The Sam Emadi Interview

(upbeat music) - We're back with another episode of the Room for New Wandsk. - Podcast with one of our most requested guests. - Say, "A Motti," how's it going? - I'd still doubt that that's true. - Yeah, yeah, wait, I could be lying. - That can't possibly be true. - I mean, like, you know. - Like two emails. - And like one was from my mom. - Well, first of all, not many people watch this. So, you know, most requested-- - Well, even less they're gonna watch this episode. - Number one requested is definitely like John Piper, Kevin D'Young, Paul Washer. People are like, "Why can't you get them on the show?" And I'm like, "You think I want those guys on my show? "I don't want them on my show. "I could get them if I wanted them, okay?" And then below that is probably like Vody Bachum, miss that one. And then right below, you're coming right in under Vody Bachum or his ghost, or his hologram. - Yeah, here we go. - That's shocking. - Would you, based off of the dumb things I've said so far, we need the Lord's help for the rest of this interview. So would you ask him to bless this conversation? - Okay. - Lord, we are weak and needy. And Father, we pray that you would get glory for yourself through our weakness. So we ask now that you would help us to have a fruitful conversation, that it would be encouraging to one another and that it would bless those who listen in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Let's start off with this. - What are the rules for this? Do I need to be right up on the mic? - There are no rules, brother. You're the guest, do whatever you want. - All right. - What is the message of the gospel and the karate kid? - You want to start with this? - I want to start with this. Hey, this is how we're going to hook him, brother. - Okay. - Is this the old, is this the Braf Machio Karate Kid, or is this what it is? - No, no, this is original karate kid. You know, I've not seen Kobra Kai or any of the new things. This is probably the most watched or listened to thing I've ever done. And it was shocking to me how it kind of went Christian viral for a couple of days. So here it is. I do think that the karate kid is the best cinematic portrayal of the gospel. So you have-- - Better than the passionate Christ, brother. - Well, maybe. You got Danny Laruso. He is the son of a single mother. He's the seat of the woman. And he moves to California. And it's interesting when he moves to California, his mom says, "You're going to love it here." It's like the Garden of Eden. - So Danny is associated with all of this adenic imagery, which is reflected even when he goes to Miyagi's Dojo. What's the symbol of the Dojo? It's the bonsai tree, right? It's like the psalm one tree of life. - Yeah. - Who is the bad guy in Karate Kid? Kobra Kai, the seat of the serpent. Now the conflict between the seat of the woman and the seat of the serpent comes to a head in the movie's climax when what happens? Sweep the leg, right? Kobra Kai wants to crush the heel of Danny Laruso, which they do. So Danny goes into the back. He goes into the locker room. And Miyagi raises him from the dead. And who is it that comes out and announces the resurrection? Well, just like the gospel's, it's a woman. And so then Danny Laruso in the Crane Kick, which looks like a crucifix form delivers a jump kick to the head of Kobra Kai, thus crushing the head of the seat of the serpent. And he does all of this for Allie Mills, his bride. - Oh my gosh. I've heard this before, but it's still so good. Now is this original to you? - So I have a friend named Mark Redfern, he's a pastor in Onesboro, Kentucky. - I know, and I love him. - Okay, so I was at the end of the story. At his church for a season of my life, and we both share a mutual love for the Karate Kid. So. - Was this why you guys were like in seminary together and nerding out? And then as you're watching it, you're like in another thing. - This is another thing. - This is why some people hate biblical theology. (laughing) Like y'all just see whatever you wanna see, wherever you wanna see it. But I don't know, man, this sounds pretty convincing. It feels like if Michael Morales were into the Karate Kid, he would have said the exact same thing. Well, I know it sounds a little silly, but I do think it's because all great stories, and I do think the Karate Kid is a great story. All great stories are great because they tap into the biblical archetypes and the biblical images. I mean, at the end of every single Harry Potter book, what happens? He goes into the earth. - Where? - He goes into the earth. He goes through some sort of death experience, and then he rises again from the dead. And all of this is climatically portrayed at the end of the last book when he literally dies, and then rises again from the dead. So sorry, spoilers, you haven't read it, but there you go. - But you have these cycles of death and resurrection, which culminates in the end of every book. - At the end of every book, yeah. So, and I think that's one of the reasons those books are so powerful. - Now do you think that this happens so much in Western literature, just because we're so down to, like so closely, downstream from the gospel? - Yeah, I mean, I think some authors are doing it self-consciously and intentionally. I mean, I think-- - Like JK Rowling. - I think Rowling is a genius, and I think even if I don't know her spiritual state, so if she is regenerate, I think she's doing it. - She's gonna be a Christian, let's hope it is true. - So I think she's doing it self-consciously and intentionally, and then I think there are others who maybe don't do it with the intent of alluding to scripture, but nonetheless, they are living in the stream of kind of symbols and images and ideas that have so permeated Western literature that come from the Bible, that they're doing it even unintentionally. - It's an interesting time to be alive. We're starting to see Western civilization become unmoored from its foundation, and we're starting to see more and more art shift away from that, so it's the constant subversion wicked, right? Like the one who was the black hat really is just misunderstood. They're actually not wicked. They're actually righteous, according to this weird definition of righteousness. Yeah, okay, well, we got ahead of ourselves, but usually start with a testimony, but I wanted to hear the Karate Kid gospel presentation first. - I mean, I think we could just end right here. - Now also that I know that you love Harry Potter so much, I wanna ask you, did you love Harry Potter before you became friends with Jim Hamilton? - I did, so I became really interested in those books when I married my wife. We got married, and when we were on our honeymoon, we watched the movies, and then I thought, "Are you honeymoon?" - Yeah, these stories are great, and then when we got back, I read the books and realized, well, these stories are magnificent, these are incredible. So then I got a hold, and then I met Jim, and Jim pointed me to the works of John Granger, and John Granger, the Hogwarts professor, and so he's written a couple of books on Harry Potter, and those have intensified my love for those books. - Yeah, okay, you work with Jim regularly on the podcast known as? - Bible talk. - Bible talk. I can never differentiate whether you or Jim are talking, and it's so funny, because when I'm talking to Jim, I know it's him, when I'm talking to you, I know it's you, but on the podcast, I'm just like, I don't know who just said, "Do you hear this often?" - I do hear it, you know. - Okay. - Is it trying to distinguish my voice? - Yeah, maybe a high pitch next time. - Or maybe do like an English accent. - Do you know about my gift with English accents? - It's so bad, do you have a good idea? - Oh yeah, so like, you know, like, like, Cockney, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Like, "Ella, O'Govna," right? - Okay. - I wouldn't do any region, anywhere, basically, throughout the UK. - Okay. - So, but you have to have like a discerning ear. So like, give me another region in the UK. - Do you like Central London? - Okay. - Ella, O'Govna. (laughing) And I can just do that anywhere. I can do all you dishes. I can do that. - Amazing. - Yeah, all right, back to you. This isn't about demonstrating my skills and talents. What is your testimony, brother? How did you come to another Lord? - Yeah, so I grew up in a Christian family. My parents became Christians, maybe a year, a couple years before I was born. My dad's from Iran, my mom's from Idaho. So naturally, they got married. - None of the Iran came through, bro. You look as white as the day is long. That's crazy, okay. - My oldest brother, so I have two older brothers. I think my oldest brother has the most Persian features. My middle brother and I, I think, probably looks the most alike. - And I just simmered down with each other. - That's right, yeah. So they became Christians a few years before I was born. I was born in Virginia, grew up in Utah. So moved to Utah when I was a baby. Like many who grew up in a Christian home, I have a testimony that I'm very thankful for in that I obviously understand theologically. At some point I was regenerate. I believe the gospel for the first time. I repented of my sins like many childhood conversions. It's difficult to understand for me exactly when that happened. I do think it happened early in life. But I'm doing membership interviews at Huntsinger and folks have similar experiences of those kinds of childhood conversions. - Huntsinger, the church you passed. - The church I passed her. I'll often point them to this quote from Spurgeon that I think is really helpful. That we may not know exactly when the sun rose, but we can tell if it's shining. - Amen. - So we gotta remember that, yeah, okay. - I think I was converted by God's grace just through the ministry of my parents early in life. Grew up in a church. It was interesting to grow up in Utah in the 90s and early 2000s. I think I knew maybe one or two professing evangelical Christians within five years of my age. while I was growing up. So I grew up in a church of about 30 people. And I would say that was typical for Utah, especially in the '90s. I didn't have any sort of, what I now recognize as kind of a traditional evangelical subculture upbringing. There were no camps, there were no kind of youth groupie kind of things. But I'm thankful for that. I think growing up in that context, and especially being in a public school environment, where very often I was, you know, the only evangelical Christian, especially in middle school and high school. It just put me in a context of, frankly, having a lot of opportunities for evangelism, that I didn't even have to initiate. Just Mormon friends coming to me, well, you're a nice guy, but you're not a Mormon, what's going on with you? But I think there was also a sense of, learning in that environment that, yeah, if I'm gonna be a Christian and follow Jesus, I have to count the cost, I have to be different. So I'm thankful for that. I grew up in, and I think, a church that I would have some disagreements with now in terms of dispensationalism, kind of differing ecclesiology, but it was Calvinistic, it believed in expository preaching. And it's amazing how, if you just open the Bible every week and teach it, so much good will happen. So I'm thankful to have grown up in that church and to have had so much Bible and theology in my life, really on. Matt Smithhurst texted me when he found out that we were gonna be doing this interview. And he gave me a list of things to make sure that we talk about. Okay. Okay. Which by the way, he also shared with me a really cool story about how you guys during COVID would go on walks with your kids and strollers and pray about what the Lord would have you do next in terms of the pastorate. That was such a cool story, man. Yeah. But he said, "I have to make sure that I talk to you about evangelism to Mormons." He didn't give me a set of questions. He just said, "That's the subject matter you gotta talk with them." So, talk with them about, so let's talk about it. Well, I think the person you really need to talk to is my older brother Matt. So I don't know if you know Matt. Matt pastors Crossroads Church in San Diego, and he's been there, I think over 10 years now. And Matt probably has his finger on the pulse, a little more than I do. And I do think that Mormonism is undergoing some transitions and shifts since I've moved out of Utah, which would have been in 2009. But is it Mormonism always going through transitions? Well, of course. Right. But I think that, there's a couple of things going on with Mormonism right now. Number one, as far as I understand, the last statistic that I've read was, for the first time in its history, Mormonism is now a minority in Utah that it's 51% non-Mormon. I see someone can fact check me on that, but I think that's true. For those who may not know, can you explain why Utah is a Mormonism stronghold? Well, because when after Joseph Smith's death to kind of truncate it all, Brigham Smith, sorry, Brigham Young, who was the second, he wishes. Second profit and president of the LDS church led the Morgans on a pilgrimage to Utah so that they could establish their own society there. So the story that is often told and that we learned growing up in public school in Utah is that Brigham Young kind of came across the Wasatch Mountains, looked over the plains and said, "This is the place." So-- Okay, so it's always been historically majority-- Oh, by a lot. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I would, you know, these are kind of rough numbers, but I would assume that Davis County, the county that I grew up in, which is about 30 minutes north of Salt Lake City, when I was there in the 90s, early 2000s, I assume it would probably be something like 70% Mormon. You know, and then you would have Provo where BYU is. And I think during my time there, it was maybe high 80s, even low 90s, percent Mormon. I went to a high school, I think of about 2000 students. And as far as I know, I was the only evangelical Christian in the school. There may have been others that I just didn't know about, but as far as I know, but everybody that I knew was Mormon. I mean, there were a couple of like rogue atheists and agnostics milling about, but everybody that I knew was Mormon. So I think Mormonism is in some transition right now because of changing dynamics in the state. You have people leaving California and flooding into the state. You have the advent of the internet. And obviously cults thrive when they can control information. But the internet has just changed the game. And then I don't think Mormonism has the kind of deep theological moorings to be able to resist the secular revolution and the sexual revolution. So my hunch is that they're kind of adrift and they don't have the kind of doctrinal catechesis to be able to not lose members of the church just to the kind of post-Christian culture. - Yeah. One thing that I do think is still probably true with regard to evangelizing Mormons is, you know, one thing that I tell folks in my own church when they're engaging in Mormon missionaries is, it just remember these are 19 year old kids who are away from their mom for the first time. Often they're very lonely, they're scared. So just breaking the stereotype that evangelical Christians are Bible thumping and cruel and harsh and belittling can go a long way. In terms of content and kind of getting to important matters, very often conversations with Mormons, at least the ones that I've had, will lead to them trying to convince you that they are Christians, that really you do worship the same God, that really you are, even in some ways adhering to the same gospel, and they just wanna say, hey, we have all of that, plus something else. We have the restoration of the priesthood, we have Joseph Smith, we have all these things. And I think it's critical in those conversations, I'll often begin a conversation with a Mormon friend along these lines. Look, you're a Mormon and you want me to be a Mormon. I'm an evangelical Christian, I want you to be an evangelical Christian. I think we are gonna have the most productive conversation, not by trying to see places where we might agree, but like let's actually talk about things that we are, that we're different, places where we're different. And what I wanna start with is the character of God, because from what I understand, you guys believe that the God of this world was once a man who lived on another planet, who through obedience to gospel ordinances and principles became a God and then has populated this universe, controls this universe. I wanna assert that God is the infinite eternal creative of the universe, that he doesn't have a body. So I wanna start with the doctrine of God, and get them to engage with me in places where we are different. And I don't really wanna, I mean, I think if you have a good enough friendship, you can talk about all the issues with Joseph Smith and differences and contradictions in his first vision. You can talk about the issues with polygamy and all of those kinds of things, but that's not ultimately productive. We wanna win them to Jesus. - Yeah, that's right. - So I think starting with the doctrine of God and getting to the sufficiency of the work of Christ on the cross, that's where I think you wanna press. - Did you get there only after making a bunch of bonehead mistakes in your evangelism efforts? - Oh yeah. - And y'all wear funny underwear, huh? Let's talk about that for a minute, right? - Mitt Romney, that's the best you got. - Yeah, okay. Were you actively evangelizing Mormon during your time? How would you when you left Utah? - It was 21. - 21. So I'm guessing you had a pretty decent amount of time to practice evangelism? - Yeah, I would say the most fruitful season of evangelism. Even though I didn't see any conversions come out of it. - Not what you know of. - You know what I'm saying? - Yeah, but just in terms of the amount of conversation I was able to have, was actually in those high school years, my junior and senior year of high school. Like I said, I was, all my friends were worn. - You know? - Yeah. - And I was-- - And I was-- - The band name called it. All my friends were worn on my friends were worn. - All my friends were worn. Well, I was in a band called How About Tuesday. (laughing) That was a Skaw band. - Skaw, let's go. - Yeah. - 3-11. - I played this saxophone and I was a band geek. And so just in those circles, like I said earlier, I think I kind of broke the stereotype a little bit. Okay, you believe in God. You're very moral. You kind of fit with us culturally, but you don't come to our things. You don't read the book of Mormon. At least when I was there, public schools had an option where students could take one period and go to seminary. So it was a building kind of on the campus of the public school, but it was a Mormon institute where they could go take classes on Mormonism. So you don't go to Mormon seminary. And so I had a lot of conversations about the gospel with Mormon friends and I didn't initiate any of those conversations. I didn't not that I didn't initiate any of them, but I didn't-- - Yeah, I know you do. I didn't initiate many of those conversations just because it's just so much part of the culture. It's just part of what you talk about. - Yeah. - And Mormons are trained to be evangelistic. So they were happy to have conversations. - Is this where you got your niceness from? - I suppose so. If you think I'm nice. - Is your wife blonde? - She is, yeah. - How many kids do you have? - I have four children. - And counting. - No. - Okay. All right. You could have been a Mormon, it's all I'm saying. It's all working for you. But you got saved, praise God. - You know what I, you should talk to your brother. - You should talk to my brother. - Okay. - But you should talk to a guy named Zach Carter. - He's a fellow pastor in Huntsville. The plan is to have him on the pod. - Zach's. - He's got a book coming out on us, right? - Zach's a very good friend and he's a genius and he's endlessly interesting. He wrote that cloud of witnesses on the practice of, yeah, very good book. Okay, let's move on from that. I do look forward to talking to him, and your brother more about this because I think, and it just never gets old. Another thing, we're gonna get to Joseph. Don't worry about that, we're gonna get to Joseph. But another thing that, who told me? - I get nervous when you ask these questions 'cause you pull up the list and then you get this big smile. - Like you're about to surprise me with something. (laughing) - You are a secret alcoholic. - Oh, here we go. - Somebody said, I have got to talk, who was this Luke that said I have to talk to him about men serving in the nursery. - Oh, the church members of yours. - Oh, Dom and Courtney Thomas. Yeah, shout out to Dom and Courtney former interns at Glory Community Church now. It's Southern and at Huntsing Island. - Yeah, and there's a Huntsing Island Baptist Church. - Yeah, talk to us about this viral article men serving in the nursery. - Yeah, so I've, you know, I don't know how many articles I've written that have been published. I think it's probably a few dozen, but far in the way, the thing that I have written that has been read the most, is this article that I've published with TGC called Brothers, Serving the Nursery. - Okay. - It's probably, you know, read more than every other thing that I've written put together. - Come on, yeah. - Yeah. I mean, the point of it is basically just to encourage men, especially brothers who are aspiring to ministry to serve children in the church and to not complain about it and why not about it. If you're aspiring to ministry, then what you need more in life than anything else is humility and a willingness to serve people. And if Jesus is willing to bend down and washes disciples feet, then we need to be willing to bend down and pick saliva soggy Cheerios off the floor for the sake of serving our brothers and sisters and for the sake of these kids. You know, one of the things that I often tell my congregation is serving in the nursery, and I get different churches are gonna do nursery in different ways. All of those things, but serving in the nursery is one way that you fulfill your promises as a member. Essentially what membership in a local church is, is caring just as much about the holiness of your brothers and sisters as you do your own. - Amen. - Caring just as much about their devotion to Jesus as you do your own, which means caring just as much about their access to the ordinary means of grace on the Lord's day as you do your own. So one way we can care just as much about their holiness and their sanctification as they do mine, let's all shoulder the burden of caring for our children together. If we all do that, then it diminishes the responsibility that any one person is gonna have. It diminishes the number of times everybody is gonna have to serve in that way. And it shows that you value, I think it shows that you value the holiness of the whole congregation. And it's a great way to shed the kind of consumerism that we bring with us into church. - Luke, are you taking notes on this? I'm sitting here totally convicted like, oh, that's how we need to talk about this in our next members meeting. I'm just like, listen, you better show up. That's so good, brother. Now, I'm guessing-- - I just printed off. I just printed off. So every Sunday evening. Do you have a Sunday evening prayer meeting? - No. - I don't want to. - We have a Sunday evening prayer meeting. I try to give out at least two books every Sunday evening. Last Sunday, I printed off 25 copies of brothers serving the nursery and pass those out. - Nice, dude. Oftentimes, some of the best stuff that we put out content-wise to help serve other churches is the stuff that's just born of our own pastoral. We're going through this. Okay, I've thought about it. I think this is good. Maybe it'll help somebody else out there. So I'm guessing that's the same thing that happened here, right? - Well, it was actually, I wrote that article when I was just a member at Third Avenue Baptist Church. - Okay. - But I don't-- - But what precipitated, like, what made you write this? Were you struggling to get men to-- - No, I mean, I didn't have any sort of authority over the nursery and I don't know what precipitated it. I just was at that time a seminary student aspiring to be a pastor. And I think deep down, I'm always just kind of bothered. Especially by men who aspire to be pastors who are unwilling to do dirty work and unwilling to get in the nursery. I mean, I tell guys in our church, if you aspire to be an elder and you're not regularly showing up to the prayer meeting, I mean, obviously you need to be there for corporate worship. That's not negotiable. But if you're not regularly, it's showing up to the prayer meeting and you're not serving in the nursery. Just put your pastoral aspirations aside. We're never going to consider you. - Yeah. That's reasonable. - I don't care if you can preach the lights out. Do you guys have any kind of rule in your church where like if you bring your kids, we call it gospel kids, to gospel kids and we expect you to sign up to be on that? - We tell our members that we expect every member to be serving the children. Unless there is some reason that they ought not to. Maybe they have a personal sin struggle which would be unwise for them to be serving in that capacity. They would have a health condition that would prevent them. But we ask all of our members to serve. When we're doing our membership interviews with them, the way we phrase it. And I think I got this from Brandon Schaefer, who's a pastor at Third Avenue Baptist Church. When we're doing our membership interviews, we will ask, is there any reason why you couldn't serve in the nursery? - Yeah, you know Jordan Thomas out in Memphis. - Okay, yeah. - Yeah, Luke, am I saying this right? He just doesn't ask. He doesn't give anybody an option. - You just turned up. - He just calls it "Voluntual." - Do you get me in the business? - You join the church, here we are. It really is so important. I've seen churches before where the volunteer pool is so low that you have some people who are serving in the nursery like every other week. Which we can't have that. You're missing service, the worship of God to people every other weekend. Usually that's because the men aren't stepping up. And if this is a Doug Wilson quote, I do think it's excellent though. He defines masculinity as the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. And this is a good place to put that on display. I'm a man, well, see you in the nursery. - We've got a brother in our church. He's a really godly brother. And he is, I would say, hyper intelligent, very motivated. I think he's gonna make an incredible pastor. And one of the things that I appreciate about him most and love about him most is he doesn't just consistently show up to serve in the nursery. When he shows up to serve in the nursery, he's all in. He brings his ukulele. He's singing songs with these kids. He's reading books. He's got games planned out that he's doing with them. - He's not just looking at his watch the whole time. - Exactly. I tried to find it in my phone, but I'm bad at that. Have you ever read that spurgeon quote about getting the apple in the jar? I'm gonna tell you butchered this. But if I do, it's still worth looking up. He basically says one day. - Is it in lectures to my students? - I don't remember. He says one day he was walking through an orchard and he saw on the apple tree apples with jars, like jars over the apples. But when you look at the aperture of the jar, it's very small, the apple is very large. And he says, I was sitting there, racking my brain. How do they get this jar over the apple? How do they get the jar over the apple? Because he's spurgeon, he goes, I thought maybe it was this. And though it wasn't that, I thought maybe it was this. And I realized, no, maybe it wasn't that either. And finally, he said it hit him. He said, you do it when the apple's tiny and the hole's tiny. And then as the apple grows, and then the jar can hang on. He says, that's what we're doing with children's ministry. We're trying to get the gospel into them at a very young age so that they're being evangelized. And hopefully what we're doing is just complementing what their parents are already doing at home. But the whole church is saying, we're doing this together at a very young age to get them the gospel. Our church is very much committed to, we want to equip parents to be the primary disciples of their children. We want parents to be the primary agents of truth speaking in the lives of their children. At the same time, I think, we don't want to be kind of, we don't want to do the isolated youth ministry where we kind of farm out all discipling of children to the church, nor do we want to be an eliminated youth ministry where we're like, well, that's just the job of the parents, the church has no place in this. I actually think we have a model for ministry to children given to us in scripture because I think there's a place in the Bible where Paul functions as a youth pastor. And that's in Ephesians 6. - No, okay. - He speaks to children in the church. He teaches them gods. word, he applies it to their life and he does all of that in a way that leads them back to the authority of their parents. You know, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is the first commandment to promise on to your father and mother. So he's instructing them, teaching them from the Bible, applying to their life and leading them back to the authority of their parents. I think that's Paul the youth pastor showing us how to address children in the church. And I think one of the reasons that young men in particular, maybe even especially men aspiring to ministry, can sometimes struggle with serving the nursery, serving children being involved in that way is just because they don't have old enough children yet. Maybe they don't have any children or they don't have any children at home who are 10, 11, 12, 13. I have a 13 year old, I have a 13 year old and 11 year old, a 9 year old and a 6 and a half year old. And I am regularly in conversation with them about hopefully, you know, discipling them and having spiritual conversation and we're doing family devotions and all those types of kind of ordinary Christian family things. I cannot tell you how thankful I am when I see members of our church teaching them, befriending them. When I tell folks in the membership interview, look, we want to be a congregation where when the kids walk into our church, they kind of look around the room and say, "These are my friends. These are the people that I know." So I want all of our members to come in with that kind of disposition that they're going to look for kids and they're going to talk to them and they're going to serve in the nursery and they're going to do the kind of ordinary Christian things that you ought to do with these kids for the sake of being able to share the gospel with them. I don't know about you guys, but we have an in our church covenant. Yeah, we have that as well. We changed the language to make it a little more as such, may it any time, be it out there. That was the Nertron Aminist of the Lord. We kept it. Great. Of course. So just on the record, Samomadi, Paul was a youth pastor, got that. Yeah. Ephesians 6, look at it. Do you guys have a youth pastor? We do not. Would you? I would imagine a situation in which we might have a pastor who gives special attention to youth and families, but not a traditional youth pastor in the way that many people would conceptualize that word. So we currently have three full-time pastors and just as a mad, you know, we're all pastors, but just as a matter of practicality. We have different areas. We distribute focuses of responsibility. And one of our pastors is a pastor of counseling and family ministries. And so he's giving pastoral oversight to all of those things, but he's not a traditional youth pastor. He's trying to equip parents to teach them and then to bring other members of the congregation into what we're doing so that they're engaging with our kids as well. Do you have a youth group? We do, yeah. Yeah. Once a week. We have a kind of a middle school group. We have a couple of high schoolers. So that's not that large. We have kind of a larger middle school group. So we're just trying to kind of incorporate those two things a little bit more. So we have a Sunday school class for them. And then we do once a month, middle school lunch. So one of the parents will host a pizza lunch right after church. And then the kids get together. They eat pizza. There's some members of the church who are regularly a part of that. And then they lead the kids in like a fun activity. And then they do a small group where they discuss the sermon. Oh, that's really good, man. I like that. Okay, let's talk about Joseph. You wrote your PhD? I did. Did you know that I have a PhD? Really? Yeah. It's a player-hater degree. And it's from a totally legit institution. I got it from the school of hard knocks. My dissertation was that I just had to get into a bunch of fights and sell drugs. But yeah, well, in your dissertation was on Joseph. What about him in particular? Really whether he's a type of a Messiah. Ooh. Okay. Well, you jump in wherever you want to jump in. Okay. Tell him the story of Joseph. Well, I'll back up a little bit and make it a little more personal and talk about my journey to Southern. Okay. And what that did to me. So I guess it would have been in 2006, my older brother, who's a D1 basketball player, he decided to do his last year of eligibility at Biola. So we're growing up in Utah, which I mean, the internet is just becoming a thing. And so we were a little insulated from kind of larger evangelical strikers. So he goes to Biola and starts studying with guys who studied with Dia Carson and reading really good books that are written by guys who are still alive. Up until that point, all through college, I was reading Calvin and the Puritans. You know, like those were the only guys that I knew. And so he goes to Biola and I'll never forget that this is the back of the day when he had to burn CDs. Yeah, baby. So he burned a CD and sent it to me in the mail and called me and was like, you got to listen to this. This is the most amazing thing in the world. So I get this CD in the mail that says, how to kill sin part two, Romans A, J, piper. And that was transformative. I just remember listening to that and thinking, I've never heard anything like this in my life. I've never heard preaching like this. So I began reading piper and then that's what led me to Tom Schreiner and then that's what led me to Southern Seminary. And when I got to Southern, I was still trying to figure out what to do with biblical theology. By that time I had left dispensationalism. I had at one point kind of flirted with becoming a Presbyterian. I couldn't figure out kind of a Baptist way to put these things together. And it was there at Southern. I would say Tom Schreiner, Jim Hamilton and Steve Wellam filled in the gaps and helped me figure out how all these things fit together. I've always had a love for the Old Testament. So I knew if I were to do something, I would want to do something in the Old Testament. And I've always had a love for Old Testament narrative. Larger because I feel like I don't understand it well. And I feel like for many evangelical Christians it is a little bit of a locked box. We turn to it for moral exemplars, illustrations, those kinds of things. That's very much how I grew up with the Old Testament, not really knowing what to do with it. And Jim and Steve Wellam in particular helped me understand how the Old Testament is a messianic document anticipating a messianic resolution. And these are not things that are imposed by later biblical authors. And we're not just trying to Christianize the Old Testament by reading it through a typological lens. Now actually if we understand the Old Testament according to its authorial intent, we recognize that they spoke in such a way that they were writing stories and talking about persons of ens institutions. So that those who were reading what they were saying in their day would recognize that these things are ultimately patterns anticipating some sort of messianic resolution. So I came to the Joseph story largely because I love the book of Genesis. I've always been interested in it. And I didn't really know what to do with it. One is kind of reading Joseph devotionaly one day and thinking, "How would I preach this? I didn't really have a clear vision for that." And then second, I did think that Joseph was a little bit of a test case for biblical theology and for typology because it's not as crystal clear as to whether he's a type as say Adam or David because there you have the New Testament specific smoking gun New Testament passages that would point you to that. Whereas with Joseph, there was a little bit more kind of intramural debate even within my own kind of hermeneutical camp as to whether he was a type. So what I wanted to do was take Hamilton's just brilliant biblical theological sensibilities as best I could imitate them. And then take Steve Wellems kind of rigorous hermeneutical model, very self-aware, very intentional, very much kind of in line with the reformed tradition and apply that kind of rigor that Wellems has to Joseph as a test case to discern whether he's a type of the Messiah and came to the conclusion that he is. I do still like my book. I want to write another one. I think there I think that they're I left so much unsaid. So I think there's quite a bit more there with regard to resurrection topology in the Joseph story that I didn't really pick up on. I think one of the things that I grew significantly in my understanding of after graduation was the importance of the internal structure, the internal literary structure of these writings. I think for people who are listening, I think they're there might be a sense of shock here, 'cause this was your PhD dissertation, right? The idea that you spent what, three, four, five years? - I mean, the program is five years, but I would say two years focused on. - The idea that you spent several years, intensely focused on studying this in the academic environment, and that you missed, it seems like to hear you say, several really important things. I think people will be shocked to hear that. - Well, I think there's a couple of things going on. Number one is just youthfulness, and I think I went into the PhD project with some degree of just kind of a mid-20s insecurity. And what I meant by that is, I think in writing the project, I spent too much time in secondary literature. I felt compelled to kind of know everything that I'd ever been written on the just story. And of course, that's good scholarship, and you should do that. But now I wish I would have spent more time just in the text rigorously doing exegesis, non-stop. Second, I think so much of what you get out of your study of scripture are the questions that you bring to it. And I just don't think I was asking the question, kind of chapter by chapter through the Joseph story, what is the literary structure that Moses himself has embedded into this passage? And what kind of textual clues and signals is he putting in here to help me discern that? So I don't think I was as sensitive to chiasms. As I should have been, I don't think I was as sensitive to the kind of artistic literary structures that Moses uses. One dissertation that's recently been written that I think is brilliant is Tom Skullthorpe's dissertation on Genesis, where most of what he does is looking at the kind of macro literary structures and the micro literary structures. So there's so much there. And I just think, well, I don't even know how long we've been doing Bible talk now, four, five years of Bible talk and getting to walk through the Bible week by week with Jim has vastly improved my knowledge of scripture and my interpretive sensibilities. Yeah, I was gonna ask, what made you realize you had missing things? Was there a sense after you finished your dissertation where I mean, I can imagine myself in that situation being like, okay, done with Joseph, or at least for a while, that was a pretty intense time. Yeah. Did you, did it take you a while to go back and poke your nose back into the story? Maybe I had like a month of that. I think I did. Yeah, I think after I finished, after I, now that I'm recalling, after I finished my dissertation, I had this like weird season where all I did was watch World War II documentaries. (laughing) Super weird. So I think I spent a couple of months doing that. But anytime anybody has something to say about Joseph, I'm interested in it. You know, it's just such an extraordinary, amazing story. And the fact that now 10 years on, however long it's been where I've been giving kind of concentrated attention to this, things are still revealed to me. Things are still pointed out to me. I still learn new things about it. It's just, it's amazing how deep the rabbit hole goes. So, you know, even just the other day, I was looking at a, I can't remember, it was like a tweet or an article that he wrote, but Mitch Chase who you should also interview. Mitch is brilliant. Yeah. He was pointing out that there's, and I'd never seen this, that there's seven scenes in Genesis 37 to 50 where Joseph weeps and they're arranged chiastically. Mm. And you know, it's just, it's extraordinary. Yeah. It never ends. Okay, so speaking of the rabbit hole and all the cool things, pretend that I am a Christian who grew up in, Are you not? I, yeah, right. Pretend that I'm a Christian who grew up in a fairly typical American evangelical church. Maybe I went to a Wanas and I got all the jewels in my crown. Okay, I did scripture memory. I went to Sunday school. I heard more or less halfway decent sermons usually tilting towards moralism. And imagine that the story of Joseph that I've heard is right down the middle of what you would expect. Just kind of, okay, you know the story, but you don't really know the story. Help me better understand the Joseph story. What am I missing? Well, I think I would want to say something like, I want you to read the Joseph story. And I think there are things that you can learn there about sexual purity from Genesis 39. Please. I think there are things you can learn there theologically about the relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. And I feel like that's where reformed Christians kind of typically go to the Joseph story. It's our compatible person first. But what I'm talking to the, you know, the Christian who's kind of grown up in moralism, I would say the first thing I want you to see is a picture of how God fulfills his promises and specifically how he fulfills his promises in Jesus Christ. So that's the first thing I would want to push is that what you see here is a story of how God intends to save his people and fulfill all of his covenant promises to Abraham. And the way that he's gonna do that is by a royal rejected son who through suffering comes to glory and saves really the world, not just because he's a wise administrator, but because he's generous and forgiving. And because he reconciles with the very people who tried to kill him. Who tried to kill him. Okay, so with that in mind, with that framework in mind, walk us through the Joseph story. Help us see it like we've never seen it before. Well, I think the first thing that you need to see in the Joseph story is in Genesis 37, the way that Joseph is introduced is he's introduced as a royal figure. So his dreams obviously signify royalty. Sorry, not obvious. Okay, how do his dreams signify royalty? So his brothers are bowing down to him, the sheaves bow down to his sheaf. And then interestingly, the stars and the sun and the moon are bowing down to him. It's like this guy's the king of creation. And his brothers understand this. They understand that these dreams are signifying royalty. That's why they're shouting. Shall you indeed reign over us? Shall you indeed rule over us? Malak, Masha'al, these are the Hebrew words and these are royal words. Similarly, the robe that is given to Joseph is a royal robe. Now, we often translate this as a robe of many colors. I think from the study that I've done, it seems like that is a tradition that's coming to us from some funny things that happen with the Vulgate. This phrase, "Cotona, Pasim" seems to be something more like a robe with long sleeves. It's used only one of the time in the Bible, and that's in 2 Samuel 13, 8, where the daughters of King David have these robes with long sleeves. And the idea is if you've got a robe with long sleeves, you're in the royal court. You're not out in the field, you know, doing work. Where you need your hands to be successful. You've got to roll up your sleeves and get stuff done. If you've got long sleeves, you're royalty. So Joseph is introduced to us as a royal figure. Now, we need to read that in the context of the promises that are given in Genesis. Adam is a royal figure. Noah is presented to us as a priest king. Abraham is promised that he is going to sire a line of kings. Same in Genesis 35-11. Jacob is promised that kings are going to come from him. So all through Genesis, we're expecting, okay, a kingly figure is going to come. And this kingly figure in the Abrahamic promises clearly meant to be seen in light of Genesis 3.15, this idea of a new Adam, a new priest king who's going to come and reverse the curse and destroy Satan and, you know, re-institute the Adinic Paradise. So there's this royal expectation all through Genesis, such that by the time we get to Genesis 37, and here's this figure. Oh, and he's got all these royal trappings about him. The question we should be asking is, is this the one to come or should we expect another? You know, like maybe this is him. Right. But then what happens in Genesis 37 is not the kind of eschatological resolution, fulfillment of the promises that we might expect. Instead, what happens is a replay of the king-enabled story. So in Genesis 4, one of the things that you see, just in terms of the literary features of the text, is that the words blood and brother are used very frequently in that chapter. Well, that word pair doesn't really occur with any sort of frequency in Genesis 5 through 36, but in Genesis 37, here it is again, blood and brother, blood and brother. So the story of Genesis 37, Joseph with his brothers, is the story of King-enabled. We're revisiting that story. And the question is, are we really just back at Square One again? Or have we made any progress in the history of redemption? Is there any way that humanity is going to be able to overcome the kind of interior moral corruption that we see play out in the fratricide that happens when King kills Abel? So it's a replay of king-enabled. Then you've got Genesis 38, Genesis 39. Jan. 38, all about Judah, Jan. 39, all about Joseph. Jan. 38, all about Judah's sexual sin. Jan. 39, all about Joseph's sexual purity. So what's happening is Moses is drawing us to compare and contrast Judah and Joseph. Judah, at the beginning of the story, he's an abuser, he's self-indulgent, he's an opportunist, he's just looking to make a buck, and he's happy for other people to suffer for the sake of his own gain. Now, I think he gets converted at the end of Jan. 38. He's a completely different person. The beginning of the story, it's a Joseph Judah contrast. At the end of the story, it's a Joseph Judah comparison. They become similar people. Jan. 38, Judah's sexual impurity. Jan. 39, we have Joseph's sexual purity. But also the way that that story is told, I think is meant to remind us of what happens in the garden. So it's interesting in Jan. 39, where it says that Joseph is given authority over all of Potiphar's house, except for the food that he eats. But then when Joseph is recounting to Potiphar's wife, his authority, he says, you know, Potiphar's giving me authority over everything except you. And I think what's happening there is kind of a euphemism or food is being used as a euphemism for sex. And so the idea is she represents a forbidden kind of food. And just as in Jan. 3, you have Adam listens to the voice of his wife and then indulges in the food. And then you have in Jan. 16, Abraham listens to the voice of his wife and then indulges with Hegar. And then here in Jan. 39, you have Joseph does not listen to Potiphar's wife. And whereas Adam goes from naked to cloth, Joseph in that story goes from cloth to naked. So I think he's being presented to us as a new Adam, but a new Adam in the best of ways, not like Abraham kind of repeating all of Adam's mistakes. Now we've got a new Adam who's succeeding in the world. Who's succeeding where Adam failed. Then you have the story of Joseph's rise to power, God's providence in his life, his wisdom and administration, all of these kinds of things. Genesis 45, he reconciles with his brothers. And it's interesting in Acts 7, when Stephen picks up on the Joseph story, what is it that he focuses on? It's actually not that he saves the world by his wise administration during the famine. It's that he reconciles with his brothers. That's actually foundational. You know, the promise is not going to be able to continue. The progress of redemption is not going to be able to continue if humanity and the Holy Family, the nation of Israel is constantly wrapped up in this kind of Canaanable Fratricidal conflict. These things have to come to some sort of resolution. And they do come to resolution because Joseph is able to take the family from Fratricide to forgiveness. He resolves the conflict of the Canaanable violence by being someone who through suffering comes to glory and then forgives those who have sought to harm him and destroy him. That's how Joseph ultimately resolves the conflict. But then as you go through the story, what you find is there's all these expectations with the Abrahamic covenant, right? So Abraham has promised a seed. Well, you know, that goes back to Genesis 128. Adam, Genesis 1, Noah, Genesis 9, they are commanded. Be fruitful and multiply. Now that command gets transposed into a promise with Abraham Isaac and Jacob, I will make you fruitful. I will multiply you. But with Joseph, with Joseph, for the very first time, that language shows up in the indicative. Genesis 47, 27. Joseph settles the people of Israel in the land of Goshen and there they are fruitful and multiply and fill the land. Right? It's the exact same language as Genesis 1, 27 and 1. So it's not a command, it's not a promise. It's a description, it's happening. It's happening. Joseph is bringing about the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. So what are the Abrahamic promises? Hold out. Well, there's a king. Joseph is this royal figure. There's multiplication of seed. There's land. I think the way that Joseph functions in the book of Genesis is his life is like a deposit, a guarantee that Israel is going to go back into the land. He says this at the end of Genesis, you know, take up my bones and take them back to the land. So his whole life is a signpost that Israel is going to go back to the land and inherit the land. And then of course there's the promise of blessing. The nations are going to be blessed through the seed of Abraham. And Joseph is a blessing to the nations. He saves the whole world in Genesis 47. They're singing his praises. They've saved us from the famine. But then you've got passages like Genesis 39, 3, Genesis 39, 23. The Lord blesses POTE of her on account of Joseph. It's very clearly an allusion to the Abrahamic promise. So I think what you've got going on with Joseph. Sorry, the allusion in sense that the nations are being blessed. Yeah, the nations are being blessed through this righteous, royal, rejected beloved son. Look at that alliteration. Boy, come on. And so the way that I describe Joseph is he is an anticipatory fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. He's a genuine fulfillment of these promises. Look, the seed multiplied. It's even interesting to consider, was that Genesis 46, when Joseph, rather when Jacob brings his family into Egypt and its 70 descendants, matching the table of nations in Genesis chapter 10. The idea is that Israel is now flourishing, multiplying into a new humanity. So you have here someone who's a genuine and true fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. But he's doing so in a way that clearly anticipates something more to come. There's still more multiplication to happen. There's still more blessing to be given. They still need to get back into the land. Yeah. So the way that I describe it is, imagine it's 1977, and you go watch the first Star Wars. And at the end of the movie, Luke Skywalker blows up the death star, and there's jubilation, and they have the metal ceremony and all of these kinds of things. You walk out of the theater and you don't say, that movie didn't have an ending. That didn't go anywhere. There was very clearly a satisfying ending, a resolution to the story. But you also recognize, well, the empire is still out there. Darth Vader got away. Luke still needs to become a Jedi. There must be more to this story. I think that's the way Joseph functions the book of Genesis. He's a genuine and true resolution of the story, and yet resolves it all in a way that anticipates something more to come. Can I keep talking about Joseph? Keep going, brother. So don't ever stop. So I think we see this more even as we get to the end of the Joseph story in Genesis 49. So in Genesis 49, you have the prophecy. Jacob is speaking about his 12 children, right? And when he gets to Judah in Genesis 49, 10, there is this prophecy that we, I think most people, if they just kind of read it in face value, would recognize as a messianic prophecy that Judah is going to, you know, the scepter will not depart from between Judah's feet, right? This euphemism is in that he's going to sigh a line of kings. What we don't pay attention to is Genesis 49.8. Judah, your brothers will praise you, which is to play on words. Judah, your brothers will yadda you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies, which again, I think is kind of a soft illusion back to Genesis 3.15. You've got foot on head, hand on neck, this kind of mortal combat. And your brothers will bow down to you. Now this is intriguing because, you know, in the context there of Genesis 49, he's talking about his 11 brothers. So even though he's talking about this messianic king to come, he's portraying him as if he is Judah, right? He's using the language of Judah's own station in life to portray the king that is to come. Well, this language, your brothers will bow down to you. This is the exact same Hebrew word that occurs to three times in Genesis 37 in the dream sequence where the sheaves and the stars are bowing down to Joseph. And then that's matched in Genesis 43 and 44 when the brothers three times come and bow down before Joseph. And then you have Jacob here in Genesis 49 in this eschatological prophecy, clearly talking about this messianic figure to come from the line of Judah. And how is he describing him? He's saying his 11 brothers are going to come bow down to him. Now I would submit if it's 1446 BC and Genesis is hot off the press and you're reading it for the first time and you get to this messianic prophecy and you're like, "Wow, look, you know, this prophecy about a Messiah who's to come, he's going to come from the line of Judah, I wonder what this guy's going to look like?" Your first frame of reference for understanding this description is, "Oh, this guy's going to look like a new Joseph." He's being described in exactly the same way that Joseph has been described. I think that's Moses in some ways kind of making it easy for us, tipping his hand, showing us that, "Hey, everything that you've just read, about the Joseph story, this is all a pattern. This is a type. This is a picture of the kind of eschatological salvation that God's going to provide in the future. There's going to be another covenant-fulfiller who will come, but he's going to do it perfectly and completely. - Perfectly final. - Genesis 50, the story of from Franchicide to forgiveness, from famine to feast. Joseph resolves the problem of Genesis 4. He resolves the famine, the producing grain by the sweat of your brow. He resolves that. But then we've already seen some connections between Joseph and Adam. But then the end of the story, Genesis 50, this famous line from Genesis 50-20, which we typically think about only in terms of compatibleism, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. Good and evil. Good and evil. Where have we heard that language in Genesis? Well, that comes from the beginning of Genesis, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But whereas with Adam, he wants to take good and evil into his own hands. Joseph doesn't do that. He leaves good and evil in the hands of God. And he trusts that God is the God who can even bring good out of evil. And so Joseph does not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He's unlike Adam in that way. And it's because of his obedience, you have the kind of salvation of the Holy Seed. You have the reconciliation of the brothers. You have the resolution of the problem of famine and fratricide. No longer do you have a can enable and the type of sibling rivalry that's been so consistently portrayed throughout Genesis. This guy has resolved Genesis. So it's such an extraordinary story. I mean, there's so much more we can talk about. But Joseph, it's amazing. It's like, have you preached through this? I've not. Yeah. Okay, that's what I was wondering. I was like, is this the kind of thing that you keep in your back pocket and wait for just the right time? Like, why haven't you preached through it? Why haven't I preached through it? Well, I began with Mark. Okay. I did too. Yeah, I got to, I got to my mind. Mark, it, you know, I know fast-paced Jesus in your face. And I know, I know a lot of one friend of mine told me, it's like, all you see, HBC, you guys, preached through Mark. But there really is something. There is something wonderful. Especially there's a new pastor. To just stare at the life and works of Jesus. As your first kind of year in the pulpit. It's not that tricky. You're building capital with your people by just showing them. I can rightly handle the Word of God and give you Jesus, a feast of Jesus every week. It's so clear on the identity of Jesus, the personal work of Christ, and also on conversion and discipleship. Yeah. So it's just. And it's also a shorter gospel, so you don't have to be in it for three or four years. Yeah. Then I went to Joshua because I knew I could preach Joshua in, I think, I did 14, 15 weeks in it. I wanted to introduce the congregation to Christ-centered preaching from the Old Testament, especially from a narrative. But I didn't want to tackle Genesis because they're like, well, I'll take forever. Yeah. Then we did First Timothy. Yeah. Because I wanted to listen to foundations ecclesiologically. Then we went to Zachariah because I just wanted to teach our congregation how to read a different, difficult genre. Yeah. And so I thought, the prophets are hard. Let's pick the hardest. Zachariah. Yeah. And I would assume our mutual friend, Aubrey Sequira, he challenged me to do it. Okay. Because he had just preached through it. Okay. And he was like, this is brutal. You try now. And then, you know, in any sort of pastoral context, especially when you are doing reformation work, revitalization work, and focusing on things that we would hold dear, like ecclesiology, it can be very easy to take secondary things, massively important things, like ecclesiology and make them the main thing. And so given all of the time that we had spent as a congregation thinking about ecclesiology, thinking about philosophy of ministry, thinking about the centrality of the local church, how it is the, you know, the church is the prongs that protects the dime into the gospel. I wanted to make sure that we didn't start to stray in any way from that gospel and find our identity more in what we're doing as a church with ecclesiology than in who God has made us by virtue, was grace. So then we went to Galatians. And I'm preaching my final sermon on Galatians this Sunday. Okay. I think, I was telling Luke earlier, I think it will be like 36 sermons in Galatians. Wow. So we really, I told the congregation at the beginning, we're going to linger in Galatians. Good. And I think I did maybe four or five different sermons just on one verse. So I did a sermon on Galatians 110, Fear of Man. It is sermon on Galatians 220. I did a whole sermon on I wish those who were troubling you would emasculate themselves. Galatians 512. Did you call out anyone in the congregation who's trolled? And so, and then I was actually going to go preach Genesis after that. Yeah. But then I started working on a commentary on first Samuel. So we're going to go to first Samuel. What are you going to do, Genesis? Probably we'll do the first Samuel. And then we'll do a new testament book as I alternate. And so probably after that, we'll go into Genesis. Another Joseph question. So much of understanding the Joseph story is understanding everything that came before in the book of Genesis. By the way Moses, what a genius. Oh amazing. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill the tension and then totally resolve in a sense, everything with Joseph except for not completely. You have the emotional release of the Death Star blowing up. Yeah, yeah. Knowing that Darth Vader's still out there. And it's a pain thing that your Star Wars illustration is so good. I want to mock you for being a Star Wars nerd, but it just works, man. Okay. But are you like a closeted Star Wars nerd? No, not at all. I'm deeply closeted, but not a regarding Star Wars. So when we move from Genesis to Exodus, is there any part of understanding the Joseph story that you need to look forward into Exodus to understand and not just back to the rest of Genesis? Well, I think that there are obviously there are biblical and theological themes that you want to be sensitive to. So the story of glory through suffering and/or the story of the way that Israel has always rejected its Messianic figures, the prophets, the Lord sent to them. So this is something that Jesus picks up on in Mark 12 with the parable of the vineyard and interestingly there when the vineyard owner sends his son, the tenants of the vineyard say, "Come, let us kill him," which in Greek is the exact same phrase as what's in the Septuagint when the brothers of Joseph see him coming in Genesis 37 and they say, "Come, let us kill him." I'm for those who don't know that Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Old Testament. So I do think Jesus is incorporating the story of Joseph into the parable of the tenants. But then in Acts 7, Stephen picks up on Abraham and Joseph. It's interesting, Stephen and Acts 7 walks through the covenants. So before, that's not Gentry well of them, that's Stephen in Acts 7. He walks through Abraham with Joseph and then he walks through Moses and David and Solomon. So he's picking up on the biblical covenant. So one of the things that he's piecing together is the way that again, this point that Israel has always rejected its prophets, always been violent against them. And this is a pattern that ultimately culminates with Jesus. This is why I think that Acts 7 is New Testament warrant for understanding that Joseph is a type of Messiah. So I do think there are certain biblical theological themes that we see there, that we can recognize as a pattern, okay, just as Joseph was rejected. So also Moses was rejected and so forth. However, there are not, at least as far as I've been able to see, lots of illusions or references to Joseph in the rest of the story. You have mentions of Joseph bones at the beginning. Right, at the beginning. Well, yeah, at the beginning and then at the beginning. But interestingly, where you do have like a stacking of Joseph references is in the exile with Daniel, with Esther and with Mordecai. In those books, so for instance, Daniel 2 draws so much of its imagery and even its language from Genesis 41. So there are a number of illusions to Joseph in Daniel, Esther, and Mordecai. And I think the reason for that is because they're at the end of Genesis. Israel is basically an exile and God needs to deliver them with an Exodus. And similarly, Daniel by portraying himself as a new Joseph is signaling to the people of Israel that his life is built on this Joseph-like pattern. And so Joseph's signal to the people that the Lord is going to bring them out of exile in an Exodus. Daniel is saying by modeling himself after Joseph, the Lord's gonna bring you out of exile in a second Exodus. So that's why I think we don't get a lot of Joseph figures in the middle of the story while they're in the land. I think it's why we get a good deal of Joseph imagery at the near the end of the biblical storyline when they're in exile within the lesser and more to die. There are a couple of illusions, like with David, David is 30 years old, Joseph is 30 years old, so there's some of these kinds of relationships there. Justin Taylor just texted me, I'm gonna send him a picture of you. He has no idea who I am. He knows who you are. No, he doesn't. Okay. Is there, 'cause you've been in academia, you know all the words, you got the nomenclature, which is Latin for what we call things. Yeah. (laughing) Whenever there's multiple many pre-fulfilments before the final fulfillment of Jesus, is there a name for that kind of fulfillment or that kind of theology? So the language that I'm familiar with, it's two terms here. One is the language of escalation. So this is the language that Wellam uses in kingdom through covenant that we see escalating patterns that are adding to the pattern, contributing to the story. And then another way to think about it, some other language that we might use is that in basically, we have these heavenly archetypes. Okay. So these heavenly archetypes like the sun, S-O-N, or the heavenly tabernacle that he really is. He really is. He really is. He really is. He really is. He really is. And then we have an earthly prototype that's created in Eden. So Eden is a prototype of that heavenly tabernacle. Yeah, that's right. And then we have installments in the pattern like the tabernacle and then the temple. And those have been referred to as ectypes. And if you ask me why, I actually don't know. Okay. The origin of ectype or how that particular prefix, ect, is functioning. And then you get to, and then you get to the anti-type, which would be the crystallological and ecclesiological fulfillment. Yeah, gotcha. Okay. Thank you so much for this. You have a book out on Joseph. What's the name of that? From prisoner to prince, the story of Joseph in biblical theology. And that is your dissertation popularized for lay people like me. Yeah, it's edited slightly. I would say most of the editing is just removing footnotes. Okay. And are you gonna come out with a new book? I would like to. Okay. Whenever you find the time. Speaking of finding the time. It takes me forever to write. Yeah. Jim's a machine. I don't know how he does it. Jim just pumps out books left and right. Yeah. I'm probably too much of a perfectionist. And I get wrapped up in the melody of the of it all. I might have to come back and bring this up at a later date. One of the reasons why it might be hard for you to write, find time to write is because you're busy pastoring. That's true. And training up future pastors. And I have four children. You have four children and counting? No. And you are training up future preachers. Now this is something that three different people who found out that I was interviewing you said we have to talk to you about. Okay. Number one, they say you're a great preacher. But two, they say that you have a really uniquely insightful way of training up preachers. The way that you think about preaching is not kind of, I don't want to oversell this, but it's not, I mean, I could look at the text messages, but it's fairly unique and uniquely helpful. So talk to us about your methodology. How do you think about preaching and how do you think about raising up preachers? Well, I have a lot to say about preaching. I'll try to. I don't know what they're referring to. I'll tell you what we do. Okay. And then how I try to approach preaching. So first in terms of trying our best to raise up preachers, we every semester run what we call the preaching and teaching colloquium because we're great at naming things. Colloquium means it's Latin for people getting together in a room and talking. Of course. So for the first, third of that colloquium, we read and discuss for the second, third, we do semi-interest worksheets. And then for the third, third, these guys preach. And then we give feedback, trying to do what we did at Capitol Hill Baptist Church model, giving godly encouragement and giving godly criticism and receiving godly encouragement, receiving godly criticism, such a helpful rubric that's provided. And you do that over the course of a year? No, we do that. I take four guys and we do this every semester. So it's it's less about 18 weeks. Okay. 18 weeks. So in the reading section, we go through Keller's book on preaching. We go through Jonathan Griffith's book preaching in the New Testament, which is excellent. And I feel like part of it. Oh, it's, you know, all the books on preaching, especially those that are explaining preaching, tend to do so more from kind of a systematic theology standpoint. They kind of start with sufficiency of the word, power of the word, those kind of things. Griffith's book looks at preaching in the New Testament and looks at it exegetically. Is this thing in the New Testament? What is it? How do we describe it? Particularly because many people deny that it is. Right. Yeah. And his book is extraordinary. I every semester when we go through that book, I will read large sections of it again. It's so insightful. But what's the purpose of giving that to your preaching student? I mean, knowing exegetically that preaching is in the New Testament, is that going to make them better preachers? It will contribute to them becoming a better preacher, but I think it will help them in their demeanor, in their pulpit, in the pulpit, in their confidence in God's word. I mean, one of the things that I often tell our preaching students, especially guys who just have a little bit more of a reserved personality, and you can have a reserved personality and preach. You don't have to be up there. You don't have to be John Piper and be up there screaming. That's right. But he didn't scream at people. You don't have to have that kind of passion. Yeah, I know what you mean. But you know, some guys, especially in the first second out, they'll have a degree of insecurity going up into the pulpit. And especially what I want them to learn from that book and then what I will tell them is, look, I want you to recognize I am just a sinner, hungry for grace. And what you're going to do in the next 30 minutes is you're going to tell me the most important thing I'm going to hear this week. I want you to imagine all the words I'm going to hear this week. Nothing is more important than what you're about to tell me. And I need you to believe that when you go into the pulpit. So I hope it fuels that kind of confidence in God's word. And then I would say the bulk of our kind of mechanical instruction is we go through Helm's Expositional Preaching. Fantastic. They watch the first principles videos with semi-interest. And if they can go to a semi-interest workshop, we will encourage them to do that. They're all over the country. That's right. And really all over the world. Everybody should do semi-interest workshops. Even if you're already preaching. Oh, absolutely. Oh, man. And then we do semi-interest worksheets. So I really do feel like I don't feel like I'm that unique in terms of how I'm trying to approach preaching or how I'm trying to teach preaching students. I feel like 80% of what we do is just what semi-interest does and teaching those worksheets. I think what I try to contribute and what I try to add are two things. A rigorous understanding of biblical theology. And then with that, helping them see how biblical theology leads to Christ-centered application. Or rather, a Christ-centered logic to the sermon that lands in ecclesial, corporate application. So let me get at those elements and get what I'm talking about. Let me just footnote here. Another really fun thing that we do in the preaching and teaching colloquium is we take, I think like 10 sermons on David and Goliath. So we listen to Keller. We listen to Derek Thomas, who's 40 days of purpose? Why am I forgetting his name? We listen to Rick Warren. We listen to all these sermons on David and Goliath and compared contrast to them. The student's really interested. Contrast creates clarity. Yeah, it really does. And you can see different guys whose strengths and weaknesses come out. And I love listening to sermons. I want to be a student of preaching. So I'm always listening to a sermon and trying to learn from them. And I just hear what they're saying, but it's kind of see what they're doing. So what I'm trying to contribute to these guys is number one, help them understand. Give them a kind of biblical theology that helps them see the gospel logic of every passage. We have to preach the gospel. And we have to preach the gospel, not just as the resolution to our guilt before God, but to the interior corruption that remains within us. I think it's amazing. Timothy 1, the first thing that Paul tells Timothy to do in first Timothy is confront false teachers. Why? Because they're using the law unlawfully. And then he goes on, he basically, he lists out all of these sins that he gets from the Ten Commandments and he says, whatever else is contrary to the gospel of the most blessed God. Paul is telling Timothy, the first thing you need to do is be a gospel-centered preacher. Because the gospel, not the law, is the true enemy of sin. So I wanna get these guys to a place where they understand biblical theology to the degree where authentically and exegetically from within the text, they can preach Christ and they can get to Christ, not just as something to kind of put at the end of the sermon, to look at the unbelievers in the room and say, you believe Jesus too. But to see Christ in that passage as the solution to that passage is particular fallen condition. Is it fear, is it anxiety, is it fear of man? Is it legalism, whatever it may be, there's some kind of fallen condition in that passage. And the author is making an argument that's ultimately leading us to Christ to show us how Christ is the resolution to that fallen condition. Now, here's the thing though. I think one of the things with gospel-centered preaching is it doesn't go far enough. And that is we have to pay attention to the fact that by virtue of our union with Christ, we participate in the fulfillment of these old covenant types and shadows. We're brought into the story. It's not, sometimes with Christ's inner preaching, you listen to the sermon, you're like, wow, look at this, look at how Jesus, the fulfillment of all these things, look at how the Bible is, this interesting interlocking web of all of these images and ideas and types and symbols. I wonder if this has anything to do with me. It's like, no, this is everything to do with you. Because if you're in Christ, you're part of this story. So if he's the temple, we're the temple. He's the seat of Abraham. And so we, he's the very high priest. We receive the priesthood. He's the priest king. We become priest kings. So all of these types that we see in the Old Testament have a Christological fulfillment, but then that also leads into, all right, then it's a church. So there is the way I tell my preaching students is look the relationship between the indicative and the imperative. - Can you do in case you want to. - So we want a moralist, a legalist says, here's the command, but they don't give you any power to obey that command, right? What's gonna change the kind of motivational structures within your heart to where you don't wanna steal and you don't wanna lie and you wanna be an honest person. You wanna be generous with your money. What is it that's gonna create that kind of disposition in your heart? Well, it's what Christ has accomplished for you. That's the only thing that's gonna change the kind of motivation structures within your heart. That's gonna give you the power. What we're talking about is helping your people have power to fight sin. And you do that by preaching to them the gospel. In all of its multifaceted glory, not just as a solution to the guilt of sin, which is primary, but as the solution to all the fallen conditions, all the interior corruption in our hearts. That leads to an imperative. Well, the relationship between the indicative and the imperative is the relationship between Christology and ecclesiology. So this gets us to the second thing. This gets us to that second thing. So, yes, preach Christ as the new temple, but then remind your people that now in Christ, we are the new temple. And so the fact that Christ is the new temple and has the fullness of the Spirit in him, he's now poured that Spirit out on us. How does that shape our identity? How does that shape our life together? What are the implications, not just for you, but for us as a congregation? I think that is critical for pastoring, for shepherding a congregation, for helping people recognize what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, that the point of the Christian life is not just how devoted to Jesus, can I be? But how can I help my brothers and sisters to be devoted to Jesus as well? The classic Mark Devorakot. If you call yourself a disciple of Jesus and you're not helping other people be disciples of Jesus, I don't even know what you mean. When you say that you're a disciple of Jesus. So, we have to move from Christology to ecclesiology. We have, okay, this is what Christ has accomplished for us, it's created a new identity. Now what do we do? This is a great quote at the end of the Hobbit where Gandalf says something to Bilbo, like, do you doubt the prophecies are true simply because you had a hand in bringing them about or being a part of them? We have to recognize that we're part of this extraordinary story that's laid out in Scripture. We think, oh, David was a part of the story. Abraham was a part of the story. And Jesus, the Holy Spirit. And that's it. That's where the, no, David was a person just like I am. And understanding your place in the story by virtue of union with Christ, no, I'm these things because I'm in him. And so now I can be these things lived out in reality because they're secure for me and him. So Christology, ecclesiology, indicative imperative, then there's another part of this that I think we miss as well. And that's eschatology. - That's a third thing. You said you had two, but we were three. - I know, but it's three. - I like it. - So we need to, as we're unfolding the gospel and trying to make applications from within the gospel and according to the logic of the gospel, we need to think in terms of indicative imperative, Christology, ecclesiology, let's add a third element to that. It's, I don't know if it's a word, but this is what I'm going with. Indicative imperative, inspirative. Meaning. - You need to be a liberation master. - Meaning. Meaning we should recognize that what Christ did accomplish, he's going to bring to consummation. And we should be inspired by that hope of the consummation that is to come. And so Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, which is to say indicative imperative and spiritive, which is to say we help our people live the Christian life by helping them recognize that all of the imperatives of the Christian life are lived and powered, fueled by the two great brackets of grace that envelop the Christian life. What Christ did accomplish for us and what he will accomplish for us. And a lot of this is rooted in just understanding the logic of the New Testament as inaugurated eschatology. - Big word. - That everything that the Old Testament promised has to some degree already arrived in Christ is now manifesting itself in the church and will come to consummation on the final day. And we often think about these things as disconnected from one another. But that's what Christ did do and then what he is going to do. No, this is the same kingdom. And we can think about it coming in three different stages. Christ inaugurating it, the church continuing it, and then the Lord consummating it on the final day. So Christ has risen from the dead and we're not risen with Christ. You know, not in our fleshly bodies, but nonetheless the very power that rose Christ from the dead lives within sight of us. - And we do too. - And yet we await the resurrection. Romans eight, we are sons of God and yet we await the adoption of the sons of God, right? So we live between these grand pillars of grace that are meant to fuel the church, that center section here, right? The imperatives of the Christian life and of our life together. So if I'm trying to make a contribution to how it is that we think about Christ's center preaching, that would be it. I want us to think not just in terms of Christ's center preaching as how Christ fulfills it in his first coming, and not just Christ's center preaching in terms of indicative imperative. I'm wanting to push on that and say, yes, and we need to make sure that the imperative includes the fact that the church participates in the fulfillment of these patterns. And so our applications need to be corporate. They need to be shaping a community. And then we also need to remember not just to motivate people with the grace that they have, but with the grace that is coming. Hey, can I sign up for your colloquium? Well, you should come brother. You can teach it. Oh man, don't tempt. But you know, like, what is it in Zachariah where Zachariah says? Oh, look at this guy quote in Zachariah. Yeah, we all know what you're about to say, but go ahead and say it anyways. They will look on him whom they have pierced. Yeah. So John quotes that in John 18 with reference to the crucifixion of Jesus. And then he quotes it in Revelation 1 with regard to his second coming. Come on now. How can that be? Yeah. It's because we're talking about one eschatology that comes inaugurated, continued, and then consummated. And I think that is critical for understanding Christ-centered preaching. I'm so glad that Matt Smith or sent me that text message and told me to ask you about this. Brother, I think we should probably stop there. There's only so much that any person, anyone person's face can get melted in one interview. Here's a chance for you to blow it all. Okay. I'm about to ask you these rapid fire questions. All right. No himming, no hawing. All right. Just one of the other. And any bad takes will be mocked. Yeah, use against you. Yeah, yeah. But honestly, man, like nobody really watches these things. So it's not really matter. [LAUGHS] Oh, since you left dispensationalism, where'd you land? Amel, premel. Yeah, I'm a happy Amelini list. I have. OK. All right. - To your coffee. - I would have said tea, but my wife has made me a coffee drinker. So now I'd say coffee. - Nice. - Okay. - Growing up in Mormon world, mess with you on any of that, 'cause you know you're not allowed to drink coffee. - Yeah, I wasn't part of the culture. My dad being from Iran, T is very much a part of it. - Oh, okay. - So we were a T drinking family. - Was coffee legal in Utah? - I mean, you could get it. - One could get it. - Okay. Favorite TV show. - The West Wing. - I gotta watch it, everybody. - I've heard it so many times. - Okay, all right. You sound like you were gonna say something about it. - Well, but you won't get the reference. - Okay, great. Trapped on an island with a sermons of only one preacher. Who do you choose? - Audio or written? - Let's do both. I've been hard-line audio only, but I wanna hear both of you answer for both. - Written sermons, Spurgeon. - Okay. - Audio. Ryan Fullerton, the pastor of a manual Baptist church here in the neighborhood of Kentucky. - I haven't done a weird one yet. - And then I think my kind of, if I had to pick others, the sermons of my brother, Matt Amadi. I think he's an extraordinary preacher. So such a good preacher. And Matt Smithersd. - He's a good preacher too. - Yeah. - He's also the most, like he can curate a quote list better than anyone in history. He always gets the absolute bangers and puts them out there. - He's just got the most sermons on the animals out of anybody. - Oh yeah, dude, I let you slide. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm usually super like, but after everything he just gave us, how can I not let him cheat and break the rules? Lewis are talking. - Talking. - We finally got one today. We finally got one. - One of my, I just think one of the most amazing things that has ever been written is his chapter in the land of shadow in the return of the king. It's so moving. - It's a novel. - Yeah. - That's more about it. - Yeah. - I've just been so bored I can never get there, you know? - Okay, the first part of the fellowship of the ring is a little boring. - A lot. - Yeah, it's, it, you gotta get to the council of Elrond and then it picks up. - All right. - Yeah. - Favorite novel. - My favorite novel. It, I mean, it is probably the Lord of the Rings. And then I would say Harry Potter behind that. But if, you know, if we have to kind of move those things aside, I, can I give three? - Sure. - Okay. David Copperfield by Dickens. A Christmas Carol by Dickens. Also, also in a Christmas Carol, he says, "At the end of it, after his conversion, he says, "The ghosts have come and they've transformed me, "they've changed me, and I will now learn to live "in the past and the present and the future." And that's exactly what I'm saying. - What are you saying? - I'm not going to ask you to tell us. - Yeah. - Christians have to learn to live in the past, what Christ has done, in the present, what he has made us and in the future, according to what he will do. - That's good. - And so Christmas Carol's amazing. - Yeah. - And I can talk about how it's a chiasm, but we probably don't have time for that. So, David Copperfield, a Christmas Carol, and to Kill a Mockingbird. - We listened to it on audio narrated by Sissy Spacek, on a family road trip. And my youngest daughter, we were listening for like three and a half hours straight, no break. And I was like, let's take a break. And she was like, no, you know, like, such a great, have you and I ever talked about the story behind to Kill a Mockingbird? - No. - Okay, well let's talk about it sometime. 'Cause I've actually talked about it on the podcast multiple times. I think our dozens of listeners are probably tired of hearing about it. Favorite movie? Justin Taylor wanted me to ask you about the gospel themes in Home Alone. - Home Alone's a great movie. - Is there gospel themes? - Oh, for sure. - Okay, all right. Favorite movie. - My favorite movie kind of bounces around, you know, stuck with one movie on a desert island. - Sure. - I'm probably say the Lord of the Rings series. I'm really into it. - It is good. - I think my favorite movie's right now is the Mission Impossible series. - I dude, all the respect that I've had for you to remember right. The last Mission Impossible movie. I went to see it in the theater because I said, it's the last one. I got it. It's an end of an era. I haven't particularly liked them, but I gotta go see it in the theater. I walked out. I was like, this is such a bad movie. I can't sit here and watch them. Oh my gosh. Okay. - If I had to pick kind of an artsy movie, this is how's the artsy? Just good. - Okay. Life is beautiful. You know this movie? - Bye. - One of them made it. It's Italian. It has subtitles. - Oh, wait. It's about the comedy about the concentration camp. - Well, it starts out as a comedy. - Yeah. - But then it is not at the end. - No. - But that, oh man, if you want a movie that will just inspire you to be - That sounds awesome. - Just a loving dad. - Oh, okay. - Oh man. That movie. Mountain Dubiche. - Oh beach. - Champagne or wine? - Wine. - Fee, at least favorite candy. - Bit of honey and black licorice. - Let's go. Hey, you totally redeemed yourself for some of those bad takes earlier. Drive. - When I think you can't see any lower. - You do this and totally redeemed yourself. - Driver fly. - Fly, but turbulence makes me nervous. - Really? - Yeah. - You don't experience it very often. - Okay. - Often enough that, okay. A morning person or night owl? - I want to be a morning person, but I'm a night owl. - Take a risk or play it safe. - Risk. - Yeah. - Manage or mustard? - Mustard. - Text message or email? - Email. - Night out or night in? - With my wife? - Doesn't matter. - Okay. If it's with my wife the night out. - Okay. - Burger King and McDonald's. - McDonald's. - Kendall, hard copy or audio? - Hard copy. - We haven't got a single Kendall or audio since in this round. Mexican, Italian or Asian? - Like who I wanna hang out with? - I was asking like who's your least favorite race? - I said that 'cause I know you always say that. - Yeah, good. - Yeah, food. - Mexican. - Yeah, don't ever embarrass me like that. - I don't know. - I'm sure. Football, basketball, baseball. - Basketball. - Burgers or barbecue? - Barbecue. - Chinese take out a sushi. - Oh, Chinese take out. - Cold or hot, which one would you rather be? - Hot. - Ranch or honey mustard? - Honey mustard. - Rock or rap? - Rock. - Unibrow or no eyebrows? - I have to have it. - You have to have it. You can't adjust it. - No eyebrows, no wigs, no plucking. - No eyebrows. - No eyebrows. - Classical or jazz? - Jazz. - I wanted to be a jazz saxophonist. I have a theory that no one actually likes jazz, but maybe we can talk about that. (laughing) - Trapped on an island with only one systematic theology. What do you choose? - You know, I would pick the institutes. It's so devotional. - Oh, so it's so, I remember the first time I read it, I was kind of geared up like this is gonna be the most intense academic thing. And it was just so heartwarming. - Hashto or calvaman's a pastor. - If I can't pick that one. - Even though he wrote it, yeah. Jewelbeeky's systematic theology. I've been kind of picking through that recently. It's got that same flavor. It's rich, theologically, and oh, it's so heartwarming. - Lace with Puritan quotes. - Yeah, I don't remember. - It's great. - It's amazing. - I wanna interview him, but that'd be awesome. - What him would you like to be sung at? - But if I had to recommend a systematic theology, I'd recommend Wellam. - Yeah. - That's right. - What him would you like to be sung at your funeral? - The sands of time are sinking. - How come? - I think it has a glorious, eschatological vision. Two lines. I stand upon his merit. I know no other stand, not even where glory dwelleth in a manual's land. So this wonderful reminder. I think we think about heaven as a place where because we will be glorified and no longer sinning, that we won't have to relate to God anymore on the basis of his grace. - Yeah. - And that line is such a great reminder that even in heaven, we relate to God purely on the basis of Christ's righteousness. You know, we stand on his merit even there. And then the final line, the bride dies not her garments, but her Dubraidune's face. I will not gaze at glory, but on my king of grace, not at the crown he giveeth, but on his pierced hand. The lamb is all the glory in a manual's land. That's a glorious vision of heaven. - You know, Luke, his one that he likes is, I don't remember who it's by, but it's like your love is like a hurricane. (laughing) Sloppy wet kiss. He wants that as funeral. And he doesn't want-- - And he wants you to sing it. - Well, he doesn't really want anyone to sing it. He just wants the track to be played. And for everyone to just sort of sit there and-- - Well, that too. - Yeah, that too. And then last question, most of Luke, can you just-- (laughing) Last question, most important question. How many holes does this draw have? - It has one long hole. Let's go. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for Sam and for the life that you gave him with faithful parents and an opportunity even at a young age, both physically and spiritually, to be able to share the gospel and to be sharpened as he's surrounded by people who are trying to convince him of the exact opposite of the truths of the gospel. We thank you for giving him the opportunity to study at an institution where his sharp mind could be sharpened even further and put to good work, learning your word. We thank you for allowing him to be trained to be a pastor under strong mentors and several different domains so that he could then take the helm of local church and lead your saints home to glory. Bless all of his writing efforts, his podcasting efforts, his name. pastoral training efforts, his preaching efforts, his fathering efforts, his husband efforts, make him holy and happy in Jesus more with each passing day. When he's low, lift him up, when he's discouraged, strengthen his hand, when he's depressed, give him the joy that only Christ can bring. Protect him from evil and the evil one. We ask this all with great hope and expectation in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. [Music]