I began to explain the gospel. And so usually that's a fun conversation because you're breaking it down and you're actually asking them questions. You're giving them giving them pieces of it one bite at a time.
And so again, and then don't forget, it's the blood of the Lamb, which is the gospel that I'm just sharing there, but it's the word of your testimony. Then you testify to it in your own life. And so that's the formula I like to use. Some people use a beaded bracelet. Some people use a track that predictably opens up into a cross. All of those work. There is no wrong method, but the truth of the matter is you testify to it in your own life, 'cause no one can ever discount the fact that, This is what God did in Carlos's life, in Paul's life, in my life. And then you bring in the gospel. You share about a Jesus who lived a perfect life. He who knew no sin that became sin so that you could become the righteousness of God. Yeah. So that's the way I normally share the gospel with people.
Well, hey, Lake Pointe family, Baptism Weekend here at Lake Pointe is coming up on May 2nd and 3rd. And if you're part of our church family, family here in any of our DFW physical locations and you have not yet taken that step of baptism, hey, we would love to invite you to do so. Text the word LIFE to 20411 to sign up today. And by the way, if you're not within driving distance of any of our physical locations, we would love to encourage you to get plugged into a local Bible-believing, Jesus-loving church and take that step of baptism with a local community as well. Also, you're watching Welcome to join us for church online to celebrate those getting baptized here at Lake Pointe on May 2nd and 3rd as well. And now back to the podcast. David, how have you applied that framework to literally like some of the relationships you've had? You, you, some people might not know this, but you've had a lot of relationships, high profile, high influence, um, people like Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Bernie Sanders. Uh, how have you applied that framework to, you know, those relationships?
Yeah. Well, first of all, I didn't always do it right. And you're talking about I was talking about my old job at Liberty University when I would host convocation. It was an interesting job because convocation, the word convocation means to convene, would bring people together. And convocation was a gathering of our student body at Liberty, but it wasn't chapel. If it's a chapel, it's always a pulpit. And we're always bringing in the Josh Howartons of the world, which we brought in, by the way, and our students loved. But when Josh is there as a guest speaker, for us, guest preacher for us. It's a pulpit because he's preaching. By the way, we are violently guarding who we put up in the pulpit, which is why I don't take lightly that you would trust me in yours today, Josh. You know that— I don't know, it's God's pulpit, but you know what I mean. So that's a pulpit, and so that's different. But there were days when we're convening and it was actually a platform, not a pulpit. And what we wanted to do was we wanted to bring in people that didn't share our faith that we could actually learn from.
I wanted to build the immune system of our students, spiritual immune system of our students, by platforming people we didn't agree with. Not just when it came to the matters of faith, but matters of politics, matters of life, matters of theology, philosophy, sociology. I wanted to bring in people to let them learn from people that like, hey, he's got 4 points. I adamantly disagree with one. "Kind of don't know about the second and agree with two." Great. Jordan Petersen. Jordan Petersen.
Jordan Petersen. Exactly.
Something like that. So like when we brought in Dr. Petersen, it was an interesting moment. Like I remember I really admired what he was doing. He had become a prominent voice at that moment. And his book was the best-selling book in the world. Like Michelle Obama's book was number one. His book was number two. Wow. And so that moment, like everyone was reading his book. It was, a lot of our men were reading his book. And so we were hearing from our students, we wanna, and so, We had two things in mind. Number one, I thought he has things to say that we wanna learn from. Number two, he doesn't share our faith and I cannot wait for him to get the best of Liberty. And the best of Liberty was not the way we did hospitality or the way we took care of tiny little details. Those things were fine. It was our students. We had lovely students. Like I couldn't wait for him to be— that guy was going to places where literally people were taking bricks, Paul, throwing them through the stained glass window at Harvard to try to silence him for speaking.
So everywhere he was going, he was meeting hostility, hostility, hostility, hostility. And I was like, I can't wait for him to come and be around hospitality.
So you were like leveraging those moments as evangelism for those guys, bro?
Like big time. The week, the week he was coming, our students knew whenever I pulled up a stool, like, oh, we're about to turn the camera off. So I remember like, we get done with— I don't know who the combo guest was that day, but like everybody, they go, hey, one more. And they'd see it. It was almost like Pavlov's, like, they'd be like, he's got the stool, he's having a heart to heart. And so I'd pull the stool and they knew to turn the cameras off. And our students knew like, hey, 99% of you with me, you 99%, hold the 1% accountable. Don't get your phones out and record. And I would say, hey, and I remember telling our students, we have Dr. Jordan Peterson coming next week. This man's either gonna be the C.S. Lewis or the Nietzsche of our generation. This guy's seeking. He's a deep thinker. I just want you to know how we hold ourselves our witness on this is gonna be pivotal for us. And so just remember we got company. You know when mom and dad tell you you got company? You know, like you just like, and they're not asking you to be fake.
They're just asking you to like, hey, they're valuable. So treat them with your best, put your best forward. So then by the time, so then Dr. Peterson comes, by the way, he lets us know last second his mom's coming, which was awesome. Wow, that's amazing. So his mom don't wanna ever come. So all of a sudden we're not getting this highbrow academic demonic. We're getting who she calls Jordy. That's awesome. And he's saying big words at dinner and she's like, Jordy, don't say 3-syllable words. It's awesome. Amazing. And he's just hanging out. He only eats red meat. So like, we're like, hey, if you want to come hang. So I, I had 3 meals with me. All 3 were only red meat.
My wife does that.
Yeah. And, uh, and so, so he comes. Oh yeah, is this him? Look at that demonic look. Look at that.
Steak. Come on, bro. That's tomahawk.
That's a tomahawk steak. And they told us, by the way, his booking agent said, uh, they said, hey, please don't put him in a weird position. Don't ask him to come eat with you because he's on a strict diet and stuff. And I was like, of course. But we're sitting there and we're cutting up, you know, I'm picking him up. And, uh, and as we're, as we're driving, I mean, we're getting to the, to our, to our venue, you know, the night before, uh, uh, we're cutting up And I can tell like he's kind of actually, he's not being polite. He's into the conversation. His mom is into the conversation. I think honestly, his mom being there helped us get warmer quicker. And then she goes, I'm hungry or something like that. And I said, hey, hey, I said, Dr. P, I know you're supposed to say no. I'm not even supposed to ask you, but I just want to tell you I've got 3 fat Delmonicos. Like they're yabba dabba doo. He goes, what do you mean? I said, they're like Flintstones. They got that bone sticking out. I said, they are from an organic place.
Organic farm. Like, no one's touched them. And so I know you like it clean, sir. I said, there's no salt on it, there's no pepper. You can do it. I said, if you want to come to the house, we'll just grill a steak and we won't go long.
And was that the house that I came up? Yeah. Okay, that's awesome.
And so I was like, but no pressure at all because I know you probably got your own food. And he was like, okay. So he came for an hour, he stayed for 3 and a half. Wow. And by the way, then we're just like, most of it isn't philosophy and we're We're just cutting up and we're talking life. And he's asking me, by the way, he's asking me like, who are you? Because I'm weird. And I'm telling them my story, you know, and we're sharing— I'm telling them the gospel and we're talking about other guests that have come and he's talking about stuff.
So, um, this is like super effective. This is evangelism right here.
Yeah, we're just hanging. Yeah. By the way, can I just brag on my team? I wasn't going to tell you this part, but, um, I'm also stalling a little bit because we didn't know his mom was coming. Coming. Okay. But now we found out his mom's coming last second. So, um, while he's at dinner— yeah, okay, while he's at dinner, uh, our team was so good at hospitality. Hospitality is love for the stranger.
It's the best. Uh, I've spoken a lot of great places that have been amazing. Nobody's ever topped what y'all did when I came and spoke at Liberty. Yeah.
And when you say y'all, it's them, not me. I was just— I was getting credit a lot of time for our our team. This was them. They, they've— good hospitality sometimes borders on stalking. They're just Googling like Jordan Peterson's mother, da da da. They find out that she had said in an article, like, now that your son is like a millionaire because he's written a book that 12 million people have purchased, and she had mentioned maybe he'll buy me an Hermès scarf. Well, we are— listen, we are so good. We're in Lynchburg. There's like 2 RVs and a TJ Maxx. There ain't no Hermès, you Hilarious. So while we're eating dinner and we're stalling, one per— they have called someone in DC who is driven to Tyson's Corner, who is FaceTiming and picking out a tie and a scarf from Hermès. That's incredible. They're buying it. Okay. They're driving halfway down to Charlottesville while another one of my team is driving up halfway to Charlottesville. They meet, they're driving back. I'm getting texts. Like 13 minutes away, 14 minutes away. By the time they ended up in their room, there's an Hermès scarf sitting by his face.
Oh, come on, man. And that, I'm not talking about being bougie. I'm talking about being intentional. Yeah, that's right. So the next morning, he, when he came up the elevator, you know what he said to me? It's one of the greatest compliments. You got him. Huh? You got him. Elevator door opens up. His mom's wearing her scarf. He's wearing the tie. We kind And he goes, "How did you know?" I go, "What do you mean?" He goes, "How did you know my mom like—" See, it's the stuff that's on your contract, but you went on the stuff that's not on your contract. You went on like, "Your mom matters to you. She matters to us." And it wasn't about the expensive scarf. It was about the fact that we valued the opportunity to win the right to make him feel at home. And sometimes it's not a scarf. Sometimes it's actually the opposite. That like spending a lot of money can make somebody feel distant. But this one was like, this was fun. And our team was nerding out on it. When she goes, "How did you know?" Honestly, the answer was, I didn't know, our team knew.
But they thought, so then we're already like warmed up in it. Well, we're sitting on stage, we're doing the Q&A and I'm trying to talk to him about these things. But again, he's not a believer. He's using different kind of language than us. You know, he talks, he calls the supernatural, the psychedelic, for example, you know, the psychedelic. And I'm like, what do you mean? The things that are unexplained. And so we're having this dialog. And while we're having this talk, Josh, this young man with pink hair, college-age student.
This is while he's on stage?
He's on stage. People can Google it. It's at like 10 million hits, you know, the video. I'm listening to him in the Q&A. So I'm looking this way. Dr. Peterson's here. A couple other are on our Q&A panel. And I'm looking and I see this, I see this man coming, walking, this young man walking down the steps. And we have 12,000 people in the room and he's got hot pink hair. And the next thing you know, this guy jumps on stage. I'm looking at it right now. And when he jumps on stage, I just go towards him and I'm like, what just happened? And in my mind I thought he had something behind his hand. So I thought, is it a gun? What is it? So I thought, I get into protect mode. I've got to protect our students. And he jumps on stage and he starts screaming, "I need help, I need help," which freaks me out even more. Then I see that it's what he's got on in his hand is actually a phone. He's dialed 911 already. And it's— so I thought, does he have a bomb? Does he have— you know, just you're uncertain.
And he's freaking out. Well, so the next thing you know, you realize like he's in this moment, this young man just is— his methodology is horrible. But he's actually honest enough, he's crying out for help. Ah, yeah. And he wasn't even a Liberty student. He had just come to the room 'cause he loved Jordan Peterson. And he jumps on stage and he's just crying out for help. Well, anyway, so then we get him off stage. I'm telling the security, "You do not take this guy to the police station. Take him to the hospital. Like, this guy's not trying to harm people. He's crying out for help." And we get to that moment and everything. But when I was praying for him on stage, I looked to my left and Dr. Peterson had gotten out of his seat and he was standing there and he was weeping. And so sometimes I'm telling you that story to say sometimes God will use, God will use a trial. God will use trauma to fast forward testimony. That's right. So my goal was we're gonna get there. We're gonna have a good conversation. We're gonna inch forward. I hope that in years to come, I'll be able to have a relationship with him and our students can talk to him about the Lord.
But buddy, all that got incubated in a greenhouse called some guy just jumped on stage. Next thing you know, like, we are like— and then at lunch we are having a gospel, literally on stage. We escort that young man off stage and everything. I sit down beside him and he wasn't in my Q&As, and I said, Dr. Peterson, I need to ask you, what do I tell this young man? Like, he does— I don't think he needs any more rules. That's the name of his book. Nice. I think he needs the ruler. Wow, that's great, dude. And he word salad through that. I mean, even though he's amazing, I'm sure he made sense above my grade level and everything But there's moments where like, dude, you developing with somebody for 3 years, but then all of a sudden the doctor tells them the bump is back. They've got cancer and they're coming to you. You thought it'll take 2 years to get there and they're like, this is bigger than me. You're the only Christian I know. Wow.
So here's the thing, like when I listen to your story, you know, we need a, we gotta, this guy's gotta preach. We gotta move on mentally. So what the big idea there is like when I listen to that story, he left I was gone, nobody treated me better than the Christians. Yeah. Yes.
But bigger than that, I didn't have on my docket that we're gonna have deep gospel conversations. I was gonna naturally go at the pace of the relationship. That's right. But the relationship, you're forged by fire. All of a sudden we're like, oh, and then I'm like, well, I got the window now. I didn't think I was gonna get a lane. Now I got a lane. So then lunch became about gospel. About Jesus.
Amazing. So I'll do, if I'm giving my, here's my go-to move and then we can round robin. And then if you want to do the Bernie thing, I'd love to. We can do that real fast. So my go-to move, the same thing I did this week on the plane is you go, here's just to help people remember, you go 3 questions deep to find out how you can pray for them and then usually they're going to ask you something. So I do the same thing every single time. Did it on the plane this week with a guy named Scott next to me. Is we just start talking and it's get 3 questions deep. We live in a culture where everybody stays surface level. How you doing? Good. That's it. My goal is go 3 questions deep. How you doing? Good. Oh man, tell me what's going on that makes you say that. And then like, okay, so now I'm 2 questions deep. Well man, I said good because like this guy this week, he was traveling back from a ski trip. I think it was in Austria or something like that. So I got this thing going back with my son.
I don't want to do details too much In case he figured out who I was and listens. Got the thing going with my son and I got to give one of my sons good news and one of my sons bad news. Oh man, do you mind me asking? Now I'm 3 questions deep. Oh dude, I can tell this matters to you. Do you mind me asking what's the bad news you got to give your son? Do you mind me asking? And now all of a sudden he gets to something where his eyes start sweating. Now I'm 3 questions deep. And when somebody gets to emotion, the reason God puts emotion in you is to put you in motion. So when he gets to the spot where now there's at least a little bit of emotion, now I've got my window and I always do the same thing. Hey dude, this may sound weird. I'm a pastor. Hey man, Pastor, do you mind if I pray for you? Or I'll just say, man, I'm going to be praying for that. And here's what I don't always get to the spot where I'm explaining the gospel in that conversation, but what I'm trying to do is move them from maybe they're a -6, I got them to a -5.
They're going to leave that going, man, that Christian was a thoughtful person. He cared about me and he's praying for me. And then this is a little cherry on top. I started doing this recently. Who did I get this from? I can't remember where I got it from. Oh, I got it from R.T. Kendall. I got this from R.T. Kendall. And he told me this and I added it to my little thing. So after I pray for 'em or I tell 'em I'm gonna pray for 'em, I'll say something like this. I did this to this guy on the plane. I was like, hey man, I feel like sometimes, I don't know why God does this with me, he'll put me in a place to talk to somebody at a pivotal time in their life. I've just seen he does it a lot. And I got this from R.T. Kendall. If anything happens in your life in the next few days, ways that confirm for you something that I'm praying for or the work of God in your life, you need to know that the God of Jesus Christ did this for you and you need to take that as confirmation from the Lord.
That's amazing.
And it's almost like you're planting this little time bomb. No, 100%. And then from there, I'm just trusting the sovereignty of God is going to do what he does.
That's right. And he does. How can God be like, oh, I'm not going to do anything about that? He's for sure will just get in there and do whatever he needs to do.
But what's so powerful there is all of what you just said is you're sitting down and you're actually like a high-level mega church pastor podcast. Never told that. But you're not trying to be interesting. No, no, you're being interested. Yeah, yeah. And so instead of trying to be impressive, you're trying to make an impression.
I'm about you. I'm interested. Tell me about you.
What's going on with you? You're curious. Curiosity. And it's amazing how people will quickly open up to you. Wide open.
Yep. Yeah, you guys got go-to moves?
I got a quick one. I mean, mine's very simple. I've learned more and more whenever I'm having one of those potential opportunities, whenever I'm potentially going to share my faith with somebody, I just pray. And I'll pray. I've learned that people are not products. And sometimes what I used to think, if I'm gonna— if I have like my strategy 1, 2, and 3, I'm just gonna figure out which one to apply. You know, sometimes people are in a different spot. I just don't know them. I, uh, my— I had a mechanic come here, meet me at the parking lot, uh, like a month ago. Oil for my car. And, and I just had that sense, man, I need to share the gospel with this guy. And, but, and so I'm praying, I'm like, God, how? I just don't want to force it. I want to be awkward. I just, just, if it works, it works. Yeah. And, uh, again, just one prayer, God help me, I want to, I want to do this. And so literally see his, uh, he has a cross tattoo. Immediately the Holy Spirit is like, that's it. Uh, hey bro, I like your tattoo.
Thanks. Uh, are you a Christian? Nah, I'm not. I just, I just like the cross. Oh, I was like, you know, how come? Tell me more about that. Oh, well, da da da da da. We go, and back to what you said, Josh, about confirming. You know, I'm asking him, I was like, oh, so, you know, having those conversations about his faith. And he said, man, that's funny that you're asking me this, 'cause literally I have not been to church in a long time. I'm in a church parking lot right now. My wife this week told me I need to consider coming back to church. And here you are asking me this conversation about this. And it's exactly what you just said.
So this John Wesley had this, he called it the doctrine of prevenient grace. Provenient grace where John Wesley, I think he pulled it out of Acts 8, Ethiopian eunuch, where he said, hey man, what will force multiply your evangelism is if you begin to believe—provenient grace means to go before. And he was like, if you start believing that every person you talk to, God has been at work in their lives before that moment to prepare them for their encounter with you, your evangelism will radically change. Yeah, I love that. That what you just did, that's provident grace.
My job is not to— becomes a divine appointment. That's right. When you believe it that way.
That's right.
Exactly right.
And I learned this from you. My job is not necessarily to close the deal right there. My job is to do whatever I can to help you move in the right direction towards Jesus.
100%. Paul, you gotta go too. Really, it's really just a very little emotional— you're still talking about Trump assassination.
It's a variation. And then I can lead into the connected dot to something you said that was so great in terms of how you approach people, but I'll get there in a second, which is just learning to ask good questions. It's really what you said, really in essence what you which is just learning to ask good questions. Some of it, it can just be about their life. And so if you're building relationships with people, it's just, if I'm at the ball field with someone and we're all at the same place 2 or 3 times a week, it's me asking like, "Hey, I can ask how's life going?" That's very generic. That's like, "Hey, how's your family doing?" And if they mention something, then you get 2 or 3 layers deep to what you're talking about. But then at some point when you get to beliefs, especially around God and things like that, or even around things like politics, you don't want to ask either with these words or with this tone, "How could you believe that?" I don't believe that. That's going to shut it down real fast. Instead, you want to be more inquisitive and say, oh, why do you believe that?
And then keep asking them. There's a great book on this, Greg, I can never get his last name right, Koukl or Koukl, K-O-U-K-L. He wrote a book called Tactics. Cool. See, that's why I can't get it right. It's just like silent K apparently. Anyways, he wrote—
I could be wrong. Go ahead.
His whole thing is basically it's learning to ask good questions that you don't have to have all the answers. It's actually learning to ask good questions of them. And so it's like, oh yeah, why do you believe that? And then doing follow-ups. And what you will learn is a lot of times people they don't even know why they have the perspective they have. It's just they've adopted it for whatever reason. So learning to ask good questions is one of my go-tos, cuz that way I'm not having to do the heavy lifting of trying to convince them of something. I might actually help lead them to convince them that they don't even believe what they say they believe kind of a thing. But to connect it up to what you said, David, what I love is you started with, hey, here is kind of my go-to for sharing the gospel and then using my testimony as well. But then to connect the dots, then when you shared about what you did with Jordan Peterson, and there's also, you told me a story about Bernie Sanders. That's about the posture. That's about saying, "Hey, I'm not coming in to try to win." So you can approach conversations like these, like I'm coming in to try to win and convince you I'm right and you're wrong.
Instead, what asking questions does, doing the approach that you did and Austin approach you did, you're trying to win them over. And that's best gonna happen when you treat 'em with hospitality and when you learn to ask good questions instead of trying to win an argument.
And in asking those questions, the truth of it is, you actually have things to learn from them. There's something really powerful about the guy you sit by on the plane who's like a real estate guy or the guy who's the mechanic guy or the guy who's the— they actually have things to teach you. You actually, when you ask questions and put them in the authority seat, like I'm the student, you got something to teach me. Like, because I genuinely like don't know as much about this as you do, Dr. Peterson, or you do, Senator, or you do. Opens the heart. Yeah, and actually puts them in the place where a lot of times we go to do missions and we're the ones doing the serving. Sometimes you can do missions with the people that, that like, you get the plumber to come and he's, he's, he doesn't know the Lord, but he's the, he's actually the expert plumber. Yes. So the first 10 questions are actually you asking him questions. Now, how do we plumb this? And how do we serve this? Question number 11 is, now, do you know the Lord? But for 10 moments, he's, he's been the authority.
That's So then he doesn't feel like you're a know-it-all, 'cause you don't know it all. Exactly. And so there's something beautiful about like asking questions simply because they actually have better answers, which then opens it up for you to be able to ask gospel questions because you might be the one who actually has the bigger arrow to point to the gospel.
That's great. That's great. Pastor Josh, you got a word on assassination attempt?
Oh yeah. All right. Hard emotional. Hard left. Let's do this. So as the, Yeah. First of all, I'll just say this. These guys have no idea what I'm going to say, and especially this guy. I never want to put somebody in a position where they're on the hook for the dumb thing I'm going to say. So that's a quick preface. So as the recording this podcast, it was 16 hours ago or so, there was the 4th legitimate assassination attempt on President Trump's life. There's 2 things that I honestly do think that we need to take away from this. And one of them, doctors call it the difference between a presenting cause and a root disease. Presenting cause, root disease. So let me hit this real quick and then we can— you guys can— however you want to disagree with me, let's do it. So for those who don't know, go ahead and pull up that first pic, Trinity. So this last night, my phone started blowing up. This is the moment at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that the shooter dude, Caltech grad, assembles a rifle in the lobby, if I understand correctly, and just starts— there's video now where he just bolts, 40-yard dashes into the room attempting to fire on people.
Now, actually, about an hour before we started recording this, the manifesto that he wrote, assuming he was going to die, came out. And sure enough, obviously it was confirmed he was aiming for administration officials. He said his goal was to start at the top and go down so that he was going to try to take out whoever, starting with the president and go down. That's the 4th one on President Trump's life. Now let me just point a couple things out. Richard Weaver, uh, you guys probably heard of Richard Weaver before. Richard Weaver, I think he was a— he's kind of a, uh, cookies-in-the-bottom-shell philosopher kind of guy. Uh, people use his little phrase that he coined, ideas have consequences. That's, that's Richard Weaver. Um, what you have right here is, I think you got— you have a presenting issue and then a root cause. Kind of the same way that if somebody's got, uh, they got bone cancer. They may actually go into the doctor because, man, I got soreness over here, or this is a little rash, and they think their rash is the issue. It's not the issue. That's the presenting cause. There's a root disease.
I think you got both those things going on here. So first of all, let me talk presenting issue real fast, and then I want to talk root cause theologically, and then we can wrap it up. So first of all, again, let me just point this out. That is the 4th assassination attempt on that God's life forth. I also want to point out some really uncomfortable realities. Uh, uh, Tony, will you pull up those graphs? Um, there's a— there's an incredible— there's an incredible amount of mounting evidence that is, you know, for anybody that's got your eyes open, you can start to feel this, but it's like in data form. And by the way, all this stuff that I'm getting ready to show, these are not like Christians, these are not like conservative, this is not like, uh, this is not like Newsmax data. No, like, this just like, you know, just generalized stuff. So number one, you got this. This came out, I think, last year. Very liberal people are 8 times more likely to say political violence is justified than very conservative people. It's 25% to 3%. Okay, go to the next one. This is— this dude, if you know who this is, his name is Destiny.
He is a massive progressive influencer. He's got nearly a million YouTube subs. You know, he's all over the place, does a stuff. This is a direct quote, like this is an actual quote: you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events. Right now they don't feel like there's any fear. Now this is not like a fringe voice. This is a dude with a million YouTube subs that is regularly interviewed by the New York Times. Okay, let me just let that sit. Go to the next one. This is one, uh, you can kind of— if you just— it's hard to see. The question that was presented in this study was, how much do you feel it is justified for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country. It's kind of like correlation is not causation, but it looks pretty correlated. It's like the farther you go left on the graph, you get extremely high affirmatives, and the farther you go right on the graph, you get extremely low. Now I'm driving at something. I want to talk about why. Again, we're going to Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, and what's the theology that's underneath the ideology.
This is where I think we got one more. Yeah, yeah, this is political polls. Again, I'm not showing you Newsmax, like fringe right data sets. This is political polls. Like, this is, you know, if you're not familiar, I think most people would say that's like a center-left outlet. 77% of Republicans believe it is always unacceptable to feel joy at the death of somebody they oppose, while only 38% of Democrats share this view. That's YouGov. So again, we're talking YouGov. This is not like a fringe thing. And then last one, and I don't want to get too incendiary here, but if you just zoom out in the last 6, 8 years of our nation, on the left is what happened in our nation after the death of Charlie Kirk. On the right is what happened in our nation after the death of what became a high-profile somebody that was coded left. Okay, so you just start to see, I think people who are paying attention, they're going, hey dude, what's going on? On, man. It seems like there's a really different response in these two things. Now, what I want to point out here— oh, actually, and then show this video.
This is Hasan Piker. Now, before I show this, Hasan Piker, again, Matt, like, very, you know, honestly mainstream, popular progressive commentator. In fact, this is an interview on a— with the New York Times, I think, in the last 7 days. So this is not, again, not fringe. This is New York Times the last 7 days. It's a 60-second clip. Listen closely to the language. I'm going to tie some things together. Listen closely to the language he uses. What he's doing right here is he's getting asked, you guys remember when that, the insurance company CEO got assassinated? And dude was like a, yeah, UnitedHealthcare CEO got shot in the back. This is like a dad with 2 young kids. And they asked him about what he thought about that. So this is a mainstream dude with the New York Times giving his response to the assassination. Again, political violence. And watch what he says. 60-second clip. Hasan Piker. Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. Pause. Okay, so let me just verbally highlight this. So he's introducing a concept. I'm going to talk about Marxism here in a second. He's introducing a concept called social murder.
What he's saying, I don't have time to— what he's saying is, hey man, yeah, somebody was shot in the back, but honestly, that guy actually committed murder because of the systemic nature of what's happening in our society. Really, the way that he used the way that our economy is set up, he committed a form of what's called social murder. That's kind of embedded into the systems is actually murderous. That's what he's saying. So let's keep going. Hassan Piker. And Bryan Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit paywalled system of healthcare in this country. And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me because America is very draconian about private punishment. Don't pause, but just notice this. They're very black and white. It's a justification. And yet you see the justification rationale. The pervasive pain that the private healthcare system had created for the average American. I saw so many people immediately why this death had taken place. Okay, now just pause and let that sink in.
This is not a fringe. This is not fringe. That is a Hasan Piker, mainstream progressive commentator on what is arguably the largest progressive platform in America, New York Times. Wow. And he's going, hey man, social murder. Actually, I kind of understood. I kind of understood his rationale and justification.
Now, hey Josh, can I interrupt you? Yeah. LP team is freaking out. Are you okay if I—
I was actually kind of hoping this would happen. This is fantastic.
I don't want to rush you because I know there's a lot.
So, man, they said 2:10.
Well, I know, but then there's like a little bit of a mic up and all that stuff. Yeah, we love you, Carlos.
Love you. Lord use you today in a big way, buddy. Love you, man. You're amazing. Amazing.
All right, this is good. You crush it, crush, crush it.
Uh, I love you, Carlos.
All right, then last one. So then you go out, uh, that's amazing. Uh, uh, then, uh, uh, last night outside of the Correspondents' Dinner, as people were walking out after the assassination attempts, those were the signs people holding up. Death to tyrants, death to all of them. Okay, now what people need to understand, let's go back to Richard Weaver, ideas have consequences. So listen, man, it's a little uncomfortable to talk about, especially in the pastor world that I come from. The thing that you're never supposed to do is violate the neither right nor left thing. It's an unspoken doctrine that you're not supposed to violate, but honestly, you simply have to start noticing reality. Reality is undefensible. Defeated. What you're starting to notice, what I would say, is that political violence is in some measure— it's a feature, not a bug, of secular progressivism. If you take secular progressive ideals, the foundational tenets of secular progressivism, all the way out to their natural consequences, you are going to end up with political violence. The reason I say that is secular progressivism in particular, it's built on top of a critical theory lens that is various forms of critical theory.
They all come together— queer theory and anti-racist, all the things. A critical theory, it views the world through an oppressed-oppressor lens. Everything is viewed through an oppressed-oppressor lens. What you have right now at war in our society, there's ideas under— people call it the culture war. The culture war is downstream of spiritual war. It's not one-to-one, but there's correlation. So critical theory sees the world through an oppressed-oppressor lens. Christian theology, on the other hand, it sees the world through a right versus wrong lens. What's right, what's wrong. Now, the reason— let's lead to why that data shows what it does. The reason you start seeing political violence take place like that is if I view the world through a right versus wrong lens and I see that you think something different than me, I just think you're wrong. And so I want to reason with you and try to persuade you. But if I view the world through an oppressor lens and I think the people who disagree with me, they're not just wrong, they're actually evil oppressors. Oppressors. That, by the way, is where you get rhetoric like, he's literally Hitler. Yeah, he's a fascist.
By the way, that was what was on the bullet casings in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Hey fascist, catch. This is Marxist language. Okay. He is an existential threat to democracy. Literally everything and everyone is racist. Okay. Well, what that's downstream from is viewing the world through an oppressed-oppressor lens. And here's the If you disagree with me and I don't just think you're wrong, I believe you're an evil oppressor, I'm not going to try to persuade you. I begin to feel a moral obligation to stop you. And if you won't stop yourself, then someone or something needs to end you. Yes.
You lie to yourself and tell yourself, I'm actually a hero. That's it. Exactly. Someone's got to take one for the team. And I'm willing to, to stop you. Stop Hitler. That's it. This modern-day Hitler. And the father of lies, that's it, who's so good at lies, convinces you that this is actually a— this is actually you doing the most noble thing.
That's right, that's right. Call good evil, evil good.
Yeah, by taking the life of Charlie Kirk, by taking the— trying to walk into a correspondence dinner and just letting bullets fly.
That's it. And then on top of that is— so it's not just progressivism, remember, it's secular progressivism. So as Christians, we— there's a moral guardrail rail. If you have a worldview that's built on top of Christian theology, there's moral guardrails built into our views of opposition. Hey man, you're not allowed to live by the sword. That's Jesus. You shall not murder. So there's these, obviously in secular progressivism, if there is no moral law giver, well now I don't have any moral law that's restraining me taking life. And the ends justify the means. Ends justify the means. It's just sheer Nietzschean will to power. So one thing, again, that's not the root cause, that's the presenting issue. What Christians need to learn to think better at a worldview level. Hey man, when you see that stuff, what you're seeing is a clash of worldviews. You're seeing critical theory and its logical outcomes, the logical implications of the tenets of the worldview versus Christian theology. Now that's presenting cause. If you want to go root cause, I do think, I just want to keep saying the same thing over and over over again. Okay, listen, we have a lot of politically aware Christians who listen to Live Free, and I want to keep saying the same thing.
Politics cannot fix what politics did not break. And mankind was broken long before any political system was ever put in place. There is one thing and one thing only that can fix what is wrong with mankind. You need Jesus Christ. Okay. Yeah. Amen. So let me just— I'll just put a bow on this, and I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts, or we may just shut her down because Carlos is going to start preaching. Okay. So if you're a Christian, you're looking at what's going on in the world. I think what you got to learn to do is, hey man, let's apply our theology to what I'm seeing. Bible as a lens. One of my favorite passages is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. When most people think it's just about lust, Jesus does the, hey man, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. And that is, in my opinion, that is the single most misunderstood part of the entire Sermon on the Mount. So Jesus looks at the dude and he's going, hey man, you got a lust issue. Now remember, he begins that little section by saying, if you look lustfully at a woman, you have committed adultery with her in your heart.
So he names a body part. This is really important. He names a body part. Then he starts going, hey man, if you're struggling with this lust issue, You need to try to cut off the body part that's causing this issue. If your hand caused you to sin, cut it off. If your eye caused you to sin, gouge it out. And a lot of people think that, hey man, what he's doing there is he's going, hey man, if there's a sin issue in your life, be willing to commit a radical amputation of something in your life to prevent yourself from that sin. And that may be true. Theology of the Sermon on the Mount, the entire Sermon on the Mount is, Hey man, the root of every single problem you got is a heart problem. So here's what Jesus is doing. And I'm going to apply it to this. Jesus is going, hey man, I want you to imagine there's this guy that really just struggles with lust. And every time he lusts, he tries to cut off the part of him that makes him sin. So he looks at something lustfully, maybe pornography or whatever, and he gouges out his eye.
And then the next day he walks down to the city square and he realizes he can still purchase a prostitute and he can sin and he can lust with his hands. And he's, "Oh, I'm gonna cut off my hands." And the next day he walks somewhere and he just, let's say he listens to something that incites lust. He's, "Oh, I'm gonna cut off my ear." And maybe the next day, he walks somewhere just to feel something. He's like, "Man, I can still walk to places that enable me to lust. I'm gonna cut off my feet." And you start imagining this guy who keeps chopping off body parts, trying desperately to cut off the part of him that causes him to lust. Lust. And he goes, no matter what I cut off, I still can sin. And Jesus is saying, in order for you to get rid of this issue in your life, you're going to have to cut out your heart. And Jesus is saying, and I can do that for you. Yeah. And if you go back to Ezekiel 36, it's a prophecy about what the coming Messiah will do when he establishes the new Covenant.
And he says, a new heart I will give you. Come on. And a new spirit I will put within you.
It's the core, not the branches. I will remove— It's the root. That's it. Right? Not the fruit. Yeah.
I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And so, man, again, presenting issue, man, do we need obviously to be engaged in political processes? Do we need to see things? Of course we do. Of course we do. But listen, I just want to make you a promise. You need to disabuse abuse yourself of the notion that there is a political solution to what is wrong with this nation. Because what's wrong with the nation is that there's something wrong in the human soul. And without repentance and reformation that lead to revival and a return to Jesus Christ, Christ is the only way out of the chaos. Okay. Any final thoughts? Agree, disagree, additional comments?
I'd like to actually connect it to a thought. Last night's assassination attempt, the other 3 assassination attempts on President Trump, Charlie Kirk's assassination. I view them as a sanctity of life issue. And here's what I mean by that. It is not, it's the anti-pro-Charlie Kirk's life. It's the anti-pro-Donald Trump's life. And so when you show me a stat that says 38% of the progressives see this as a viable option, I'm actually surprised that it's only 38%. When you go back to the unborn, the sheer amount of people that they're willing to click and drag out of their life for convenience. So it is someone who says, "Well, I've got my whole life ahead of me. I've got a baby in the womb. I'm just gonna get rid of this baby 'cause I've got a life to live." How do I remove a human being so that I can— who's in the path of what I want? So if 90%, 80— I don't know that stat, but if the majority, the overwhelming majority of progressives don't really hold the sanctity of life with the most vulnerable, who is the child in the womb, then why are we surprised that they would hold no sanctity of life for someone that they don't agree with?
If you kill an innocent child, you definitely kill a guilty adult. That's kind of the logical implications. Right.
And so the root of that is is that they don't see another person made in the image of God. They don't see a human being as a human being. And maybe it's because when they look in the mirror, they don't see themselves that way. And so it's like, does that person truly hate Charlie Kirk? Do they truly hate themselves? At the end of the day, what is the ultimate root of that? And we can get really outragey about this really quickly. And I think a lot of people are prone to just get super outragey about this when all they think about it through is the lens of politics. But if you look through it through the lens of scripture, you can have outrage at what happened last night, but eventually it's got to turn into outreach. Ah, bro, so good. Who could have stepped— who in California— like, I heard that this young man is in California. That's right. Yeah, this weekend I'm going to be in California. I wonder what part in California. And was he near Sandals Church? Was he near Andy's church at Saddleback? Was he near— yeah, was he near Mariner church?
Like, was there a church nearby that could have loved and, you know, could have stepped in downstream into the life of this individual so that if they knew the Lord, they had community, they wouldn't see the taking of a life as a— in the lie in their mind that this is a solution. That's great, dude. And so I think it's not just sanctity of life as in the assassination, the person attempting the assassination doesn't see that. I'm also thinking about the sanctity of the life of the assassinator. Like, how do value that person and go upstream and say, how do we, how do we love them? That's, that's seeing Muslims not as the enemy but the prize. That's seeing like Hitler killed 6 million Jewish people. Talk about like last night was an attempted assassination that failed. Talk about a person who 6 million Jewish people were killed, innocent people, because of Hitler. But I hear the stories that Hitler's father was a watchmaker and some Jewish gentleman hired him to fix a clock. And when he fixed it, the Jewish gentleman didn't pay him for it. And they spent a winter, when Hitler was a young man, he spent a winter with his feet cold, his nose cold, his house cold.
They ate only cabbage. They were hungry. So when you're going to bed every night hungry and your father's screaming, "We're hungry tonight, we're freezing tonight because the Jewish people didn't pay us well." Those seeds of sanctity, you know, someone, so then, But what if Hitler had had a community of believers? What if something— I always think through, like, could there have been someone in the life of these individuals who end up being the harmers when somebody could have been their church community? Bro, so good. This guy in California, how far is he from a local church? Who needs to look at that and go, this guy was walking distance to us. Can we at least— it's not somebody's fault because they live, but could we at least ask that question as That's a good spot to land.
Yeah. Chad G. Balti, would you close us in prayer, sir? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
God, as Pastor Josh just said a few moments ago, ideas have consequences. And we just want to recognize right now that your word says that every human is made in your image. That's right. Every single person, including the people we disagree with, including people like the people we saw in those videos who have ideas that are completely opposite the ones that we believe your word says. Has. But God, they're made in your image just as much as we are. And so God, I pray that you would help us to now put that view out there, that Lord, in this world of competing views, you would help us to be Christians, be salt and light, that we would be people who see everybody as made in your image, and that we would be people who move from outrage to outreach, that we would want to bring to them a message that there is a God who made the universe and who made them, and they're in his image, that even though they've sinned against him and it's cosmic treason, God loves them so much that he sent his only son to die for them. Yeah. So God, would you help us to flood the streets with that competing message, Lord?
And God, I do pray that it would transform individual hearts and minds, but God, because of that, it would transform our whole nation, including our political system, and our entire world. Give us a heart to reach the one more for you. In your name we pray.
Amen. Amen. David Nasser, thank you for joining us.
Love you guys so much.
Live free. Well, hey, Live Free Nation, we just finished this episode with David Nasser today. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, this Thursday, May 30th, at midnight, we're dropping a bonus episode with special guest Tim Barton, and we're going to be hitting American history, how America's founding and early education system were far more explicitly Christian than most people think, what does separation of church and state actually mean, and how slavery has been revised over time and more. Trust me, you don't want to miss it. It's an amazing conversation between Pastor Josh and Tim Barton. We will see you there.
What does it actually look like to share your faith with someone like Jordan Peterson, and what do four assassination attempts on a sitting president reveal about the state of the American soul? Pastors Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Paul Cunningham sit down with Pastor David Nasser for one of the most wide-ranging conversations in Live Free. From Josh's eye-opening trip to Greece retracing Paul's footsteps in Acts, to the seven I AM statements of Jesus, to the difference between a presenting cause and a root disease, this episode moves from theology to culture to the street-level art of winning your one more.
David Nasser pulls back the curtain on what happened when Jordan Peterson came to Liberty University, then the team tackles Saturday night's assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and makes the case that political violence is not a political problem. It's a spiritual one.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Three categories of proof that Jesus claimed to be God: things he said, did, and knew that only God could
What happened when David Nasser hosted Jordan Peterson at Liberty University and why hospitality is evangelism
Why political violence is a presenting cause with a spiritual root disease, and what Christians need to understand
Practical, real-world strategies for moving your one more closer to Jesus in everyday conversations
Why the answer to what's broken in our nation is not political, and never has been
Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free.
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