Special Event – Conversation with Dr. W. Scott Sager: Mark Lanier, 06/08/25

Scott Sager
===

[00:00:00] Well, I got very excited when I heard that Scott Sager was coming in for the lecture last night. Scott has been a friend of mine for many years. He is, um, someone that I have, I guess for lack of a better way of saying it, uh, uh, relationship with that's academic. That's, uh, to some extent even a professional relationship.

Not, not as a lawyer, but, but as a part of, uh, a school, a university. But, but beyond that, he's my friend. And he is a wonderful man of God. And I asked him would he mind sticking around today and [00:01:00] letting me interview him for class. And he said he'd be delighted and he'd be honored. He's been in this class many times, but he had to get someone to fill in his pulpit on Sunday morning this morning because, uh, uh, he normally would be preaching in Nashville and instead he's here so that, uh, I can interview him.

You can get to hear him. So, uh, I'll ask you to join me in welcoming Scott Sager.

Alright, Scott, I've kind of divided this visit dialogue into three different areas. I wanna do some general background talk. Okay. And then I want to talk about the Bible and preaching, and then I've got some rapid fire. Questions, depending on how much time we might have left. Alright, sounds good. Uh, now is there anything off, uh, uh, uh, that I'm not allowed to ask about?

Don't ask who won the stop. Right. National Championship. Stop right now. [00:02:00] Softball game between Texas, stop, Texas Tech and the University. Uh, stop right now. Mercy. Don't ask that because other than that, we're all good. Okay, well now I'm gonna start cross examining you. Um, yeah, that was. That was, um, surprising.

No, no, man. Y'all blistered us that last game. Yeah. Alright, let's get the basics outta the way. Where'd you grow up? Your mom and dad, your life, siblings, any of that? How do y'all, I'm from Fort Worth, Texas and uh, grew up there. I'm the middle of three boys. Uh, we grew up, uh, 33 months apart, so we were all in high school together and all in college together.

And, uh, I'm a Fort Worth native. Went to Abilene Christian, and, uh, my mom and dad are still living. My dad is 91 and he was here. December 1st for Carols and candles that my mom and dad were both here, came to, uh, this class, uh, then too. And so both [00:03:00] my brothers live in Fort Worth and I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Now, you grew up in the faith, your dad was a song leader at church. Ah, it was fascinating. I grew up in a small church of about 300, something like that. Uh, my dad was the song leader and, uh, I grew up, um. Just really around the church all the time and singing all the time and going to camp and going on mission trips and uh, huddle groups and all those things.

You, I'm assuming your church was like mine when I grew up three times a week. Sunday morning. Sunday night. Wednesday night, absolutely. Plus you stuff on the side and you stuff on the side, and you were there for all of it. I was, I was there for all of that and, uh, my dad. Was really, um, formative for me. My dad baptized me on, uh, March the 17th, 1976 from a gospel meeting that Willard Collins was hosting and, uh, Fort Worth.

Willard Collins was the president of Lipscomb, where I now [00:04:00] work, uh, at the time. But he was a friend of my dad's. And so, uh, I got baptized, uh, then, and my dad still celebrates my spiritual birthday every year on March the 17th, he sends me a book that he's written in that, uh, just kind of celebrates the next year of my spiritual heritage.

And so I'm very. Uh, for my parents and the faith that they gave me. Your parents did a lot to foster good home life. Mm-hmm. One of the things that you went to, you, you were telling me about Camping Club. Yeah. Tell us about Camping Club. Well, my mom and dad went to a a James Dobson seminar on family, and one of the things they heard at that was that.

Uh, you needed to have some adversity as a family that you overcame. And Dobson recommended camping and he said you'll always have adversity if you go camping as a family. So my dad bought a little [00:05:00] trailer, believe it or not, the five of us would fit in and it was not as big as the stage. And, uh, we would go once a month, uh, camping with a group of other families and, uh, we would just play games and get to know each other and have great times.

Deal with all the challenges of that. And so that became an important part of my upbringing. Also, I was in scouts. I didn't know if you wanted me to mention that or not. Mom, you mention anything you want. My mom was my den leader when I was in Cub Scouts, and then my dad was my scout leader when I was in Boy Scouts.

And so I went all the way through scouting, got my guiding country and my Eagle Scout, and so did both of my brothers. And so Scouting's really important. Uh, to my family, uh, as well, I, I did scouting as a Cub scout, but when we moved to Lubbock, uh, uh, it kind of went away. But Mom was mom's here. Mom was, uh, our gin leader, uh, in Cub Scouts.

The, the thing that I loved most was the time we, we had our basement and our, [00:06:00] and our, uh, residence there. And, and you could buy those, well, not buy. My dad would empty those Folgers coffee cans. Yes. Um, and, and they were metal. And so one time the scout meeting I really remember was mom giving us all one of the metal coffee cans, and we took a hammer and nail and we'd nail in a pattern that she gave us on the top of the coffee, can go into the basement, turn off the lights.

Shine a flashlight through the coffee can onto the ceiling. You'd see the constellation that you had hammered out and mine was Orion. Oh, I can still pick Orion out in the sky because I remember as a kid nailing those nails and seeing what it looked like in the basement. That's great, scout. That's great.

Let's hear it for Carolyn over here. Yeah. So, um, now you, uh, um, you. Made a faith [00:07:00] decision, uh, you were baptized. Mm-hmm. You went through high school. Did you, did you struggle to keep your faith through high school? I, um, because you were an athlete? I was an athlete. I played, uh, football, baseball, and track, and I was in the marching band.

Uh, at the same time, what, what, what, during halftime coach, I'll be right back. I've gotta go March. I played the tuba, uh, which was pretty simple. You just walked down the 50 yard line back and forth and, uh, played your music. So it, it was not hard to memorize what you were supposed to do. And so I would, I would do that.

My brother was the drum major, and so it was important for my parents that all three of us were in the band together. We were all three in the band together at Abilene Christian too. Wow. Yeah, that's kind of cool. I'm not very good, by the way. What'd you major in? Yeah. Yeah. Um, oh, I wanna tell you one other thing that you and I have in common, because, you know, uh, one of the things that I do [00:08:00] every morning is I get up and we'll talk about that maybe a little bit more.

But I, first thing I do is I get up and I say, my heart is steadfast. My heart is steadfast. 'cause that's the mantra of our church. And then I make my, so I know something. And then I go make the coffee for our family. And I sit down and the first thing I read every day is Mark Lanier. Uh, and I don't know how many of you guys read his daily devotionals, uh, every morning, but my wife and I do.

Uh, today. It was about Keith Green. Yes it was. And, uh, but that's, uh, an important part. But over the reading of those, especially the Psalms one, I discovered that he had some of the same language that I had from my childhood. And I went to a seminar called the Bill Goard Seminar Institute and Basic Life principles.

I think my dad took me every year from the time I was 12 until I graduated from high [00:09:00] school. And so I would go and kind of get steeped in. What I think was the best of that material. And uh, when I'm reading you, sometimes I'll hear umbrella of protection or some other thing that I think, oh, that reminds me of that.

And so, yeah, I found Bill Gohar to be very useful in so many ways that some of it, uh, as, as I've grown up, I've thought, ah, you know, no, I total, I'm totally there. And I met him, by the way. I went to Chicago, uh, on a event. Went over and met with him and, you know, he's had some challenges too. But, uh, I'm thankful for the good formative stuff that I got outta that material as a kid.

It was, it was really good. Well, you decided as a young man that you were gonna be called to preach. Mm-hmm. And I wanna transform there. But before we do, uh, uh, you go to Abilene Christian and you actually get a business degree. [00:10:00] Mm-hmm. But you took four years of Greek. That's right. Um, you knew you were gonna need that you were gonna be preaching.

Mm-hmm. Um, tell everybody how you came to take your first ministry job and what it was. Okay. Well, I was called, uh, to preach on a Sunday morning when I was 13, and, um, I responded to the invitation, came down to the front and told the church that. God had called me to preach. And um, and so that was just part of the rhythm of me growing up, was knowing that eventually I felt like God wanted me to, to do that.

And so, uh, but I. I mowed yards and threw newspapers, and so I got up every morning at three 30 to throw a newspaper out. Fort Worth. Star Telegram? Yeah. I threw in Lubbock, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. You got up at three 30? Yeah, I got up at 3 29.[00:11:00]

Go ahead.

We like to get our papers out early and love them. Gotcha. I was just pleased to get mine out so. Uh, but the, uh, so my parents decided, or they encouraged me to get a degree in business and they said, you know, Paul was a temp maker. He had something that he could do in addition to studying, and so they wanted me to get a, a business degree.

And so I went off to Alene to get a business degree, but I knew I wanted to preach. I took all the Greek that I could take and I took all the Bible courses that I could take as I was getting my degree. And I went on a spring break mission trip when I was a sophomore, and uh, it went to Seattle, Washington.

And there I spent a week doing campus ministry on [00:12:00] the campus of UDub and all the lights came on for me. As far as my love for a college campus, my love for college students. Uh, the opportunity to evangelize and to disciple and to really be on the front line of where faith and culture, uh, collide. And I came back and I knew that I wanna preach someday, but what I really want to do when I get out of college is I want to go be a campus minister.

And, uh, so that's what I was aiming towards. And a common friend of ours, by the way, was very influential for me. Milton Jones and Milton had been on staff at the Broadway church with Mark when he was growing up, uh, before he went to plant that campus ministry in Washington. And so, uh, I. Graduated thinking campus ministry was gonna be in my future.

And you wound up, we, we can, we gotta move through this to some degree with some haste. But, [00:13:00] uh, you went to Jerusalem. Yeah. You studied, uh, took a degree or No. At least studied at Hebrew University. That's right. Uh, you, you did a lot of other things as well. So I started, I graduated with my undergraduate degree and then stayed in Abilene.

Under Abilene Christian to get my master's, but I actually, uh, was invited to go study in Jerusalem at Hebrew University. And so I went over there and took courses in Rabbinic and geography and archeology. Tom Davis, one of Lipscomb archeologists are here today and that's really where I, uh, fell in love with, uh, archeology.

A guy named Amon Bento, uh, took me all over Israel on various digs and, uh, a guy named Joe Helum. Taught me Rabbinics and he's stayed a close friend. I think he's actually been, he, he, he's been to the library twice. That's what I thought. And, uh, he's just wonderful. Um, uh, I, I, spoiler alert, one of the [00:14:00] books that, uh, Scott has written is entitled Bible Lands Adventures.

This is in my, the.

Uh, best tour guide for the Holy Lands. And it, it, it's got not just information, but it's got scriptures that, that plug into that information. It's got room for you to make notes. It's got maps, it's got timelines. It just makes sense of everything you're seeing, puts it into context and you take students over there, uh, every year.

Every year that the government will, and the risk management at Lipscomb will let me, uh, we go, well, that's true. Yeah. With the wars and, and things like that. Yeah. It can be tough. And let me just pause it this moment and just say, how many of my friends are my friends? Because he's my friend, [00:15:00] you know, and the connections from this book.

So many of those came from people that I met through Mark at the library. Um, I I would not be the same person, uh, if I didn't know Mark. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm serious. Well, I mean very, I would not be the same person if I did not know you Well, I'm honored. I just wanted to say that in front of all these people.

Is that what Mark does to bless so many of us relationally. Okay, let's move on to, so you took a job at the University of Texas, had trouble getting a job at Texas Tech, obviously. Yeah. And um, and as a campus minister, you are ministering to a group of people. I had about 120 college students that were a part of our college ministry.

And so you started dating one of them? That was a real challenge right there. And you married her? I did. Uh, tell us about Suzanne. [00:16:00] Okay. I have the finest wife next to Becky, next to, well, right there with Becky and I think Beverly's here. I got, there's some people here. I, I hold in the highest, highest to Steve.

Alright. You had a, you had a good wife or have a good wife? Yeah, I have a great wife and, uh, I met her. Um, at the University of Texas, she was in my campus ministry and then I'm trying to figure out how do you date somebody that's in your campus ministry? And what I did was we just did things as friends for about a year, and then it was clear that she was the person I went to spend the rest of my life with.

So I went to the elders of our church and said I'd really like to date her. It was her last semester of her senior year. And the elders are like, who? Good? You know, they were, they were ready to get me off the market. They thought that was a really good, uh, thing. And so they blessed it greatly. And uh, and so we dated for the rest of that semester.

And [00:17:00] then she had a job working for Proctor and Gamble in Dallas. And we dated long distance for a year and they got married. And you have two kids? I have two kids. Anna and Will, and Anna is a school teacher in Birmingham. She teaches middle school. Uh, uh, um, politics, history and geography. And then she also, uh, teaches the cheer squad and is the assistant to the middle school musical, which has been really fun for us.

And then my son just graduated from Lipscomb with a degree in biology and is headed to, uh, UT Memphis for dental school. Uh, July the ninth. So he's gonna be on the drill team. Yeah. Oh my goodness. That was great.

Very good. You know, I understand being a dentist is a filling profession, but, um, alright. You, uh, uh, you left from campus ministry. [00:18:00] And transitioned, uh, uh, went to a church in Dallas, the Preston Road Church. Mm-hmm. Where Lynn Anderson had been the pre or was the preacher. Right. And then when Lynn Anderson stepped down from the pulpit, uh, you were the interim and then made full-time preacher and you preached at Preston Road in Dallas for how long?

For 15 years. And so that church is right next to smu. And while I was there, I start a campus ministry. Uh, that we call ponies for Christ and it's still doing well, uh, there as well. Another thing you did while you were there, now you, you worked on your PhD or your D men uhhuh at SMU while you were there.

D is a practical doctorate as opposed to just, uh, philosophical doctorate. Um, but, uh, your D Men was something that I find fascinating. I find it just the heart and root of what Christianity is about. I want you to tell everybody what it is you did and [00:19:00] what your church did. Okay. So our, many of you know Dallas and so, you know, Highland Park is University Park's, kind of a, a fluent part of, of Dallas.

And I lived in the church house, next to the church building. I couldn't have afforded to live anywhere in that neighborhood, but I was very grateful to live there and I would jog every morning and I noticed that there were all these bus stops. And I started thinking, why are there all these bus stops in the wealthiest part of Dallas?

And then it hit me all the nannies, yard workers, housekeepers that were coming in, uh, to work. And so what we did for my D men, that question was, who are the marginalized in your community and what can you do to serve them? And the answer was, we could create a fully functioning health clinic. That would provide for the working poor of the park cities.

And the thought behind it was that, uh, retired [00:20:00] doctors, volunteer doctors will go to Mexico or they'll go to Africa and they'll serve, but they can't really do it in their own city. And why not put a clinic in a safe neighborhood? And then we created a piece of legislation. Dan Branch was my state representative.

Uh, and he went to our church and we created a, a piece of legislation that would protect volunteer doctors until the Good Samaritan Clause kicked in so that they wouldn't be out of pocket to defend themself. And so, uh, the clinic started in our basement with three exam rooms. Baylor Hospital donated all the equipment for it, and we put in a pharmacy closet, and then we put in an an eye.

Ophthalmology lab and we've got a fully functioning health clinic that's in the basement serving about four 50, working poor in the Park Cities area with [00:21:00] about 22 volunteer doctors and nurses that, uh, step in every week to, to help make it happen. And, and that's just a gift from the heart of Jesus, the kingdom.

It's those who need it. And we've set it up where if you're in the community and you wanna sponsor the healthcare of somebody who works for you, you can donate $25 a month. That will go towards helping to pay for that. So it helps people in the community feel like that they can give and be involved in.

Process as well. So it's been alive for 20 years now, and it's even doing better since I left than it did while I was there. There's a woman named Katrina Bradford, and she's the, the secret behind it. She's a Harvard educated, uh, doctor who is bilingual and speaks Spanish, and she has really carried that ministry to new heights and it's, it's, it's called Christ Family Clinic, Christ Family Ministry.

If you're [00:22:00] interested in Googling about it. Fantastic. Well, you leave from there and you go to Nashville. Mm-hmm. Uh, you go to work at Lipscomb, uh, you've got a church where you preach. Uh, uh, tell us, uh, uh, first of all, a lot of these folks, they hear me reference Lipscomb, but they don't know what it is.

Tell 'em about the school. You know, I was, uh, so I was preaching in Dallas and uh, the president of son went hired. Adult education for us. And so he, his parents came for a baby shower and we got to know them and they were telling me all about Lipscomb and I'd heard about it, uh, but they asked me to come and visit and speak.

And I, I went to the campus and it's beautiful. I couldn't believe how pretty it was. Yeah. And the people were so kind. But the more time I spent walking around the campus, I, I looked at my wife and I said, um. [00:23:00] Alan's on the move here. Um, those of you who are familiar with Chronicles and Narnia, remember when the beaver says that Alan's on the move?

That's what I felt when I walked on the campus, is that God was stirring there and that, um, things were happening in the lives of young people. And it was a place that I could see somebody who. Been on a college campus their whole life since they were 18, that that could be the next step in my. Ministry career would be to go and, uh, work with Lipscomb University in that way.

Now you actually teach classes, uh, uh, at Lipscomb. Give us a feel for the classes you teach. Yeah. And then we'll get to the preaching. Okay. I, uh, am blessed to get to teach freshmen and sophomores, and so I teach, uh, the story of Israel, followed by the story of Jesus, followed by the story of the church.

And so during that [00:24:00] time, we get to walk them through the scriptures and help them to see God's unfolding story and how Christ fits into it. And then also to see, especially in the story of the church, how that story then impacts your life and how does your story align with that, and what's the continuing story that you play out?

And we've got this place on campus called the Center for Vocational Discovery. Where every student can go and really ask questions about what's my identity, what's my purpose, what's my calling, and where am I being sent? And, uh, can learn really deeply about how do I fit into the kingdom and how does what I do, uh, as a vocation, uh, become a calling for me.

And so getting to work with students, uh, in those ways has been really, really exciting for me. Um. Yeah. No, keep going. Yeah. Uh, mark is on our board and, uh, it's, it's really meaningful to get [00:25:00] to talk to him about that and to get to partner with him. We're on the spiritual life committee of the board together.

He's the chair of the committee, and I'm as liaison, which means I do the grunt work that he doesn't want to do for that. And I do it happily. I mean, I'm honored to get to do that. You, you do a great job at it. You do it better than I would do. No, it's just really fun to get to work together. But. That means I also get to tell Mark when great things are happening on the campus, and it's really fun to, to get, to give him updates about things that are happening.

Um, but I also will send him pictures sometimes when a, a student in my class will decide to make a faith commitment, uh, for Christ. And um, last semester I had five students in my class of 62. Uh, make a faith decision during the course of the semester, and it's just so, and when they make a faith decision.

Lipscomb got a kind of a fountain type thing there in the square. You got no trouble even in the dead of winter [00:26:00] just going and baptizing them immediately. We do, we have a, we have a big fountain in the center of the campus and it's got greats that come out so that we can baptize people right in the center of the campus.

And it's a, a great celebration moment and a really important part of the identity of our, of our campus. And, and you'll do it in cold water. It's not heated. It's not heated, coldest time you've done it. Uh, I did one, it was 28 degrees outside. Yeah, yeah. It was a soccer. And this is not like pouring or dipping or sprinkling, man.

This is like boom, boom. Yeah, it was a soccer player and he was really tough. Uh, but I got in the water and I had to just stand there for a minute before I could even talk. You know what I mean? I was just like, yeah, it was an honor. Um, and so, uh, story of Israel, story of Jesus, story of the church. What are your textbooks?

Um, well we always use the Bible. It's good start. It's good. Uh, it's interesting for the story [00:27:00] of, uh, Israel class, I actually used the story, which you may have remembered a lot of churches used a while back, and so it takes the great. Of the story and breaks it down into 21 Old Testament sections. So we read one every class period.

Uh, then there's another book that, uh, sounds dangerous, but I promise it's not, it's a really great read. It's called God Behaving Badly with a question mark after it. And the subtitle is, is God Racist, sexist, and Misogynistic? And it's a look at. The God of the Old Testament and showing students that he's really much more consistent than you think he's, and there's really a lot more going on than the way you've dismissed as being.

Not the kind of God that you think he's, it's a book by David Lamb and students have loved that book, God behaving badly. And then I do one on creation, [00:28:00] evolution, intelligent design for views by IVP that I encourage all of our biology students, uh, to read. And so you've got that. And now how do, what do you use for a story of Jesus?

Story of Jesus? Uh, we use a, a book that I wrote called Disciple Making the Core Mission of the Church. Um, we have another book, uh, that they all read and it was this time was called The Good and Beautiful Life, and it was by Brian Smith. Richard Foster's protege and it's a walk through the Sermon on the mount.

Uh, and they would journal on that every week about. Lust in their life about pride in their life, about anger in their life, and, uh, really deal with with that. And then in the story of Jesus class, we also read through the Chronicles of, of Narnia, um, the line to which in the wardrobe. And they write a paper for me at the end of the semester comparing and [00:29:00] contrasting and developing.

How is the story that you find in the line of the witch in the wardrobe, an imaginative retelling of the gospel story. And so they have to go into that story and plummet for its depth and to see what CS Lewis was really doing, uh, in that, and to then understand how the story works. Uh, that way for themselves.

So if, um, we have people who are constantly asking me, what's a good book for this? What's a good book for that? What's a good book for me to read or to give to someone if, if I or Brent Johnson. Gets a hold of you by email, you can give us these titles. Absolutely. I'd love to do that. And we can email out these links so that people can order these books and read them.

Sure, yeah. Absolutely. Um, um, I was gonna ask this later, but I'll ask it now since we're on the subject of books. There are a couple of books that you have said have been transformative in your life. Mm-hmm. Uh, why don't you tell us, uh, one or two of those right now? Okay. Yeah. The, the ones that have really just [00:30:00] changed the way that I think.

Uh, the first one was Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, and I read that book back in the eighties. It was actually voted the book of the decade for the eighties, and it was the by Richard Foster himself. Go ahead. He, uh, but that book was the first book that really talked about spiritual disciplines about.

Prayer and fasting and worship and meditation and silence and solitude. And so that was the book that really unpacked those for the first time. And uh, so that became an important book for me. And then another book by Richard Foster was, uh, called Devotional Classics. And it was 52 Summations of the Great Christian Classics, uh, throughout all of history.

And so it was the first time that I was introduced to anything that [00:31:00] Luther had written or anything that Anselm had written or, uh, kinds of bunion. Huh, bunion, bunion, Bernard of cla, all those people that I had never, I'd heard their names, but I didn't know anything about him. It gave me a, an invitation in, in a very simple way.

And so that became an important book for me to try to understand, uh, that as well. Um, you know, there's anything that John Sto wrote was influential for me. I just read everything that he's written and in t Wright who we were with yesterday, when you were talking to Tom, you, you mentioned one. That was the last thing I was gonna say is that the, of the most recent book that just shattered my understandings and made me rethink things was when.

Uh, somebody gave me NT Wrights book on Surprise by Hope, and I was talking to him yesterday and I asked him, [00:32:00] you know, if you were gonna, I'm, I'm putting a class together on CS Lewis. And so we've been trying to take all of CS Lewis's books and say, what are the five that we would want students to read?

And so yesterday in the car with t Wright, Dave Capes was driving and I was in the back seat. I said, can I ask you a question? He said, sure. And. If we developed a class on nt. Right. What are the five books that you think would be the five books that most summarize your entire career? He's written over 80 books.

Yeah. And so the number one book that he said was surprised by hope, and that was true for me, uh, that that book, uh, changed the way that I understand the resurrection, but it also, uh, challenges me daily. To remember that we have a biblical mandate to seek after beauty and after justice. And those things are [00:33:00] important, uh, for me to keep thinking about seeking after beauty and seeking after justice.

And so NT Wright's book. Uh, really help with that. But, you know, there's only one person that I've read daily for four years, so that's, uh, he's a pretty good guy too. So we can move on. So, um, preaching, what are you preaching on right now? Uh, you know, I'm, I'm having a blast preaching right now. Uh, I'm in a series that's gone all year and, uh, it's called Great Characters of the Bible.

And every week I do a different character of the Bible, unless there's just so much there, I have to give them two or or three weeks. And so, um, as they pop up, just going through chronology, we pull 'em out and we do a character study of their life because I've discovered that people really like characters and just somebody that they can jump into, [00:34:00] identify with kind of.

Plumb the depths of, get the best of, and then just kind of see how to apply that to their life. And so that's what I've been doing. Um, alright. We're gonna get into some of those characters. Okay. Um, but I have to ask a global question first. Have you done any bad guys? Bad guys? Yes. I think the greatest scoundrel in the Bible, other than Judas, other than Judas, is Jacob.

Jacob. Interesting. I think he was a pretty sorry dog.

Well, certainly for much of his life he was without a doubt. Yeah. So, so what, what makes him such a, a, a sorry dog in your book? Well, I mean, you know, he stole the birthright. He stole the blessing. Uh, he was. Pretty ruthless with his father-in-law, who was his [00:35:00] ruthless back. Uh, I just don't think he would've been a nice person to be around, you know?

So when you, when you teach on Jacob Yako in the Hebrew, um, uh, what, I'd love to hear this sermon. Yeah. Unload a little bit. Preach. Well, I think that he, um, I think he hit a point. Where he realizes that I have totally messed up. And I think the moment where he realized I've totally messed up is when his mother came to him and said, you've gotta leave right now.

Go live with your uncle because your brother's trying to kill you. And so he has to leave the land of Israel. And he crosses over the Jordan River into Jordan, and he's by a river. When all of a sudden the Lord appears to him and he sees the [00:36:00] angels ascending and descending, and I think at that moment he began to realize that God had him and that he needed to trust God instead of trying to manufacture it all for himself.

And he's become somebody who, even though I think he's a, a scoundrel, I, I wanna be like him in one way. And that is, don't you wish you could wrestle with God for a night and say, bless me. I mean, I picture him just holding onto Jesus or whoever that figure was. Right? Yeah. And I'm just like, I'm not gonna let go until you bless me.

I'm just not gonna let go. And he limps for the rest of his life, but he, he got blessed. So he's, it's amazing story. Yes. It's fascinating. I, I [00:37:00] love Jacob because of the way he molds. Into so much of the Bible. Yeah. Um, we did not prepare to talk about Jacob, by the way. This is all brand new, uh, for us to be dialoguing about this.

Um, his name mm-hmm. Is an idiom for trickster, but he's, he comes out grasping the heel of his brother. And then he has a transformation grasping the heel of the Lord. And, and he wanted to take the place of his brother, but you have this sense that he ultimately needs to find his place. He was, he, he, he doesn't personally need to grasp and bring his brother back in to the womb so he could be born first.

He needs to grasp the Lord and let the Lord make of him what he will, and it's, it's a, it's a wonderful story. What did you put on the ceiling of your chapel about Jacob? So the ceiling of [00:38:00] the chapel, if you ever go see it, um, Jacob is actually there in two places. I thought that was the case. Correct. So if you go into the chapel doors and you look up to the left, you'll see a double.

Panel that's got Jacob in it, and it includes the seam where he is at Bethel, which is Hebrew for House of God. He says, I'm gonna name this Bethel because he slept there on a stone. He opens up, he sees the angels ascending and descending on what is probably a staircase, uh, if we read the Hebrew carefully, but it's often called a ladder.

And so he thinks the angels are coming up and down from there. This must be where God's house is because they're coming to visit. Right? That's his mentality. Now his name means one who is full of guile. He's a trickster. He's not someone you can rely on. Can I use your Bible? Sure. Now [00:39:00] you find in the gospels the call.

There you go of Nathaniel. Where is it, John? One. One, John two. Wait, is it? It's two, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, no, it's John one. Okay. So here we've got, let me see if I can put this up here. Look at this.

First of all, I'd like to compliment your Bible. You've clearly read this before.

The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee finding Philip. He says, follow me Philip, like Andrew Peters from Be Philip finds Nathaniel. Now Nathaniel's name naan. L naan means gift. In Hebrew, L means God. So Nathaniel means gift of God. Alright, now Philip finds Nathaniel and says, we found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the [00:40:00] prophets also wrote.

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel says Nazareth, can anything good from come from there? That's like the Austin, Texas of their day. And um, can anything good come from there? Nathaniel said, well come and see. So when Jesus sees Nathaniel approaching, he says, look at this. Here is a true here, truly is an Israelite.

In whom there's no deceit. An Israelite. Now Jacob's name means the deceiver. The trickster. Jacob has his name changed by God to Israel. So Jesus is basically saying, you've got the Israel, the new [00:41:00] Jacob. Hmm. Without any of the old Jacob. Nathaniel says, how do you know me? Nathaniel's like, whoa. Jesus says, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.

Now, Nathaniel declares Rabbi, you're the son of God. You're the king of Jesus says, because, told you.

I saw you under the fig tree. You'll see greater things than that than he added. You'll see heaven open in the angels of God, ascending and descending on the son of man. So here's what you've got. Nathaniel's clearly, in my opinion, been meditating. [00:42:00] On Jacob and the latter. Hmm. And God changing his name to Israel.

And so Jacob comes up as the skeptic. Can anything good come outta Nazareth? And Jesus says, I know what you were thinking. And Nathan says, how did you know? And Jesus says, when you were under the fig tree where he was having his quiet time, I guess I knew what you were sinking. I knew what you were doing.

And he says, you're the Lord. You, you got that. You are. You are king of kings, Lord of lords. You. You can do something nobody else can do. And the response of Jesus is, oh, just wait. 'cause you're gonna see the heavens open and the angels ascending and descending like Jacob saw, but it'll be on the son of man because that's the true bridge between heaven and earth is Christ on the cross.

So in the ceiling we painted not only [00:43:00] Jacob having that experience, but in the wings where the life of Jesus is in the draperies, we've got the calling of Nathaniel and where Nathaniel is called by Jesus, you've got kind of a little bubble of HIMSS under a fig tree thinking about, and we've repainted Jacob's ladder there.

In the John vignette to carry that through. That's so, yeah. That's kind of fun. Um, alright, so let's get back. So who'd you preach on last? Who was your last great character? Habak. What'd you say about Habakkuk Habak. I, I said, how many of you ever ask why you scratch your head and you say, God, I dunno what you're up to.

I dunno how this world is supposed to be working, but it doesn't seem to be working. Uh, that's what Habak says to God in the first chapter is, I don't get it. And God's response is, you think you don't get it now, just wait. And it [00:44:00] is about to get worse. And so in chapter two, Habakkuk has to say, God, I do not understand what you're doing, but I know who you are.

And in chapter two. Habakkuk teaches us how to frame our questions about God in what we know to be true about God. You're holy. You're my rock. We will not die. You still got this. And so he recounts that. And then at the end of chapter two, he reminds everyone that although all the nations are messed up.

They're acting in corrupt ways. The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silent before him. And so he closes Habakkuk with one of the great, uh, statements of faith anywhere. He says, there may be no figs on the trees, no [00:45:00] grapes on the vine. The all of that might be empty and the wine skins might be empty.

But then he says. I will rejoice in the Lord my Savior. He will make me like the feet of a deer able to walk on the highest places, and that's how Habakkuk ends. And so it's just a real call to faith in the midst of a great time of questioning and national questioning, we don't understand what's happening.

But we're still gonna trust you. And I think that's what Habak does for us. Wow. Amen. Praise God. Yeah. Okay. Um, ah, we got, yeah, we got a couple minutes. I need you to tell us about Barna stats. We're gonna have a Barney guy come to the library in a couple weeks. Not everybody will go there. You stay on top of this stuff like nobody I know.

Talk to us about [00:46:00] the next generation and do we need to panic? We do not need to panic the next generation. Here's what's interesting, uh, the Barna material, and by the way, the guy that's coming to the library is the guy at Barna, David Kinnaman. He's the leader of Barna and a very top man. Tell everybody who Barna is.

Barna is the Christian Research Institute that's keeping up with all the global data and the national data on Christians and the Christian faith asking all the questions about what makes a church thrive, uh, how do we. Build more dynamic churches and what's happening generation to generation. And uh, David Kinnaman, by the way, has moved to Fort Worth, Texas.

He lives there now and is a great, great guy. Um, but he put, sent something out and it had a slide that showed the hard number, and that is in 2040 2% of the people surveyed by Barna, they classified as a committed Christian. That was in [00:47:00] 2040 2%. In 2024, they did the same study again and the number had dropped from 42% to 20%.

Then he flipped to the next slide, and the next slide said that although the number has dropped, that they are seeing a vibrancy among the committed. Like they've never seen before. Of that 20%, 87% of them are going to church weekly are engaged in Bible study. And what he was saying is there may be fewer, but the, but the salt of those is much more powerful than it's been in a long time.

That there's a vibrancy to the Christian faith, especially among Gen Z, the youngest. They're leading the way with the highest percentage of vibrancy among them. And that's what I [00:48:00] was saying we're seeing on the campus at Lipscomb, that gets me so excited is God is sending a set of students there that are just so on fire for the Lord.

Uh, and we've got a, a major now that's, uh, worship in the arts. And so we have students there that are intentionally there to figure out how can they take beauty and. Bring it to the culture and transform culture by drawing people into worship, into praise, into cinema, into the arts, into animation and that kind of stuff.

So Lipscomb got a new animated series? Yeah. Uh, it's it, how many of you know Veggie Tales? Okay. Veggie Tales was done by basically two guys. One of them at Lipscomb started another. Animated series, like Veggie Tales, and it's called the Dead Sea Squirrels. And there were these squirrels that hibernated during the Dead Sea and the [00:49:00] Biblical Times, and they just finally woke up.

So they're telling everybody these biblical stories of what life was like before they went to sleep. The clip that I've seen is the one where, um. Mary finds out she's gonna have a kit that she's pregnant with. Jesus, this is so good. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. And so, um, the Angel Gabriel comes down and announces it in song Now the Angel Gabriel in this international release.

Is none other than Darrell Comedy, our song leader. Because Scott Sager had heard Darrell sing and went and told the people that, Lipscomb, I got a voice for you. So Darrell goes to Lipscomb, they record him singing. Mm-hmm. Um, talk for a second, Scott. Well, I was here, I was here December the second, and, [00:50:00] uh.

The savior on the, uh, the, it was something about, uh, Jesus on the, um, the manger throne. And I don't remember exactly how the song went, but it was so moving to me that morning. I came home and I said, I just heard somebody who used to sing for the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, and he sang about the savior on the manger throne.

And my mom and my dad and I were all just moved to tears. And I came back and I was telling about that Mark brought Darrell and Jarret for lighting of the green, which is something we do every, uh, Jan, uh, December with Amy Grant, she comes and, uh, hosts a big event. And uh, so he brought Darrell and he got to meet everybody.

Alright, let's see if this works. Uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if this Scott sends me this. Um, let's see.

Oh, he's upside down. He, he [00:51:00] seems, he seems good even upside down. Alright, let's see. Uh, oh, I've turned my phone down because

Hall. Yeah. That's nice. Mm-hmm. Uh, hold on, hold on.

Yeah.

Man, that was good. Second one was great. Isn't he amazing? That guy is so talented. He just blows me away. Yeah. So [00:52:00] sorry. Um, so we've got to uh, close down so you can preach. Yeah, we gotta close down so I can preach. Um, no, we, we've gotta make sure everybody has a chance to get that your kids, your grandkids, uh, heavens you will love it.

I've now seen the video that goes with it. Guy Angel, Gabriel even looks like Darrell is pretty good. It's pretty good. I really, really like it. Alright. Um, so, um, I don't have time for the Rapid fire, but we covered a bunch of that stuff. Lemme ask you one question, rapid fire. What's your favorite hymn? Uh, greatest Thy Faithfulness is my favorite hymn, but, uh, I'm also fascinated by how there's kind of a, a new version of greatest thy faithfulness that, um, young people are singing, uh, today as well.

And, um. I am trying to remember how it starts now. Well, your dad's a song leader. If you got any of his gene, you already be able to do it. Well, uh, all my life you have [00:53:00] been faithful, right? Yeah. All my life you have been so, so good. Every moment that I'm able, I'll sing of the goodness of God. Amen. And so I think that's the.

The new version of Great is thy faithfulness. And, uh, it's exciting to me to kind of sing them both and just see that, uh, the generations were, were, were united in singing about the greatness. Of God. Amen. And on that note, would you join me in thanking my friend Scott? Scott? Would you, uh, pronounce a blessing over us in the name of Jesus?

And we'll, uh, have class dismiss? Yes. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace. The Lord be gracious unto you. The Lord be [00:54:00] steadfast in his love to you. And may that love that is in you. Be poured out upon a world that desperately needs to know about the love of God seen in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Amen. Thank.