Today on the podcast for Cultural Reformation, we get back into our series on Think Christianly, and today Dr. Michael T. Sinanai will be discussing the Church, the Kingdom, and the mission of God's people. Well, welcome back to the podcast for Cultural Reformation. I am your host, Nate Wright, and I am joined by my colleague, my friend, the illustrious Dr. Michael T. Sinanai. It's wonderful to have you. It's nice. We always miss Joe when he's not here, but sometimes it's nice to connect with you, Michael. I'll hear your voice a little more. Yeah, it's great. Thanks for taking on the housekeeping responsibilities, Nate, as we jump on here, and I'm a little bit late. It's so good to connect, and I know that you and I have a lot to say about the topic of spurious sovereignty and the confusion going on in the church right now. So looking forward to this chat. Yeah, this will be good. So for those of you who are regular listeners, you'll remember that we took a bit of a break from the series that we started in the late fall. We were talking about Think Christianly and kind of working through some of the themes of Joe's most recent book. If you are a listener, if you're a fan of the Ezra Institute, if you're a follower of Dr. Joe Boot, we would highly recommend that you get your hands on this resource. Think Christianly, I think, is a much needed and very relevant and timely work. So we're kind of going through some of the themes in this. And then we took a bit of a hiatus as we were going through the TPUSA footage and some of the great things that came out of that, some of the good, kind of talking about the cultural moment, but we want to get back into sort of what this podcast does best. And that is to actually help believers to think and thinkers to believe and thinking through some of these big topics. And so today we have the topic of the church and the kingdom of God, the theme that we'll be thinking through is sort of what is the mission of God's people. So what we're going to be kind of talking about is this tension that we often see, right? Some think that the mission of the people of God is merely church growth. Some people are very hyper focused on the church itself. Some people are focused on the idea of teaching the Bible. Some are focused on evangelism. And all these things are good. We want our churches to grow. We want the influence of the church to grow. We want evangelism to flourish in our churches and in our neighborhoods. And of course we want the word of God taught. But whenever we sort of narrow the focus and we don't think more cosmically about the mission of God's people, we often miss it. And then of course coming out of the TPUSA thing, it's probably a good warning to us as well, is that some people might think that the mission of God's people is merely political activism. And we want to kind of combat that misconception as well. So we want to look for the narrow road between both those ditches because we think that scripture gives us something bigger than either of those things. So we're going to launch into this. And we'll kind of start with the mission of God's people ultimately as Joe points out in this chapter and think Christianly is the faithful worship of the triune God in every aspect of life. And I think that sometimes we truncate that, we shrink that down and we make it less than what it is. But Michael, why don't you just start by talking about when we say it's the faithful worship of the triune God in every aspect of life. First and foremost, I think people hear that word worship and they reduce it to the Sunday morning corporate singing in the church. And that's not what we mean by worship. So why don't we start a little bit by talking about what worship actually is when we're using the term worship throughout this podcast. What is it that we're referring to? Because we're not truncating it to the Sunday morning praise musical experience. Yeah, so first of all, Nate, I actually think that people when they read scripture, they don't actually reduce the word worship and glorifying God to an experience on the Lord's day. I think they've been trained to do that. And so I'm not trying to disagree with you, but I was going in a bit of a different direction to the foundational problem as to why people do that today. I think the average Christian reads their Bible and they go, God created the world. It's his creation and everybody in creation is supposed to be loyal and responsive to their creator. And then they go, and Jesus came and Jesus came and offered salvation to all the earth. And so that means every person on earth has a very specific opportunity to be saved. You can get into conversations about the relationship between God's sovereignty and free will. But at the end of the day, that is attention that scripture very clearly teaches that God is a creator of the universe. And we as his creatures are supposed to respond appropriately. I think that your average person, when they're reading their Bible, they get that even when they get to books Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they're still looking at that going, okay, all of these things are good. The issue at hand, that's kind of strange, Nate. And I think this is why we get into churchyinity and into the truncation of this is because their pastors aren't teaching them that same vision. Their pastors don't have a historical vision for the Christian life that it's possible for the church to transform the culture or the world. And so what they hear, and this is where you're getting at, is they hear the constant dialogue about worshiping God within the confines of the church and then outside of the church, the only task is evangelism. And so just to be really clear, I'm happy that Joe starts off this chapter with reminding people of that very simple fact. So when we talk about worship, we are talking about the call to be holy, the call to be righteous, the call to be mindful of the Lord in everything we do. So I go to work. And if I come across a situation at work, I go, okay, which is God's word, say about this moment. It says I shouldn't embezzle money. Okay, great. Then the opportunity now I turn over the ledger and I don't fudge the numbers. When we think about worshiping Lord, the Lord, we are talking about making him king in our hearts and our minds and our muscles over everything. And so where I would agree with you, that right now, a common problem in the church is that people equate worship to just this Sunday morning experience. I think it's the problem. And this is where we're going to get into scholasticism and we're going to get into the concepts of philosophy. It's because there pastors, the clergy, and even, you know, university educated individuals, they have been trained that philosophy, that the that the understanding of the nature of a thing and how it relates is somehow completely separate from the Christian life and that, you know, we've got this idea where we study God in theology, but so much of the church has accepted the idea that philosophical assumptions, well, we just go to the world for that. And it leads to this major confusion that either goes to either one of the ditches where you your your political philosophy leads you to thinking too much of the government or only focusing on churchy theology allows you to think about high theology well, but you haven't thought about cultural theology or practical theology. So that's the anomaly. I think the average person reads their Bible and gets it quite easily, especially if they're accepting God's word as a Protestant. The problem is in the academic and philosophical world to which our clergy are being trained that lead them in this dualistic direction. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And, and, you know, and I think this it goes to the point that, you know, a lot of times churches can become very insealer and and focused on, you know, their bills to pay, their salaries to pay, their buildings to upkeep, there's ministries to to get warm bodies for that need service. And and we sort of reduce the the calling of the average Christian to just what how are you serving the church? And there's this almost conflation between the kingdom of God and the church. And I think there's a lot of confusion about what the kingdom of God actually is. There'd be some who would say, well, the kingdom of God is the work of the church. And then you'd have some people who would maybe expand it further and talk about the kingdom of God being sort of the the spiritual kingdom made up of the hearts and the minds of those who have been redeemed. But when we used the phrase the kingdom of God, we're actually the way we would define the kingdom of God is it's the rule and the reign of Christ actualized on the earth in every sphere of life. So as the kingdom of God expands and as Christians become obedient to the word of God, it's, you know, the kingdom of God changing the way Christians think about medicine and practice medicine, think about education and practice education, think about law and practice law, think about work and apply it to their work. This is what we mean by the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is actually the rule and the reign of Christ Jesus over every sphere of life. It's the actualization. He is the ruler. He says he has all authority in heaven and on earth. And the kingdom of God is the actualization and the implementation of that reign as his creatures become cognizant of his reign and his his word law in every sphere and then see it implemented in every sphere. So it's far more tangible than just the hearts and minds that sort of spiritual kingdom. So let's talk a little bit maybe just about the confusion about what the kingdom of God is. We're defining our terms well and then we'll launch into this discussion from there. So how would you, how would you further define the kingdom of God? Let me jump off of something you said there, Nate. You also gave another reason why pastors are leading people in the wrong direction or in a very church focused churchy entity. And that's pragmatism. So I'm a pastor and I'm supposed to be helping families thrive, but I have a church building that needs to be repaired. And so my focus very practically moves towards overly selling a building. Pragmatism where the ends justify the means is also another reason why this issue is really coming out in the leadership of the church. So before we talk about the kingdom, I think there's you know, there's multiple reasons why pastors are not teaching correctly on the kingdom. And that again is this academic issue with the scholasticism where they are leaning too much on Greek philosophers. Then there is this fear of interjecting in society. And then this third one where just practically they only want to see evangelism being the public arm of the church so to speak. And so I would just agree with what you've just said, Nate, you've said it succinctly. The kingdom of heaven is the I would I use the word manifestation. You said acualized actualization. Those are the same words. The kingdom of heaven is the manifestation of the people of God living out the word of God on earth. And that sometimes includes me being evangelistic. Sometimes that means me promoting justice. Sometimes that means me learning how to be a father and control my temper as I'm going through right now. Sometimes that means I'm a brother in Christ and I make fun of Nate's hair and he makes fun of my hair. And then I have to repent of my sin for being envious of the non-gray in his hair and you have to repent of your envy and your heart because my hair is so good. Like it has all of these different facets of expression of manifestation of actualization. And it's this acknowledgement, again, this leads into something we talked about regularly about this non-neutrality principle, right? That everybody is externalizing their religion. And so when we understand the kingdom of heaven appropriately, then we also understand who is the enemy of the kingdom of heaven? And the enemy of the kingdom of heaven is anyone who is following Satan's lead and Eve's deception and Adam's deception to try to become their own God by nullifying God's word, by lying about God's word, by not agreeing with God's word. And so not only by identifying the kingdom everywhere I go, I manifest the kingdom. That means a doctor manifests the kingdom of heaven when he doesn't murder a patient because it's too difficult of an issue. So this religion externalize the kingdom of heaven is my the word of God being manifested into the world. And that leads off into evangelism. That's the irony of this. The people who are most concerned about not bringing, not having an understanding of the kingdom being gospel centered is they want to be all about evangelism. The irony is that your actions and your words have to be coherent in order for you to actually do evangelism. You actually have to confront people of actual things before you can lead them to repentance. So yeah, it's I think we're interesting. And you talk about kind of the gospel centered movement and there's certainly a lot of really good pastors out there. It should say this, really theological pastors out there whose application every sermon attends to be read your Bible and pray more. And it lends itself to this piety. And so this is the tension. You have your average Christian who like you said, the reading the word of God, they see the there's a phrase, a quote that Joe has in this chapter that I'm like, I'm definitely going to steal that and eventually I'll stop giving Joe credit for it because I'll forget where I got it from. But he talks about how the church is in this cosmos sized field of conflict. Right. Most pastors preach to their people and most programs in church on Sundays are focused on the idea of getting Christians spiritual disciplines in order. And yet most Christians look at the world around them and they see, you know, euthanasia and abortion and they see corrupt politicians and corrupt systems. We have a friend in the church who's going through some really difficult stuff with their kid right now. There's some really wonky things going on. And when they try to get a doctor's appointment here in Ontario, the doctor was like, yep, I'll see you mid March. And it's like, well, thank you for that, right? Like we recognize that the systems are broken. The culture is fragmented wickedness and darkness are celebrated. And your average Christian can look at the decline of Christian influence in the west. And then they go to church and it all becomes about their own personal piety and almost promotes their inward focus where everything is just about me getting my spiritual disciplines in order where I think most Christians are actually longing for some application. How do I actually bring about the kingdom of God? How do I actually confront social evils? How do we actually transform this culture into something that glorifies God? And I think that that's where the tension lies. And I think that a lot of churches when they see and they identify the decline of the Christian influence in the west and the sort of wicked culture that it's produced, kind of one of two things happens. Either the church and the Christians within it begin to retreat to that personal piety. And it all just becomes about me and my spiritual disciplines and I'm in a small group and am I being accountable in my personal prayer life and all those kinds of things which aren't bad things. We're not knocking small groups or personal disciplines. But the other danger is compromised in the name of relevance, right? It's okay. The culture is this way. And so now we need to begin to look more like the culture. So we seem to have more relevance. And essentially both of those things are tied to either cultural retreat or cultural compromise. And so what we're trying to discuss in these next couple of episodes is how does worship connect to cultural obedience and why does a truncated mission lead either to retreat or compromise? And I guess how did the church abandon key areas like education and politics? I think all of this is tied to not understanding how the gospel and the kingdom of God interact. Are the gospel redeems sinners and brings them into this cosmos-sized field of conflict where now the world needs transforming and it's about finding your place in where those things are being transformed. So the Christian life is not private spirituality nor is it compromised with the culture. It's actually participation in Christ's kingdom mission which is to see the kingdoms of this world becoming, manifesting, actualizing the rule in the reign of Christ over every area of life. So I think that that's sort of the question before us. And we'll talk maybe in our next segment about the errors of church unity and politicized kingdom. But let's stay there and kind of talk about why doesn't matter Michael that Christians understand this cosmos-sized field of conflict? Why is it so important for Christians to understand that the gospel is not about your personal ticket to heaven, but it actually recruits you into this cultural transformation that's taking place under King Jesus. Yeah, I think the question that I would leave with every Christian who's listening and the pastors who might be attempting to teach in their churches would be the spiritual disciplines for what? Or the spiritual disciplines to what ends? Or the means of grace that God gives us to what ends? And the answer is always to the ends of the earth. If I feel called to do evangelism in another country, then I go on a missionary calling. If I feel called to transform the mechanic shop that I work in so that it's a healthy environment, then I go do that. So we are not against piety in the sense of being spiritually disciplined. And that's where so often our frenemies are getting it wrong. They think that we are opposed to the spiritual disciplines and want to just affect the world with the kingdom of heaven through some type of artificial dominionism or or arm twisting. When in reality it is a combination of the two. We are personally transformed. And maybe we'll get into this a little bit. As we talk about before we talk about the two ditches next week, Nate, we should or later on, we should talk about the spheres that God has created. What does God do in my life to transform me? How do I take those disciplines and then turn my direction and serve the Lord outside to what end? And so again, the spiritual disciplines are wonderful. The pastor who says, read your Bible, pray, control your temper, all of these types of he's doing good work. But we are asking the church now to say to go where? And the answer is not just the mission field. The answer is everywhere. This episode of the podcast for cultural reformation is brought to you by Ezra Media from in-depth lectures, conference talks, podcasts, and exclusive content like premium shows and the podcast post show. Ezra Media is the digital home for the Ezra Institutes teaching and worldview resources, helping Christians think clearly and live faithfully in every area of life. When you sign up for premium plus you gain access to exclusive content like the Ezra Podcast post show where the guys dive deeper into the topics discussed in the main episode, along with Ezra Press eBooks and even the opportunity to join live recordings. You can sign up today by going to Ezramedia.tv and if you use the coupon code podcast you'll save 15% off an annual subscription. That's using coupon code podcast and you'll save 15% off an annual subscription. Now back to the show. I think that as we think through this question of the kingdom of God and how we've kind of gotten into the trouble that we've gone into by limiting it, we tend to think that it becomes either we grow, we grow spiritually ourselves and therefore we're focused inward or it becomes a completely outward focus and I like that you brought it back to both. What we don't want is we don't want to think that real ministry only happens in the church and meanwhile education, politics, arts and family life are all things that get handed over to the world. So, Nate. Yeah. On that point that you just made, I want to read something from a quote from Joe's book and he's quoting from Zudema. And this is actually what happens because I wanted I wanted let you draw out your point before moving on. The ecclesiasticizing of religion necessarily calls into being the profaning of the non ecclesiastical area. I want to think on that for a moment. So we started our conversation where we're saying a problem is churchy entity or a secular political philosophy. What we don't really understand is that when the church says only the stuff inside the walls of the church or inside the ministries of the churches holy not only does it elevate those things foolishly, it actually profanes. It actually means well wait a minute me me being a businessman means nothing except for the amount of money I give to the church. It actually makes people very confused because they see it. They see not only the elevating of one thing, but they see the profaning of the other spheres. And so that's why this is so important and I'm glad that you immediately are talking about that. It's the profaning of these other spheres. And so we should talk about the spheres. Yeah, let's do that. So the idea of sphere sovereignty we talk about it a lot, but let's just flush it out as it relates to this because a lot of times when Christians say or in their minds they confuse the church and the kingdom of God, they're failing to understand how God has delegated his authority within the world. So we would see say there's four primary spheres that God has delegated his authority into. And from those we can sort of ascertain that there are other spheres as well, but the four main spheres are the state, the church, the family, and then the individual. And when we make the church, the primary sphere of God's kingdom, then we forget that God has delegated authority to the state in particular spheres and to the family in particular spheres. So we talk about sphere sovereignty. We say that Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, he is all authority in heaven and earth, but he delegates his authority. And so he delegates his authority to fathers within families, right, to politicians and to world leaders within this realm of the state, to pastors and to elders within the sphere of the church, and to individuals for their own self rule. And in all of those areas, Christ remains king, Christ remains Lord, Christ remains master, but he delegates his authority. And so when the church tries to swallow, right now, what we have is stadeism, where the state is trying to swallow up, they don't understand that they are, they have delegated authority from Christ. And so because they don't see an authority over top of them, they try to swallow up all of these other spheres. So during COVID, we saw them swallow up the church sphere by trying to tell how and when the church could worship. We see them swallowing up the family sphere by providing education, which wasn't a responsibility delegated to the state. We see them swallowing up healthcare, which was not a responsibility delegated to the state. And so we have these four main spheres. And then of course within society, we see that there are spheres of education and spheres of law and spheres of all those kinds of things, but those are the four primary spheres. So why don't you help flush that out a little bit, Michael, anything that I might have missed? Well, I might have just said it in the opposite order that you've said it. So God first created the individual, God created Adam, and then he created Eve. We see the first created order being the individual. Then we see the from those individuals, those individuals propagate families. Then we see out of those families, they are invited to be a part of the the the people of God. And in in the Old Testament, we see that manifested in the people of Israel. We see that manifested with any non-Jewish individual who would come into the covenant relationship with God. And then of course in the New Testament, the specific birthing of the church with the power of the Holy Spirit. So we have the individual and the individual has is supposed to self-govern. We have the family and the family is supposed to self-govern. We have the church and the church is supposed to self-govern. And then because of sin and and and the need for nationhood and civil law and and God's law specifically applied broadly in society, then we have a few things just to emphasize. Number one, what that means is that you've got levels of levels of accountability. So the person self-religates except when sometimes the family needs to interfere and help that person self-govern. And then the families they self-govern until there's a problem and then the religious community comes around them to try to help discipline them and the church. And then and then we have another more severe area where now we're getting into criminal behavior. And that's where the that's where the the government would would come in. So there are times when one's fear does have to oversee the other's fear when that individual or when that family or when that church is failing. And then of course the Lord oversees the king of king oversees the government for it to be corrected when it's failing. So you have this crossover between the spheres where there's times where individuals have to go to their families and correct them. But when we talk about severe sovereignty we are also emphasizing the freedom and the individualism of that sphere. There are certain things that an individual should never have to endure from the oppression of a family of a church or of a state. The individual has certain freedoms. The family has certain protections. So when we talk about sphere sovereignty we're not just talking about the different categories of authority. We are also talking about the different categories of individual liberty. And that's so important. And so when Nate as we're going on to this when we see the church just centralizing itself what happens is not only does it see itself as most important but then it neglects the family or it tries to do for the family what the family should do for itself or it tries to do for the individual what the individual should do for him or herself or it tries to do for the government what the government should be doing. So you know we talked about this in the past like what's the definition of forgiveness? Well there are certain things you can forgive and then there's certain things where you have to leave the government to do its due process and punish. So yeah when you say different categories of authority that's fantastic and then it is they those different spheres are supposed to be protected to have their own individual application of the manifestation of the kingdom which is why you could have in one moment a murderer be killed by the government, appropriately punished for a capital of fens and the church the individual and the family having gone and forgiven and evangelize that murderer and all of that can be pleasing to the Lord. Right. So so properly understanding how God is delegated as authority through what we would call sphere sovereignty. Joe goes into in this chapter on the church and the kingdom into two main errors and both errors emphasize one sphere over and above all the other spheres and they they reduce the kingdom of God to that particular sphere. So the first error we'd call or Joe calls churchy entity and the second spear he kind of calls politicized kingdom theology and so one of them focuses entirely on the sphere of the church as God's mission field within the the broader context of the world and the other one looks actually at the political realm and the political sphere as the the institute of justice and and this is where you'll conflate things like biblical justice with social justice because you're looking at the government as the sphere by which God brings about justice on the earth. So these are ditches on either side of the road is the language that we often use. So let's talk first about churchy entity Michael. This is conflating the institutional church with the kingdom of God and it reduces the mission of God and the mission of God's people to evangelism church attendance and personal piety. Now in the last segment we talked a lot more about personal piety. So let's maybe focus on evangelism and church attendance. One of the first things that Joe talks about is how the result of churchy entity actually produces immature Christians, right, cultural impotence and this sort of secular sacred divide that we talk about so often, right. We told people that full-time ministry meant the pulpit not necessarily seeing that their vocational work is actually kingdom work. So I actually have one of my favorite quotes regarding this. So I'm going to read you one of my favorite quotes and then I'll let you riff off of it. But this is Charles Spurge in the Prince of Preachers and he says this talking about the secular sacred divide. He says to a man who lives unto God nothing is secular. Everything is sacred. He puts on his workday garment and it is a vestment to him. He sits down to his meal and it is a sacrament. He goes forth to his labor and therein exercises the office of the priesthood. His breath is incense and his life a sacrifice. He sleeps on the bosom of God and lives and moves in the divine presence to draw hard and fast line and say this is sacred or this is secular is to my mind diametrically opposed to the teaching of Christ and the spirit of the gospel. One of my favorite quotes, Michael, let you riff off of it. I'm just a little bit scared that we're just going to keep repeating ourselves on this section because like this thought is just so important and I know I know that it encapsulates so much of our passion. Let me ask you this then, Michael, to ask a more direct question. Why is churchyality as Joe kind of describes it in this chapter? Why is it even persuasive to evangelicals? Okay, so this goes back to the first section where I wanted to get into the why. So it's a number one. The basic so so that quote that you just made is so profoundly helpful. It's a man who is recognized that even my mind, my thinking, all of my assumptions and presumptions, my decisions, everything ought to be called into captivity to Christ. We get that. Okay, that's coming from Colossians too. The reason why churchyality specifically is so appealing to the church is because it's the way that the church gets to pretend to play with the academics. So the idea of the sacred secular divide, I think this comes up with lots of different areas of Joe talks quite extensively in the book about how the Greeks developed a system of assumptions where they believe that you could find truth by nature and the reason was because of their view of nature, matter, distinctive and so at the end of the day, it's appealing because people get to say I like man's word. So whether it be the Greeks philosophizing about form and matter and coming to some decisions or whether it is the salesman who says if you grow your church, you can do it this way, pragmatism, whether it's the scholar that tries to make you say you can't be neutral, you can't bring the Bible here, you have to show us other evidences of authority. In all of those areas, the appeal is that I have somehow come to the same conclusions that the world has come, not by man's, I mean, not by God's word, but by man's word. And then once we can agree on this as men, then I'll tell them, oh, by the way, the reason why we can come to this agreement as men is because this is the way God has created the world. So it is an elevation of man's word. If I can grow my church by basic business principles, I have a formula I can work with. And so the appeal is always to man's word. And the church just is always tempted to set aside the need to live faithfully to the appeals of God's word. Rift back on that because I don't know if I don't know if I know, no, no, I think that's good. And I want us to keep going because there's a lot of content that we want to cover. But that kind of leads into my next question for you. And then we'll move on to the politicized kingdom. But I think a lot of times within churchy entity, we reduce the mission of the church to the great commission, which I don't think is wrong, but we have a wrong understanding of the great commission. So let me ask you this, Michael, why is evangelism central, but not exhaustive of the great commission? Right. We tend to reduce the price. I would say that I would say it's very simple. It's actually our view of evangelism is an incorrect view. Our view of evangelism is not the simple introduction of people to the gospel. Our view of evangelism is as we go into the world with the authority of Christ to lead the world, we introduce them to the gospel. And so if I, so let's just like try to put this in practical terms, right? So I'm working on a farm and I build tractors. I'm a very unique job. I'm creating, you know, research and development for tractors. And I know that I spent $250,000 last month on welding parts, labor, everything to add an arm to a tractor. And then I show in the building, though, $300,000. And the idea would be that somewhere in there, I know how to move $50,000 out of the equation. So, you know, it's a personal invoice that gets paid to me, that's over whatever. And then let's just say that in that same day, I go and I'm sitting with the owner of the farm and I try to share Jesus with him. That's how absurd it is to have this this technical, uh, uh, disjointed view of evangelism. The Christian who wants to do the evangelism to the owner of the company would first say, this is an accurate account of what I have done and what I have spent. And the reason for that is because I first do not steal before the Lord. And then I do not steal before you. And by the way, did you know where we learned the idea of honesty from scriptures and ultimately from the Lord Jesus? So this is where I think we have an artificial view of evangelism that leads us to bifurcating or separating them. And that is why the great commission includes Christ's claim to authority. What did people marvel at? And we talk about this a lot, Nate. So I hope people really get this point. People marveled at Christ's authority and they always marvel at the authority of God's word, whether they like it or not. And we go out in that authority. So we do evangelism with with the authority of calling people to be like Christ. And it is in our calling for them to follow our example, for them to hear our words about a thing that we then have the opportunity to present the gospel. I think that is the reason why this concept of churchy entity just fails on its face so often. Yeah. And I think in contrast to that, then when people get fed up with that ditch, the fear or the tendency then is to get into the ditch on the other side. And that is actually conflating the kingdom of God with political activism itself. So this is the ditch on the other side. And to that side, salvation actually becomes social programs or state-driven justice. So the problem is on one side, you have people saying just preach the gospel and sort of stay out of culture, right? Just get as many souls into heaven as you can. And then on the other side, you have people saying that the kingdom of God is actually political reform. And both of these are actually distortions. And they both go, they actually have share the same root problems. And Joe talks about this in his book. He talks about how both errors share three root issues. Number one, they both place hope in institutions instead of Christ. So one in the institution of the church, the other in the institution of civil government. Secondly, they both can, they both are confused about the limits of the church in the state. And this goes back to sphere sovereignty like we talked about. And then they both get a secular sacred sacred dualism. They just have it in different orders. So the sort of core theological claim that we're making is that the kingdom is not the church, the kingdom is not the state. The kingdom is the reign of Christ over all things. And the hope of the world is not the church as a fortress nor is it state as savior. The hope of the world is Christ, the king of kings and the lord of lords, who actually has given us his law word, which shows us how life works best in his world. So if Christ is lord over all life, what is the actual role of the church's kingdom? And we'll get into that in our last segment. This episode of the podcast for Cultural Reformation is brought to you by the Ezra Foundations Curriculum. The Ezra Foundations Curriculum equips churches, small groups, and Christian educators with a clear biblical worldview for all of life rooted in scripture and aligned with the theology of the Ezra Institute. It's designed to help participants think, Christianly, about family, education, politics, culture, and more. Each Curriculum kit includes full access to the Ezra Foundations video courses featuring Dr. Joe Boot, Pastor Nate Wright, and Dr. Michael Tisen, along with 10 printed participant guides and a comprehensive leader's guide for group facilitation. Learn more and get started today at EzraMedia.tv slash foundations. Now back to the show. So we've been talking about the church in the state, and we've been talking about sort of the kingdom of God that it's not limited to the sphere of the church, nor is it limited to the sphere of the state that the so then the question becomes, well what is the church what is the church and what is its relationship with the kingdom of God? And Joe makes the point that the church is an institute and an organism under the universal kingdom. So the nature of the church is that the church is the organism and the institution that is under the grand scope, the cosmic scope of the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is the universal focal point of the Christian life, and the church is one of the institutions under the kingdom that brings about social reform. So the church itself, let's talk about that a little bit. Even the term, we translate the term church, but the term itself, the Ecclacia is the called out people, right? The appointed fruit bearers of the kingdom. And so why don't we talk just a little bit about what the nature of the church itself is, Michael, and how some Christians just get what the church itself is wrong? Well, again, I think where people get it most wrong is we think about for what? And so the church is very clearly the gathering of people where we worship on the Lord's day, where we renew our covenant with the Lord, where we are taught scripture, and we're taught how to interpret scripture and read scripture and apply scripture. And then the church is the community gathered where we support one another with the with all of the one another's of scripture. And we long suffer with one another, we bear each other up. I think the thing that I was thinking about this morning, and I was reading in second kings, and I'm getting near to the end of the book, and I'm I'm right where Isaiah is about to give the answer to the people when he has a kaya, and all of all of his men go running, you know, the king of Assyria has made this this threat and has made this taunt. And it's like the people, the king, and the citizens, and the judges, and like the administrative people, they come running to whom? You come running to the prophet. What does the word of the Lord say about this? And I was thinking about that, like that's that's literally just so normal, right? Like when things are going well, the king knows best, you know, when when things are going great, the the judge is no best. And and yet when there's a major threat at the door, people turn to the real source of their of their foundation of truth. And that would be the word of God. And so the church as its rule is a prophet training, prophet sending area where priests minister, and we learned then how people as individuals are kings and queens in the kingdom. It's all this mixture of these roles that we have. The individuals are supposed to go out as kings and queens and priests of the Lord and prophets all the same time mimicking Christ. And the church is the training center for that and and helps them understand this is what the word of the Lord says about that. Yeah, that's good. And I you the phrase that you used there, I really liked when you're talking about the sending organization, right? And so I want to come back to this distinction that Joe makes in his book between the churches and organism and the churches and institution. And I think this helps people understand the role of the church as it relates to the kingdom of God. On Sunday mornings, we gather as the church institution, right? And and we we you know, hand out the sacraments and we disciple and we preach God's word and we proclaim his truth and what he said to us. And Hebrews 12 makes this very very clear that when we gather as the church institution, we were actually in two places at one time, right? When Paul is writing to the Ephesians, he says, you know, to the saints who are an Ephesus and later on in the in chapter three, he talks about being seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. When we gather as the church institute, we are gathered and together corporately are sort of brought up into the throne room of God, where we are transformed by his presence, where he speaks to us from his word, where he declares our assurance of pardon as we confess our sins to him. And we're transformed in his presence. And this is why traditionally churches end with a benediction because we're gathered up into the presence of God. We are transformed by his presence, shaped by his word, strengthened by the sacraments. And then we are scattered once again. So we gather as the church institute and then we scatter as the church organic and the church organic, then unleashes us as transformed individuals, transformed by the presence and the power of God. And we are unleashed into the world Monday through Saturday. And that's the sort of the thing that we've lost is that as transformed people, transformed by his word, shaped by his word, transformed by his presence, strengthened by the sacraments, encouraged by the saints, then we scatter as the church organism, believers living under Christ's lordship, then in every sphere of life. And so this is how we understand the church. The church institute is the place where, as you said, prophets are trained to then be sent out as prophets to the nations, to disciple the nations by living under the lordship of Christ in every sphere. So we gather as the church institute and we scatter as the church organic. And as the church organic, we infiltrate the culture with transformed individuals who bring that transformational blessing that we've received in the presence of God into whatever vocational sphere, whatever, you know, individual sphere God has called us into. So this is an important distinction that I think Joe gets to really well in this chapter, right? Sundays we gather as the church institute and Monday through Saturday we scatter as the church organism. And so in both cases, we manifest the kingdom of God. Amen. That's exactly right. In both situations. That's right. And that is such an important point. You know, I really like the subtitle. It jumped out. I mean, the last subtitle in this chapter for Joe's book is the recovery of Christianity. I like that. He didn't even say the recovery of a vision of the church or the recovery of the vision of the kingdom. He says a recovery of Christianity like the church has its place within Christianity, but it is not Christianity Christianity is the church. As you just said, institutionally gathered organically scattered, manifesting the kingdom of heaven. And therefore I am a Christian, not exclusively a churchman. That's right. That's right. And I think that when we don't have this view of the church, it lends us to thinking that we're going back into a neutral rounds throughout the week, right? It makes us think that, okay, I'm getting trained to think like a Christian and trained and encourage my own personal piety. And then I go, you know, as a baker or a candlestick maker, however, Joe says that it was, what does he say, a baker, butcher, a candlestick maker? I don't know. I don't, I don't listen to have other things he says. And so what this reminds us is that we are scattered as the church organic into non-neutral territory, education, politics, art, family, not neutral territories, territories to be infiltrated by transformed individuals who bring those spheres of life under the Lordship of Christ. So the sort of theological anchor of everything that we're saying here is that the scope of salvation is as broad as the scope of the fall. And that's another line I stole from Joe just to give him credit. But he says in this chapter, the scope of salvation is as broad as the scope of the fall. And if we think about the fall, being what infected and affected every area of life with sin, so too is the mission of church. We sing it at Christmas, right? Far, he came to bring his blessings known far as the curse is found. So as far reaching as the curse, so far reaching must the work of the church be in bringing about the kingdom of Christ because Christ is right there. And right there, right there is where the slide into the political side can happen. Yes. Because right there, someone can listen to what you just said and said, okay, therefore society transformed in and of itself is a good thing without Christ. Like they'll miss what you're actually saying, which is it is the transformed individual, the transformed family, the transformed church, the transformed government by Christ. That will then transform personal experience and definitions of justice. They hear this idea that the scope of the gospel is grand and they go, oh, oh, oh, see, you just want to be political. It's like, no, no, no, no, we want everything to be transformed. Which by the way, I just want to make one little point here, Nate, just to all the authoritarian men out there, when we talk about fear sovereignty, that means that your family has certain freedoms, but it also means that your family doesn't. And so, you know, one of the things about fear sovereignty and understanding this concept and how the different spheres relate to the accountability of God, it brings every sphere in accountability with the Lord. And so even if you're an individual and you're getting away with murder and the church doesn't know about it, it doesn't matter. You're not getting away with murder. If you're a family, right? Like we, the individual freedom of the the sphere is freedom from people, not freedom from God. And so, I just think that as you were, you know, flushing that out and we're talking about the scope, it's this beautiful balance. God has created the world with this beautiful balance of accountability and freedom, of responsibility and and and personal rights and all of that comes from an understanding that we are tethered to the creator. Absolutely. And and therein lies lies the issue is that every aspect of our lives are tethered to the creator, as you say. Right? So when we have this sort of truncated view of what the church is and what Christians are, we see Christians as as individuals who have to practice spiritual disciplines rather than recognizing that that most Christians are husbands or wives and parents and tradesmen and teachers and office workers. And so the idea is that you you are not merely tethering part of your life to Christ and his Lordship. You're actually tethering every aspect of your life to Christ and his Lordship. Most of the people that we are preaching to on Sunday mornings are not going to be pastors or missionaries as we as we generally think of them in terms of overseas missionaries. They're going to be these everyday workers and until we let them recapture a vision for what it means to bring their vocational sphere their everyday life like the kind of neighbor they are, the kind of citizen they are, the kind of parent they are, the kind of worker employer or employee they are under the Lordship of Christ, then we were just we're giving them the first half of their, you know, duty as a disciple without giving them the what for to bring it back full circle to something that you said earlier is what are these things for. So reminder the church gathers to be formed and then the church scatters to live out Christ's reign. So talk a little bit as a pastor for many years Michael more years than I have under my belt because of how much older you are. But talk a little bit about how our discipleship needs to change that discipleship isn't primarily the installation of spiritual disciplines discipleship must be vocational and civic and educational and artistic and familial our discipleship needs to be as well rounded as the kingdom itself. I think here is the crocs for many of us who are engaged in what we would call full time ministry. This full time ministry for many decades has meant that we need the numbers, we need the established security. So Joe has coined the term tritianity. I have coined the phrase clergy economics. I think you know our system of seminary is it riddles men with debt. And we have appealed to the world's standards in our schools of accreditation. We have appealed to the world's standards of professionalization. They had ultimately what that means is that when we are empowering people and we are discipling people and teaching them to go away and do what the word says it's a lot harder to qualify and to quantify whether my ministry is successful. And I say this as a pastor who for the first part of my ministry I served with two very large churches and for the last majority parts of my ministry have served in small churches. And it is really hard in large churches to not turn everything into tritianity because it's so easy to celebrate. We had 500 young adults at youth. We had 38 small groups, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're able to justify your full time ministry with numbers. And you have the person in the small church and it's like yeah, we had three small groups and one lasted a year and the other two fought and then they broke up and then we started two other small and so I think that very practically, pastoral we have to shake clergy economics. We need to train up a whole new generation of elders who are willing to be bivocational and who are willing to be educated informally and just to train to handle the word correctly. We have to reimagine seminaries. I think this is this is where Joe and I started really becoming friends in this area of church unity because we just we kept looking around and going why is it that you know the home schoolers are getting it but their pastors don't. Why is it that the professional over here is getting it but the pastor doesn't? Why? And a lot of it comes back to both the way that we're training pastors and what we're training them towards. So maybe my application there, Nate, is just two words, elders and the appointing of elders and the way that we do that and the church can reimagine that so that the elders who are coming up out of the next generation are not so desperate that everything be centered around whether or not they're preaching was pleasing to the people that week. So that would be my application. What would your application for the for for people who are not elders and and not in the pulpit and maybe not at the center of leadership? What would your application be for someone who's been attending a church and is exploring these things and they're struggling with the way that their pastors are focused on church unity. I think it would be to to recover the idea of sort of what I would call inside out transformation. So as Joe says in this book, even as he's attacking pietism that there's there's nothing wrong with spiritual disciplines and internal transformation. That's actually a necessary starting point. But when you look at anything gospel related, it always starts small and it grows. It's the mustard seed that grows into the biggest plant that trumps every other or dwarfs every other plant in the garden. It's the small stone that turns into a rock that becomes a mountain that fills the whole earth. There's this slow outward. So I would say that the vision that we need to recover is the idea that I need to be transformed from the inside out, which means everything that is immediately closest to me begins to be transformed. When you become a Christian, you become a different father, a different husband, a different family man, a different neighbor and it goes out from there. And so you're always looking at taking dominion. Like Adam was told to take dominion, take the small you know, garden that God planted as a blueprint and bring it out into the entirety of the world. And so let that inside out transformation begin to affect everything and don't have a small vision for what kind of a Christian you can be. Have the kind of vision that transform people, transform everything that's around them. And there's this slow outward gradual transformation to everything that is closest to me ought to be transformed first. Everything that's a little bit adjacent to that ought to be transformed next. And as you go out and out further, you become a catalyst for transformation in the entirety of the world. I actually want to give Joe the last word here. So I want to actually read the last paragraph from this chapter and give him the closing words and then we'll wrap up just before you do. Yeah, just before you do. Everybody, the post show this week, I'm going to be interviewing a new author, a friend of our ministry Levi C. Cord. And he is a pastor in Minnesota who's just written a book on fear of sovereignty. So if you're interested in this topic, you want to dive into it more. Listen to in the post show with Levi and myself. Go ahead Nate. All right, given Joe the last word, the time has come to be done with retreatistic, pietistic and synchronistic gospel of church unity that has led to the radical decay of our culture, the collapse of the Christian calling and the impotence of an institutional church that refuses to bring the word of God to bear on all of life. A new generation of Christians must in the power of the Holy Spirit take up the task of fresh of being Christian lords in the development of creation and in the direction of culture as Christ Jesus intends. For this, we need true grace and wisdom, not only in our churches, but in our marriages and families, schools and civic associations, universities and businesses, political parties and guilds. We need the truth of the Christian gospel to permeate family, church and state and every dimension of life as it leaven permeates the dough. We must boldly proclaim and apply in detail the wisdom of God for every domain of life regarding not only the way of personal salvation, but regarding the entirety of our lives for the reconciliation of all things to God, only in this way will the gospel be unhindered and the wisdom and renewing power of God be effectively released again in our time.