Dr. Sam Horn

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. And now, here's your host, Steve Noble.

On the show today is our special guest. He's a professor, he's a pastor, he teaches at Bob Jones University, he is Dr. Sam Horn, and he knows a little bit about the book of James. So we're going to jump right in with him on this epic passage. You might know it better as faith without works is dead. Not only is this passage in this book, not only has it given conniptions to all kinds of people over the years, even Martin Luther had a dark time with it. And this may be, now Dr. Horn, you've got to correct me on this, brother. This may be what in fact caused Luther to call this the epistle of straw.

Is this the straw that broke the camel's back on that, or how about that? Yeah, that's exactly right, Stu. How are you doing, by the way? Great, good to hear your voice. And I tell you, when I agreed to sit in, Stu Epperson in for Steve Noble, when I agreed to take this spot today on this austere, wonderful radio show with an amazing radio audience, when I found out who the guest was, I just kind of like, I said, oh, thank the Lord, you know, because how am I going to tackle this text without this ninjutsu Bible scholar Sam Horn with me, who's preached it and studied it and read it, and so we're excited to put you in the hot seat today, Dr. Horn.

You ready? Well, I'm not sure I'm excited to be in the hot seat, but I am excited about the little epistle of James, and what an amazing passage we're looking at today. You know, Luther may have thought about it as straw, but I'm sure that as we come together, we're going to see the goal that's going to get woven out of that straw for our good. You know, Steve Noble and I, when we're together on these Thursdays, we kind of like to call this street theology, because it's not theology for the ivory tower, right? It's theology for where we all live, like what we do every day. And so James is an exciting book to me, because it sort of reminded me, again, of the fact that our Christianity wasn't supposed to be lived in an ivory tower, it wasn't just for Sunday. It's intended to change our life so that we can go out and live authentically as believers in a world that desperately needs to know what faith in Jesus Christ looks like, and what the power of the Gospel can do in a broken world.

Yeah, you know, Dr. Horn, I'm so glad you said that. A lot of folks go to this passage, and we will talk about the different controversial points. We'll talk about the big Protestant Catholic debate. Everyone's saying, well, Paul and James are contradicting each other.

The cults have even used this passage to teach a works salvation. But beyond the negative things that we need to expose that we'll be naturally servicing during this conversation, there are so many compelling positive things in this passage, in the whole epistle of James, but particularly chapter two, where we're in a day and age where it's time for the church of the living God to put up or shut up, where we have communities that are absolutely devastated by gunmen destroying and killing children and teachers. We have horrible diseases. We have a war going on, you know, overseas. We have all kinds of drug use. We have height.

There's never been a heightened level of depression and suicide. And so James is really calling the church of God to do something, to put some shoe leather out here, don't you think, Dr. Horn? Yeah, you know, Stu, I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm from Texas, so what's going on in the news coming out of you of all day is so impactful to me, and I know to many, many others. It's almost incomprehensible to kind of think of the brokenness. And then you just think of the tragedy that is going on in the lives of so many families right now.

You know, you can hardly countenance it, you can hardly think about it without your own heart just wondering where in the world is our nation, where in the world is our God. And it's in that kind of a world that James is writing this book to. I mean, these people were living in a world where they were facing unbearable suffering. They were confronted with unmitigated evil. They were living in all the little kingdoms of the world that were filled with unspeakable immorality and idolatry of the worst kind. And many of them, as you get to the book of Hebrews, many of them were actually suffering immensely for the faith that they had espoused in Jesus Christ. And so as James writes the book, he's writing to people who are part of God's big kingdom, but they've been assigned to live for the 70 years that is theirs in all the little kingdoms of the world. And what those kingdoms most need is exactly what people in our world and in our country, whether it's Ukraine or Russia or the United States, or whether it's a community like the one I live in or you live in, or a community that's just been devastated by the brokenness of sin like what's going on in Texas today. What this world and what our country most needs is a group of people who are so passionately involved in the gospel of Jesus Christ that they're living out their faith in a credible way. And James is telling us how to do that. He's talking about a wholehearted, single focused, fully trusting faith, and he talks about that in chapter one.

How do we get that faith? What does it look like? How does it grow? What does it do when it encounters a trial? How does it handle a temptation? What is its relationship to the word of God? And then in chapter two, he gets really direct with people, and he talks about two big dangers that come into play. And we talked about one of these dangers earlier on an earlier program, and that is the danger of a faith that is actually deformed.

And it's deformed by the way that we handle other people. James is making a big deal in the first part of chapter two about partiality, and he says, you know, as you show and live out the faith of Jesus Christ, don't do it with partiality. Don't serve those that you can serve selectively based on what they can do for you, because God isn't like that. God is not partial. So he goes right at the whole approach to partiality in our life.

But when we get to this text that we're in this morning, or rather this afternoon, in James 2 14, he's talking about a dead thing, the danger of a dead thing. Okay, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back to everything and anything, James 2. Welcome your calls, your questions. Come back with Dr. Horan right here.

866-34-TRUTH. Hang on. There's a man going around taking names, and he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden letter reaching down.

There's a man taking names. That's right. Is your name written in the book, the book of life? What about the demons? It says, even the demons believe and they tremble.

What about dead faith versus living faith? What about Paul in Romans 4 and 5? Is he contradicting James in James 2? Paul says, hey, no one is justified by works. By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified, and his sight also says that in Galatians 2. Yet James 2 says faith without works is dead.

In fact, on my program, Truth Talk, years ago, Dr. Sam Horan's our guest. I'm Stu Epperson, and for my buddy Steve Noble, Theological Thursday, James 2 is in the crosshairs. On my show, I had a leading Catholic apologist who, we were very friendly, had a good discussion, but he said, you know, Stu, the only time that it says faith alone in the Bible is when James says man is not saved by faith alone. In fact, he says the word justified to make things even more confusing. A man is not justified by faith alone. You're like, wait a second, I thought the whole impetus of all your ministry, and of the Word of God, and the whole Reformation, and the whole Scriptures, and all of Romans 4 was all about faith alone, to Christ alone, by grace alone. And yet you're telling me, James says, a man is not justified by faith alone?

So this Catholic gentleman was trying to bankrupt everything I've ever believed. Dr. Sam Horan, how about this James 2 passage? What about it says, you know, how do you deal with people that come at you like that, and tell you that James and Paul must have had a big-time feud going on?

They were like the ancient first century Hatfields and McCoys. Yeah, and I, you know, that's always the question, Stu, that I think really comes up, and part of the answer to that is, you know, that the Bible is actually written by one author. Ultimately, it's inspired by God, and so it doesn't contradict itself. So whatever is going on here, Paul and James are not contradicting themselves.

So that's the first thing that you've got to kind of come to as you kind of look at the scripture, and then you start realizing, okay, there is a context to this, and context always matters. Paul is answering a different question than the question James is answering. And so when you get the answer that Paul is giving, he's answering the question, how does a man receive righteousness from God? And Paul's really clear about this, he says, you don't get that righteousness based on any works that you do.

And you're going to see this in Titus chapter 3, you're going to see this in Ephesians chapter 2, that there is nothing that I contribute to the justification, the righteousness, that Jesus Christ earned for me by completing the law in his life and then dying in my place on the cross. So when Paul says that a man is saved by faith alone, that's exactly what he's going at. James, on the other hand, is answering a very different question. He's answering the question, what kind of faith actually saves? So Paul is answering the question, how does a man get saved? And the answer is by faith, and only by faith. And so James says, so what kind of faith is that? Because there are a ton of people who actually would claim to believe everything that you and I believe about Jesus Christ. And actually, James is going to make a really shocking statement about that. He's going to say that demons actually believe what you and I believe about Jesus. They know exactly who he is, they know exactly where he came from, from heaven, they know exactly the position he occupies as a second member of the Trinity, and they know exactly what he came to do.

In fact, when they met him on the earth, they were terrified at their encounter, begging him not to send them to the appointed place of damnation ahead of the time. So James actually says, just because you claim a certain thing, don't assume that your claim is the same as a living faith. And that's what he's going at. He wants to know what kind of faith you have. And so James says, you show me your faith without your works.

And the answer is you can't. If all you have is words, and that's all you can do, you really can't demonstrate the vitality and the authenticity of your faith. The only way you're going to demonstrate that authenticity is through what that faith produces.

So they're really completely conjoined, they're really in complete cohesion. It's just one author, the book of Romans, he's talking about faith as the root of salvation. And in James, James is talking about the works as the fruit of salvation.

And so you've got different battlefields going on, you've got different fronts. I love what one Bible scholar said, while some people try to put James and Paul in a duel with guns aimed at each other, they are in fact back-to-back with their guns aimed out. And Paul's shooting down the people that are saying, the Judaizers that are saying, you've got to be saved by keeping the law and by works. James is shooting down the people that are saying, well, there's just this little kind of easy-believism thing that I can just, I can say I have faith and not do anything about it. I can say I love God and treat poor people like dirt. I can say that I want wisdom, but I can be a double-minded man about all of it. I can be a hearer and not a doer, and James is attacking on that front, Dr. Horne. Is that close to what you're trying to say?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting that Paul and James both use Abraham to make their case, right? They both use Abraham. In Romans chapter 4, Paul says, let me tell you about how a man is justified in the sight of God. And so he points to Abraham, and Abraham was saved. He was counted righteous on the basis of his belief.

This is what Genesis 15 talks about, right? He believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. And then he was circumcised. So it wasn't circumcision that brought him the righteousness, it was his belief. And so now James is going to take Abraham and say, now let me show you what kind of belief he actually had. When God spoke to him in Ur, he immediately did what God said. Remember how James 1 says, be quick to hear, be slow to speak, be slow to wrath? As soon as Abraham heard the voice of God as a 75-year-old man, rich and powerful and highly placed in the massive city of Ur, as soon as God told him to leave everything, he departed.

He was quick to hear. And he didn't argue back with God, he was slow to speak. And when he got to the land, and there was no city, and he had to live in tents, and then when he was walking around and his nephew Lot looks over, he sees this little plane and he sees the city of Sodom, and he decides, I want the best part of the land. Instead of getting angry, he was slow to anger, Abraham consistently listened and responded to whatever God said. That's what faith is.

Faith is believing God, not just believing in God, believing God. And it's interesting still, honestly, Jesus had a really interesting thing to say, and I think this is where James is going. He said, not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven. That had to be stunning. I mean, if you stop and think about it, that had to be really stunning for the people who heard Jesus say that. We got to take a break.

He's in the hot seat with one of the hottest passages in the Bible, more James 2. When we come back, you got a question? 866-34-TRUTH. Hang on, more coming up right after this.

Don't touch that dial. So we've heard it, we've quoted it, we've cited it, we've argued about it, but what does it mean, faith without works is dead? Dr. Sam Horn is with us to clear the air and to give us some encouraging words in a day and age where, what does faith look like? If you, Dr. Horn, could ask anybody about what true, living, vibrant, transformational faith looks like, why not ask the dude that grew up as a roommate and as a half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ himself? And he won't even say it, and he introduces the book as a servant of Jesus Christ.

He doesn't even try to trade on his brother's notoriety. But Dr. Horn, that right there tells you volumes about this man they called Camelnese because of his deep prayer life, and it tells you a whole lot about this text that we're even looking at today. Wouldn't you agree, and what are your thoughts on all that? Yeah, Stu, that's exactly right. Can you hear me? Yes, sir.

Okay, good. I just had a little blurb on my phone line here, so I think you're exactly right. I mean, when you talk about Abraham's faith, I think what I'd like to do, and I think this is kind of where we need to go with this, is we've got to bring it right down to the street level where we live. And that is this, how many times do you run into people and they open up their mouth and they tell you, I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe he's the Son of God. I believe he came to the earth, born of a virgin.

I believe he was crucified on a Roman cross, and I believe he rose again on the third day, and he's my Savior. And so you listen to that language come out of their mouth, and you're stunned because that's exactly what New Testament language talks like, right? I mean, that's, in essence, that's somebody looking at Jesus and saying, he's my Lord. Jesus said, many of you are going to call me Lord. Many of you are going to say, Lord, Lord.

And so there's a ton of people in this country growing up, you know, obviously in a place where we're so thankful, we've had the opportunity to hear the gospel, and we have the opportunity to worship freely, and we're so grateful for those freedoms. But how many times have you run into people and what comes out of their mouth is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said, now, many of you are calling me Lord. And then he said, but not all of you are going to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

That's really a stunning thing. Can you imagine? That's what James is doing, in essence. He's getting up on Sunday morning, and he's looking at the congregation and said, now, all of you that are here this morning that would call Jesus your Lord, some of you may not enter into the kingdom of heaven, because you don't have a living faith. So what does a living faith look like? And so the answer is a living faith actually works. It actually produces the kind of deeds that Abraham's faith produced.

And so James has been talking about this, right? He talked about it in chapter one when he said, a living faith endures trials. A living faith knows how to resist temptation. A living faith is quick to hear. It's slow to speak.

It's even slower to anger. A living faith doesn't show partiality. A living faith does the works of faith. And that's exactly what Abraham did. And all through Abraham's life, he lived out his faith consistently for more than 60 years, until there came a point at the very end of the narrative in Genesis 22, when God said to Abraham, now, I want to validate your faith. I want your faith to be validated so everybody knows what it's really like. And so he says to Abraham, you remember all the way back when you were at Ur, and I said, do you go to a land? And you got up and you followed me?

Well, I have another place I want you to go. I want you to go to Mount Moriah, and I want you to take Isaac with you. Now remember, Isaac was the son that Abraham and Sarah had waited for. He was the son of faith. You know, remember how they had Ishmael and God said to Abraham, no, Ishmael's not the son. I'm going to bless Ishmael in his own right, but he's not the son that I'm going to bless the earth through.

And he's not the son I promised you. And so all of a sudden comes Isaac. And when Isaac is a young man, probably in his 30s, God says to Abraham, I want you to take Isaac, and I want you to go to the mountain, and I want you to sacrifice him. Well, that was stunning.

That was stunning. And the scripture says in Genesis 22, that Abraham got up, and he took Isaac, and he began to go on the journey. And there's no, there's no words that come out of Abraham's mouth.

He's quick to hear. And so that brings me to the question my own life, and really in your life, and in all the lives of the people listening to our show today, what's coming out of our life, and what does it say about our faith? Does it confirm the genuineness of our faith? If what is consistently coming out of our life is ongoing disobedience to the things that God has said, then there's a real question about the genuineness of our faith. And that doesn't mean that there are not moments when we sin, because there were moments in Abraham's life where he sinned.

We've got two of those recorded. You remember when he took Sarah down to Egypt? Right, yep. And he deceived, and he put her in harm's way, and then a little later on he did the same thing with Abimelech. So it's not like Abraham was perfect. The scripture never describes Abraham as sinless. Okay, so let me ask you, go ahead, finish that.

I want to jump in with a question that's really been a point of contention for a lot of people. Finish that word, because you're on a right track there. Yeah, so Abraham's never presented as sinless, but he's always presented as a faith that is growing and deepening in his following God. And after every time of failure, Abraham repented, and he went back to the place where he had built an altar to renew his relationship with God. Okay, so that's what faith does. So that's a faith that works, a faith that's lived out.

And this is The Steve Noble Show. I'm Stu Epperson Jr., host of Truth Talk, and we're gonna play clips of this on my show at some point. I just love sitting at the feet of godly men who study. He's been studying the Word, preaching the Word, teaching the Word on the college and seminary level for decades. He is Dr. Sam Horn with the Bob Jones University Seminary. It's Theology Thursdays. I also want to call it a tough text Thursday, because this is a tough text, Dr. Horn. And by the way, if you have a question about, if you're struggling with this, maybe you struggle with the Catholic view of this, or maybe you struggle with, well, you know, am I saved by it? I gotta have a little bit of work, so I gotta bring a little something to the table here.

You're struggling with that. I gotta be baptized, at least, to be saved. Any view that you would hitch James chapter 2 to that you think that you're not jiving with what we're talking about, we'd love to hear from you, to have a friendly conversation. No question is a bad question.

866-348-7884, toll-free 866-348-7884. Now we've got a few more minutes left in this segment, and then we've got one more closing segment. We're trying to kind of put a bow on this. So Dr. Horn, this verse right here is what kind of really sticks in a lot of folks' craw that have confusion about this. Was not Abraham our father justified by works? So there you have someone that says, well, look at there, Abraham, justified by works.

And they mentioned the same event you cited from Genesis 22 when he offered Isaac his son on the altar. Do you see that faith was working together with his works? Verse 22 of James 2, and by works faith was made perfect. So, you know, of course they don't read verse 23, but when someone comes at you, and people listening that maybe their Catholic friends are trying to come at them and say, you gotta have a little bit of works, you know, it's faith, it's 99% grace, of course, but I gotta contribute.

I mean, I've got to do something. And they cite this verse, Dr. Horn, how do you reply? It says Abraham was justified by works.

How do you respond to them? So there's another text in the New Testament where it says, wisdom is justified by her children. And that's the same word, right?

So the word in its context has to be, the meaning of a word has to be determined by its context. When I say wisdom is justified by her children, what I mean by that is, wisdom is proven to be wisdom by what comes out of it, right? So if I claim to have wisdom, the only way that you're going to know that I actually have wisdom is the decisions and the effect of those decisions in my life and in the life of others. So wisdom is justified. The idea there is validated or vindicated, right?

So that's the idea here. So Abraham's faith was validated, it was vindicated by what came out of it. And what came out of it was this amazing work, this deed, right? So if you go back to James 1, he talks about what comes out of temptation, right? What is the work of temptation?

What comes out when temptation actually works is sin, and what comes out of sin is death. So what comes out of faith? What comes out when faith actually works? And the answer is this incredible obedience to God, this unquestioned obedience to God, even when God asks something that is impossible, it's unthinkable, how could God ask this of me? But Hebrews says that Abraham actually believed that God was going to do something if he actually sacrificed Isaac. Abraham believed that God could and would keep his word, even if it meant that he had to raise Isaac from the dead.

Yes. So this was an amazing belief. This was an amazing belief. And this was a true saving faith, a real genuine saving faith.

Correct. Like I think one of the Reformers said, faith that saves is a faith that... How does it go? It says faith that... It doesn't take faith and works to be saved, but faith that saves will work. Did I say it right? I probably figured it out. Yeah, it's a faithful faith, in other words. Yes, sir. It's a faith that produces faithful work.

I love that. In the next verse, the scripture was fulfilled, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. It modifies the belief. It was the faith in God who only can save by his work. More coming up on this day.

Hang on. So what does it look like to be a Christian? If you walk into an art gallery and someone says, okay, if I could have a portrait of a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, a true saved through and through person, what would that person look like? And there on the canvas is the book of James, a portrait of a true servant of Christ.

Faith without works is dead. We've been unpacking that all hour long with our special guest. Now, just another tribute to the amazing listeners on this network and to this program. Caller called off during the break to correct me on that quote, and I'm so glad that he did. He said the quote is, faith alone saves, but faith that saves is never alone.

And Dr. Horan, that's right along the lines of what you've been kind of saying all hour long. Faith that saves, faith alone saves, but faith that saves is never alone. That's right.

That's right. You know, it's interesting, Stu, there's another example in this same paragraph we never really talk about when it talks about Abraham's faith. There's also Rahab's faith. And if James is answering the question, how does a person get the kind of righteousness that will deliver him from the judgment of God when it comes? The answer is, you've got to have the kind of faith that Abraham had. And it starts by believing God, but it is actually matured, and it is grown as you listen to God, and as you follow God, and it is validated by the works that come out of your life. But how do you know that faith will actually deliver you on the day of God's judgment when it falls on the wicked of the earth? How do you know that the faith that Abraham had, and how do you know that your own faith will actually work when you need it to?

You've got a working faith, but how do you know that your faith will actually do what you most needed to do on the day you most needed to do it, on the day of judgment? And so you've got this wonderful story of the first Canaanite convert to Israel. I mean, she's the first Gentile outside of Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, to come into a covenant relationship with Israel, and her name is Rahab. She is this prostitute who welcomes the two messengers, and it's interesting that they're called messengers. Everywhere else in the Bible, in Joshua and Hebrews, they're called spies, but here they're called messengers. And they have come to Jericho, and if you go back to Joshua 2, it's pretty evident that they've been talking about what's about to happen, and Rahab's been listening, because she actually quotes things out of Exodus 15 that she heard from these men, and she has embraced the truth that the God of heaven is the only true God and is going to give her land to these people. I mean, can you imagine somebody coming into your city and saying, hey, God is going to give America to another nation?

I mean, you would be absolutely appalled by that. That's exactly what happened to Rahab. She actually became convinced that God was going to give the land she lived in and the city she lived in to Israel, and she sided with them and welcomed the spies. And on the day that Joshua got there and the city fell, guess who was the only one delivered?

It was Rahab. So her faith in God actually delivered her on the day she most needed it. But it didn't just deliver her. It brought her into Israel, and she married a guy named Salmon, who was of the tribe of Judah. And Salmon and Rahab had a little boy named Boaz, who married a woman named Ruth. And eventually out of Boaz and Ruth came somebody named David, and eventually out of David came Jesus Christ.

You know, it's amazing to me that God is not ashamed to be Abraham's friend, the patriarch, but he's also not ashamed to be the friend of Rahab the prostitute. You and I don't get to pick our ancestors. None of us get to pick our ancestors. But Jesus got to pick his. Jesus got to pick his, and when he picked, who would be in his line? He reached all the way back and said, I want this Canaan prostitute to be one of my ancestors.

And he elevated her to one of the highest places in all of Israel. And that's the beauty of the gospel. That's what a saving faith looks like. It's a faith that works, and it's a faith that saves, and it's a faith that's faithful.

And to contextualize this for all of our listeners, to thank the thought that the seed of the woman prophesied in Genesis 3 15, way back when, that would be the serpent crusher, that would crush the head of the serpent, would come through this pagan, heathen, unclean, Gentile, harlot woman named Rahab. And here you have these Jewish believers that James is really coming at hard, you know, telling them that, hey, show me your faith. Where's your faith?

Where's your faith? You know, talking about how you're treating poor people like dirt, you're putting them in the back of the church, and you're letting the wealthy people that are regaled in all the jewelry and the bling bling sit up front. And so then he has the audacity to say, look, the same way that Abraham, your father, the original called out one, the father Abraham, the same way he was remarkably saved by faith, and it was accounted him for righteousness, was the same way that Rahab, this unclean Jew. So imagine the smug Jews who James is writing this to.

But what a picture of how we should all rejoice in this. Dr. Horton, I just love your insights. Is the ground still level at the foot of the cross? Can anyone come to Jesus, listening to us talk right now, the unclean, the dirty? Is anyone out there too far gone?

They're running away, their family won't even talk to them, they've wasted their life. Is it ever too late for someone to come to Jesus, Dr. Horton? It isn't.

It isn't at all, and the Gospel according to Rahab makes that really clear. And you know, Stu, I think maybe one of the applications for all of this is, you know, we are so bound up in trying to fix all the things that affect us personally. And I'm that way, you're that way, I live in a country that's in a chaotic mess right now, and it's affecting me in every way.

You know, how much I pay for gas when I go to the grocery store, and I want to fix things that affect me. But maybe what we should be doing with our faith is we should be going after people like Rahab, and saying, you know what, there's a place at the cross for you. And what we do speaks a whole lot more than just what we say, and my concern for my own life is that what comes out of my mouth may actually undermine what the Gospel really is, because of what is actually happening and how I'm handling my life as I get frustrated with all the things that are going on around me. And that's really what James is going on. He's going at it. He's going, you know, you need to validate your faith by what comes out of your life, not just what comes out of your mouth.

Yeah. Well, I hope that everyone will listen to this show when it comes out in podcast form, and when it's downloaded, you can stream it whenever. We have a free Truth Network app, I can get texts all the time, people love the app, you can listen wherever you are, you can share it now. I've shared it with 40 people while on the show today, say, listen, I share it with a shout out to our buddy Tom in Pawleys Island. Dr. Horton is listening, him and Pat are listening on the Truth app.

To you, man, they're not listening for me, I know that. But I'll tell you, what's so important, speak to this, and I know that Bob Jones University Seminary has been a great partner here with the Steve Noble Show, and I'm honored, Stu Epperson is honored here to sit in for Steve and to be able to interview you about this, but when you talk about the importance of being under the Word of God, you know, you have heard this man help process and help teach, exposit an important passage of Scripture, and there's so many seminaries that are really cemeteries, because they're dead, they're not equipping you. The nice word is liberal, they're really evil, and what they're doing is you're spending every waking moment defending the Bible and the veracity, and was Jesus a man or a woman, all this nonsense, but at your seminary, Dr. Horton, and other good seminaries, you're equipping men of God to teach the Word of God, and that's what people are really hungry for. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.

We are begotten by the Word of God, James 1. This is His Word that's engrafted to the sake of the soul. Can you speak to the importance of that as we wrap up here?

Yeah, you said it well. I mean, James says, be quick to hear, be slow to speak, be slow to anger. He talks about being a doer of the Word and not just to hear only. One of the things I love about Steve Noble as I've gotten to become more acquainted with him is every time we're on the show, he always drives it back to the Word of God, not in a conceptual way, not at an ivory tower, but what it needs to look like on the street of our life, and I love that.

As I go off the show today, I'm going away just with a reminder that I don't just get to talk about this, and it's not just something I get to sit in an office and study, it's got to be lived out on the street. It's got to be street-worthy theology, and that's where all of us live. All of us have a desire to serve God, but we have to live out the Word, and the only way we're going to live out the Word is to actually know the Word.

I'm not going to live out a Word I don't really know, and I don't get to live out my own version of it, right? I've got to live out the Word that God intended for me to live, and that's why I need to be under that Word every week in my local church. And so I would encourage all of you listening, pray for your pastor and support your pastor, and be at your church when he opens up the Word of God. Be swift to hear, be slow to speak, be even slower to anger, and be a doer of the Word that you hear every week, because you've got a faithful shepherd who's opening up God's Word, and the Spirit of God will take that Word and make your faith work.

Wow, I love it. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, and that's why we do this program. That's why wherever you're hearing this, whatever network, whatever affiliate, that's why it's here. That's why Dr. Sam Horn, this man, has been passionate about teaching the Word of God for many decades. Dr. Horn, God bless you. Thanks for being on.

I guess people can google Bob Jones University in the seminary and learn more about you guys online too, right? Yes sir. Awesome. Thank you, Stu. What a blessing to be on the show with you today. Great to hang out with you. Prayers continue to go for Texas, everyone where Dr. Horn is from, praying for the families there, praying that gracious Christians, Bible-believing Christians, will live out their faith and love them, and let's all live our faith out by praying for everyone affected by that, praying for our nation to return to God. God bless you. Another program powered by the Truth Network.