Beeson Podcast, Episode #601 Dr. Robert Yarbrough May 10, 2022 >>Announcer: 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 your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. Our guest today on the show is a world renown biblical scholar and good friend of many here at Beeson, Robert Yarbrough. Dr. Yarbrough is on campus giving our biblical studies lectures. We host these lectures each spring as a way to enrich the spiritual life of our community and enhance the educational experience of our students. Guest speakers committed to the authority of scripture, the proclamation of holy scripture, are chosen for this role. And our hope is that their scholarship will serve as an example of the faithful diligent attention to the bible that we hope to instill in all of our people. We believe a strong foundation in biblical theology is essential to Christian ministry. In fact, about a third of our MDIV program is devoted to the study of the bible and biblical languages. If you’d like to hear Dr. Yarbrough’s biblical studies lectures, visit our store at www.BeesonDivinity.com/store. Or contact our media and technology manager, The Reverend Rob Willis, at rowillis@samford.edu. Kristen, would you please introduce today’s guest and get our conversation started? >>Kristen Padilla: Yes, thank you Doug. Hello, everyone. We have Dr. Robert Yarbrough with us in the studio. He is Professor of New Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary. He has written and published extensively, including having published commentaries on Romans, the pastoral epistles, and the Johannine epistles. He also serves as the co-editor of two commentary series and I’m sure there’s more that could be said about all of your writings and your ministry. But we are glad to have you in the studio. And we hope to get to some of that today in our conversation. >>Dr. Yarbrough: It’s great to be here with you. Thank you. >>Kristen Padilla: We always like to begin by getting to know our podcast guests a little bit better, a little bit more personal. So, if you could tell us where you are from, anything about your family, and spiritual upbringing, and journey to faith? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, I’m from around the St. Louis area. Although my wife and I have lived about 15 different places I think. We’ve been married almost 49 years. So, that might not be as itinerant as it sounds but still we’ve moved a lot. We have two adult sons. I grew up being taken to a Southern Baptist church. I met the Lord when I was nine years old. But didn’t really start to grow as a Christian until I got married at the age of 19. In my young adulthood, along with my wife, and getting married and finding the Lord shortly after she got married we began to grow as Christians as young marrieds. We are still hopefully on that trajectory. I was in the Southern Baptist sphere until I was almost 40 and at that point I moved my ordination into the Presbyterian Church in America. Over the years I’ve served with congregations that represent quite a few different denominations in a number of different countries. >>Doug Sweeney: Dr. Yarbrough, we mentioned at the top of the show that you’re here for our biblical studies lectures. Yesterday you preached a wonderful chapel sermon entitled, “Reckoning with Jesus.” Today and tomorrow you’re giving two lectures for our students entitled, “Just Jesus: Taking His Full Measure.” We want to commend these to our listeners. We’ll get them posted on the web. They can listen for themselves. But can you give them a little teaser? What are you talking about this week? What did you preach about in chapel and what are your lectures about? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Yes. In chapel I decided while I’m here I really want to talk about Jesus. I wanted to preach on a text that would really get us into something striking and memorable about Jesus. We pray about what to preach about and I hope the Lord led me to John 7:53-8:11, the pericope of the woman taken in adultery. That’s a neglected text. In fact, I’ve never heard it preached on. My wife said she’s heard it preached on but she grew up in the Roman Catholic Church. So, she said when she was in the Catholic Church they talked about it ever so often. But I’ve never heard on a sermon on it. So, here at Beeson where people are training for the ministry, how should we handle a text in the bible that has brackets around it because scholars say it may or may not be genuine? And then that pericope or that section of John ties in with the lectures, because the lectures deal with how do we handle the full range of Jesus and who he is? And not just this or that aspect of him? It’s a text with appeal and conviction for everybody I think. So, why not give it a shot? So, that was the sermon subject. Then the lecture is on taking the full measure of Jesus. I chose that topic because it’s inherently important. Also I’m amazed at the uptake of a book on Jesus called, “Gentle and Lowly.” A very good book. A very important book. And as I digested the book and looked at the times we’re in I felt that there was more to add to the buzz surrounding the book and this would be a good time to do that. >>Kristen Padilla: Well, thank you for your presence here and your ministry among our people. I’d like to turn now to discuss your current research and your books. I mentioned several of your writings already. And I know our students have profited from your books here at Beeson. But as I’ve said, you’ve contributed just so much scholarship to aid preachers and students of scripture and faithful exposition and proclamation. What motivates you to keep writing books on the New Testament in particular? And what drew you to study and be a professor of the New Testament? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, as far as the publishing part at my level you can say it’s a professional expectation. If you go and get a doctorate and you’re called to teach in a college or a seminary it’s kind of expected that you’re going to write. So, that’s one reason. Another one would be a sense of call. I do owe God productivity in ways that benefit other people. (laughs) And that’s been a motivation for writing. I’m also fascinated with the material. And that goes back to before I ever really started doing any formal study. Even at the undergraduate level. I really got hooked on reading the bible and the more I read it the more I realized this is very important. And I am very ignorant. So, through the conviction that God’s Word really is the Bread of Life and it leads us to Christ – reading, thinking, and then communicating first through Sunday School and children’s sermons and things. But one thing led to another and eventually I was asked to write things and I’ve been doing that. Also, I think in terms of my professional location, which is called a New Testament scholar, I’m contrarian and maybe that kind of goes along with getting a PhD. You get it in a field and there are a lot of opinions and not all the opinions are the same. I found myself, as I grew more and more in knowledge of the history of the study of the New Testament in the modern Western world, I became very dissatisfied with the skeptical nature of a lot of the coverage of the New Testament. So, a lot of my writing has been learning more about why that skepticism is there especially studying people at skeptical junctures who are not skeptics. Because I figured somewhere there I read in the books that this was abandoned and this doctrine was changed. I thought, “There were Christians there and they’ve been lost to history. Who were they and what were they saying?” And that’s been a lot of my study in the history of the New Testament study. “What were the Christians saying when the skeptics sort of won the day?” And now we look back in a skeptical age and we remember the skeptical trajectory because the culture is skeptical. But a lot of times the Saints and the brilliant scholars who were back then and there, we’ve lost them. And I’ve done a lot of work trying to retrieve some of their great insights. >>Doug Sweeney: What are you researching and writing about now, Bob? Any next book we can be looking for? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, I am working on a commentary on Galatians for the Tyndale series to replace an older one by Allen Coles. I’m excited to be editing a new Revelation commentary by Thomas Friner at Southern in Louisville. And it will be in the Becknet series. And I’m also wrapping up the proofreading and editing on the fourth edition of Encountering the New Testament, which is a New Testament survey that I wrote with a former teacher of mine, Dr. Walter Ellwell, who is emeritus at Wheaton. It’s wonderful when you can write a New Testament survey that undergrads use and some seminarians use and profit from. But this came out in 1998 and there was a new edition and I think about 2005 and another in 2013 and now there will be another one in 2022. So, that’s a lot of usage at the undergrad level and it is a survey that’s meant to encourage college students, both in understanding with a contemporary student of the New Testament which is often very negative, but encouraging them in trusting in Christ and in believing in the truth of what scripture says. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that’s a great book. I know it’s being used in lots of schools. Do you have a recent sales figure? How many copies is sold of that one? I know it’s big. >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, I think it would be between 200,000 and 250,000. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow, that’s great. >>Dr. Yarbrough: And it’s also translated I think into about ten languages. >>Kristen Padilla: I want to ask you about your work internationally but let me just pause here. Is there one book that you’ve written for our listeners who have never read anything by Dr. Robert Yarbrough? What would you recommend: >>Dr. Yarbrough: Probably I guess the first book I wrote was just a very simple commentary on the Gospel of John. It goes back to about 1991. It was originally written in the Moody series, “Every Man’s Bible Commentary.” And it was updated because it was being used in inner city ministry a few years ago. So, there’s a new Wipfenstock or somebody has re-printed it and I wrote a different introduction. But that may be my favorite book because I go through every chapter or verse of John’s Gospel and just explain what it says. And that’s a wonderful experience. >>Kristen Padilla: Okay, listeners, now you have a book recommendation. Although, any book that he has written will be sure not to disappoint, but will be edifying to you. So, I want to ask you about your work internationally. You’ve done a lot of teaching, I understand, in Eastern Europe and Africa and other places. What has drawn you to teach and be involved in theological education internationally and what have you learned from brothers and sisters across the world? Especially that would really encourage us Christians living in the states? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, I suppose what drew me is I was asked to go. I first started going overseas to do my doctorate in Scotland. I was teaching at Wheaton College and Wheaton College had a wonderful program, probably still has it, The Wheaton Faculty Missions Project. And when Wheaton College would get requests for teachers they had a fund that would send teachers. And my first request was to go to Egypt. And then the next summer they sent me to Romania right after the fall of communism. And then the next summer they sent me there again. That time it was with Mark Knoll at Wheaton College. And then coming out of that there were just a series of places they sent me. Another one was Sudan. That became permanent until 2012. And it wasn’t all through Wheaton College. But it was funny. All the way through 2012 when they would have the pastoral training conferences that we hosted there which would have as many as 150 Christian workers in a Shira Law country. So, it was a very big thing. They would always advertise with Wheaton College on their banner. I kind of got a kick out of that. But it’s a wonderful program. Then donors materialized. You can only do so much without quite a bit of money when you host 150 pastors for six days and you pay a lot of their travel expenses. I mean, overhead is low in Sudan but it’s still a lot of money. And God just raised up donors for this. What is encouraging from being there and now we got run out of Sudan in 2012. But we’ve been able to sort of move the ministry over into Cape Town and into Johannesburg, South Africa. And it’s very impressive and encouraging to see the hunger of people for just knowledge of the Word of God. And anything in ministry, theology, church history, homiletics. I always take a pastor with me who has a different skill set, but a lot of experience in ministry. And just to see the hunger that people have in these areas that are often very underserved. In the Cape Town community it’s a ghetto. Very high murder rate. Very dangerous. Very impoverished. But people love the Lord and they want to serve. They want equipping and tools to do that. So, their hunger, their zeal, their willingness to sacrifice. I mean, God is their life because they don’t have the amenities here and holiday opportunities and worrying about their retirement portfolio and all this stuff. Life is relatively short. They’re not guaranteed medical care. Lots of our contacts there died under COVID. I was on a link last summer teaching online and while I was teaching them online over the span of several weeks seven people died. And there’s just no medical care. So, to see people be committed as they are under those conditions is very inspiring. And then one more thing. Philip Jenkins and others tell us that they’re the face of the future of the Church. 44% of the Protestants on earth right now are in Africa. So, anywhere we have a chance to minister in Jesus’ name it’s a great place to be. Anyplace. But I feel especially privileged to be helping move the needle just a little bit in a couple of places where people really want to take the gospel and go with it. I really see our labor there is not in vain. >>Doug Sweeney: I know well Bob that you’ve also been a very active churchmen over the years; preaching and teaching in your own churches, lots of other churches as well. I hate to have to admit this to our audience but you can take that for granted. Even among seminary professors. Here at Beeson our faculty are very much involved in preaching and teaching in church ministry. But there’s a lot of places where that’s not taken for granted. Why has that been a priority of yours and what difference has your churchmanship made even in the way you teach New Testament in a seminary? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, probably a lot of things to say about that. But one I’ll say is the prayers of normal church people. And especially widows. From early in our marriage my wife would say to me, “You know something? Old ladies really like you.” And you know I must have looked like a pathetic waif that needed their help or something. But the older I get the more I believe in prayer. And I just realized that a lot of the older widowed women really do pray. And they send me cards. Especially from St. Mark where we work. There are several older couples and widows in that church – it’s just remarkable, because I’ve been gone from their church for ten years. I go back and preach there about four times a year. But I know they’re praying. How can any of us calculate or quantify the effect of prayers in our lives? So, that’s very significant. Through being in church on a regular basis I’ve had the opportunity to do children’s sermons. And that reminds you of the need for sharp focus on gospel basics. And it’s really easy in scholarship to get off on tangents and to make what’s secondary or tertiary central. And often the tertiary and secondary things are very important but you don’t want them to become the central thing. And kids are great reminders of what matters. Also, the mutual love that congregational co-dependence fosters. You don’t do anything in ministry without ... I mean, you can call it “fellowship” or call it “comradery.” And it’s as important on a faculty as it is in a church. And academic settings can be pretty sterile. But if you have good chemistry with believers in your church it’s a lot more likely you could bring that into your classroom and into the faculty meetings and things like that. So, it’s been good for my soul to be in fellowship with other believers in the church. By being in the church I’m reminded that the academy should serve the church. I mean, Christ is the Lord of the Church and we’re explicit about that. The academy has a lot of idols. And Beeson or Covenant Theological Seminary, where I teach, we’re all accredited by state agencies. We have academic responsibilities which don’t necessarily have to be idolatrous but can tend in that direction. So, to be in a worshipping community that elevates Christ I think helps me not to go down the road that I’ve often seen in academia – it’s always throwing the Church under the bus. Always making the excesses of whatever pastors or priests, always making them the butt of jokes and acting like all the evil in the world is caused by religion in the Church. And I know better than that because I’m around so many dear sacrificial godly people in the life of the Church. Just a couple other things. One, I think it helps me with credibility with students. If students are training to live Christian lives and some of them are thinking maybe I’m going to be a vocational church worker, but their professors don’t love the Church, they don’t really go to church, or they’re just sitting on the back pew then going out and playing golf or whatever. That’s not good. So, I share with my students a desire to see the Church thrive and to be a part of that thriving. And then meaningful friendship with pastors. This has continually sharpened my vision for the heartbeat of scripture. Especially in terms of the care of souls versus gospel ministry and prayer. And again, there’s probably nothing in the academic curriculum of a seminary that’s not worthwhile and important but you can be an expert at all kinds of rudiments or advanced areas of theological study and ministerial theory and so forth and not really be touching lives. And also to be prayerless. And because I have just sort of ... I look around and I see all the people I email, people that I’m kind of accountable to because I’ve befriended them and vice versa, we depend on each other. So many of them are ministers who are helping people in dire straits. They’re doing end of life ministry. They ask me to preach. I’m sharing the burden of their ministry. So, this set of realizations and responsibilities I think is just invaluable for motivating me and also for shaping and giving a certain tone to what it is I end up doing in my studies and my writing and in the classroom. >>Kristen Padilla: One of the questions that I was most excited to ask you is about your relationship with several of our faculty members. I happen to know that you are good friends with our Dean, Doug Sweeney, and Paul House, and Frank Thielman, and Oswaldo Padilla, and Sydney Park, and perhaps there are others. I wonder what you can say about these friendships and how they’ve been meaningful to you? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Well, in some cases I could say things now if they were listening to this podcast they would feel a chill and they would say, “I wonder if he’s going to talk about that?” With Dr. House I was in college together – we were both undergrads. But I am not going to throw anybody under the bus. I would say first I can vouch for their awesome level of quality and integrity as persons. Including, Kristen, your husband Oswaldo. These are not only fine scholars and gifted teachers, but I think everybody that I know has weathered the kind of personal blows that sometimes knock people out of ministry. Or sometimes people stay in ministry, they stay in teaching, they stay in academia, but they become purely professionals. And they really can’t teach from their heart. Because they’ve had to harden their heart to survive. And everybody I know here at Beeson and it’s not just two or three, it’s more like half a dozen or more, they teach with Holy Spirit conviction and a deep sense of the truth of scripture, and the glory of gospel ministry. So, that makes them, you could say, quality human beings and dedicated Jesus followers. Another way I could put it is I would say this collection of people you’re talking about, Beeson faculty that I know pretty well, they love much because they’ve been forgiven much. They’re not pretentious in the sense that they feel like they’re elevated individuals. They know they’re sinners in need of grace, and that conditions everything they do. All of them have been personal encouragements to me. They’ve been examples of how I should remain committed to my calling. It’s often not easy. You can get discouraged. But the accumulative effect of knowing Dr. Sweeney, knowing Sydney Park, knowing Oswaldo ... It’s a buoyant effect on my life. And it’s just rewarding and uplifting to be around people and learn from people who have the capacity to write the things they do, like Dr. Webster on Christology. Now, I don’t know him personally, but I feel like I know him from his writings through the years. Or Dr. Sweeney with Jonathan Edwards and things he’s written on evangelicalism. Or my former student, Sydney Park, with her work on Philippians and her more recent work on men and women in biblical theology, especially women in biblical theology. It’s just rewarding to rub shoulders with wonderful people like this. >>Doug Sweeney: Bob, Kristen and I always like to end these interviews by asking our guests what the Lord is teaching them these days. You’ve been representing things that the Lord has taught you over the years quite well. All week long here on campus. But what’s going on in your life these days? How are you listening to the Lord’s voice? And what are you learning, even at the advanced age at which you are today? >>Dr. Yarbrough: Very advanced. Yes. I have to say, that’s true. Well, I am continuing to learn that if one is married, ministry always ties in closely with your marriage. And I’m very happy to say that I’m growing in love for my wife and in our ministry together. She, this year, is a bible study fellowship group leader, which is a big responsibility. And she continues to bear the lion’s share of the care of her mother-in-law, my mother, in a nursing home. So, the Lord is teaching me our need for grace and our need for renewal. Because the duties can get heavy. But the joy of Lord is our strength. And so we’re growing and appropriating that grace together. I thought about this question, “What is the Lord teaching me?” And I got this image of my granddad in a little Southern Baptist Church down in the Ozarks near Springfield, Missouri. And he was the song leader and I’d get sent down there in the summers to live on the farm with him and my grandmother. They would be in this little country church and when it came time for the singing he would get up and go to the front. He would kind of cajole everybody who needed to come up in the choir. And of course that would always be me, at six or seven years old. I’d go up in the choir and sing with the men. But they always sang this song on their way up and then as they were dismissing. And it was the song, “Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before. And every day I know him. I love him more and more. Jesus saves and keeps me and he’s the one I’m living for. Every day with Jesus is sweeter than the day before.” So, that’s one thing I’m learning. This was a word that Jonathan Edwards liked to use, too, was “sweetness.” And Calvin used it, too. And I’m seeing that more as I get older that there’s a sweetness there that I didn’t see it when I was younger. There’s another song that occurred to me and I thought about this “Every day with Jesus” song but there’s another song from my rock concert past. And it’s a song by a group called Poco. And the song was, “Bad Weather.” “Every day that passes us by I can’t help the feeling that you and I, we won’t get to see another day together, looks like bad weather.” And that’s not a Christian song. But I really do think Christians should be bracing for hard times. A lot of Christians are dying every day. Hard times are here for Christians. Maybe God will continue to spare the West. But I think God loves the West and wants to see the West redeemed. And the West is so far gone that without persecution I don’t think that there’s going to be renewal. So, I don’t want to be irresponsible and failing to teach my students what the Church is learning in other parts of the world. And this is an unfolding saga for me to learn about and to have a little experience of when I go to South Africa, because there’s a lot of disadvantage there to being a Christian. That’s another thing the Lord is teaching me. And the last thing I would mention is just what my topic is this week. It’s “Just Jesus.” And I’m learning that Jesus is worthy. Because service is service. And ministry is work. [inaudible 00:30:25] is the Greek word. And that was a word for menial service. Now, God elevates the servants so there’s nothing menial about serving the Lord. But there is effort and sacrifice required in all kinds of ways. And his service is worth everything I can put into it. And I have a goal. I’ll name the age, Dr. Sweeney. You kind of threw it out there. But I’m going to own it. I’m coming up on 69. And my goal is to finish strong. And I see a lot of people that don’t manage that. And I want to be fully receptive to all God’s grace, because I need it and I will need it more and more to the end. So, those are some things the Lord is teaching me. >>Doug Sweeney: Amen. That’s a great word and a great way to conclude this interview. You have been listening to Dr. Robert Yarbrough. He’s Professor of New Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary. He’s a minister of the Word of God, Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is a dear friend of mine. And of my wife Wilma. And of many here at Beeson Divinity School. He’s here this week giving our biblical studies lectures. We encourage you to check them out on the Beeson website. There will be video and audio for you to enjoy. I promise you they will be edifying to you. We thank you for joining us. Thank you, Bob, for being with us – this gift of your time this week – we’re deeply grateful to you. And we say 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 Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.