Pastor Plek's Podcast
Pastor Plek's Podcast
Faith Beyond Ritual
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What happens when ritual replaces relationship? When a nation embraces death as a solution? When God is removed from governance? These profound questions drive our latest conversation about faith, culture, and the sanctity of life.
We begin by examining how easily Christians can fall into the trap of treating Scripture as a good-luck charm rather than a life-changing relationship. From soldiers reciting Psalm 91 before combat missions to nostalgic traditions that actually hinder authentic faith, we explore what it means to truly "hold fast" to Jesus rather than empty religious practices.
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and welcome back to pastor plex podcast. I'm your host, pastor plec, along with pastor holland hi and also john milton joining us in his full six foot nine frame hello, that's me all right, so we're talking a little quick recap. Uh, you were there for the sermon here at Wells Branch Community Church on Sunday.
Speaker 2:Thoughts, definitely yes Thoughts when it comes to Hebrews 3,. It's reminding Israelites, reminding Jews in this case. Right, moses is a great prophet, moses is not good enough.
Speaker 1:Right, hold up Jesus over Moses and then hold off hardening your heart toward the Holy Spirit. And then I think the last part was what did I say? Oh yeah, hold firm to believe in Jesus, or hold fast to believe in Jesus, all right. And I think the first thing I opened up with when I was in Iraq, I had one of my tanks. They go out in a sector and all of them would read Psalm 91 together and there was no real evidence of their lives being Christian other than that they read Psalm 91. Got it, which was great. I mean, I love the fact they read Psalm 91. Way to go. But that wasn't the thing that made them safe. In fact, they read it as tradition or ritual, so that they wouldn't get hurt in combat. Now, to be fair, they didn't get hurt in combat, praise God. Is that causation or correlation? God only knows, god only knows, all right. So I can pretty say for sure that that isn't what saves you, that's not what protects you. There is no magic words in the Bible, can?
Speaker 3:you attest to that.
Speaker 1:I attest All right. So I can pretty say for sure that that isn't what saves you, that's not what protects you. There is no magic words in the Bible. Can you attest to that? I attest All right. So I think that's how a lot of Christians are. We kind of create our own sort of things. I hold on to that are Christian things that may not necessarily be a relationship with Jesus, may not necessarily be a relationship with Jesus. And you know, like doing things a certain way, the way you've done it, in sort of tradition, not bad, but that's not what saves you, not what draws you into deeper relationship with Jesus. All right, so that's what we talked about throughout the whole thing, anything that stood out to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the part that I like to hammer home is always like hey, like Jews, welcome to the family we're all in. We all believe Jesus is going to die, did in fact die to cover all his sins. Your rituals that you have are nice if they draw you together and draw you near God, but they do not save you, Right, right, they do not save you.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, and and there could sometimes nostalgic things, if you sort of lean into them too much, they become actually hindrance. And I, and I pointed out, like this is where I was, I actually did a couple ditties on Sunday you may not approve I sang the 1983 song from the police, which was every breath you take.
Speaker 1:Classic and a classic song and it's one of those songs that, if you grew up 80s, 90s every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you. There's that reality. We sang a song that was basically about stalking someone. So how did this tie in? Like there's that reality, like we sang a song that was basically about stalking someone, so how did this tie in? It's like, if no one thinks about the words, you just think about the nostalgic feeling back in the past, if you really analyze the words.
Speaker 1:You're like do you really want to be a person that's singing that to somebody? No, or Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye, blind, oh man, classic. And then like the lines went like this I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kind of life, baby, baby. And everyone was able to sing that part, which is I don't know if that's encouraging. But the next lines are like doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break. It won't stop, I won't stop. I keep stock, a tick, tock rhythm, a bump for the drop. Then I bumped up, then I took the hit that I was given, then I bumped again. Then I bumped again. I said, uh, yeah, it's wild when you look at the words and you're like I sang that yeah, or at least I was like bop my head, do it and I'd do the oh yeah, and probably like fifth grade or something for me.
Speaker 3:I can't remember exactly.
Speaker 1:I was like you know yeah, this song's awesome, 20 or whatever but it was wild to sort of see that reality of like how crazy it was for that to be so in my head and then that's nostalgic. But if I were to sort of like speak that now it would be completely antithetical to my faith and I think that's how some people are with parts of their past which the Jews were. That leads them astray or away from Jesus, not towards him.
Speaker 3:The song came out in 97, so I was 10 years old, so that was about right. I was about fourth grade, fifth grade for me, yeah yeah, I was 20. It was a great song that was hilarious, Dark and wicked of course, so you connected this with the Hebrewians who still are doing their kind of old jewish rituals, the temple stuff and they're like get circumcised yeah, and they're like not wearing.
Speaker 1:They won't wear polyester. They will not enjoy some good old-fashioned, cheap clothing. Um and or whatever.
Speaker 3:Their issue is just holding on to nostalgia instead of really um letting the covenant go. Embracing the new covenant, that's right.
Speaker 2:It's about the law, guys, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then the last was holding firm to faith in Jesus. I had this cool moment for Paxton's second day of school. You know, they gave him a little bag and we prayed with him a couple times to receive Jesus. And you know, how do you get to heaven? You have to believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. And we went through the whole thing. And so it was like okay, if you're a Christian on your show and tell here's a little rock with a cross on it, I want you to tell everyone that you believe in Jesus. And he's like okay, so he had a turtle, he had a cross and he had like a wristband or something that we got from some vacation I think it was at Port Aransas. Okay, so those are three.
Speaker 1:I like to go to the beach, and we went to the vacation at a beach this year. And then so he does that and he holds up the turtle. He's like I love the turtle. And then he holds up the rock and he has the cross facing him and the rock facing out and he goes I like rocks, that's awesome. And then the first thing he does when he gets out of school, he runs to Adrian. He's like I didn't do it.
Speaker 3:I didn't do it.
Speaker 1:I told him I like rocks and Adrian has no idea what he's talking about. And then finally he explains. That was the story. But it was kind of wild. It was fun to kind of see the conviction but as a six-year-old it's hard to hold firm to faith in Jesus. But over and over again you're going to be challenged by that and so starting young to be able to say I'm going to stand on my faith in a public environment is something that we'll be doing for the rest of our life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was reluctant.
Speaker 1:After a second man's retreat, though, I'm like, yes, let's do it second man's retreat, though I'm like, yes, let's do it, I love it, I love it all right. So I wanted to shift from holding first, holding first, holding firm in our faith in jesus, holding fast our faith in jesus. I want to talk about, um, something that's going on that came out in, uh, an article in the atlantic I don't know if anyone reads the atlantic, it's not a christian article place at all um, but they have really long articles. If you read them you're like it's almost like reading a novella. But on August 11th of 25, they came out with this article, written completely from a secular person, called Canada is Killing Itself, and they brought up the fact that it's I think it's called, uh, medical assistance in dying program made, which is kind of funny.
Speaker 1:Let's call it like the maid, the. The death maid is here the death um and one in 20 deaths across canada come from made gosh. Medical assistance and dying account for 1 in 20 deaths. 5%, 5%. So like I'm thinking that this is going to go. It might be 10 in 20 pretty soon.
Speaker 1:I mean that's wild 5 in 20. That's a big number. Sorry, 1 in 20. But I could see it going from 1 to 5, 5 to 10 real quickly, a higher rate than any other nation with with longer experiencing, longer experience legalizing euthanasia, and I think it's because what it says. They created the ethos of autonomy. The law prioritizes patient autonomy over mandatory exhaustion of other treatments. A contrast models like nether Netherlands, where patients and physicians must agree that no viable treatment options remain. So, for example, if a doctor doesn't sign off on it, then you can't get medically assisted death. However, in Canada, you are autonomous, and so if you think in your non-medical training non-medical whatever that that there is no hope for you, you're allowed to say it is better for me to be dead, and then they, they're like, they kill them off uh so is this a service you pay for?
Speaker 3:I, I guess or you imagine you would have to pay for it. Yeah, you have to pay for I mean it's part of the job, like so, like you know they have.
Speaker 1:You know like there's christian conferences where you show up, there's a thousand people, they do like raffles and it's like a fun experience.
Speaker 1:And they have death conferences where you go and you network there and you hang out with other killers, I guess, or, like you know, medically assisting doctors, and some people have killed up to 500 people. It's like a thing, it's like you know you go kill somebody, you head off to Starbucks, pick up your coffee head home, take the kids to the game and then you knock out another death the next day. I mean it's wild to think about.
Speaker 3:So I just looked this up. It says financial costs related to medical assistance and dying are relatively inexpensive. Physicians' fees have not yet been determined, but an interim document lists the cost at 440 dollars for a general practitioner, 519 dollars for a specialist. Uh, that's so you're just paying hundreds of dollars for someone to kill you.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is very dark very dark, very dark catching on so what's wild is like just, I mean, let's just be real. I mean like I think of the last 20 people I know who have died, they all died from like. I know two that died from covid, uh, several from cancer, uh, like, but then out of that there'd be at least one out of those 20 that died from going to the doctor and then signing up for it. And this is wild to me, that this is a thing, and it's sort of like this gets into. The government has said human beings are completely autonomous of themselves, and I think it's really the first time you're seeing that, that this value of autonomy, of like there is no one who can tell me what to do, and I think that gets to a place where then we decide what is good, what is evil. We don't have. There is no God, there is no like government. It's like even that they can't tell me that my life is worth living either, which is sort of wild to think about. And what's interesting is, like this, the thing of you know, back in 20 or 2002, belgium legalized this and the Netherlands legalized it, and I think there's some cases that look in the past that just go, wow, it's sort of wild that in 2010, there was this lady 38 years old. She had a borderline personality disorder. She was euthanized and she was 38. Her family their claim that the procedures weren't followed correctly, but all three doctors were acquitted and it was wild.
Speaker 1:Here's a woman she didn't want. At some point she goes I'm not ready to do this. And they are like no, we're doing this and she has to die. It's kind of this crazy spot where it creates the slippery slope of like, if you don't explicitly request it, it can be like hey, for an extra $500, we'll just make this problem go away fully. And how many people are in their right mind? Yeah, right. And then we're talking about teenagers, or children are apt to be like hey, at what age are we making it appropriate for someone to say my life isn't worth living anymore? And then we let them go. And if it's 18 plus, I think that's where they're at right now. But for a 19-year-old to go, hey, I think I'm ready to end my life and there's so much life to live. Maybe they're depressed, maybe they have a bad, whatever, but they can say I feel like my life is unlivable.
Speaker 2:And I think that gets into this culture of death that becomes really scary. Well, yeah, it speaks to this assumption that we've all had the blues. A lot of us have been depressed. I don't want to live in a world where I had that option before today. Right, because it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Speaker 1:Right, okay. So then this gets to the question is should there be morals involved in law? I mean, because what you're, what? What the moral that canada has now is that your life does not have value outside of, I guess, your opinion. Your opinion, which is wild, yeah, and you didn't bring yourself into this world, but you now have the authority to take yourself out. And I think that it implies there is no God who has a saying over your life. And so it is saying to all of Canada don't worry about God. If you want to die, you can die. Your life is your own, whereas the inherently Christian thing is your life is not your own. You are God's and you are made in the image of God and so therefore have value and worth, even if you don't recognize it. So that bothers me.
Speaker 3:Here's what's so crazy is you have so many people today, so many Christians today, many people today, so many Christians today, who are, you know, vehemently opposed to the idea of a Christian nation or, um, you know, intentionally prioritizing Christianity in America and things like that. You know, it's like, uh, we see that as like, for some reason, we see that as a bad thing, um, due to a lot of you know, failure of pastors to teach what the word says about nation's government politics.
Speaker 3:A lot of people just kind of not really knowing and listening to snippets they hear on social media instead of really studying the word and how this has been taught. But what happens, though, is you go okay, if you're not going to have a Christian nation, you're going to have a something nation. You're going to have a. Laws are inherently moral. Like you brought up before you know, should laws be moral? Of course laws are about what is right and wrong, what will be accepted or what will be penalized. You know what types of things will land you in jail and what types of things will be celebrated socially. Laws are inherently moral, and so whose morality are you going to have If it's not going to be the Lord's morality, biblical morality, the 10 commandments, god's view of righteousness and justice, and right and wrong, good and evil. You're going to have someone's view, and you know who it's going to be People who think you should just end your own life if you're not happy People who think you should destroy monogamy and celebrate homosexuality and kill your babies.
Speaker 3:Have abortions. If you're suffering, just take your life. It is the total opposite of what the opening pages of the Bible say. Be fruitful and multiply. Enjoy this good earth that I've given you. Jesus said I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. Like you, will either have a culture of life that comes from Christ and his word or you will have a culture of death. Take your pick.
Speaker 1:So okay, so let's do this. This is john. I would love this to hear your perspective like do you think it's okay? Or maybe it may be a better way to put this clearly secular world say, especially left-leaning people, would say it is not only okay, it is great that there are muslim nations that have sharia law.
Speaker 2:Sure, I do hear, do hear that.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, no one is sitting there going like man down with Sharia law. They're waving Pakistani flags. I'm not saying that murder on any level is right, but people are very quick to affirm like Sharia law, great, we need to enforce that, or they need to be able to enforce that. However, when it comes to Christian law, nobody's on board with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or like okay, currently, currently, for you know many, many, many centuries, this is how the Bible was taught, but currently it is not okay to want a Christian nation.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, and then also like the Jewish state Israel, like I don't think any Christian is opposed to them using like the law of Moses. Probably they would say, like okay, let's not stone people. I'm not sure how they do the temple sacrifices. There'd be a lot there that they'd have to like work through. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I think for the most part, they're down for at least Sabbath law. Like you can't, yeah, you don't hear anyone complaining online about the idea of a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation or a Hindu or a Shintoist nation or a Buddhist nation All of those exist, by the way, yeah but what you do hear people complaining about is the idea of a Christian nation, you know, a nation that worships the one who is actually king. So, like a lot of it, I think, is people confused on. They've never thought about what it means to be a Muslim nation or a Jewish nation or whatever, and how religion and politics intersect. What you know, what it means for the institution of the church or the state to be submitted to God and yet still not encroach on each other's territories Right, what about?
Speaker 1:this. Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world. Yeah, so that's kind of a common. I'm going to quote that scripture. So therefore we should keep Christians out of politics. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, if this remember, the Anglican church was brought here and it was part of the foundational tool of the United States to practice liberty, with the freedom to worship the Christian God. Right, I'm trying to disentangle that and quote separation of church and state and I get confused quickly.
Speaker 1:All right, yeah, so remember. Okay, let's go back to that. So, first off, where was it? I can't remember what my question was, oh, yeah, my kingdom is not this world. Jesus is saying the origin of the kingdom of God is not earth, it's heaven. Right, so he's bringing kingdom wherever he goes, and so, therefore, his followers should represent heaven on earth. And so, therefore, whatever laws we make, we want them to reflect heaven and not earth.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the origin of his kingdom is not this world. The nature of his kingdom is not this world. It is based not on worldly principles of right and wrong, but on divine principles of God's moral law. But we're taught to pray. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We want to see the spiritual rule and reign of God in heaven manifest itself on the earth, in our lives, which involves our personal walk with Jesus. It involves our families. It involves the institution of the family, the institution of the church, the institution of the state, the government nations. We want to see everything in creation submitted to Jesus Christ. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's the ultimate goal, and it should be. If we really believe that God has the best way and his design is for us, then we want a Christian culture. Now, that doesn't mean we can convert any hearts with religion. Nobody can convert anybody's heart with religious things. However, it is a way bigger win.
Speaker 1:In the same way, there's probably cultural Judaism. In fact, we'd say there's probably a lot of that. How many are actually legit Jews who are following the Torah by the book? Probably not many. However, what about? There's probably secular, cultural Muslims. I mean, I ran into those people all the time. They appreciated they would even do the prayers, but they would also get drunk and hire prostitutes, would even do the prayers, but they would also get get drunk and hire prostitutes. They would like. That is a thing, um, that they, they appreciated the, the, the fabric of society built on. There was some some common things that you would do, and here's some things you go to jail for, even if you, you know, didn't want to. It's kind of a wild world where, culturally, everyone does the same thing and it makes the whole culture in a sense, hold together better.
Speaker 3:Crime is less Consistent.
Speaker 1:Consistent, yeah.
Speaker 3:Could I read? This is from a commentary you know, jc Ryle, familiar with.
Speaker 1:JC.
Speaker 3:Ryle, theologian Anglican, lived in the 1800s, I think he died in like 1900. Yeah, and so he wrote a. He's most known for his commentary on John, so very thorough, detailed. And so he wrote you know, that's where this verse is my kingdom is not of this world. Here's what his commentary.
Speaker 3:I'll read one section he says but our Lord did not intend to teach that the kings of this world have nothing to do with religion and ought to ignore God altogether, and the kings of this world have nothing to do with religion and ought to ignore God altogether in the government of their subjects. No such idea, we may be sure, was in his mind. He knew perfectly well that it was written by me kings reign, proverbs 8.15, and that kings are as much required to use their influence for God as the meanest of their subjects. He knew that the prosperity of kingdoms is wholly dependent on the blessing of God and that kings are as much bound to encourage righteousness and godliness as to punish unrighteousness and immorality. To suppose that he meant to teach Pilate that, in his judgment, an infidel might be as good a king as a Christian and a man like Galileo, uh, as good a ruler as David or Solomon, is simply absurd.
Speaker 3:Let us hold uh, let us carefully hold fast the true meaning of our Lord's words in these latter days. Let us never be ashamed to maintain that no government can expect to prosper which refuses to recognize religion, which deals with its subjects as if they had no souls and cares not whether they serve God or Baal or no God at all. Such a government will find sooner or later that its line of policy is suicidal and damaging to its best interests. So he says like, if you've got a government that's not going to acknowledge God, the result of that is going to be suicidal. You're going to fall apart, destroy yourselves. We're watching that happen before our eyes in Canada.
Speaker 3:Right now. It's wild to see that Now he does say this no doubt the kings of this world cannot make men Christians by laws and statutes. Okay, so he's not intruding on the mandate of the church, which is to preach the gospel and make disciples. He's saying that the institution of the state has a responsibility before God to rule righteously. So he says. But they can. The kings of this world are governments, rulers. They can encourage and support Christianity and they will do so if they are wise. The kingdom where there is the most industry, temperance, truthfulness and honesty will always be the most prosperous of kingdoms. The king who wants to see these things abound among his subjects should do all that lies in his power to help Christianity and discourage irreligion. This was written in 1876. So there was a time when people properly understood what the Bible teaches about a government's responsibility and accountability to God to rule righteously, and predicted back then if they don't do this, you're going to kill yourselves, and we see it happen right before us.
Speaker 1:It literally is happening. In Canada. One in 20 deaths is from a medical assistance in dying. Okay, which I appreciate. And when Thomas Jefferson wrote about religious freedom, he said that he created a wall of separation between church and state. It wasn't a freedom from religion, but it was a freedom of religion to practice however they wanted and that the government wouldn't give preference to any one Christian denomination Right. And I think that's the part that gets difficult. Like everybody was all about Jesus, like when you look at the— yeah, there weren was all about Jesus.
Speaker 3:There weren't Muslims and Hindus. There weren't Muslims and Hindus. You had Baptists and some Catholics and you had Presbyterians. You had Christian denominations, protestants and Catholics, especially people who had come from an oppressive— so you can go wrong. That's important to say you can go wrong with a Christian nation.
Speaker 2:Obviously, that's how America got here. Right, right, right.
Speaker 3:You have Charlemagne right. Who is you know? Hey, get baptized or I kill you, right, so you can go wrong with it. But that doesn't mean you throw out Christian, the idea of nations and governments honoring Christ. It means that you seek to do it well, according to the wisdom of the word Right the.
Speaker 1:Enlightenment with the French was huge, like Robespierre with the guillotine just chopping everybody's head off. That spoke out against the French and then he ended up dying by the guillotine as well. I mean, they were just murdering people left and right because they wouldn't bow the knee to the cult of secularism, which is sort of wild to think about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so— and it's like that's where you want to go. You want to go to the cult of— Right.
Speaker 1:And I think what's happened—they said, okay, listen, the Thirty Years' War, all these things were different.
Speaker 1:Said, okay, listen, the 30 Years War, all these things were different. You know the Catholics and then the Protestants, and you know England would go back and forth and you know Mary Queen of Scots is kind of like bringing back all the Catholics and then everyone died. There's a lot of issues, right, there's a lot of issues where you see back and forth violence within Christian rulers who probably the culture of Christianity hadn't affected their soul. They were using it as a power play and there wasn't a place for the church to act independent, to be the conscience of the government, while they enforce law like don't murder, steal that kind of stuff. Anyway, I know that that seems probably over the top and like what laws are we going to morally legislate and what laws are we going to be calling that conviction of the conscience, which is where the church comes in and is preaching to you to have your heart changed, where the government is saying like I don't care what your heart says, I just want you to do the right thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, yeah, I think that brings up, you know, the important discussion of, like, what is the best way to align, you know, a nation with God's moral law and what's? You know what's going to be righteous and just. That's a good conversation. But the conversation we're still having now, by and large in culture is should you even try to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and maybe the question is I think this autonomous issue of Canada is like no one should be able to tell me what to do. Yeah, and what you're saying is there is no God that says it's not wrong or right to take my own life. It is whatever, and I think that's where you go inevitably when you say there is no God or when you have your government devoid of God completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right Again, do I think President Trump is saved.
Speaker 1:I mean, he just said he hopes to go to heaven because of all the peace deals he's doing, which I was like, ah, I'm just like nah Pray for his salvation. Yeah, we got to pray for his salvation. But I think that becomes problematic when you want to take God completely out of all things, make it completely secular, because that's a religion of itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's also a religion that when you're done, you're done and there's nothing else after this. So why are you even here Right, which gets dark really fast?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right Ecclesiastes was written. For that Right, everything under the sun is worthless, but for God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, hey, thanks so much for watching. If you've got any questions, we'd love to field them here at Pastor Plex Podcast. You can text at 737-231-0605. We'd love to hear from you. We'll see you next time. Until then, have an awesome week of pushing.