(upbeat music) - Well, when should you stop listening to this podcast? Who would ask such a question in the first place? I don't know, well, we did. It was our very first episode. We recorded together on stage in public and we pulled it off at the Getty Sing Conference in Nashville recently.

About 2,500 friends joined us early in the morning. A lot of you who are regular listeners were there. So have a listen to our interchange. How many of you are regular listeners to the podcast by a show of hands? Oh, wow. Wow, thank you. It's just amazing to be here with you.

Typically, this is not our recording setup. This is not how we do it in front of a live audience. Typically, Professor John is in his home study and I'm in my home study and we connect over Skype. We bounce all over topics. - And usually I have a computer screen right here in front of me with all the answers.

(laughing) And I don't have one or a manuscript this time. I do have some notes, but I don't know if I'll look at them or not. So I don't wing these answers. Believe me, they take a lot of preparation. - They do. - They're hard questions, usually. - We have over 200 email questions come in to us each week.

200 email questions. And in those emails, I see a lot of recurring questions that come in to us that are very situational. So should I marry this lady or this lady? Should I marry this guy or this guy? Should I take this job or this job? We appreciate those situational questions.

But it raises another question for me, and that is, where do you want this podcast to serve our audience when they have spouses, they have parents, they have pastors, they have churches, they have other voices in their lives? Where do you want, ask Pastor John, in your wisdom to come into their lives in light of all the other voices God has given them as well?

- So how to listen to APJ or how to fit it into your life, if it fits in at all, probably should be something that you decide on the basis of what it is. So what are we trying to do? Why do you guys do this? You've been doing this for six years, 1,400 episodes.

Why in the world do you do this? So let me give you some roots, and then say so in view of those roots and what we're doing, should you listen? And if so, why? And how does it relate to your pastor's preaching and so on? So go back with me to 1966.

I'm in the hospital with Mono at Wheaton College, and about 200 yards away is Edmond Chapel, and Harold John Ockengay, pastor of a big church in Boston, was the guest preacher in Spiritual Emphasis Week, and he was preaching. And WETN is the radio station, and I was listening on my bed to his preaching.

Now I was a pre-med student and excited that God had made plain to me that I was gonna be a medical doctor. And lying there and listening to him, my world absolutely changed. And to sum it up would be, I came away from those several days of listening with this passion that has never died.

It is as close as I've ever had to a call. And it was, you're not gonna be a medical doctor. You're gonna be a Bible guy, and your job for the rest of your life is going to be to look at it, see what's there, try to savor it according to its value, and then say it for other people to enjoy.

And I have not been able to shake it for what is this, 55 years or whatever, 50 years now that what I do and what we do is look at the Bible, try to understand what it says, love what it says, and then tell people what it says. That's what we do.

So fast forward to 1980. Now I'm the first year of in the pastorate, and I get to preach twice on Sunday. Back in those days, we had evening services, and I preached twice on Sunday, and everything in me said, "That's not enough. "I got so much more to say to these, "this is my flock.

"My job is to tell them what I see in the Bible. "I'm seeing things in the Bible every day, "and I can't not want to tell people." I mean, that's just what it means, I think, to be called in this way. So we created the star, Bethlehem Star. One page, no email, no internet, no nothing in 1980, just snail mail.

One page, a letter from Pastor John with what I'm seeing in the Bible, and the other side, here are all the youth ministers that are happening. And so fold it up, mail it to every member. That's APJ. It's me not able, not to savor, and not to say what I'm seeing in the Bible about all kinds of issues, like billboards with half-naked women, okay?

So that's what my people are driving by every day. I'm writing, I'm gonna say something about that from the Bible. I'm a pastor. And then you advance forward to, when do we start this, 2013. - 13 January, yep. - Okay, 2013, I've done star articles for 33 years. They're all in books everywhere now.

But they're stars, and I'm done. I leave the pastor. I'm not preaching every weekend. I'm not counseling anybody. I'm just working for DG. What should we do? And let's do some pastoral counseling. Let's read our Bibles, and let's tell people, let's tell people what we're seeing in the Bible.

So that's what we did. We started long distance while I was down in Tennessee. And so basically, think of me as a guest preacher at your church. So I'm invited by your pastor to come. I preach a sermon, then he does a little Q&A with me in the afternoon or something like that, I don't know.

And you miss it because you're sick. And the pastor says, "Not a problem. "We've got our little website. "We'll just put it up there, and you can go listen to it." And that's the way you should listen. And that changed my life when Harold John Ockengay did a little guest preaching at Wheaton College, and my life got turned upside down.

Now, should you listen? And my answer is this. You test all things, hold fast to what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Here's how you decide whether it's good. Number one, after I've listened to a handful of APJs, do I love my Bible more than I love APJ? Do I go to my Bible with more confidence and more joy because of APJ?

Number two, do I love Jesus more than APJ? Do I love Jesus more than I did before I listened? Number three, do I love my church more? Do I love my pastor more? Do I pray for him more earnestly? Do I care for the people in my small group?

Do I do my Sunday school class better? Am I better invested locally 'cause I listened to this guest preacher? And fourthly, do I love lost people more? Do I love the nations more? Am I praying more earnestly for the mission of the church? If those four things aren't happening, don't listen.

(audience laughing) - Wow, thank you. - Is that what you were getting at? - Yeah, that's what I was getting at. (audience laughing) Here's the lingering question for me. Did your wife think she was marrying a medical doctor? - No, no, but she thought she was falling in love with a medical doctor.

So I did bait and switch, (audience laughing) but not intentionally, and she was very, very forgiving because she came to visit, I mean, she fell in, we fell in love in 6666. (audience laughing) It's an easy date to remember, we celebrate it still. That's when we met in Fisher Hall, and madly in love, yeah, I'm gonna be a doctor like your dad, and then three months later, she can't find me on the first day of class, and I'm in the hospital, and then two weeks later, she walks into that room, and I look at her and say, I'm going to seminary, hope that's okay.

(audience laughing) She's been great all the way along. Tell you a story, I mean, I don't know how this fits into the recording, but I just gotta celebrate Noel. I mean, we were married 50 years last December, and-- (audience applauding) I got so depressed my first year in preaching.

I thought, oh, my, have I done the right thing? You know, I love teaching, and now I've become a pastor, and I'm just depressed out of my mind one Sunday afternoon, and sitting at the dining room table, the bedroom is just off to the right here, and she's in the bedroom doing something, and I'm sitting at the table, and I say, I think I'm gonna go to Africa.

And you know what she said from the other room? Tell me when to pack. That's an awesome woman. - Yeah, amen. (audience applauding) Amen. - So I didn't throw her too much when I said, from doctoring bodies to doctoring souls. I love that story, so good. And please, please continue to seek the wisdom of those that God has put in your life.

As Pastor John has said in another context, as you read 1 Thessalonians 5:21, don't miss verses 12 to 14 of that chapter two, which gives a beautiful little sketch of why we need people in our lives, in our local churches, and what those relationships should look like. Really helpful.

And thank you to everyone who turned out for this first ever APJ Live recording for Pastor John and me in Nashville. Apparently it went well. We're gonna do it again in Louisville at the Together for the Gospel Conference in a breakout session on April 15th in Louisville. Maybe we'll see some of you there in person.

Well, Pastor John just finished writing a 600-page book on the providence of God, and so our next question is providentially well-timed. Is God's providence and God's sovereignty the same thing, or are those different things? It's a really great question. It was actually on Pastor John's mind when he was writing the book, and it's up next time on the podcast.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Friday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)