We need godly men now!

Welcome to The Student Podcast. This is where two guys get together and we discuss and learn how to be students of Jesus Christ. So good to have you today. How was your week, Brian? Yeah, it was good. I've been looking forward to talking with you. I was rereading the introduction of the book and I forgot how good the introduction of the book is. Yeah. And so, we were busy week.
We had a good Bible study at John and Rosalie's on the parable of the seed, or sorry, the parable of the sower going out and casting his seed broadly and then, you know, you don't know when you share the gospel. And this is Jesus' own statement, he's talking about himself, that He's going out. He's spreading the seed. It's good seed.
Yeah, but the enemy comes in and so is a bad seed and and so I didn't tie it together there, but I was thinking afterwards about how the apostles later, when the Samaritans reject Jesus, they want to ask, should we call down fire and brimstone from heaven? It's essentially that idea, do you want us to pluck it up? And Jesus is saying, well, hold on. And then actually, when we find Jesus at the resurrection in Acts chapter 1, just before the ascension into heaven, he actually tells them, go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria into the ends of the earth.
Like, hold on, some of those are still good seed there. Pete Yeah. Jared Be patient with them. The angels will do the reaping. Pete Yeah. Jared And so, yeah, we, so it was a great time and Nathan and Deborah are two oldest, they come to Tuesday night Bible study and Okay. Do you lead that Bible study down at Burlington? Jared Yeah, yeah.
If I'm not there, John does it. But we don't have a book necessarily, you know, that we're going through. We're going through the book of Matthew, but there's no study guide. It's just verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, working through it together. And we started that in, well, we started that with COVID because we switched it to online and so we stopped doing the Hebrew study that we had done for a long time and we switched over to Matthew and yeah, it's been a blessing to me just to work through the gospel.
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. How was your last week of PA school for the semester? It was good. Yeah, thankfully class kind of toned down a little bit this week because we had two exams. Well, I had two anatomy exams on Monday and then my last exam this morning.
So is an anatomy exam like, you know, cut open this cadaver and show me where the appendix is? More or less, yes, but you've done all the cutting. during the entire unit previous to that exam. And so at 8 AM, we had an exam in a lecture hall, which covered all the lecture content of the class. And then at 11, we had a lab exam, which covers all the lab components.
So this whole unit, we've been dissecting the head and the neck. And then you get in there, and they have 50 stations. with different specimens and bodies and whatnot, that they have different structures tagged, and you have a little worksheet, and you put 50 things down on the worksheet, and you get one minute at each station, and it runs like a chain through the entire anatomy lab. That's intense.
Well, why don't we pray and we'll get into the intro of Disciples of the Godly Man. Father, we thank you so much for this day and we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for what a blessing it is to get to be iron, sharpening iron. Lord, I thank you for Simon and I thank you for the time that you've given us now to talk about this book, the introduction, but even more so, Lord, I pray that you would light our hearts on fire. I pray that we would be men diligent for holiness, diligent to bring you glory, not because we desire to earn our merit before you, but Father, because we love you. In Jesus' name, amen. Pete Amen. All right.
So, give me your initial thoughts as you worked through the introduction chapter. By the way, we're working from different versions. Mine is, mine's old. I've had mine for a while. So, mine's- Yeah, this says updated edition with study guide. Okay. I don't, you are privy to things I don't have. So, my study guide is from my brain rather than from Arkent Hughes. But what were your initial thoughts? I thought it was a breath of fresh air. Yeah, was it?
Just coming from being in this culture every day, and I was telling Al, I just feel so out of touch with this generation. It just does not… I have trouble identifying with a lot in this generation. And she reminds me that's probably a better thing than a bad thing.
But, man, if men haven't dropped the ball in our society and if that's not become the standard, you know, I think this introduction really hit home with that and just kind of call it out. is a refreshing kick in the pants. You know, whether just, just with the effeminate men that I'm around all the time and the expectation from women for that too. That, you know, women expect men not to be men of character. Women expect men not to be men of faithfulness now. And that's just, and then that changes the way women are.
And so, I don't know, I think he had a lot of cultural critique in here that was refreshing. Yeah, and I thought it was interesting that he pointed out it wasn't, it's not just outside the church, it's even inside the church. Jared Oh, mostly inside the church. I mean, I think that's where it starts.
I mean, if the church isn't a faithful witness for what manhood is, you know, people, when you interview for a job and you say you're a Christian, people automatically make assumptions about you and they think you'll be a hard worker, you'll be industrious, you're gonna be honest, you know, whatever, fill in the blank. Well, if the church drops the ball on that, we've lost our reputation in the workplace, right?
But the church has dropped the ball on manhood and I've been just, you know, thinking of all the people I know who are in my age group that are single, that are godly young people. woman. Same with my wife, woman. We know so many eligible young women who want to be married, want faithful husbands, and I'm like, okay, who, what guy do I know that, you know, would, you know, would be a good match? Maybe one, maybe two, you know? Yeah, I remember reading a historian, a women's religious historian one time, and she was bringing up the statistics for women in the church and one of the statements that stuck with me, she said, church history is women's history. I thought, well, that's really true. And Arken Hughes, when he was talking about it in here, just the reality that it is way more likely for, if it's an unyoked couple, a believer married to an unbeliever, for the woman who's a believer to come to church without her husband than it is for the man to come without his wife.
Pete Right. Yeah, it was kind of a, I like your word, a phrase, a kick in the pants. Pete Yeah, yeah. Jared Well, he talks about discipline and he gives a whole series of examples and we could talk about those somewhat, but maybe I could ask you in your life, has there been someone in your life, and it doesn't have to be a Christian person necessarily, but somebody that you have seen excel at something and show the need for discipline? Pete Yeah. Yeah, one of my good friends in college actually was a discipline maniac.
He had this phrase, and he got it from a book by a Navy SEAL, but he called it extreme ownership. Oh, Jacko! Okay, yep, yep. I haven't read the book, but he applied that to everything in his life, and I saw him start to apply it to his faith. He was a not as committed before college. And I saw him really grow in college and that was really cool. But talk about hunting. And this guy, every time he was home, hunting and work out every day, just work and just owned it. And you know, if you don't, well, that's your fault, you know? And yeah, he was a very disciplined individual.
Nice, yeah, I remember being shocked when I got into the Navy and there's kind of a different, different types of people in the military, you know, and so, Jacko was a Navy SEAL, you know, and there are people in the military who are just outright bums. They made it through boot camp, but they're there for the frat party. And then there's a whole other group of people in the military that I ended up rubbing shoulders with that dramatically changed my life as I saw them actually be committed and be those men who are going to wake up at 4.30 in the morning and do, you know, do the disciplines and make sure that they were at the gym and some of them were too committed to things they probably shouldn't have been. But I thought it was some of the things he said here, he said in one part, the quantitative discipline of their work prepared the way for the cosmic quality of their work.
And so, he's talking about, you know, the NFL player and he's talking about, you know, Michael Angelo and he's talking about Da Vinci and so, talking about all these people who were just devoted to their task or when he was playing tennis and just working at him, working at him, working at him, working at him, you know, playing until his feet were hot on the blacktop.
Pete Right. Jared That kind of, commitment to something is admirable. But as Christians, what does he say we need to be committed to? Pete. We need to be committed to training in godliness. Jared. Yeah. Yeah, do you remember the passage that he brought up for that? looking at it right here, I guess it'd be 1 Timothy 4.7. Yeah.
Yeah, right, 1 Timothy 4.7. You got your Bible, I see it right behind you there, so.
1 Timothy 4.7. Right here. Yeah, this was really striking to me. I'm actually going to have you read 1 Timothy 4, 7-10. Okay, 1 Timothy 4, 7-10.
But reject profane and old wise fables, and exercise yourself towards godliness. For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, for to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." Jared All right, yeah. So, in 1 Timothy 4-7, the command is there, train yourself in godliness.
Pete Right. then he goes on and he talks about how there's an easier path to go, a way you can be sidetracked, and that's old wives' tales, fables, things like that. But instead, in verse 10, he talks about how we labor and strive. And he points out the word there, agonizomai, is the idea of where we get our word agonizing.
It's really hard. Pete Yeah. I have to confess, it's really easy for me in my life to just kind of be surface level with Christianity rather than actually putting in what he calls the spiritual sweat. Have you seen this in your life or battled with this, this idea of complacency? Yeah, yeah. I think it's, I think what it's been for me is like, I mean, I hate working out, physical working out. And the reason I hate working out is because it hurts and it feels awful. And you know, you get past a certain point, then it starts feeling good. But man, for the investment phase, it stinks.
And there's a lot of that with the walk with Christ. You know, there's some things he calls us to do that frankly just aren't comfortable. you know, go and make disciples. Well, that gets messy and that makes me look like an idiot in front of this world, right? You know, commit yourself to faithfulness, you know, fill in the blank, whatever it is. You know, those things are hard and when we're in a culture that he critiques in this introduction that supports almost none of these things, you can feel like a lone ranger. But that's okay. Christ says he would be enough and he calls us to take up that cross and follow him and where did the cross lead him but to death, right? And he's like, be ready to do that. And that isn't, that's not comfortable. Who wants to do that? Jared Yeah.
I want to get your thoughts on, he explained this later, but he makes a statement here The successful Christian life is a sweaty affair." Meaning spiritual sweat, are you ready to actually work hard? And then he says this, no manliness, no maturity, no discipline, no discipleship, no sweat, no sainthood. What are your initial thoughts when you read that?
It made me think of Ephesians 6.12. I wrote it down here. What was I thinking? This was a couple days ago.
Oh, and he says for, Paul writing here in the context of the arm of God, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
And I guess it made me think of that because we're not up against just a pushover enemy. We're up against the devil who labors hard to tear at the bride of Christ. And that's what we're up against, and that's what we've been saved from. But I think we can get into this concept of, okay, I've been saved, Christ did the work, now it's smooth sailing. It's like, no, that devil wants you back. Hard. And we are promised, you know, that he who began a good work will keep you and bring it to completion.
But there's also this idea that there's still a war going on and it's not an easy war. And I think we can downplay it sometimes. And here he says, no manliness, no maturity. You've got to be a man to fight maturely against this stuff. You can't be an idiot and just act like it's a pushover, you know? And ultimately, it's those who, you know, here it says, no sweat, no sainthood.
And it reminds me of, you know, readings of Revelation to the churches. It says, to him who overcomes. And each of these churches have lots that are assaulting them, you know, whether it's from within the church or without the church. And Christ says, to him who overcomes. And, you know, we get to overcome through Christ, but it's not easy on this side of glory getting there. Yeah, yeah. One of the questions I have following from this, and by the way, amen to all of that, right? I hadn't thought about that in the, to the churches. So, he overcomes. What's the danger that he addresses, especially in that last part? I think everyone can get behind the no manliness, no maturity, no discipline, no discipleship. But that last statement, what's the danger there? No sweat, no sainthood. What's the danger in going through a book like this, doing what you and I are doing?
Jared Yeah. Yeah, and I kind of tried to dance around it there a little bit and that is, at least what jumps to my mind is this, this balance between Christ working in us and us working out our salvation with fear and troubling. And I guess the guy who gets it, I've cleared it up the best in my mind was Jerry Bridges in his book, The Discipline of Grace, where he describes this airplane and it's got two wings and one is, you know, you working in your sanctification, the other one is God's grace. You can't fly with a one-wing plane. And I think there's a delicate balance there because you swing all the way to God's grace and it's all of God's grace and I don't have to work at all. We've lost discipline, we've lost working at our salvation with fear and trembling, we've become antinomian, you know. If we swing all the way to the other side, we become a Pharisee and it's all about self-righteousness and working my way to heaven and good day, bad day mentality with God.
Jared Yeah. Jared Yeah, I often think of it as, you know, this is the, as you've been coming to the country church now, you understand how on either side of that gravel road, there's a ditch. And if you go too far to the right or to the left, you're going to end up in a ditch. Pete Yeah. Natalie reminds me. Jared Wives are good at that.
And so, You know, on one side is that, like you said, that ditch of antinomianism, of that lawlessness, and on the other side is that ditch of legalism, trying to merit God's favor and acting as if we could somehow be good enough. I was reading a document or a biography on Martin Luther and he was, the author was talking about when Martin Luther went out into the country churches around Wittenberg when the plague was going on. He found out that many people had heard of the teachings of being saved by grace alone and they were really thankful for this teaching, but then were out then living lawless lives. Pete and that was actually the impetus for him writing the larger, his large catechism was him going out into the churches and realizing, whoa, hold on. This doesn't mean because you've been saved by grace alone that then you get to live lawless lives.
And I think 1 John attacks that really up front. But on the opposite end is, you know, the church in Ephesus, you know, to the church in Ephesus, You know, you don't like the nicolations. You got that going for you. You're not for the sexual immorality going on around you. Great. One problem. You've forgotten your first love. You've forgotten that this is about Christ.
And so, I really liked how he talked about there's a sea of difference between the motivation, between legalism and discipline. I kind of summarize it as legalism is self-centeredness, meaning I will do this and earn God's favor, versus discipline is God-centered, saying I love God and I want to please him, so I'll do this. You know, it's out of that heart of gratitude, it's out of that regenerate heart, not out of the sense of pride.
I think it's easy for us to get pulled to one side of the road or the other. And so, I'm really excited to go through this book. I'm really excited to kind of, like I prayed for, that we might be on fire for the Lord and he might use us and that he might, you know, use us to lead our families and to be key players in the, not players, but key members of the congregation where we're those who will be able to sharpen other people up, build other people up, serve other people in the church for his glory. but out of a heart of love and humility." And so, I was really thankful when, I actually have it written underneath that, I said, when it says, no sweat, no sainthood, I had a little marking in my book and I said, too far, question mark, dot, dot, dot. And then as I read the next section, it was like, oh, he's going to deal with that, sweet.
He's a good writer, he anticipates the objection that's going to come. And so, he talks about this being a cosmic call in, I'm trying to think here, I don't know what the page numbers are. I should probably just buy a copy of that version. Pete I've got a heading that says Cosmic Call. Jared Okay, so in Cosmic Call, in my book it's, I have it underlined, in Christ spiritual discipline frees us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and the angels.
And I'm talking about that obsessiveness for following, for discipline frees you. It frees an NFL player, you know, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. So, when the game day comes, they're able to run with full freedom, unleashing all of their talents, you know? When the violinist who's played for 110,000 practice hours is able to just pick up a violin anywhere and just let it go, you know? It's that beautiful freedom that is.
And so, um, A lot of people might hear the word discipline and they might think of constraining, and in a lot of ways, discipline is constraining. It's cutting things out of our lives, it's evaluating the priority of things, but it's doing that so that way we can do the most important things well. So, another question I have is if we are talking about discipline. And sometimes this means cutting things out of our lives and stuff like that.
The question I have for you is, why would it be wrong then to become a monastic? Jared Hmm. That's an interesting question. I don't think we see it commanded in scripture to do that. Pete Okay. Jared And so, I think, you know, he talks about legalism as a motive I think when you look at Christ critiquing legalism in the Pharisees, you see a bit more of an emphasis on outcome, I guess, and by that I mean Pharisees' legalism looked like changing God's law, either adding to it, twisting it, or taking from it. And I guess that monasticism kind of makes me think of that direction of legalism, where we put a binding on ourselves that you must do this, this, this, and this, and this.
Okay. Well, let's assume the best of. This is a good Protestant sola gratia, sola fide type monk, you know? I'm going to be honest with you, it's always tempting my heart. I remember telling one of my church history professors, you know, if I was born 700 years ago, it's very likely I'd be in a Benedictine order somewhere, you know?
But probably not, though, because I love my wife and the Lord didn't give me a gift of singleness. But what's the problem? Does monasticism actually free someone for the disciplines of becoming a godly person? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem freeing to me.
And I guess, if I think of these disciplines we're talking about and that enemy we were talking about that we're going up against and why this isn't easy, this happens in the context of a world and in the context of an enemy. And God has chosen somehow the praise of his glorious grace to display us as tokens of his grace to this world. And I think one way he does that is working through us through this discipline to be salt and light where he's put us so that, you know, we could be the most sanctified person ever living in the Himalayas all by ourselves. and God would probably be glorified, but he's called us to live in a perverse generation to be vessels of his grace for his glory. And so, I think we miss out on, you know, in the hypothetical Protestant monastic lifestyle, I think we would be missing out on a huge opportunity to glorify God and to be a witness to his world of the power of grace to change a heart.
Yeah, amen, amen. I think the other problem with it is you can change all the outward circumstances, but where does the real rub come in? Where does the actual problem reside? It's your heart. You know, it's not outside of us, but it's inside of us that's the problem. We could strip ourselves of everything and still be the most slothful, drunken monk in the world. There were prayerless monks who learned the prayer by memorization, but it was rote, mindless memorization.
The question is how do we actually be faithful disciples in the world, in the situation God's given us, with wives, with responsibilities and work and income pressures and etc., you know, how do we actually follow Christ? And Dr. York at RPTS brought up at one point, the word for disciple in English, you know, we understand disciple, discipline, you know, that type of thing, but the Greek word is mathetes. And so, he would actually challenge, he was a math teacher, and he would challenge his students, he would say, it's hard, and he would teach them, yeah, to be a student is to study math. To be a mathetes, you know, at Mantano is to learn, math is hard. you have to learn it. You have to discipline your mind, you have to think, you have to focus, you have to pour your energy into something. It doesn't just happen.
Jared That makes homeschooling make a lot more sense because my dad named our homeschooling Methades Academy. really. And I never knew, until now, I didn't know what that meant or what the context of that was. But he called it, yeah, whenever we were filming something, I was like, you're from Beth Hades Academy. Jared Okay, there you go.
Yeah, yeah. Disciples Academy, that's good. Yeah, I like it. Nice. That's good. Yeah. Well, so, honest heart to heart question here then is, you actually want to do this? Pete Yeah. Yeah, let's jump into it. Jared Okay, because I mean, it's, It can be dangerous, right? Just, again, heart to heart with you, this is dangerous.
Dr. Cipione at seminary would tell us, men, if you're going to be godly men, you're going to have a bullseye on your back for Satan. Right? To desire to be a disciple of Christ looks like to suffer, looks like to pick up your cross and follow him, looks like to be ready for the onslaughts of hell. And so, before I ever start doing discipleship with someone, I always ask them, are you actually ready for battle?
Are your feet shod with the gospel? Are you going to cling to that shield of faith? Do you actually have your helmet of salvation polished? Are you wearing the breastplate of righteousness? Are you clinging to Jesus' righteousness alone? Are you ready to have your sword sharp? And you know, Micah, my pastor, would always ask me, did you bring your primary sword? You know, and he was making sure I always had my Bible with me.
So, I guess that's my challenge to you. Like, you actually ready to go through this and I'm sure there's going to be good weeks and hard weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it by God's grace. All right, man. Well, good, good. Yeah, I like that. In Christ, we can do this. Well, let me pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. I thank you for my brother Simon. I thank you for the opportunity it is now to follow after you.
Lord, you have called us to be your men, men who would not go to the drumbeat of the secular world in which we live, But Lord, we pray that our hearts might be filled with your word, that we would see our champion, our leader, our Lord, our Savior, our King, Jesus Christ, and where he has walked, we pray that we would follow.
We pray that we would truly be conformed to the image of Christ. Lord, we pray that we would take heed, for the battle is hot. And we don't want to be filled with pride, Lord, but desperate for your protection. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Lord, we pray that when temptation comes, we would flee the way of escape. Give us strength, Lord, in Jesus's name. Amen. Amen.
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