Beeson Podcast, Episode 488 Dr. Ray Van Neste March 17, 2020 Mike Pasquarello: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I'm Doug Sweeney here with my cohost, Kristen Padilla, and we are delighted to welcome you to another week of edifying conversation about the things that God is doing in and through the Beeson family. If you listened to last week's episode, you know that Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer was here not long ago for my installation service. This week we have another friend on the show, Dr. Ray Van Neste, who is on campus giving our annual Biblical Studies Lectures, February, 11, 12, and 13. Now, Kristen, would you please tell our listeners about Dr. Ray Van Neste Kristen Padilla: Welcome everyone to the Beeson podcast. As Doug said, we are pleased to have Dr. Ray Van Neste with us on the show today. He is Dean of the School of Theology and Missions at Union University where he also serves as Professor of Biblical Studies. Dr. Van Neste is an ordained Baptist minister, prolific author, manager of pastoralepistles.com, and a Pastoral Epistles expert. He is married to Tammy and they have six children. Welcome, Dr. Ray Van Neste to the show. Ray Van Neste: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Kristen Padilla: We always like to begin with an introduction, a longer introduction. How did you come to have faith in Jesus Christ and what drew you to study and teach the Bible? Ray Van Neste: Yes, thank you. I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home where I heard the Gospel from early days and was in the church. So it's part of the air I breathe, hearing these things, which then meant, they didn't mean, but anyway, ended up that I professed faith early on, but really didn't know the Lord, but just continuing to hear the gospel and being convicted. I came to faith in the sixth grade and again, was blessed to be in a place where the Bible was faithfully preached and preaching through books of the Bible and we had Bible drill so it was drilled into me memorizing scripture. That's all I knew, of course that's the way it is when we grew up so I thought that's what everybody did and along the way, I have realized what a blessing that was. Ray Van Neste: I can see some things in church or whatever that I would do differently now, but one of the things I often say to students is as you, probably about the time of college age, you begin to see some things you might disagree with or might see done differently. So as that's happening, I try to caution them, "Okay, sure, sure, sure, but you learn and grow. Your parents and others hope you will grow beyond where they are, but don't miss the positive things that you receive." I was really blessed in that and that played into then, a call of ministry, which I fought. The traditional language in my circles is surrender to ministry and sometimes that's a little odd. In my case, that's good language. Ray Van Neste: That's exactly what I did. I thought I was going to study physics and through a variety of things, the Lord began to work to call me to ministry. I was telling some of the students just a minute ago about that process and when adults in my life began to say, "Do you think maybe God's calling you to ministry?" I would find myself irritated at the question and respond, I knew better than to respond rudely to them, I would be in big trouble, but nonetheless, it was a strong, "No." I began to say to myself, "Why am I so irritated by that?" Well, that's because the Lord is calling me and I'm resisting it. Ray Van Neste: So I knew what I wrote on a piece of paper that our youth group was a setting after a camp and what had the Lord worked on you and I said to teach the Bible because that seemed a little, a little less scary than saying to preach the Bible, but I didn't know what that really looked like. When I went to Union, I again, I thought I was going to study physics. It seemed weird to pick Union instead of some places where I had some scholarship opportunities that actually had physics majors, but I felt like the Lord was calling me there. Then that made sense as the call to ministry came through and there in classes when I took Greek I just thought, wow, this is amazing stuff. Somehow I need to be engaged with this and that's the process that began then move me towards biblical studies. Kristen Padilla: Well, speaking of Union, Kristen's already mentioned that you're a Dean and a professor at Union University. Lots of our listeners know that Beeson has had a longstanding relationship with Union University that we've really been blessed by over the years. But, what people might not know as much about is what the Lord's doing at Union these days, what your life is like at Union, what your job is like day by day. Ray Van Neste: I might not exactly know what my life is like day by day, but it's a good time to be at Union. I'm delighted to be there. I'm in my 20th year there and then my wife and I were undergrads there, so we're both approaching about half of our life being there, which is a great blessing to us and it is an exciting time. We continue to have great students coming through and encouraging ministry being done by them, through them with them. Dr Oliver's doing a great job of leading forward so it's encouraging. Day to day for me, I teach one or two classes a semester. I'm supposed to teach one and two or three out of my four semesters so far in the role I've taught two. Some more things that need to be done or I've wanted to do so get a class and then typically various things. Ray Van Neste: I imagine similar to yours of planning, looking ahead and the Dean of the School Theology Missions role, which is different from some of our other Dean roles at Union. There's a significant part of my work that is church relations and that's a part that I particularly enjoy having to learn some more of the other academic administrative part, but the church relations part is a lot of fun. Engaging our associations nearby and touching base with them, letting them know about things we're doing that could serve them and also trying to hear more and more about better ways we can serve them and be partners together there particularly in Western C Kristen Padilla: As I already said, you are here at Besson to deliver some lectures on the Pastoral Epistles and before we get into the content of those lectures, I'm just interested to know what drew you to study and do so much of your academic work in the Pastoral Epistles. What excites you about them? Ray Van Neste: Yes, yes. How long do we have? I was just having a piece of this conversation with, again with, some of the students at lunch. When I was in masters work at Trinity, I came to the point where I needed to decide what I would write a master's thesis on and I'm still this way that my interests are broad. Some of my friends in fact tease me that I messed up going in the New Testament studies because they keep seeing all this interest in church history and other things. And so I'm there needing to decide on something to do serious work on to write a longer thesis and by this time it needs to be New Testament I've got that narrowed and I've got interest in the gospel and other things. I'm just, I'm trying to figure this out but it just so happened I was pastoring when I was there. That was a real blessing to me as well. Ray Van Neste: And I was, we had a little duplex and there was an unfinished basement, which we made my study, it's not quite as grand as that sounds, but it was nice, a little spot for me. I was there working on a sermon and I was preaching on Titus and I don't remember why I was in Titus at that time, what had led me to choose that or whatever. But I was in Titus and I was really looking at the shift between chapter one and chapter two and wrestling with that and I began to see some things with the flow of thought or the structure that weren't in the commentaries that I had. It's not to say that nobody had ever seen it before, but they weren't in the commentaries I had and that piqued my interest and I thought, I think I want to work on this. So it was that, coming out of sermon preparation, that led to the topic for a master's thesis, which led to the doctor work and the rest of the things from there. It's fun to me for that to grow out of sermon preparation. Doug Sweeney: While we're on the topic of the Pastoral Epistles, let me let our listeners know that you've been giving lectures this week on our campus from the Pastoral Epistles and you also preached a marvelous sermon. We'll talk about that in a minute, but a marvelous sermon that I wish we could require for every seminary student in the world yesterday in our chapel. But, today, tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday you're giving a little bit more academic lectures from the pastorals. Today you talked about our people, ethics, and the identity of the people of God in a letter to Titus and tomorrow you'll talk about the word prayer and practice worship in the Pastoral Epistles. Of course, we're going to post these lectures online and our listeners can see the whole lecture for themselves, but for people that just want for now an executive summary, can you just let them know what your messages are in these lectures today and tomorrow? Ray Van Neste: Sure. Today the focus was on the ethical teaching that we find in the letters of Titus and it really is the eventual outgrowth of that aha moment 25 or however many years ago it was in my basement study, of seeing how this goes together. The basic thing I'm arguing there is that the exhortations in that letter aren't merely cultural accommodation or compromise, but they are the express description of what it looks like to live out the gospel. So it's pushing back on some critical scholarship in different ways and then maybe even in the evangelical world, trying to hold up an example of something that's here that maybe we don't look at as often. Ray Van Neste: The second lecture on worship came out of a setting of somebody asking, but what contribution do these letters make to worship and to our understanding of worship and I discovered there's not much written asking that question of the Pastoral Epistles. Sometimes in biblical studies we're examining the text and we say aha here's something, other times a question is put to us and we began to say, well what is there? So this lecture comes more of that, what is here? In the end I thought actually there's some significant things here for us to glean from the Pastorals in this sense. I think the fact that we haven't asked the worship question of these letters significantly is probably part of the broader thing, even in the evangelical world where the letters get overlooked and in a lot of ways. So I'll try to pull out a few of the points that I think are there. Kristen Padilla: For the few listeners who do not know which books are part of the Pastoral Epistles, can you say what those are just for those few? Ray Van Neste: That's a great question because I assume that and then I'm in various situations where that's not the case. First Timothy, Second Timothy and Titus. Kristen Padilla: Thank you. Well, moving on then to your sermon yesterday, as Doug mentioned, was just a wonderful sermon on the portrait of a faithful and approved pastor from Second Timothy 2:14-26. You mentioned several qualities, but one of them that was just especially important as I was listening to you was that of humility. Why is humility so important in the life of a minister and how can one cultivate humility? Ray Van Neste: Yes, that's a great question. One that has been a topic of a lot of discussion over the history of the Church, but as far as why is it so important? I think it's first of all just important in the life of a believer. God resists the proud. If we want to draw near to him, which is discipleship, which is sanctification, we're going to be stymied in that effort as we hold onto our pride. Isiah 66 that I referenced in the one lecture talks about the one to whom God will look. So again, drawing near to God is the one who is contrite and humble and trembles at his word. All the way through the scriptures, it tells us essentially if you want to be stiff armed by God and held at a distance, hold onto your pride. But if you want to grow close to him, if you want to know him, cultivate humility. Ray Van Neste: Before I get to cultivating humility, it seems to me that in, I'd say the American church, maybe I'll just get closer down to our world and evangelicalism, we all know that the Bible talks about humility, but far too often in ministry we do a weird dance to get around it and pride becomes very common and accepted. The story that sticks in my mind about that is my dad, who is not a pastor, he's been a Baptist deacon for years, as far back as I can remember. I remember a setting where we were talking about a pastor and not at the church where they are now, but when I was a kid, a pastor that he was defending and standing up for and whatever was going on, I was a little kid, I don't even remember what was happening. And he was pro him and he said, "You know, some people say that he's arrogant" and he said, "But he's a Baptist preacher what do you expect?" That was coming from a supporter. I remember that sticking, that just stuck in my mind. I thought, oh boy, that I'll not be. Ray Van Neste: That's just part of the air we breathe. We're, we are prone that way just as fallen individual so we need a significant effort to push against it all the way through history. We're pushing back something that's kind of grown up in our garden of our part of the kingdom. We need a lot of stress on that point I think. Ray Van Neste: How we can cultivate it, you will have much to say to that, Dr. Sweeney, because this has been across the history of the Church has been talked about, but one thing is the regular stuff of just fighting sin, of seeing it and calling it what it is. Having faithful friends around us who are willing to tell us, you're getting a little big for your bridges because none of us want to hear it so it's got to be faithful friends who will tell us that. Attention to the scriptures because they're going to keep hitting it. It's funny, it's all over but what we tend to do right is we harden our hearts, we callus our hearts towards certain things. We just don't hear them as often. So we need to be hearing that. Ray Van Neste: Then along the way it was a specific individual's example that brought this home to me. I tended to think of humility as a negative quality, that is not doing certain things. The way that would get expressed is somebody says to me, "You know, that was really good. You did a good job," and you're kind of supposed to say no, not really. Which really the "no not really" is often then a plea, tell me again, tell me one more time. Or it gets awkward where somebody is trying to say thank you and you're stiff arming them and that's weird. But I was another brother's example when I saw him being very aggressive to acknowledge and celebrate the gifts of others and it dawned on me, that's what humility looks like. If I'm trying to say not so much about me, I'm still focusing on me, but it is to turn my eyes outward and to recognize, get caught up in and celebrate and rejoice in the gifts and the contributions of other people. Now my mind is off myself. So for me it's far from perfected, but that's been a real helpful turn in my thinking. Doug Sweeney: That's great advice. Well, at Beeson Divinity School we love pastors. We are all about equipping and serving pastors. And one of my favorite things about you, Ray, is that even though you're a high flying professor, you so evidently serve with the heart of a pastor and you so deeply care about helping and encouraging pastors with the work you do as a new Testament scholar and the work you do in churches. Many of our listeners are pastors, some of them are having great weeks, some of them have had much better weeks. I wonder, do you have anything either from your own experience as a pastor, you've been a pastor in the U S, you've been a pastor in Scotland, you're a professor and a pastor, or do you have advice from the Pastoral Epistles for some of our listeners, particularly those who are feeling a little low this week and need a bit of encouragement? Ray Van Neste: That's a great question because if there are at least two people listening, there's got to be one of them in that spot today. The main thing that comes to my mind, it's, you can find it in the scripture and various places, you can find it in history, and I'm most recently being reminded of it by a new book called The Cure of Souls I think it is or maybe it's The Care of Souls. Lexham Press published it. I wasn't intending to mentioned it, so I can't give it the name of the author. He's a Lutheran and he's just very helpfully reminding us in his book that God must do this work. Ray Van Neste: And we know that, anybody listening knows that, but it's very easy to forget and to think it depends on me. Obviously, we must be faithful, we must be diligent, but that God must do this work and that he will do it and when we can trust him with that, then that can encourage us. And that God cares more for our church, wherever it is, than even we do. The denomination may not know about our church. We may feel like other people talk about the work done in this place or that place and nobody notices the work where I am and we know that sounds selfish to say it so we don't tell it to anybody else we just think in our own hearts. But God sees it and God knows and God cares and God is committed to the good of his people. Ray Van Neste: So there's a pastor listening who is discouraged. Your answer is the answer has been to all the other issues. It is through rest in the Lord. He cares, he sees, he knows. His word is powerful. His word is powerful when we feel it, his word is powerful when we don't feel it. We love those times when we preach and it just, you can sense that, it happened. Ray Van Neste: My wife will ask me, how did the preaching go? I'll sometimes say the X factor was there, that you can sense that something happened, but they're all kind of times when it feels like nothing happened. It was flat as can be. Then you find out later people were blessed and helped. I think the Lord, for me at least, removes my own subjective awareness of the success of the word, just to remind me that I'm dependent on him and doing it. So people may be at places where they're wondering if anything's happening, but the word won't return void and so just stay at the task and trust the Lord. Kristen Padilla: You're not only a pastor, but you are someone who is preparing pastors and future ministers of Christ Church at Union. And so I'm curious to know what role and value you see places like Beeson Divinity School and Union and your school at Union playing and offering in the formation of ministers of the gospel? Ray Van Neste: I think they are a crucial, obviously people will expect me to say that because I work at one such place, but it really is the other way around and I'll say it because I worked there, I work there because I believe it. The Church is the, well, it's the center of God's work in the world. It is in also the center for the work of preparing people for ministry. The way I will plan to say it at preaching tonight for both of our alums is God has only one bride, that's the Church. Places like Union and Beeson are to be handmaidens to that bride so it's a crucial role. We understand though, there's not a supplanting of the church, but it is a coming alongside. It is serving the church by providing the resources, by which I primarily mean people, to provide the best, the most robust training in scripture. Ray Van Neste: That training can only work where places like Union and Beeson are working alongside the Church so that we can do some of the academic training that churches typically cannot. But we recognize, every once in a while people say, "Well, you know, seminary didn't have me do this" and when they say that they mean places like Union too and if it's a relational context where I can be this forward, I'll say it was never intended to. There are things the Church does, things that the Academy can do alongside it, but I think it's crucial to help people training for ministry to have the strongest and the most robust grounding in the scriptures so that we know it well and are shaped by it. Ray Van Neste: Then that linkage to the Church then means, and this is part of what I appreciate about what I've heard from Beeson through the years, is that what we're looking for in teachers and professors are people who have all the academic training and then they notice things, but they are churchmen because we got to bring those things together. Even recognizing the Church does things that we don't do, but nonetheless they have to be connected so that we're wanting them to learn truths, but it's not merely intellectual. We're wanting those truths to shape who they are. There's mentoring in there that's going on. To serve the Church in that way I think is crucial that we might have the best trained ministers that we can have. Doug Sweeney: Amen and amen. You have been listening to Dr. Ray Van Neste, who is the dean of the School of Theology and Missions and a professor of biblical studies at Union University. We are being blessed by him this week here at Beeson Divinity School as he is here to give our annual, our 30th annual, Biblical Studies Lectures. We are so grateful to you, Dr. Van Neste for being with us- Ray Van Neste: Thank you. Doug Sweeney: ...for ministering to the people, even listening to our podcast today and we're thankful to all of you for tuning in. Goodbye for now. Kristen Padilla: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquerillo. Our cohosts are Doug Sweeney and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.