God’s Plan in Every Moment - Rod Martin Part 1

00:00 - Speaker 1You honor the God who created us, you honor the Savior who died for us and you're enabled to live for Him. It's called regeneration. You're brought to new life and in the process of that, you know, given a new heart. You still have this body of flesh, you're still prone to sin, but God sanctifies you, which is to say makes you more and more like him all through your life. 00:27 - Speaker 2Welcome to the Ignite with Barry Meguiar podcast, where Barry's book and passion for spreading God's love are guaranteed to ignite your life. Now listen in and prepare to have your life ignited. 00:43 - Speaker 3Hi everybody, welcome back to Ignite, have a great show for you today. The great Rod Martin, a man that you may or may not know. He's kind of new to me. Somehow, rod, you just showed up on my computer. I don't know, you've got some amazing ways of doing that. All of a sudden, there's Rod, in written word. I didn't see you, but I heard you and I felt like I knew you through your, through your words, and, uh, I'm, I'm always looking for, you know, at any given time, people that are speaking truth. 01:15And we get all these feeds, don't we? And amen, it doesn't take but a few moments. Uh, no, block that one, block that one. Block that one, block that, one, block that one. There's not a lot of great voices that are solid, that are God's word, and even in the secular arena, because it's all God's world. 01:39And you struck me with several things you said on a political level that were very astute, didn't shout Christian, yet I knew they were Christian thoughts, but that caught me in looking, perceiving, peeling back the pages and seeing what's really going on in this world of politics. And I'm kind of a political junkie to some extent, although it has nothing to do with my faith. I kind of watch it for amusement. So it's okay, we do know what's going on in this world and how lost our world is and what we need to do to fix it. And then, all of a sudden, you hit me with one that was on a totally different side. It was just blatantly out there. I said, okay, this guy's got game. I told our team, I said we need to meet this guy Someday. Maybe we, maybe we even get a podcast, and and here we are, and I, I answered you, you actually had a thing where I can, I can message you. I thought I can actually message this guy, so I let you know, uh, uh, my thoughts and excitement and, and you mentioned back, let's talk Really. 02:40So, folks, that's how we kind of got this relationship going over the last few months. And, rod, I love your heart, man, I really do. I just love your heart, your mind. I must say, folks, I'll just say it right now, I'm a metal midget, okay. I pedal car wax, okay, and I got this guy who's got this. This is so, not true, and I'm just running trying to keep up and get some of the pieces. You know, I don't know if I can comprehend it all, but that's kind of my mindset of what's going on. Now I can't, I'm not going to be able to keep up with you, but but I do love your heart. I love your heart and, um, so talk about us a little bit, even educate me a little bit of how did you get to where you are now, spiritually, what, what, what has been your journey to get to where? 03:31 - Speaker 1you understand what you really do. Understand as best we can as humans what God is up to these days. Well, like most Southern Baptists, I was a Southern Baptist before I was a Christian. So there's that and the Southern Baptist part stuck. As you're probably aware, I'm a recent former officer of the executive committee of the southern baptist convention. 03:48 - Speaker 3I served a couple terms on the executive committee of the florida baptist convention, very, very concerned about the lostness in this country and, of course, I haven't done anything as lofty but I, having served in church boards for 30 years and been all kinds of ecclesiastical and college boards or whatever, I often ask somebody and you're still Christian. 04:13 - Speaker 1Well, people do get disillusioned, and I understand it, because they're not used to seeing the sausage get made. But they need to understand. We have chosen, certainly as Southern Baptists, but non-denominational churches are the same way. You know, we've chosen to rule ourselves. We don't have an episcopacy, we don't have, you know, all these hierarchical aspects that define many denominations. We've chosen, basically to have rule through business meeting and you know, I personally think churches do better when they have plural elders and you know, an elder-led congregation can be better in a number of ways, certainly with regard to church discipline. But as far as actually deciding who our preacher is or where our missions money should go, or all those things, you have committees for those things and if you have a committee, you have an argument. There's no getting around that You're going to take votes. 05:11You're going to organize, you're going to get people on your side and that's political and it really offends a lot of Christians. It certainly offends a lot of pastors. They need to think through their own ecclesiology. The truth is, this is what we've chosen. We've chosen again to rule ourselves, and you do that by majority vote. 05:35 - Speaker 3Well, it's so true, and I've been in some of those discussions and I wonder, even in some Christian environments, these guys know what the will of the Lord, what Scripture says? I mean, we're kind of off. 05:51 - Speaker 1Oh, I know the arguments can be pathetic. We kind of miss the point of what we're here about. 05:55Yeah, but anyway, I have been a Southern Baptist my whole life and have been very active in that because I became a Christian and the Lord very generously and miraculously saved me life, and have been very active in that because I became a Christian and the Lord very generously and miraculously saved me when I was about 13 and kind of in bad shape. I was definitely intellectually excelling but I was emotionally bereft. We were having family problems. I was just kind of at the end of my rope and the Lord stepped in and changed everything. And so I've been a believer now, my goodness, 42 years, I believe, and that's a little while. And that has to define everything we do. We have a master. He is our king, he's also our father, he's also the best friend we'll ever have in our life, he's also our judge. He's all these different things, but first and foremost he's the creator and the king of all that is and our work needs to serve his ends. 07:01 - Speaker 3Yeah, how do we comprehend a God who always was, always will be, who speaks the universe into existence, who creates it? He can do anything. How do we understand a God that, then? I mean when I was a kid. I remember back to a moment when I was like 10 years old. I was looking at an ant hill and the ants were so industrious and they're carrying things several times bigger than them and they all knew where they were going Total organization. And I sat there and I thought to myself, as a 10-year-old, I wonder what it's like to be in their mind to understand things like they see them. And as that 10-year-old, it went to me. I said that's what God did. Yes, exactly. 07:58The difference between me and that ant is nothing compared to the difference between me and God. How did this God create me out of nothing for eternity? He created me for eternity, us for eternity, and he created us with this opportunity to make decisions and allowing Satan to be there and giving us the free choice, knowing that most of us would make the wrong choice, oh, absolutely. And then sending his son, his own son, to be tortured and crucified for the very man he created he could have just, I mean it's outrageous to shed his blood as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could actually enter the purity of heaven as being sinless. It's the only way. It's just amazing. How's that possible? He's done all that for us and then he says that we'll reign with his son, jesus, as co-heirs. I mean, how can we even comprehend that? How? 09:08 - Speaker 1is this possible? 09:08 - Speaker 3Absolutely. 09:12 - Speaker 1And you know, speaking of the crucifixion, you know a lot of people struggle with the idea of a substitutionary atonement, which is, you know, fancy words, for he died in my place and people look at their lives and they just don't believe that they could possibly be bad enough to deserve such a thing. So this Christian thing doesn't make a lot of sense. But oh, you're so completely wrong because the issue isn't the specific sin you may have committed and I'm sure you've committed many, whoever might be watching this, I certainly have but it's not about the specific sin, it's the, it's what that sin represents. I just said he is a king. Our sin is treason against the king and you execute traitors. That's what's happening there. 10:02But the God of the universe sends his only begotten son, the second person of the Trinity, to die on a cross a thief's death, you know, a humiliating, terrible thing from a Jewish perspective. And he dies in place of all of us, which he's qualified to do because he lived a perfect life, he never sinned in 33 years, and then he goes to die on the cross. That pays the price for anybody who chooses to. The scripture says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. And of course, he did rise from the dead on the third day and ascended to the right hand of God, the Father, where he's reigning over all creation now. 10:54 - Speaker 3Yeah, if all the people that raised their hands in churches that you and I have been in all these years had really received the Lord, we'd be a Christian nation. 11:05 - Speaker 2Oh, unquestionably. 11:06 - Speaker 3That prayer is so minimized today and I preach all this about this subject and then you have two minutes to make it and then you're going to go to heaven after that. And no, you have to believe in your heart, or really believe and confess with your mouth. You tell people about Jesus and that confirms in your heart. Just the words aren't enough. 11:27 - Speaker 1You have to actually believe and in doing so, you honor the God who created us, you honor the Savior who died for us and you're enabled to live for him. It's called regeneration. You're brought to new life and, in the process of that, given a new heart. You still have this body of flesh, you're still prone to sin, but God sanctifies you, which is to say makes you more and more like him all through your life and walks with you and gives you peace, and it's truly extraordinary. And the other thing you mentioned about the ants is spot on too Every aspect of creation. 12:11Speaking as someone who has made a living on science, that's my career. I'm not a clergyman, but I was one of the early guys at PayPal, at Martin Capital. We invest in technology ventures. That's what we've always done, and so I make a living from physics and from electronics and from space. That's what I do. And speaking from that perspective, I can tell you, the more we learn about the world, the more we see design. There is design. There is not randomness. There is a shocking degree of design and it just testifies to the truth of everything God has to say. 12:56 - Speaker 3Well, we come from different schools of thought. Obviously we're at the same point. As we come closer to God we become like one. But we asked you to be on this podcast some time back. So many articles and things you've said have struck me. But then you brought out an article on Sunday that just threw me back in my chair and it's on the subject of adoption, which I understand. I guess I kind of sort of already understood what you said in that article and yet I didn't. And if you could explain right quick how, in Paul's mind, reconciled with or applied to the Roman law, what is this term adoption really mean? I mean it's mind-boggling. 13:52 - Speaker 1Well, some people have the idea that the Jews didn't have any concept of adoption and that is plainly false. It's not addressed directly in the Law of Moses, but Jewish culture had adoption from very early, even before they were called Jews. So it's not that Paul couldn't have been speaking from that point of view when he talked about adoption, but in the epistles, which are letters to the Romans and the Galatians and to the Ephesians, he speaks of adoption to a Roman audience in terms of Roman law, and the Roman law of adoption wasn't used the way we think of. Oh, a couple of parents want a cute little baby, okay, well, they didn't really need to do that a lot and there wasn't really a way to do that. Most of the time, if somebody dies and they leave a child behind, somebody probably adopts them, but that wasn't the primary use. 14:50 - Speaker 3Let me say unfortunately, sometimes an adopted son is not seen as the real son. He's the son, but there's the sons and there's the adopted son. This is exactly the opposite of that. 15:07 - Speaker 1actually, scripture is exactly the opposite as was Roman law, and this is the point I mean. Paul is speaking to people who are familiar with roman law. They live under it, so the analogy is to that. It's not to jewish law and even though it's consistent with jewish law, but the roman law on this, so made you in some ways more than a natural son. When you're adopted into. 15:35 - Speaker 3Roman law. The fact of that, the fact that it can't be changed, it's amazing. 15:47 - Speaker 1Well, the logic is exactly that you don't know what you're going to get when you conceive a child. It might be anybody I mean, maybe you have Hitler, who knows but if you adopt a child, you're making a deliberate choice for that child. So under Roman law such a person was not capable of being disowned. You could disown a natural son, you could not disown an adopted son. So that's kind of a disowned. You could disown a natural son, you could not disown an adopted son. 16:15 - Speaker 3So that's kind of a big deal. It's so important to say it again because adopted son is forever. It's better than being the son? 16:25 - Speaker 1Yes, because the father has chosen that specific person. Again, when you have a baby, you don't know what you're going to get, but if you're adopting a person who is already in the world doing things, you know exactly who they are, and Roman law reflected that. But also it did so for the reason I was getting at a minute ago, which is this usually wasn't used for children Under Roman law. It was usually used for inheritance. So the primary example of adoption that we have today in Roman times is Julius Caesar adopting his nephew Octavian, who, of course, became Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Why did he do that? Well, caesar, if he had children, they weren't legitimate and he didn't want any of them to be his political heir. He had also amassed an insane fortune during his time in Spain and then in Gaul and I mean it's just an extraordinary number and he wanted it to go to the right person to subsidize that person's political success. And he had this genius nephew, octavian, who really one of the most brilliant men of history, regardless of whether you agree with how he used his brilliance at times and Julius Caesar wanted him to be the heir. So he adopts him. That's normal in Roman law and that's normally how it was done. 17:58So that has a couple more implications. First of all, it's permanent. You don't enter into it lightly. They don't want anybody doing this without really meaning it. Second, the legal effect of it was you are now legally a new person, a completely new person. Your debts are wiped out. If you had a mortgage, it's gone. If you had a car note, it's gone. You are a new person in front of the law, which is why they couldn't do it privately. It had to be done in front of a Roman court and you have a new name and a new father and you're completely severed from the old family. It's not that you can't go speak to them, but you are no longer part of that, and that is the picture of the gospel. That's exactly it. 18:46We are God's permanently. None shall pluck you from his hand. We are a new creation, a new person, a new name, a new father, and we are, of course, doing all of this. Our debts are wiped out, obviously our debts to God in this case. But above all, you are actually a child of the king, a co-heir with Christ, not in the sense that God's going to die, but in the sense that Prince Charles, all those decades, was the heir to the throne in Great Britain. Well, he has a special status. He has a special legal position. He has special rights and privileges because he's the heir. Christ has those because he's the only begotten, which means natural child, and we are his. He is the first fruits of many brothers. The scripture says we are the adopted children grafted into the vine. 19:51 - Speaker 3Left it into the vine. It's so simple and so profound, backed up by Roman law. I mean, it's just amazing. So here we are at an amazing time in history, and we haven't had a lot of time to talk about this together, but I want to hear your heart on it. But, as I see it, god's given us a bit of a reprieve, a bit a huge reprieve, and we're rushing about claiming victory and doing all kinds of stuff politically and sometimes in the name of Jesus. 20:27It seems like the world has been provoked to the point where they're all looking where God is God's up to something? People are lost regularly. What's God up to? They know this is epic, but the church seems to be unstirred and those that are stirred are looking on issues in politics that are not necessarily, they're, god-honoring but they're not salvation-motivated. And we have this moment and our ministry, of course, is ignite Christians to get off the bench and into the game. We have this moment. Can you speak to I mean, you know far better than me what's going on today but can you give us some perspective of where God is in the midst of all of our seeming euphoria and crazy world that we're experiencing right now? 21:20 - Speaker 1Well, not only can I, but I do so every single day at rodmartinorg. 21:26I encourage all your viewers to go to rodmartinorg and sign up for a subscription to our daily in-depth analysis and also for my X feed. I've got about 180,000 followers on X and it was about 20,000 first of the year, so we're doing pretty well. But every day we're talking about all these issues and we're doing so from a Christian worldview. You know, we're talking about the demographic collapse in China and some of the rest of East Asia. We're talking about the economic and military consequences of that. We're talking about, you know, inequities within the NATO alliance and in our trade deals and all these different things. 22:09And, of course, as you know, on Sunday I published my article about adoption and Roman law and how that applies in Scripture to our salvation. So, yes, absolutely. And what I would say in answer to your question, after all that preamble, is that I absolutely believe that we have a short but meaningful reprieve. It may be enough, it may not be enough, but the Lord has provided it, and I think we saw the same thing in 2016. You know, and God just loves to raise up the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and of course, he means by that foolish by the world's view and wise in their own eyes. Donald Trump is anything but foolish, and you might think, well, he's not as good as I want him to be on this or that or the other. Yeah, but he keeps promises better than any politician I ever met, and he did an incredible job in the first term. And I'll just give you one example. 23:10 - Speaker 3He promised when he got elected. Hold that thought. Hold that thought we're out of time. Oh, okay, so you're going to keep that thought. Can I bring you back for another podcast? Yes, absolutely One more podcast. Hold that thought we're going to talk about that a whole lot more. I mean, we're going to get some really fun stuff. Listening to a scientist talking about the Almighty God and the opportunity we have to represent Him in these days. It's amazing. Come back and see us in the next podcast. Okay, see you later. Bye. 23:42 - Speaker 2If you enjoyed today's episode, let us know, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review to help us reach more listeners. Remember sharing your faith ignites your faith. See you next time on the Ignite with Barry Meguiar podcast.