Why Christians Follow Some Old Testament Laws—but Not Others

FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:01

He's just a regular guy with a cool job that God loves for some reason. Welcome to The Steve Marston Show, a daily journey in learning how to live more like Jesus, conversations with those that God is working through, and dad jokes. It's the most unique show you'll hear today. Now, here's Steve. Okay, here we are. Welcome in. The Steve Marston Show is underway. So thankful and delighted to be with you.

00:29

Especially those of you that are listening on radio. Radio has been the foundation of this program and what we've always done in the podcast part has kind of blossomed and grown on its own, but radio is still the number one priority here. And we're so thankful for those of you listening on 99.5, The Word in Little Rock. That's the OG. That's where we launched the show. It was later picked up by AM 630, The Word in San Antonio. Grateful for you guys. And of course, all of you listening on the podcast.

00:59

on your own schedule, on your own time. So we are delighted to be with you as always. And I know I probably sound like a broken record or this, and I don't want to, but every Wednesday night, my wife and I have a chance to be around some young adults, and we get to lead a Bible study. And it's so fun because it's an interactive Bible study where I kind of just read a passage and throw it out for observations, for questions, for...

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just what do you see here in this passage? And I have been so impressed every week with the group that we have because they really are taking the scripture seriously and they really are wrestling with it and asking questions and trying to determine exactly how this all fits together and weaves into their lives.

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And it just got me to thinking last night as I'm sitting there, I'm the facilitator, like I say, and as I'm listening to these young adults with their own perspectives and bringing out ideas that I haven't even thought of, I'm just so blessed. And I'm thinking to myself, this is what it's all about. Because I can remember back in the nineties, you know, when I was coming up, graduated high school in early nineties, was in college in the, well,

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I spent a lot of time in college, but most of the 90s I was in college and I remember the seeker friendly mentality that was pervasive among churches. And look, I bought into it myself. thought, you know, we need to be able to have churches available for people to come and be a part of and make it tailored toward them, to people who maybe...

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have never been to church before, and maybe would never darken the church. So yeah, let's do messages revolving around ideas and principles of how you can live this life for Christ, better ways to follow Jesus and have a list of those things, or maybe a cute little acrostic where every letter means something different.

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be able to have music that's more contemporary and more smoke and kind of lights and just kind of be of the world but not necessarily in the world too much. Do you know what I mean? Or maybe I said that backwards. Be in the world but not necessarily of the world. That was kind of the whole mentality there. But as time has gone on, we have learned that that's not what church was really made to be about. Not the secret.

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And it took me a long time to understand that because church should be, first and foremost, a worship service for those who are believers already. It should be a chance for us to take what God has commanded us to do, to take time to remember Him at the end of every week and to be able to start that new week with praise and worship.

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hearing his word read and because it's his word it will draw all people to him and be able to convict hearts and those that are on the outside will hear and be able to respond to whatever God is calling them to whether it's to salvation or just to a deeper walk or what have you but it all starts with that foundation and we got away from that in the 90s.

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And I think it cost us a big generation of people. Because again, I can count on one hand, really on both hands, how many kids that I know that are probably in their late 20s to mid 30s right now. Kids that grew up at my church going through the children's program and then in through the youth program. And now here we are, what is it? 10 years, 15 years later, and they're all

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for the most part, atheists, they've turned their back on their faith, they've just completely kind of checked out. Now, why is that? Well, I think because that generation was given a bill of goods about the whole thing about, you know, we're just trying to be seeker friendly and we want to really do what we can to be more like the world without

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giving up the credibility of the scriptures. But what happened inevitably was that all of these churches really became more like the world. The scripture all of a sudden became watered down and the messages were just more or less self-help groups, right? Self-help things. And honestly, there's still some of those churches around and they have big numbers, huge numbers. Why? Because it's easy to hear.

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It's not controversial and it's not going to step on anybody's toes. It's not going to convict the hearts of those believers and non-believers alike. But what I'm seeing, and I think it's being bared out not just in my little group on Wednesday nights, but really when you look all across the country that people 18 to 25 years old now are really searching for

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something different, something more, something with more meat on the bones. They're looking for worship. And I think, like I say, this little group that I'm able to be around is a microcosm of that because we're not telling them on Wednesday night how to best live their life out to honor God through their workplace. We're not telling them what to look for in a relationship.

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with the opposite sex. We're not telling them necessarily what to do in case you have a bad boss, you know, or how do you get along with the coworker that is just bent on just being nasty and hateful and mean. Those little messages, while they have their place, are not what these kids and young adults want or need.

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What they're wanting is the Scripture. And it's so encouraging. They're reading these passages that we are providing to them and we're opening up to them. And they're seeing not only the events that happened and are able to digest it from a perspective of exactly what took place and why Jesus did the things He did, but they're able to extrapolate that into

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their own lives. And they're taking those principles that they're seeing, that Jesus said and taught, even though it was to first century people, and they're applying it to their lives today. And you know what? That's the way it's supposed to be. We got it so wrong in the 90s. You know, and I'm so glad we have, a lot of us, or at least the majority of churches have pivoted away from it. And we are, I think, seeing the dividends paying off now.

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with this generation that's coming up. And I'm so hopeful and so prayerfully optimistic about this group and how they are going to fight back against not only the culture, but live out their faith through just the reading of the Word. It's just amazing. And I'm so, like I say, incredibly humbled and grateful to be a part of a ministry like that.

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and I'm thankful for those young adults. And again, we're seeing it not just anecdotally with me, but all over the country in all these different revivals and things that are happening with these college age people at universities all over the country. Look, it's really easy to get pessimistic and to say, well, we're just never going to get back to God in this country. We have just fallen so far. Because look, I fall into that trap too, but I am so buoyed by Wednesday nights that I think maybe...

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Maybe God isn't through with us yet and there might still be a chance for us to have that revival that we're all praying for that this generation could lead us in. Back in a minute. Welcome back, it's the Steve Varsity Show and I just love it.

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So thankful to be with you. Now, let me give you a little inside baseball here. And I don't want to get too deep in the weeds, but I do want to let you know that this is, because it's fascinating to me. For those of you listening on radio, you would never guess necessarily what the percentage is of people who listen that would say, you know what, I'm not even sure about this whole God thing. And you say, really, Steve, to Christian radio, there's a lot of people. Actually, I think you'd be blown away to know.

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that as high as 30 % of our audience at any one time on this radio station are non-believers, are people who are saying, I'm not sure about God or Jesus, but I see this as a safe space, a judgment-free zone where I can listen to what's being said without any kind of pressure or any kind of expectation on me. So having that in mind, I thought it would be fun to do a segment called

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Christian, explain yourself. And really it has two meanings. One is for those non-believers that are listening, but also for those that are of the faith. Because this is a great apologetic tool to help us answer and defend the faith when people have these legitimate questions. Because God brings those people into our path a lot of times, and we can't afford to fumble the answer. We need to be...

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fully convinced of not only what we believe but why we believe it. So Christian explain yourself as what we like to do every week on Thursdays. And this question comes up a lot. In fact it's done a lot in parodies and movies and in television shows. I can remember, I was never a fan of this show, maybe you were of West Wing, but I have seen the clips online where

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The show is about the president of the United States, Martin Sheen plays the president and there was like a reporter asking him a question and I don't know whether it was about, it was some social issue, abortion or homosexuality or something like that. And obviously they were from a Christian perspective and they asked the question and then Martin Sheen came back with chapter and verse about how, know, well, do you eat shellfish?

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you know, and do you mix-match the cloth and fabric of your garments and all these things that are found in the Bible. And he's basically making the point that, well, you're picking and choosing things out of Scripture that you want to devote your time to and you're ignoring the others and you're basically kind of being a hypocrite. And of course, that shut down that person playing the reporter. And I think that's legitimate. There are questions that people have about that.

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And so I thought we would tackle, why do you follow some Old Testament laws but ignore others? So let's start with the things like, you know, like I say, whether you're eating pork or shellfish or clothes made from different fabrics and don't follow Israel's dietary laws, aren't you just picking and choosing what you want to obey out of the Bible? Well, honestly, the answer is

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Christians, we all believe the Old Testament is God's Word, but every commandment in the Old Testament wasn't directly given to Christians to obey under the New Covenant. Now, again, I don't want to get too deep in the weeds in here, but let's start with the distinction, especially like in Leviticus, because that's where all the laws come from. And you've got to remember the situation here. Israel had been in slavery for literally centuries.

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they had not had any kind of laws to govern themselves. They were under oppression. And so that's why God gave all of these laws in the book of Leviticus that we read. And a lot of people just kind of roll their eyes and kind of think, oh man, Leviticus, really? But it is an important book. But Leviticus' laws are divided up into basically three categories. There's the moral laws, the ceremonial laws,

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and then the like civic or judicial laws, okay? Now, moral laws are God's standards. That's the murder, adultery, stealing, sexual immorality, dishonesty, all of that stuff. Those things don't have an expiration date, the moral laws. Ceremonial laws governed Israel's worship and their purity and their sacrifices and the food restrictions and the purifications, festivals, practices in the festivals and all of that. Then you've got those civil laws.

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that governed Israel as a nation, you know, it talked about all the things that normally go on property disputes and penalties for crimes and agricultural practices and all of that kind of stuff. Okay, so it's important to know when you're talking about these different things that are outlined in Scripture, which one of those categories that law falls into. So like, okay, let's just answer this. Why can't Christians eat bacon?

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Well, because Leviticus 11 is strictly forbidding Israel to eat pork. But in Mark chapter 7 in the New Testament, Jesus comes on the scene and says, it's not the food entering a person that causes them to be spiritually defiled. It's what comes out of the heart, not what goes into the body, right? And then in Acts chapter 10 is the big one where Peter has the vision of

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the sheep coming down and all of these animals that are quote unquote unclean by the Levitical law, the voice from God tells him to take and eat. And Peter says, no way, I've never done that. I've never eaten anything unclean. Then God says, don't call unclean what I have made clean. Basically saying that rule doesn't apply anymore. Now you may say, well, Steve, if that's true, why do you still quote Leviticus on the sexual morality? Well, again,

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We look to the New Testament and we see that God through Jesus is still keeping those morality laws in place. The New Covenant that Jesus set doesn't expire those laws. So, and then again, what about the mixed up fabric kind of stuff? Well, the prohibition is in Leviticus 19, also found in Deuteronomy 22.

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So is it not relevant? mean, of course it's still in the Bible, it's relevant, but what role did that command within God's covenant with Israel? Are Christians still under that covenant? That's the real question on that. And then you again, let the Bible interpret itself. Hebrews chapter eight says, no. And speaking of the new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. So it's just a matter of really understanding

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what the Bible says and letting the Bible interpret itself. Where God commands in the Old Testament to do some things, is it trumped or completed by Jesus in the New Testament or is it still together relevant? That's what you've got to decide for yourself and you have to know the scripture to be able to do that. All right, we're back in a minute. Stay with us. More coming up.

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Welcome back! The Steve Marston Show is continuing. It's the Christian radio show and podcast that truly matters. Great to have you here and it's time to welcome in my son Tyler. He is the content creator of the YouTube channel 1189. It's a free online Bible commentary where Tyler goes through each chapter of the Bible and breaks it down in like, you know, 8 to 10 to 12 minute videos and it's just incredibly well done and

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We've been talking to him practically every week throughout this process, and he's in the middle of Acts, almost through with the book of Acts. Tyler, welcome back, man. We are glad to be able to talk to you again. Yeah, glad to be back. All right, so let's dive in. A video that just dropped as you and I are recording this interview just dropped earlier this morning. It's Acts chapter 25. What can we expect from that?

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Yeah, so we're in the middle of this kind of saga at the end of Acts talking about basically Paul's arrest and there's this whole deal that happens when he's in Jerusalem. He gets arrested and he gets handed over to the Roman governor of the province, Felix, and he's trying to preach the gospel to Felix. He's trying to make a defense for the gospel of Jesus. And Felix is somewhat interested, but he just

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kind of drags his feet and ultimately he actually gets replaced as the governor with another guy named Festus. And so that's where we pick up in Acts 25. Festus, unlike Felix, who, you know, at least he showed a little bit of interest, Festus is kind of completely apathetic to the gospel and to the teachings of Jesus. And he just wants to be done with Paul as quick as possible and get about going business as usual, right?

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And so Festus is kind of constantly looking for a way to pawn Paul off. First, he talks to the Judeans back in Jerusalem, the people who had him arrested initially, and he talks to them and says, what should I do with this guy? And they say, well, hey, you should just send him back to Jerusalem and let us deal with him. Of course, we know as the audience, and Paul knows, but Festus does not, that

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They intend to kill him. They had actually intended to kill him earlier, and that's why he was moved to Caesarea. Of course, Bethesda doesn't know that. So he says, yeah, that sounds great. We'll send him back to Jerusalem. when this comes up in Paul's hearing, Paul says, actually, I would rather take the gamble and appeal to Caesar. And this is a really big deal. We've tracked in the book of Acts how Paul is really

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acutely aware of his rights as a Roman citizen. There's something really unique, especially to members of the early church. And one right that they had was to appeal to the emperor's court. And this is a huge gamble because at the time the emperor is Nero, who had a really infamous disdain for Christians. But Paul is saying he would rather take the gamble there and appeal to Caesar than go back to Jerusalem and

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where his death is a near certainty, right? But all of it really revolves around that statement that Jesus gave to Paul just a few chapters ago in a vision saying that as he had done in Jerusalem, being obedient to preaching the gospel, Jesus would carry him safely all the way to Rome. And that's kind of the guiding principle that leads Paul to do this. And so basically this chapter is filled with kind of

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You get glimpses of the political instability of the region, right? You've got transfers of power. You've got people, different courts, all these different manmade systems of government to try and do right. And they end up failing. end up failing Paul because again, he's done nothing wrong. He's been falsely accused. But the truth in the gospel is that there's a king on the throne.

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who is more powerful than any system of government mankind could come up with. He's the one we should be chasing after. He's the one we should be seeking to please. And his kingdom is eternal. He's never going to get replaced. And that is, I think, really one thing we can really take away from this chapter. I think so too. And, you know, a lot of times we look at, or at least we have this idea that the Apostle Paul, and all of the Apostles really, had this

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no fear of death. They were always just willing to die, which ultimately I guess is true that they were willing to die. But you can tell by Paul and his appeal to Caesar here that he knows going back to Jerusalem it is an absolute death sentence, and he would rather roll the dice like you were talking about with Nero, even though as you say, Nero was never a friend to Christians at all. But Paul wasn't ready to die yet. I mean, now

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We'll read later on in the writings, you know, especially to Timothy, where he is, you know, I'm ready to go. But right now, Paul still feels like he has a lot to offer and a lot more to do, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, again, I think it's being guided by the fact that he knows he still has a purpose. He's got desires and ambitions, not selfishly to...

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promote his own career as a traveling missionary, but to preach the gospel, to let people in Rome know who Jesus is, to build a church there. And because he knows if you can get a church started in the middle of Rome, in the middle of the empire, well, you all roads lead to Rome. So the gospel is going to have a huge launching pad to literally all over the known world at the time, right? And so that's

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know, that's what we see happening through the rest of history. But yeah, Paul's desire is not to selfishly build up his own career or anything like that. It's, hey, I see how the gospel is going to be advanced, and I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of preaching Jesus to everyone in the world. And that is such a good point, because in our day and age, we can't really fathom

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what the city of Rome meant back then. But you're right, it was all roads led to Rome. It was the world capital, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you know, my, our, our pastor here in Southeast Missouri, he, did a stint in New York for a while interning at a church up there. And he always said that if the apostle Paul was alive today,

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he would be trying to do ministry in New York. How many different, just because of how many different nations and nationalities and ethnicities and everyone, everyone in the world values New York for whatever it is. Of course, you know, it's the day before September 11th and all the things that go along with that, right? It's a major just symbol of,

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not just America, but of the world. And Rome kind of operated in the same way. It was filled with people who were of all nationalities, from all the provinces, from all the ethnicities that Rome had authority over. It really was the capital of the world, right? And so, yeah, that was really, I think, really one reason Paul wanted to do ministry there.

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My son Tyler is our guest here on the Steve Marston show. He is the content creator of this wonderful YouTube channel called 1189, where he breaks down all of the chapters of the Bible, one by one, almost verse by verse, in videos to be able to help you understand and better know the Word of God. And we're talking about his latest video that just dropped as we're recording it earlier today on Acts chapter 25.

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When you look at the rest of the story here, I mean, it's far from over because he does leave there and then there's tons of things that will happen between him and actually getting to Rome, which I know is going to be coming up in some videos that are going to be dropping within the next couple of weeks, right? Yeah, it's really exciting stuff. In chapter 26, Paul makes one more final defense to the

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Judean king named Herod Agrippa who really, you we're talking about Caesar and the Roman Empire and all these things. So what is a Judean king doing in the middle of all this? Well, it really, he really kind of serves as a figurehead, you know, being sympathetic to the Romans and kind of being used as a puppet for their government. And so what you really get the sense of is that Paul is preaching the gospel to

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Some of the most powerful people in the region, right? You have Festus, the Roman governor, but also Agrippa, the Judean king. so, Jews and Gentiles has been a highlight of Paul's ministry all throughout the book of Acts. The new kingdom of God, the new creation, the new people that Jesus is bringing about through unifying all creation, right?

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that's kind of a symbol of that when he preaches both to Agrippa and to Festus. then ultimately, yeah, he continues on his way to Caesar to keep doing the same thing in Rome, too. Actually, as you're talking about that, it really is something that Paul never gives up on. And I think it goes back to the fact that

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he did have that vision from God, that God did let him know that you are going to be able to go to Rome, because you got to imagine all of the stress and all the pressure and the aloneness that he feels throughout this whole time. That's the one hope he's been able to really rest on, I think, where everything else is so... because we know the end of the story, we know how it plays out, but as far as Paul is concerned, he's...

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going back to jail, and he'll just stay in that prison for who knows how long, and maybe for the rest of his life, you know? But he does have that hope, and I think that's probably what kind of got him through that time, don't you think? Absolutely. And I think it's the hope of that specific vision, but also the more general hope of heaven, of a future resurrection, of a new creation, having a new earth, right? And also you think about, you know, Jesus knew that this was coming for His apostles, and He

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taught about it and warned them about it and talked about it all the time. In Luke 12, Jesus talks about how the Spirit is going to come and whenever you are brought before rulers and governors and kings, like Paul is literally doing right now, the Holy Spirit is going to come and give you the words to speak, give you what you should say in that moment, right? And so, you know,

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Paul knows that he's empowered by the Spirit because he remembers when it fell on him, right? He remembers the road to Damascus. He remembers all of these things, and that one moment in his life, realizing that Jesus was the Messiah, that Jesus was alive, he was not dead, completely flipped the trajectory of his life completely upside down, and he knows what the end is. He knows that Jesus is on the throne.

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He wants to, but he also has a responsibility and obligation to give that good news to as many people as possible. Absolutely. And it certainly underlines the fact of what we talk about a lot, you and I, on this segment, and that's all of the connective tissues, how everything just kind of relates back to one another all throughout Scripture. And it's just something really amazing to behold. Yeah, absolutely. mean, I don't think...

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Obviously, God gave us the whole Bible, so I don't think He intends for us to read any one part of it necessarily more than any of the others, right? It's all one cohesive story. It all points to Jesus. And when we really realize that and realize the worth in studying all of the Bible, not just the parts we like, but even the parts we don't like or the parts we're confused by, when we really study it, we realize the richness and the depth.

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and the connective tissue there that makes it plain who Jesus is and what He came to do and how He redeems and restores us to our Creator. My son Tyler is our guest here on The Steve Marston Show. We're talking about his YouTube channel, 1189, where he's breaking down every chapter of the Bible on video. And it's really incredibly well done, and it's all free. And we'll touch on that here in just a second.

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As you round third, headed for home stretch for the book of Acts, what's next on the agenda for 1189? Yeah, Acts 26 will be coming out very soon, hopefully next week. And so yeah, it's the third time we hear Paul's testimony in the book of Acts, which is really pretty interesting and pretty unique. And each time, especially when you compare those chapters to each other, you see...

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that there's a few more details added in each time. And so it's really interesting. course, it's really interesting to see who Paul is talking to both times and how the circumstances have changed. And so that is what's coming up in Acts 26. And then after that, you get some more seafaring, seafaring voyages and adventures that are always fun in the Book of Acts with Paul shipwreck on his way to Rome. And what's after?

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And what's up after you get through with the Book of Acts? What's up next? Yeah, so after that we'll be returning back to the Old Testament and jumping back into where we left off. We're going to be looking at the Book of Joshua. So I'm really excited for that. Yeah, that should be incredible over the next few weeks here with 1189. Okay, we have just about a minute and a half left, so tell everybody how they could get in contact with you and all about 1189. Yeah, exactly.

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You can find it on YouTube at 1189. Type out the words or search it in the search bar there. Yeah, we make videos on every chapter of the Bible and we're almost done with the book of Acts. When we're done with it, we'll have videos on every chapter of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts whenever we get done with it. So yeah, if you're in any of those books of the Bible right now in your daily reading,

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Check out the videos and watch the commentaries there, especially if you have any questions or want any more insight on any of those particular chapters. It's a completely free resource for you. It's completely free to subscribe, to watch, to like, to share, all that stuff. It just serves to help you in your daily Bible study. So that's what I'm about. And I am so thankful and so proud of you for doing that. And again, it's all free. I just want to underline that again because

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It's just a labor of love that Tyler has taken on himself, and it's a huge project, obviously, going through every single chapter of the Bible in video form, but he does a great job, and I would encourage you highly to check it out. Again, it's youtube.com slash 1189. Spell that out, and you'll be taken right to it. Man, really thankful for all of the work that you do on that, and always joining us here every week. Really appreciate you, brother.

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Yeah, thank you so much for having me. All right. Love you, kid. We'll talk to you soon, okay? Love you too. See ya. All right. That's my son Tyler. Back with more in a minute. Stay with us.

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The Steve Marsden Show rolls on. Discipleship.

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So glad to be with you. Let's check out some of the stories you may have missed. Now, you know Annie F. Downs, right? If you're a lady that has been involved in the Christian circle for a while now, you probably have heard of her. She's done a lot of conferences. She's written a lot of books. She has a podcast that is extremely popular with Christian ladies, especially, but with a lot of people called That Sounds Fun and just a bubbly

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effervescent kind of personality. I actually had a chance to interview her one time and she was just as genuine and just as real off camera as she was on. So it was really neat to be able to talk to her that one time. And one of the things that she has talked about over the last several years is the fact that she is still single and how society and even Christian culture kind of looks at ladies being, you

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not in their 20s anymore and not married as maybe something wrong with them. So she's talked a lot about that. But here within the last, I think, month, she just got married and she has dedicated some of her time now to talking about what she and her new husband did as far as getting ready to be married. And she shared some of them. She said that we wanted to prepare well as we walked into the rest of our lives together.

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She said, the starting line is where the wedding was and we wanted to train for this race together. I love that symbolism. She listed some resources and people that helped her and her new husband prepare for marriage, including the Symbus Pre-Marriage Assessment, S-Y-M-B-I-S by Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott. Also eight dates from the Gotham Institute, Draw the Circle by Mark Batterston.

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and couples and individual counseling. She said all of those resources really helped her and her new husband. She said they brought us clarity, health, integrity, joy, purpose, and healing we need to stand in front of our God and our people to commit to each other the rest of our lives. As far as spiritual preparation, Downs recommends the Ready or Not KNOT Prayer Guide by Scott Kadeshera. I think K-E-D-E-R-S-H-A.

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I know I butchered that last name, you know, forgive me, Scott. And then she applauded a lot of her mentors, pastors and friends, including Nancy Bigby Mattingly and Levi and Jeannie Lesko. She said it, she joked that it took a village to prepare her skin and hair and bod for the wedding. Getting ready for this wedding felt like a part-time job. And she admitted that she's not sorry that the prep and engagement seasons are over. Well, congratulations to her and her new husband.

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much success and pray that God just uses the both of them for the rest of their lives together. Another story you may have missed, this one is to me really exciting because it's like we can play the same game. It comes from Mobile, Alabama. There's a pastor there named Travis Johnson and earlier this year during Pride Month, all of downtown Mobile, Alabama had all of these Pride displays and the pastor Johnson there

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had found out that it was through a privately funded group, but the city policy there allowed for an organization to apply banners for month-long awareness campaigns. so September is coming around and is already here, and Child Awareness Month is there. So Johnson applied for banners that read, protect our children from child gender ideology.

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He told our friends over at churchleaders.com that the application received written approval from the city and the banners went up back on September 1st and are displayed around City Hall and along the Government Boulevard through the entire month. He said, this is good because Mobile is family friendly, we're faith-filled community, and you know what? We ought to stand for our children when they need us, Pastor Johnson said. And he said,

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pastors and Christians are silent, then you're ceding the ground to the people who are not silent. And if we don't influence a culture with moral and theological issues, then we're going to see that we're losing ground, and we're going to lose ground in the pulpit as well. It's a good point. And he also went on to say, let me just say this to the pastors, it's time for us to preach the whole Bible and fully engage unapologetically. They need encouragement, and I'll tell you what,

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courage is contagious. How about that? Taking what the other side was able to do and doing it ourselves. I love that. So kudos there to Pastor Travis Johnson in Mobile. Great, great stuff. And finally, another story you may have missed. This was really sweet. You remember Beth Hamilton? She was from the movie Soul Surfer. It was a true story. When she was a teenager, she got her arm bitten by a shark.

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in a surfing accident, right? Well, she's talking about now how wonderful it is to raise a daughter. She said, I want her to grow up knowing that she doesn't have to fit anyone else's ideas of what she should look like, be or become. I want her to take care of her body, be grateful for what it can do, try hard things, face her fears and know above all that it's okay to fall and to start again. But then she said she wants her daughter to understand where her worth comes from.

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She said, I want her to know that God created and loves her and values her and that her value does not depend on what the world says about her. Hamilton went on to say, life has its challenges, darkness can creep in, but don't allow the darkness to win. With Jesus, all things are possible. And she said to her daughter, and really to all of us, you can overcome. Love that. Thanks for Bethany Hamilton and the great example that she is. Okay.

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Really quickly, while we got just a couple of minutes left here, it's the anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death and Charlie's being remembered all over our country today for the things that he stood for. And again, he was just a young guy with a young family that loved debate, that wanted to use his words and ideas to try to be persuasive to our culture, to be able to reach young people for not only a conservative

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view of life, but also he was not shy about his faith. Now, I don't necessarily buy into the fact that he was killed because of his faith as a whole, but I do know that it used to be that way. We used to be able to have civil debates where we didn't agree with one another, but we could still be friendly and be agreeable to disagree in somehow, some way that has been lost.

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And hopefully, maybe prayerfully, it can come back when we look at what happened with Charlie because it affected both sides of the political aisle. Nobody should be happy or celebrating the fact that a man lost his life because the words that he said and because he was disagreeable to somebody. I that's just so crazy. And we all know that. And I think everybody that is of a rational mind feels that way as well.

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Charlie Kirk's definitely going to be missed and definitely someone that we ought to remember because it was just so horrific and so unneeded. I'll have more coming up.

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Here at the Steve Marston Show, we're serious about faith, but we love a good dad joke too. The dad joke of the day comes to us from the home office in Redfield, Arkansas. What do you call a factory that makes just okay products? Well, you would call that a Satis factory.

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The Steve Marston Show continues, where faith and fun are both taken seriously. Let me just close the loop on Charlie Kirk here for a second. I know a lot of people, good-hearted Christian people that look at him as a martyr of the faith. And I think that's a little bit off. I don't think that that's correct because I don't think Charlie was killed for his faith. Although his faith did guide everything that he did and all that he believed in.

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I think it was more of his ideas, his more conservative politics that got him killed, not necessarily because he was a Christian. So I have a hard time saying that. And again, that's not to downplay anything that Charlie did in his life, but I just look at true martyrs of the faith, people who really died just because they were Christians. And I just don't think Charlie fits that mold. But again, that's not to take anything away from him at all. So just my...

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two cents on that. Let's get to faith between your ears. This is where we learn a Bible verse every single week. We start on Monday with a new verse and then we learn it throughout the week and then hopefully by Friday we have it right there between our ears because it is what will help us grow our faith but it also will bring us closer to God. I think more so than anything else we can do is by having His Word in our thoughts.

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in our hearts. Not, oh I think this is what it says, or I'm pretty sure. No, knowing for certain and the only way to know for certain is to memorize. And we memorize this verse this week, 1st Peter chapter 5 verse 5, and it says, humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. That's the Bible verse for this week. It's faith between your ears. 1st Peter 5

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Verse five, so memorize that however it takes for you to learn things. And again, there's no excuses. We can't say, well, I'm too old to learn. I can't memorize. It's just something I used to be able to do and I just can't do it anymore. No, that's not true. And again, let's draw this delineation as well. It's not so much getting it word for word correct, but it's about knowing what it means.

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knowing what it says and having that first place in your heart and first place in your mind. So, 1st Peter 5 verse 5 is our faith between your ears verse. Let's learn it this week, okay? And as we close up shop, we always like to give you a little call to action. We call it your next step. So, after spending this last hour together, what is your next step? Well, I think it's

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to continue down the path of being a good Christian apologist, knowing why your faith is important and not just what you believe. So let's continue to work towards that area of learning some of these answers to these questions that will come up with people in all areas of life that will ask you about your faith and you can defend it. Out of time for today. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

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Back on the radio at three o'clock tomorrow, Steve Marston show.com for everything else. Adios.