Mission Focused Men for Christ

Episode Summary. This episode examines both the explicit meaning of what is prohibited in Sixth Commandment and what Jesus and James taught is the implicit meaning of what is prohibited the Sixth Commandment for Christ-followers so that we are equipped to teach our children and grandchildren the ways of the Lord. 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why is it important to know that the 6th Commandment prohibits the unlawful taking of a human life?
2. Which God-ordained restraints upon the evil of hostility towards other humans leading to murder most stood out to you?
3. What do you most want to remember about the NT teaching that the sixth commandment not only prohibits harming another’s body, it prohibits harming another’s soul?

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Episode Summary. If you were God giving instructions to the human race about how to get along with each other, what would be the first thing you'd say? Don't be selfish? Don't be proud? Learn to forgive? Treat others like you want to be treated? God's first law is “Honor your father and mother.” And in case we still don't catch the foundational importance of this command, God attaches an unbelievable promise to it. It is the only one of The Ten Commandments with this kind of a promise: that you may live long and that it may go well with you. 

Isn't it interesting that God's first law of human relationships has to do with the family? God starts with the most basic and important cell group in society. God designed it to be the birthplace of a child's self-esteem and of his sense of identity, the place where he is to learn what it means to be loved and to give love, the place where he learns how to adapt to the way the world has been created by God to operate. This episode examines this foundational commandment and its implications not just for children but for adults.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How would you contrast “obedience-centered training” with “child centered training?” What would you say to one who said this verse in Proverbs 22:15 encourages abuse? “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.”
2. How do the opening verses in the first chapter of Proverb juxtapose being shaped by your parents’ wisdom with being shaped by peer pressure? (See vs 8-10).
3. What does it say about God that he demands that adults honor their elderly parents?
4. What evidence do you see in the culture that it is anti-God’s design of the family to be the foundation of society?

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Episode Summary. One of the words used to describe the worldview of the culture in which we all swim is secularism, which describes a lifestyle of preoccupation with the visible, material world to the neglect of the world of the spiritual. The result of swimming in this polluted water has been, in my view, a largescale disregard of the fourth commandment by Christians and consequent loss of its benefits. The lost benefits are understanding the eternal value of work and understanding the need to regularly shut out the secular world to be renewed and reconnected to the Spiritual Being who created us. This episode seeks to recover what is often lost by the neglect pf the fourth commandment.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. What most stood out to you in this episode about the fourth commandment?
2. How would you respond to someone who said, “Keeping the Sabbath is being legalistic, and the church is not Israel?”
3. What components of a biblical view of work seem most important to you.
4. It’s been said that the more important your work is, the more important it is to regularly step away from it and renew. How might this principle apply to serving Christ?

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Episode Summary. Fatherhood champion Anthony Bradley’s research proves what Scripture teaches us about the role God has assigned to fathers in creation: fathers are the most important men in any community, anywhere, everywhere, ever. Their presence, involvement, and guidance are pivotal for the emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of their children. This is the fourth episode in our June series

Fathers Giving the Moral Foundation to Their Children That the Culture Won’t. It recognizes that the third commandment, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain, involves much more than a prohibition against cussing. It goes to the very heart of our love for Christ and how God says that love should be shown in the way we treat his name.  

Link to New City Catechism Curriculum.

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Episode Summary. On October 7, 2023, more than 3000 members of the radical Muslin extremist group Hamas surged across the Israeli border crying “Allahu Akbar” “God is good” raping women, beheading children, torturing, mutilating and murdering more than a thousand people, most of them civilians conducting the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. How would you respond to the trembling words of a seven-year-old who said, “Daddy, these bad men said God told them to do those awful things. How can this be?” This episode seeks to answer this question by understanding what the second commandment teaches.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How would you answer a new believer who said to you, “I believe Jesus is the Son of God, the risen Lamb slain to take away my sin, but why are there so many other religions in the world?”
2. Why can’t a chewing gum replica of the Alps convey their glory? Do you agree that a chewing gum replica of the Alps might be worse than no physical image? Why?
3. Although man was created in God’s image, our fall into sin means that we suppress the truth of who God is, especially our accountability to him, and remake God as OUR IMAGE—the way we want him to be, because we are created to worship. (Atheists usually build their life around a false ideology, which functions like a God.) How do you see this biblical truth making sense in what you observe about the world?

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Episode Summary. Unlike adherents to multi-culturalism, Christians realize that God chose to reveal his moral law to one nation, Israel, in a rather spectacular manner. God himself wrote his summary of his moral law on two stone tablets using his own finger (Dt 5:22) telling his people how they can most please him. There is no other text of the Bible written directly by the finger of God. The two tablets were called the Ten Words, the decalogue, and kept in the Ark of the Covenant. Foty years later, In Deuteronomy 5, Moses repeated The Ten Commandments for the next generation. This episode examines how to apply the first commandment as the leaders of our homes and provides some thoughts about teaching it to our kids, using the New City Catechism.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. In the opening overview observations, which one stood out most to you?
2. Why do spiritual leaders have to fight a lifelong battle to keep reminding those under their care that God’s word is the path of life? Why is that so hard for us to remember, in moments of temptation?
3. What do you find most helpful in Tim Keller’s definition of an idol as: “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.” Which potential idols do you need to be wary of? 

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Episode Summary:  One of the bad ideas causing massive victimhood today is egalitarianism, the denial of creation role distinctions between moms and dads, and the heretical denial within the church that “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” The first egalitarian was Satan, who demanded the right to be equal with God. As the father of lies, who masquerades as an angel of light, his strategy is to label the biblical teaching about gender oppressive patriarchy and then support this accusation with dishonest reasoning that in every case, violates the laws of logic. This episode reviews those dishonest arguments, makes a fresh biblical case for fatherhood and reviews recent research that substantiates the significance of God’s fatherhood design. 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Which of the dishonest, fallacious attempts to support egalitarianism most leaps out at you? Why?
2. How has your relationship with your father shaped your life? How does it shape your relationship with God, the Father?
3. How would you argue the biblical case that a child needs both a mother and a father?

Resource Used in this Episode: Some of the material in this episode comes from Pete Alwinson’s book, Like Father Like Son: How Knowing God as Father Changes Men, which I highly recommend.

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Episode Summary. This episode seeks to examine what the church’s commitment to the poor of our cities should look like. We examine 5 serious flaws in the progressive view of social justice, an ideology which is captivating many young adults leading them to abandon Christianity. Finally, we examine how only the church can bring about the restoration require to solve the problems of our urban poor but raise the question, “Will middle class Christians care enough to do it?”   

Questions for Guiding the Rising Generation to think about this material. 

1. What is the biblical case for Christians being very engaged with alleviating the poverty and other suffering in our cities?
2. What would you say to a church leader who said Jesus’ mission for us is to preach the gospel not feed the hungry?
3. What flaws of progressive ideology’s approach to poverty most stood out to you?
4. How would you make the case that the true causes of poverty—the breaking of harmony between us and ourselves, each other, God, and creation can best be achieved by the church? 

Recommended Resources 

• When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.
• Before Your Lose Your Faith, Edited by Ivan Mesa

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Episode Summary. The intent of this episode is to strengthen, not weaken, our concern for the plight of the poor. But deeply rooted in our commitment to love the poor must be a commitment to helping the poor and doing so in the right, God-ordained way. This episode seeks to call us to care for the poor, to shun passivity, but to understand the biblical guidance God gives for HOW to help, and not harm, them.

For Further Prayerful Thought.

1. What rationalizations among Christians have you seen for allowing American consumerism to shape us too much to care significantly about sacrificing to help the poor?
2. Which instances of compassion without biblical wisdom stood out to you.
3. Why do you think that selling the dream of utopia to the masses by Lenin in the Soviet Union, Mao in China and other communist dictators worked to cause them to overthrow the government allowing them to seize dictatorial control?

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Episode Summary. We look carefully at the claim made by many social justice advocates that Christians are hypocrites for not standing up for the poor and embracing ECONOMIC EQUALITY for everyone as Jesus would have. Is this claim true? How do we respond to our kids returning from college who are “deconverting” from Christianity because of the failure of today’s church to embrace such equality? Should Christians help the poor by pursuing economic equality? These are the questions this episode seeks to answer.

Resources Used for Today’s Podcast

Institute for Faith, Work and Economics website (excellent, biblical, scholarly articles on the biblical view of economics, helping the poor, etc.)

What Would You Say Colson Center  (Excellent short videos on how to promote a biblical view of economics).

For Further Prayerful Thought.

1. How would you respond to the average Christian dad who says, “understanding economics is not part of my calling. I can’t answer my kid’s accusations that Christianity is hypocritical and that they can’t embrace a religion that favors American consumerism instead of ECONOMIC EQUALITY as Jesus would have?”
2. What most stood out to you about current ideologues who have replace the content of the word EQUALITY as equal justice under the law with the concept of the same treatment?
3. Why does the biblical view that justice is not everyone having the same abilities, assets, and opportunities but that from those who are given much, much is required better match reality than the concept that everyone God creates should be EQUAL in every opportunity, ability, and asset?

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