What Winning Looks Like

Philip All right. Welcome to All Are Yours. This is Philip.

Sean I’m Sean.

Philip And if Sean sounds less reluctant to you today — yes. Not only is it because we’re recording, but it’s because we’re recording on new equipment.

Sean With microphones.

Philip That’s right. These are actual microphones. Sean is wearing headphones. He loves hearing the sound of his voice.

Sean So much.

Philip Yes, that’s right.

I actually had, a couple days ago, Jory Monnie was like, hey, your guys’ stuff is great, but you should really consider getting some better equipment.

Sean Really?

Philip Yeah.

Sean Okay.

Philip And I’m like, hey, you know what? I already got it. So here you have it. All are yours: bad microphones and better ones.

Sean Boom.

Philip Yes, there you go.

Sean I feel like I’ve gained IQ points just from having a legit microphone right in front of us.

Philip It feels more real. Like it’s not just messing around. This is a real podcast now.

Sean Yeah.

Philip That’s right. It feels like winning.

Sean That’s been a conversation that we’ve started to have more so even over the last week.

Philip That’s right.

Sean A national conversation.

Philip That’s right. There has been some winning.

Sean Yeah. And how that applies to Christians, and maybe even to us pessimistic — or, that’s what we’re tagged as.

Philip Right.

Sean We’re tagged as pessimistic in our eschatology.

Philip That is not a label we put on the business card.

Sean Right.

Philip But we have at least had some sort of winning this last week — whether or not, whatever your eschatology is, and even whether or not you’re a Christian, you have experienced victory. And also a good chunk of the American nation has experienced a loss and is freaking out about it.

Sean So by “winning,” to be clear — you mean, and I would agree with this, you mean winning because in the presidential election Donald Trump won and is the president-elect. That’s what you mean by winning.

Philip Correct.

Sean So that Kamala Harris and the Democratic platform appear to have lost.

Philip Yes.

Sean See, I’m even hedging. Because —

Philip There’s still a chance they could cheat, and —

Sean Yeah, literally. Because I stayed up the night of the election. And Trump’s speech was absolutely chaotic and crazy, and whatever — though apparently he had been up for 72 hours.

Philip Yeah, that’s what I heard.

Sean Which — I think you’d be tired just at seventy-seven or seventy-eight years old at two-thirty in the morning anyway.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Let alone if you’d been up seventy-two hours. But anyway, so he was great.

So I stayed up, I watched it. To what I could tell, everybody on Twitter had called it for Trump.

Philip Right.

Sean And I was flipping back and forth between Fox News and CNN on the TV, and it seemed like — and even Trump’s speech was accepting that he had won.

Philip Right.

Sean So, fine. But I remember in 2020 I went to bed and woke up and things were different.

Philip Right.

Sean And so when I woke up on Wednesday morning and I was talking to Mo, she’s like, oh, Trump won. Because she had gone to bed.

Philip Okay.

Sean And I said, well — maybe.

Philip Yeah, right.

Sean Because I hadn’t gone online yet. And she said, well, Wikipedia said he won. And still I had a little bit of a sense of, well, let’s see.

Philip Right. Yeah, I had three channels on simultaneously. So we had Fox on the TV, then I had CNN playing on one of the laptops, and on the other laptop I had Blaze TV with Glenn Beck and Steve Deace and those guys.

Sean Yeah.

Philip I appreciate some of those guys’ perspective. I think I am maybe the most aligned with them, of the three options.

Sean Yeah.

Philip With some of their more, I’d say, realistic approach, and even maybe from the point of view of a Christian worldview. I like some of Steve Deace’s stuff.

But overall, the Blaze TV guys were confident that Trump was going to get it —

Sean Yeah.

Philip — a couple hours before Fox called it.

Sean Well, it seems like certain people on X — but everybody talks big.

Philip Right, for sure. And they were like, if he doesn’t get it, this would be shocking.

And then CNN, after there were a few of the swing states left, CNN was saying that Kamala has to win Pennsylvania. If she doesn’t win Pennsylvania, there’s no path forward for her. If she does win Pennsylvania, there’s still a path to a loss — but she had to win Pennsylvania.

And then Fox called Pennsylvania for Trump, and CNN spent the next hour or more trying to look for a chance that she could.

Sean So we’re calling this winning.

Philip That’s true.

Sean Now, I don’t know how much time you’ve been able to be on Twitter, X, or whatever over the last couple days. But even heading into Sunday, the number of people that the algorithm was showing me who were Christians, that potentially even are Christian pastors, talking about how it was potentially not even okay to talk about it on Sunday — to have any reference at all to the election, or to Trump by name, or whatever. And some even who, apparently, are professing Christians who don’t have the category for saying that this was winning.

Philip Right, exactly. Or even — I saw one tweet, or post, tweet, that says something like: if you get deeply happy or sad about politics, it’s your idol.

Sean Yeah, you responded to that, didn’t you?

Philip That’s right. And so, you know, if you are deeply happy or sad about your wife, or your kids, or your church, it’s your idol.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so I think there is this kind of pseudo-stoicism that is saying, well, you have to just be even keel and never get too excited or too discouraged about a win or a loss.

And in a sense, maybe some of it is apathy, where we don’t know how to celebrate and also don’t know how to grieve properly or adequately. And in another sense it is maybe this kind of pietistic apathy, where I feel morally good about myself for not caring as deeply.

Sean Yeah. There are so many thoughts, whether they’re worthwhile or not — I have a variety of thoughts that I would consider winning, that have become more and more clear even over the last four years in some sense.

But Christians in particular are just much better at having enemies that they can — but even still, I think most of the experience I have is that Christians are better at having enemies that they can complain about, not even necessarily that provoke them to do anything.

Philip Right.

Sean At least the cultural train wreck that the Democratic Party has been pushing on us has seemed to cause enough pain to then provoke a reaction. And so conservative men vote for Trump. And good.

But yeah, we have a hard time, it seems like, wanting to build. We have an easier time finding somebody to battle against, or at least to —

Philip Right.

Sean — complain against. I feel like we’ve talked somewhat about this in a previous episode: that it’s easier to find an enemy and market yourself as up against them.

It’s not like we don’t still have the seed of the serpent, who — we’re still in a spiritual battle. Even in Washington State, we definitely have a lot of opportunity to battle as well as to build.

Philip Right.

Sean But to not be able to find something to give thanks for, feast for, count as an actual win —

Philip Right.

Sean Thank you, Lord, for answering our prayers. We prayed that he would give us some relief, and every sign so far — at least, what Trump keeps saying is relieving for Christians.

Philip Right.

Sean And Christians seem to have a hard time appreciating that.

Philip Well, but even the battle part of it. It’s almost like America’s war in Vietnam, where they weren’t ever really intending to win. It’s kind of like this indefinite battle. So we’re just always in a battle without any kind of clear notion of what victory even looks like.

Okay, we’re in a battle against the culture. Well, how do we win that? What would that look like? What are the actual markers of victory, and how do we finish the battle and then move on to the next one?

So even in the battle, I think there is no vision of victory. It’s just an ongoing battle — which again, yes, our entire life and the entire history of the church is and will be building and battling. But that has mile markers of either victory or defeat, and appropriate responses to either one of those, which is what is missing.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So there’s some of that.

But in a big way also, I do think that understanding what to do with victory, what to do with plenty, how to live in that, is near the root of our problems in America. Near the root of the issues that we’re dealing with.

So, Deuteronomy 32:15, when God is talking about how he will bring them to the cities that they did not build, with vineyards that they did not plant — they will have all this. And then he says, “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.”

And so you come to a victory, you come to deliverance, and are not ready, don’t have enough maturity, don’t have enough sanctification to know what to do with that — and you forfeit that victory as a result.

Sean I suppose in some ways — at least according to what minimal reading I’m doing about it — in some ways it’s even like Trump’s win in 2016. He wasn’t prepared for it.

So, to whatever degree he himself was surprised, or the people around him were surprised — it wasn’t just a new thing that he hadn’t done before, not even as a politician. It wasn’t just new. He was not even sure he was going to win, and so he didn’t know what to expect, and wasn’t actually able to get the right people around him to then actually know what he wanted to accomplish.

Philip Right.

Sean So he wanted to be president. Cool. Okay, you won. What are you going to do with that?

Philip Right.

Sean Whereas this time around — not just because it’s a second administration, but because you even had four years in between to think more about it.

Philip Right.

Sean Whether he called it an autopsy on his first administration or not, he does actually seem to be doing things differently this time around, in terms of stated policies that he’s going to reverse or that he’s going to put into place. And the people that he’s choosing are completely different as well.

Philip Right.

Sean And we still are a couple months away from him being sworn in — but in terms of this transition team, it sure seems like he knows what he wants to do with this win.

Philip Right.

Sean As opposed to being unprepared.

So, in terms of Christians: well, what are we going to do? Well, we didn’t think we were going to win.

Philip Right. So it’s possible — all is in God’s hands, clearly — but there’s a chance that the progress that we were thankful for in Trump’s first administration will be much bigger the second time around. Because he is coming in running, coming in knowing what he wants to do and how to do it, setting up the right people in those places from the start, as opposed to dealing with the snakes in the grass.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so there’s a chance —

Sean On his own team.

Philip Right. On his own team.

So there’s a possibility that there is going to be a lot of winning. Like, whoa. We might win more than we even are asking for.

And that’s maybe a side note: God’s kindness continues to shut me up.

Sean Yeah, what do you mean?

Philip Like, I was ready to see Crazy Laughing Lady in the White House. We deserve, very evidently, God’s judgment. There’s nothing that we have going that would make God’s judgment unreasonable or not just.

Sean Yeah. Like, prior to the election Tuesday, we didn’t have massive repentance.

Philip Right.

Sean And —

Philip And that’s usually the order of things that we talk about, which is right, we see that in the Bible: that there’s first repentance and then there’s blessing.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But it seems like God just chooses to be kind. God just chooses to love, to bless. And yes, in one sense that makes all of us more accountable; that is more of even God’s passive wrath, or wrath that is being stored up.

And yet we are still experiencing his kindness. We’re experiencing his love. It doesn’t seem like it’s just some kind of manipulative trick —

Sean On God’s part.

Philip On God’s part, right. Where it’s like, well, I’m just going to be a little more kind so that I could really beat you later.

But the Bible says that it’s his nature. God is love, and his kindness is then to drive us to repentance.

Sean Yeah. I was going to try to sneak that in — not sneak that in. I was going to try to include that particular phrase sometime in the service on Sunday. It didn’t make it in there.

But yeah, so we didn’t repent and get his kindness as a country.

Philip Right.

Sean I don’t know how a Christian could not recognize this as some level of kindness compared to what the alternative would have been. A Democratic push for abortion, further transgenderism, further socialistic, communistic economic policies, further state control, all those kinds of things. So to just have less of that has to be some measure of kindness, like you said, that we don’t deserve. And winning further — pushing that winning further of the kindness.

By God’s grace, if he shows us more kindness, there will be more repentance, yes, work and establishing of righteousness. But may he actually grant gospel preaching and soul repentance among many of the people in the midst of the plenty, in the midst of the good — as opposed to sending them famine so that they would turn to him.

And even in Scripture, it’s not like bad times always made hard men, or bad times always caused repentance. In Revelation there’s a passage — I can’t remember the exact address of the verse at the moment — but they’re in the midst of great suffering and yet they harden their hearts and refuse to repent. So just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean that somebody’s going to repent. And actually, just because it’s a time of great harvest doesn’t mean that somebody won’t repent.

And it’s regularly simplistic —

Philip Right.

Sean — to think, oh, well, the negative world.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And I think it’s probably still fair to say that we live in a negative world, even with Trump’s election.

Philip Sure.

Sean We still live in a world where it’s probably not doing you better to say that you’re a Christian, even just on a cultural level. We’re not back to cultural Christianity in most ways yet.

But living in the negative world still doesn’t necessarily make it better. Doesn’t automatically make it better for Christians to realize that they’re in the fight and they’d better take it seriously. Doesn’t automatically make unbelievers realize, oh yeah, this is no good, I need God.

So God can use both.

Philip Right.

Sean In terms of all are yours.

Philip Sure.

Sean Well — all are God’s first.

Philip Correct. And we see both patterns in Scripture.

Sean Yeah.

Philip We do see the pattern of judgment leading to repentance, and then God granting relief as a result of repentance. That happens all the time. And we also see — maybe this is a two-by-two — where you also see God’s judgment leading to harder hearts as well.

Sean Yeah.

Philip You know, even in Jeremiah, where the more judgment Jerusalem was experiencing, the more stubborn the king got, and the people got, and the more they hated it.

So judgment could lead to repentance, we see that — or to more judgment. Or then also we see God’s kindness leading to repentance, and God’s kindness leading to entitlement, or envy, greed, that kind of thing as well.

Sean Making them more accountable for the good that he’s given them.

Philip Right, exactly.

Sean They are, in a different way, storing up wrath for themselves, because they are getting all of his gifts without acknowledging him.

Philip So I think the first way maybe to look at — and that’s why I said, where God’s kindness shuts me up. Because my imagination is limited, and I’m much quicker to try to plan the story plot as judgment-repentance versus kindness-repentance.

And even — I want to be more of that kind of person.

Sean Sure.

Philip To imitate God more in his love and in his kindness. To maybe even lean on the side of kindness toward my kids, toward my church, toward the people who I’m around.

I think that is God’s nature, where God’s wrath and judgment is responsive — he responds to sin with wrath and judgment — but by nature he is kind, he is love. And so to have that as an essence of your identity, as opposed to wrath being an essence of your identity, I think is good.

And so even, maybe the first part of being able to live in a time of plenty is seeing God as kind and loving, and as a maker who wants to bless his creatures, who wants to bless his people — as opposed to, we are living under God’s tyranny, and we’re just here shuddering and being scared that he’s going to call us out and beat us.

So having that kind of perspective, I think, matters. Knowing who God is, who your Maker is, that he is love and he is kind. And that is what then enables us to receive a win, to receive a victory, without having to be skeptical about it. Like, well, what’s the catch, God?

Sean Right.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Why do you think that is? Can you identify in your own life what has been the liturgy — like, lowercase-l liturgy — catechesis, lifestyle? What has gone into the worldview, in your own experience, your own mindset, or even among the groups of Christians that you’ve been a part of? What do you think goes into that?

Because I wouldn’t say that you’re — I would also agree that it’s way easier for me to be pessimistic. I’m not optimistic. I’m not looking for the good first. I’m looking for the problem first, a lot of the time.

I’d like to think that as I am maturing, I’m looking for the good first on a more regular basis. Looking for what are the kindnesses that are being shown. Where’s the blessing in this first, rather than where’s —

Philip Right.

Sean — the beating that I’m getting.

Philip Right.

Sean But what would you say? And how can we fix that?

Philip Well, one is, I think, the nature. What I’m saying where — we are, I am, a little tyrant. That is my nature, to be that little tyrant. And so then I project that nature onto God as well. And so I am thinking that, well, he’s like that. And so clearly I’m wrong, we’re wrong, this is what we deserve. And so even if there’s some kind of win, or some kind of good, I’m quick to qualify that, to question that, to be skeptical of it.

So I think part of it is nature. But then, yes — story and liturgy.

So for me, whether it’s right or wrong, the stories I grew up with about the Soviet Union, and the state being never trustworthy. You can never trust the state. That’s the category that was burned into me: that the government is never to be trusted. And so as a kid, you just grew up with that paradigm. Okay, that whole group is never to be trusted. They’re always against you.

And so if there is ever any kind of good coming out of that — which again, the Bible tells us to pray for. We are to pray for our leaders, so that we can live quiet, peaceful, godly lives. So if the leaders are enabling that kind of godly life, or peaceful life, then there has to be something behind that. There has to be something that I need to question.

And then even in the Psalms, when we’re told to look at, or to maybe even envision, a king that is like the sun rising on a land, or like rain that is creating blessing for the land — this is the kind of ruler and government that we want. And so in the stories I grew up with, that is an impossibility. That does not happen.

So I think that is definitely there, that kind of story, liturgy.

And then on top of that maybe as well is the sense of — yeah, it probably would connect to a dispensational premillennialist approach to reading history, both past and present. So apart from even the Soviet Union, the Russian part of it, included in that was a certain way of looking at history, past and future, again pessimistically, and always questioning — that we lose down here. This is the thing that we’re looking at.

And so I think maybe compiling those three things together, for me, I err on that side, as opposed to the side of receiving victory and plenty and winning and just being grateful without having to question or qualify it.

Sean Yeah. I’ve been glad to be going through Ezra even over the last month or two, and seeing Cyrus and the Persian kings who were blessings to Israel — and even providing for them. So not just allowing them, but providing for them to return back, as a fulfillment of God’s promise to bring them back to their land.

And as I have been going through it, Cyrus doesn’t seem to me to actually have converted to being a worshiper of Yahweh. Seems to have taken that as another god to go into his pantheon, so to speak. So, letting the Jews worship their God, their Lord. And that’s good. And they were able to give thanks for that.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean They weren’t waiting to only give thanks for when Cyrus had repented from all of his pagan idolatry. They actually could take what he gave them as advantage, take what he gave them as blessing and kindness from God.

Then even into Darius, a number of generations later, who does the same thing. He’s not repenting, obviously, and then becoming a proselyte to Judaism — but they saw his protection and his provision as a good thing.

So, whether or not Trump himself — I get that the United States is not the same kind of chosen nation as God’s promise and covenant to Israel was at the time. But by way of application, it sure does seem like we’re allowed to be thankful.

Philip Right.

Sean Without it being perfect, without having reached the ideal yet. And the ideal isn’t going to be until Jesus is the monarch and the King of kings and Lord of lords, as recognized on earth.

That seems optimistic. Dispies can be —

Philip That’s right. We win down here.

Sean Far —

Philip Actually, this is a big tangent, but dispies are the only ones who think that we win down here with Jesus ruling and reigning with his feet touching the ground.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So there you go.

But that’s kind of what I was talking a little bit about at the last episode, where reading history in its context — there’s a certain way to read history only through a redemptive lens that keeps you from being grateful for when things happen that you can’t immediately connect to redemption, salvation, the gospel narrative, quote unquote, in that way.

But being able to receive history even as you’re living it, in the current context that you’re living in, and glorifying God directly for that. And so having to, or needing to have, that redemptive lens over history in some sense keeps the gratitude qualified. Keeps the gratitude at bay. You’re holding back.

“Well, but Trump is not saved, and his motive is not really for the glory of Christ, so we can’t really be thankful for it.” It’s like — but what’s the context? And receiving it that way, and being able to be thankful, I think becomes much more possible through that God’s-glory contextual lens.

Sean Yeah. I am more thankful, and can more quickly call this winning, even in the history that we’ve had more recently of what God sends us that we clearly more deserve, in terms of not winning, and judgment. So, able to be thankful for lesser things.

Philip Right.

Sean Without it having reached its pinnacle of all of the good that it could possibly be imagined. We actually have more to give thanks for. There is a motivation —

Philip Right.

Sean — because he’s teaching us how to better give thanks wherever we’re at in the timeline.

Philip Right. And so in this sort of conversation, eschatology gets brought up and thrown around. There’s winning eschatology, there’s losing eschatology. And even the winners aren’t always winning, and the losers aren’t always losing.

Sean If they’re honest.

Philip Right.

Sean Whoever’s holding whichever one that gets characterized as the winning or the losing eschatology — if they’re honest, they have seasons where they have to — I mean, even a non-Kuyperian dispensationalist has to acknowledge at some point that there have been better days and more winning days, in Jesus’s name. And an honest postmillennialist also has to acknowledge that there are times of great suffering in the church.

And they don’t know whether their current life is going to be one that is marked by a dip on the upward-and-to-the-right that they would claim has got to happen before Jesus comes back. They don’t know, in their own lifetime, if they’re going to lose down here and be one of the conquering-by-martyrdom sort of Christians. So they have to make a place for that.

It’s not as simple as, oh, we have the optimistic eschatology.

Philip Right. And I think it’s laughable to simplistically categorize it that way, where: we have the victory eschatology, you have the defeatist eschatology.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Sure, we could throw mockery at one another. We like doing that. But if it’s serious, that is laughable. Because that’s not really the case.

So even the “we lose down here” is John MacArthur’s quote, right? And that started an uproar on social media.

Sean Yeah — which he said somewhere in the middle of Grace Community Church winning their case against the state of California for not shutting down during COVID.

So in the middle of that season, he was championing — and lost friends in the right evangelical world that he was sharing platforms with, that were even speaking at Grace Community Church at conferences in the past. He lost some of those connections while trying to keep Grace Community open. They had livestream for a while —

Philip Right.

Sean — but came back earlier, and then fought the state and the LA County officials. So, in the middle then of winning his actual court cases —

Philip Right.

Sean — and being out front of standing against the government and its control, he then still said —

Philip Right.

Sean — “we lose down here.”

Philip Right. Well, and so Nate Wilson was one of the ones who at least had something to say about John MacArthur’s thing. And I think in his explanation, Nate Wilson was saying that John MacArthur does not live that way. He doesn’t build that way. So whatever it is that he’s saying, he doesn’t build like a loser, like somebody who’s expecting to lose.

And then Nate, being a postmill, goes on to say that even in the postmill eschatology, sometimes winning looks like losing. So there’s —

Sean Yeah, if you’re going to read the Bible, that has to be the case.

Philip Right.

Sean Yep.

Philip And so, taking all that together, it seems like it’s not just dispies or postmills or whatever category you want to put yourself in. It’s maybe Christians in general who have an easier time — or maybe they’re more ready to be prepared, or to plan, for persecution, as opposed to prepare for plenty.

They’re more ready to — persecution fits neater into the category of a Christian’s world or lifestyle, as opposed to plenty and victory in a time of prosperity, or a time of permission, protection, provision, in that way.

And so, how should a Christian — and in our context, our people have a certain kind of eschatology — how should we as Christians live under a time of plenty? How should we live under a time that is giving us the opportunity to do things, as opposed to us having to deal with persecution?

Sean Yeah. I wonder how much is actually just a lack of self-control. That’s not enough — because then you also have to still decide that you want something, so you have to care about something.

When you’re under persecution, you are limited in a way that kind of tells you what your options are. And so, in a good or bad — well, I want the good. But when there are multiple goods that are out there, well, then you’ve got to choose. You’ve got to have your own self-control.

Philip Right.

Sean Yeah. So: self-control amidst plenty.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Self-control when you’re choosing between many goods is actually a higher level of self-control. Because somebody else — I guess, even in persecution, to some extent somebody is controlling you.

Philip Right.

Sean Or there’s more of that, even if they’re limiting you. But when there’s plenty of options, well then it’s up to you to choose what is right.

Philip Right.

Sean And probably why, in the United States even, we have so many people who are overweight.

Philip Right.

Sean Well, that doesn’t happen unless there’s a lot of food.

Philip Right.

Sean So we are living in a time of plenty, and we don’t have a lot of self-control. That’s hard. Whereas we could all be skinny — more skinny than is healthy — if we just didn’t have supermarkets lined with food.

Philip Right.

Sean In a political climate, then, what we also need is self-control.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So that we are not just waiting for somebody else to tell us what to do.

So self-control would include some amount of initiation. Self-control would include some amount of: I can figure out what is good, what I want to accomplish, without somebody else needing to tell me.

And self-control is mentioned for every demographic in the church, like in Titus 2. Old men, young men, older women, younger women. We need self-control — and then some sort of development of taste, so that — and not in terms of food, but some sort of taste, in order to actually want something that then we’re going to use our self-control to get to.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And most of the time we would just rather not have to think about it.

Philip Right.

Sean Be distracted. Or, again, have somebody that we can complain about, that is limiting us from doing what we think we really want to do — but we’re not even sure. We just want to not be told what to do.

Philip Right.

Sean But then we’re not pushing forward when we have the opportunity.

Philip Well, it’s like the Jews, right? They were complaining, grieving, by the slavery in Egypt. And then they got their freedom and didn’t know what to do with it.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so, in that sense, to have that kind of self-control takes a higher level of maturity, a higher level of sanctification — to be able to live in a time of abundance than a time of persecution.

And again, that should also be qualified. It’s easy to speak about doing the right things under persecution when you’re not living under that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so, not experiencing the sort of persecution that Christians either today elsewhere, or in the history of the church, have experienced — that’s not to take away anything from them. But it’s at least a different kind of sanctification.

So when Paul says he had to learn to be content, or learn to live in times of persecution or prosperity, with plenty, with abundance — he needed that; that was something for him to learn to do. And so for us to expect that it’s not going to come naturally. It’s not just an answer we have right away, of how do we live under a time of plenty in a way that honors God most. It’s something for us to, like you said, have self-control over, something for us to grow up into, to be able to carry that sort of weight of glory.

Sean Yeah. And we are potentially not ready for that level of maturity.

Philip Right. Well, and again — Proverbs is written to a future king. So it’s wisdom for rulers. I think you’ve said that before.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So it’s how to rule, how to be an owner as opposed to a slave. And in a big way it is easier to just have a list of things to do, as opposed to a blank canvas to draw on, where you have to be able to set your own boundary, your own focus, your own direction. So knowing how to do that requires more wisdom, more self-control.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And the other part, maybe, is: when we are under a time of plenty, it seems like it’s very quick that we forget that this is God’s grace. We are quick to forget that we don’t deserve this, and so we grow entitled. And even have a sort of entitled apathy.

So it’s not just that we don’t know what to do, but we don’t care about it, because we think it’ll always be like this, or we deserve this. And so, Jeshurun grew fat. We grow entitled and apathetic, and misuse, or don’t steward, don’t invest, the talents that we have, for future progress, for future growth, for more work.

So apart from not knowing what we are to do, we also just think that it’ll always be like this, or it always has been like this. And so that’s also something that we forget: that this is God’s grace, that we ought to be grateful for, not take for granted.

Sean I don’t think this is only because it consumes my weeks — I think it’s generally true. That is one of the reasons why corporate assembly worship on the Lord’s Day would include knowing how to joyfully receive. So, the humble part of receiving, and then joyfully receiving.

So we don’t have to get our joy somewhere else. We get our joy in dependence on God. But when we depend on him, we also then have joy. So it’s not either/or — it’s dependence, receiving the kindness that we get, and how then that results in joy that we share, which even itself is a part of the kindness.

So we are trained to see, even as you were saying earlier, that God’s nature is one of generosity, kindness, and love. We’re trained — not that we can’t think about that, read that in the word, meditate on that wherever we’re at, but on the Lord’s Day we ought at least to be dealing with beholding the glory of God, and the various parts that make him so glorious, which includes that kindness and generosity to us.

And how then that provokes us to a good kind of feasting attitude, that should show us how to respond to the many blessings. The blessings should provoke us to give thanks, and that is more joyful — rather than, I’ll just take these blessings and get out.

Philip Right.

Sean I’ll take these blessings and act like I did it, like I came up with it.

Philip Right.

Sean So the humbling nature of considering ourselves before God, and all the good that he’s giving us, ought to make us better at knowing how to take the plenty.

Philip Right. So there are these two ways, maybe, of doing it wrong. And there are more than two, but at least two.

Sean There seem to be infinite ways of doing it wrong.

Philip So one is keeping the gifts at bay. This kind of, well, I need to keep my attention on God, I can’t get distracted with the gift, and so I’m just going to hold the gift over there. And ultimately you’re refusing to receive the gift — but in a very pietistic way.

Or in a different way, where you do indulge in the gift at the expense of forgetting the giver. And so it becomes very selfish and entitled, like I said, where you do forget the giver, you do forget to give gratitude to God.

And so whether it’s keeping it at bay, or forgetting God altogether, you’re not receiving the gift in a way that glorifies God, in the way that honors him.

And so I think that’s where gratitude is. Gratitude is receiving the gift, and also then not forgetting the giver. Being able to do those things together.

Sean Yeah. So, Trump — we don’t say, well, if we are too excited about Trump, therefore we’re giving Trump our allegiance, not God.

Philip Right.

Sean So that’s rejecting the winning.

Philip Right.

Sean The alternative would be acting like Trump is all we need.

Philip Correct.

Sean And maybe there are people who are out there. But I would have to believe that those people — people who actually think that Trump winning is the solution — if they’re doing that in the name of Jesus, they’re not —

Philip Right.

Sean They’re not very mature either.

Philip Right.

Sean But it would seem like a mature person should be able to thank God for the gift.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And recognize that God is actually still in control, and in God we trust.

Philip Right.

Sean Not Trump.

Philip Right.

Sean So: here’s the great temporal kindness. Thank you, Lord. We receive it as from you, and we’re still looking to you. Help us not mess up the good gift that you gave us. Help us maximize it, be more fruitful with it now.

In 2020, when we were locked down for however many weeks and months, it was new rules, or confusing rules, and the amount of energy that it took just to try to keep up with what they seemed like they were requiring.

Philip Right.

Sean It seemed like they had relentless energy to make up new things.

Philip Right.

Sean Well, perhaps now, for some period of time, we can actually use our energy — to not need to figure out what the next restriction is going to be, but to actually figure out how to make a profit, as opposed to just how to build the wall to defend.

Philip Right.

Sean But — I mean, we’ll see.

Philip Well, I think on the heels of entitlement in the time of plenty comes envy. Where we see our neighbors having plenty, or some sort of prosperity, or receiving God’s grace, and so we grow envious of that. We believe we deserve what our neighbors have, or more than that.

And so entitlement comes with envy, which then opens the door for a whole bunch of sin, a whole bunch of strife. As opposed to — it seems like gratitude comes, or is followed up, with good works. When we are grateful, that puts us to work. As opposed to, when we’re entitled, we just grow envious and refuse to work.

And so, maybe taking those two juxtapositions, or two responses, of envy that destroys versus good work that builds up, is a different way to approach a time of plenty.

Sean Yeah. Even as we come to Thanksgiving — to the Thanksgiving-through-Christmas-and-New-Year’s sort of part of the calendar, and there are lots of parties and lots of food and feasting kind of thing — the difference between feasting and gluttony is not necessarily how many bites of pie you take, but whether you’re actually thankful for it, and then what you’re doing afterwards.

Philip Right.

Sean And I don’t mean that you can’t take a nap after the big turkey or whatever. I just mean: well, we’re going to continue to then take that as a reason to do good works, to press forward, to try to maximize that, rather than get lazy.

Philip Right. Well, and then the next thing, I think, also — with envy comes greed, where we’re holding on to things, as opposed to generosity where we are giving.

And so: gratitude, good works, generosity — being able to receive and live under this time of plenty. Versus entitlement, envy, and greed, where we are holding everything so closely, unwilling to give and to share, because we’re afraid we’re going to lose more of it.

And so it’s this kind of death spiral, maybe, where the more we’re holding on to it, the more we end up losing it — as opposed to casting your bread on the waters and then receiving more gain from that. So it’s a different approach, a different worldview. And it takes sanctification and self-control to be able to see that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip All right, well — we have solved all the problems.

Sean Literally winning. Like, multiplied —

Philip Correct.

Sean — exponential winning.

Philip That’s right.

And so, whether or not you believe we win down here literally or allegorically — I’ll close with this, maybe. My activity on Twitter, on X — a sub-tangent of my work there is looking for people like this.

Actually, I read a guy who called it — oh man — antepenultimate eschatology.

Sean Okay.

Philip I think that’s what it was, right? Where ultimately we win. In the course of things, before we win, we lose. But before we lose, we’re also able to win.

And so, reading future history in that way, where ultimately there is victory; in between now and then, at some point, there’s going to be some kind of loss — but that also doesn’t keep us from wanting and working to win right now.

Those kinds of people are more rare out there. And so I keep putting out a signal to try to attract more of those. And so there are some.

Sean We’re going to have to get more microphones if you find them.

Philip That’s true. So, that kind of — what is it, antepenultimate? Is that right?

Sean Yeah. “Ante” is before — “pen” is the right — “ante” is before the penultimate. “Ultimate” is the last, “pen” is right before. Antepenultimate is the three out, yeah.

Philip There you go.

So winning looks like that antepenultimate.

All right. Hope you guys enjoyed the good quality conversation. All are yours.

Sean Winning.