speaker-0: And here's here's the other thing I found is I study differently if I study with the objective that I'm gonna tell somebody after I'm done with my study what it was that I just learned. So I'm studying to teach, whether I'm preaching or not.

speaker-1: Well, welcome to episode one hundred and twelve of the Adding Color podcast and a new chapter for our podcast. As those of you who are watching on the video can see, there is a special guest with us. And before I introduce him, I just want to invite you if you're if you're watching online, close your eyes and listen. And if you're listening to the audio, just look forward to the sultry voice of

speaker-0: Sultry. Sultry.

speaker-1: Lapine. friends, we are blessed to have Bob Lapine with us. And I'll start off by introducing him as a member of the Religious Broadcasters Hall of Fame. So we are in the presence of a Hall of Famer. Bob, welcome. Thank you so much for carving out time. Let's just walk through a little bit of your bio. You have hosted several radio shows. why don't you tell us? A little about about those, maybe one of your favorites, so that we can get to know you.

speaker-0: Well, I spent twenty-eight years working alongside Dennis Rainey on a radio program called Family Life Today. And a great privilege to be able to do that at at our peak. I think Family Life Today was heard on about twelve hundred radio stations across the country. And just just a great privilege. Along the way, got a call from our friends at Truth for Life, Alistair Beggs radio program, and they wondered if I might be able to be the one who introduces Alistair at the beginning of the program and comes back at the end and gives the toll free number. And Dennis and I talked about that and agreed that we love Alistair and his ministry and wanted to help however we could. So I've been doing that now for about I think it's fourteen or fifteen years that I've been involved with that. And because of my involvement in Christian broadcasting I've I've had opportunities to be in a number of other settings. I work with Nancy Damas Wolgemouth and her ministry, Revive Our Hearts for Women, serve as the chairman of her board and have been involved in her radio program through the years. so that's really been what I've been doing vocationally, but as you know, I I have a passion for the local church, served as a local church elder, as a lay elder in a number of churches in San Antonio and here in Little Rock. And then in two thousand eight with a small group of people, we decided to launch w the church that I serve as lead pastor of. It's Redeemer Community Church. I've been doing that bivocationally along with my my Christian radio programs. but it's been the joy of my life to be able to teach the Bible every week and to to to lead this local church and to see God at work in it. So that's kind of the scope of of what my life has been vocationally.

speaker-1: You know, and I've been to Redeemer in Little Rock and just am so blessed every time that I'm I'm with you all, to be able to just see you open God's word and in your preaching add color and to do so with such a Christ centered, Christ exalting approach. if you're in the Little Rock area and you don't have a church, please check out Redeemer. I know that you will be blessed. Bob, you also have family. You're married to Marianne and if are you Forty

speaker-0: Forty seven years of marriage, yeah.

speaker-1: Seven years of marriage. you have five children, eleven great

speaker-0: Adult kids and eleven grandkids. Our kids all live in different states. This keeps dropping out. I hope I hope listeners don't mind if I just adjust my my earbuds here while we do this. But yeah, i w our kids live in different states, so when we want to see grandkids, that means we gotta load up the car or hop on a plane and go see them in Asheville, North Carolina, or Brooklyn, New York, or Fort Worth, Texas, or Tulsa, Oklahoma.

speaker-1: Wow, which I think you probably strategically decide during the year which ones of those you visit with the weather.

speaker-0: We try to make it everywhere during the year and see the grandkids and then we get everybody together every other year. We all gather at a a common location, rent a house for a few days and just have a little family celebration.

speaker-1: So fun. So fun. Bob's also written several books and many of them focus on marriage and family. And if you're in the Kansas City area, in February, we have the blessing of having Bob be our speaker at the Rekindle F marriage and family conference. We'll put a link to that registration in our episode notes. But I I kind of feel Bob with my background in baseball that I'm like a high school. player that is inviting Ted Williams to join him in the batting cage.

speaker-0: Huh.

speaker-1: So thank you, brother. I I I've been so blessed getting to know you, getting to hear your heart for Christ, your your love for God's word is such an example for me. And so the blessing of this new chapter in our podcast is that we get to hear from other pastors. And the approach to preparing for a sermon Is similar and yet so very different as you compare how pastors do it. And so would you just walk us through, Bob, how how do you prepare? You've been at Redeemer at Little Rock since 2008. So many years, many sermons. how do you approach sitting down to prepare for a passage like the passage we'll discuss here in a few minutes in Romans?

speaker-0: Yeah, the the starting place for me is to make sure that I'm locating the text I'm gonna be looking at in the context of whatever it is. So knowing something about the general scope of the book, how it's put together, getting the big picture so that when I get to the specific text I'm gonna be looking at, I understand what came before, what's coming after, and where this fits into the context. I think that's really critical and I think there are a lot of interpretive errors that come when you don't place context first. And once I've got that situated, then I sit down with it a particular text and I will read through it and I will say, What's unclear to me about what I just read? So what doesn't just immediately make sense or what what what do I feel like I need to investigate more in order to really get at the heart of what this text is about. So in reading it through several times and going, okay, what what is it that I need to to uncover here? I remember hearing Tim Keller say when he approaches a text and and preaches it, he wants to say, what does this text say? What does it mean? why does it matter? And where's Jesus? Those are the four questions that he asks. And and really starting off and saying, what does this say? Do I understand clearly what this text is saying? And then to look beyond that and say, and what's the meaning? What was the Holy Spirit's intent in saying this needs to be a part of what shapes our thinking about who God is? so to to get behind the the the meaning on the face and say what's the purpose of this text? And then why does it matter? How what's the application for me in our day? because one of the other things that I learned from Keller that was so helpful is he said when you preach, the place you're aiming for is the will of the listener in order to get to their will, you want to go through their mind and through their heart to get there. You need to touch both mind and heart, but ultimately what you're preaching for is is change. You're preaching for the transformative power of the word that we will not be conformed to this world, but we will be transformed by the renewing of our mind. So how do I help you understand the the passage better? How do I understand you help you feel what's going on in this passage so that then you can respond with your will to to in the way God would have you respond? And then of course, what's the redemptive? Where where does Jesus sit in this? Where's the gospel in this text? And you want to be careful that you're not just flying the gospel in where it doesn't belong, but the more you meditate on a text, and and I would say that's my next step is once I've I've started doing that work. I spend a lot of time during the week just chewing on. When when I'm when I lay down at night to go to bed and you know, I need to quiet my mind to go I'll start chewing on the text that I've just been meditating on and saying this is about putting off or putting on. That's what I'm meditating on this week because I'm in Ephesians chapter four this week. But in in the text that you you preached to look at meditating on Paul's passion for his ministry, his calling and his faithfulness to his calling. So just just the phrases that I've been reading just to chew on that and s and let that run over and over in my mind. And it's amazing how God the Spirit will awaken things in me as I'm just continuing to chew on and meditate on that passage.

speaker-1: What I love about what you said is that it doesn't sound like just one reading gives you everything that you need to know.

speaker-0: So don't we wish that was the case?

speaker-1: Well sometimes, especially with busy weeks. Yeah. but I I love that you're abiding in the text. And I I get the sense that that's what Jesus was drawing his disciples into in that section of fourteen through sixteen of the Gospel of John, to abide with Christ as a pastor. That's important that we are abiding and that as we do, there's the there's something that happens in our souls and in our minds. As you think about this, Bob. Do you sense that this is a process that is reserved only for preachers? I think you know where I'm going with this. How how would you take what the preacher does in preparing for a sermon and extract some principles that somebody who isn't preparing for a sermon, and maybe today they've got 30 minutes before they head into work? do you think those principles that you unpacked with Tim Keller are important and are they accessible to somebody who isn't spending an entire week on one passage to preach it?

speaker-0: Yeah. I I think there are two kinds of of reading when it comes to the scriptures. There's devotional reading, where we may read a chapter or two. You're going through the McShane reading program or whatever it is that you're doing and and you're reading devotionally and you're just saying, Lord, would you speak to me through this passage? And you're not really digging deep. but you're you're just flying over the landscape and looking down and going, What do I need to notice today? What's God got for me today? But but Study is different. And Je Jeff, I found early on, the first time I decided I'm gonna read through the Bible this year, when I got to January fourth, I remember Genesis twelve through fifteen. So Genesis twelve, the covenant delivered to Abraham, you know, the first I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. And then we've got the whole excursus with Lot. And Abraham having to go and rescue him. By the time you get to fifteen, it's the middle of the night and the stars are out and there's the there's a ceremony where the animals are cut. I got done with Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: I got done with that and I thought, I can't read tomorrow until I understand today. So I quit reading through the Bible that year. And instead I spent the next I I got a couple of books and I spent the next Two months looking at the life of Abraham, studying the life of Abraham, getting to know him and getting answers to all of the questions that had popped out as I was reading that text. And one of the things I learned is yes, this is how I needed to approach the Bible. This is what studying the Bible looks like on my own, because I had questions about the text and I wanted to dig in, and I got tools and helps to help me with that. But yes. Anybody can do this. And here's here's the other thing I found is I study differently if I study with the objective that I'm gonna tell somebody after I'm done with my study what it was that I just learned. So I'm studying to teach whether I'm preaching or not. yeah I'm I'm studying because I I want to be able to explain what I just learned in going through this to you in a way that it makes sense to you and because then then I've really learned it. I've not just kind of check the box and and I can move on. Right.

speaker-1: Which is that step of abiding in Christ, moving beyond just a task to actually a tool for relationship. Before we get into Romans fifteen, I I wonder if you mentioned tools. Are there any go to tools that you have enjoyed as a pastor that you think are accessible for somebody who isn't preaching that really helps plumb some of the depths and expose the treasures of God's word?

speaker-0: Yeah, I I mean I started my journey with some simple commentaries, finding a good, solid orthodox commentary and and there are a number that you could recommend. Just a one volume commentary where I would I would read a passage and go, Wait, what does that mean? And I'd just turn to the commentary notes and see if they had anything to say about it. And then along the way, study Bibles came along and and helped kind of bring the commentary right below the text. So I had that available to me and there are Great study Bibles, the ESV study Bible's a good one, the MacArthur Study Bible's a good study Bible. All of them are going to carry a particular theological orientation. You have to recognize the notes are not inspired, and you may come to a different conclusion, but a good study Bible will help explain that there may be different ways to interpret a text, even if it lands in a particular place. So commentaries and study Bibles were kind of where I started. but over the last decade plus I've been a faithful fan of logos bible software. Amen. And that library that is provided with logos that gives me access to commentaries. And now Logos has as a part of it's gonna sound like a commercial for logos, but but they have

speaker-1: Apologizing for that.

speaker-0: the they have AI capabilities built inside of logos. And I know people hear AI and and the alarm bells may go off. The great thing about this is Logos is only searching the The content that's in your library. So the answers you're getting are the answers you would get if you were able to quickly run through your whole library and not stuff from some obscure spot on the web. so that's been very helpful. When I have a question, I can pull up the the AI box and just say, How am I supposed to understand what this means? Or tell me all of the usages of this Greek word in the the text and And just get answers to my questions much more quickly than I was able to in the old days.

speaker-1: it saves so much time, doesn't it? And you know, we could have a whole nother conversation about AI. The that like anything, there's blessings and there's challenges. But I I love what you're saying is that we're not just relying on books or AI to give us answers, but it it does stimulate and give us the opportunity to save time and really engage, which I'm sure that would have been valuable when you preached through Romans fifteen. Just tell us y you it looks like you might have preached this section th when you preach through the Book of Romans, is that right?

speaker-0: Yeah, but eight years ago I I went from Romans one all the way to the end and it was the great great joy. Loved that journey, loved that study, and was so glad to be able to dig in t to Romans. So yeah, got to this passage near the end of our study.

speaker-1: Well, and you were so kind to share your notes with me. And I I, you know, if you're listening and you want to listen to some great preaching, listen to Bob's messages. I Bob does an amazing job telling stories, connecting modern relevance to the truth of God's word, but doing so faithfully. So many preachers stay in the modern reality and then try to find something in God's word. Bob does an amazing job weaving. God's word into our reality without compromising what the original author meant to the original audience. So if you're looking for messages to listen to, head out to their website. We'll put a link in the notes. Listen to Bob preach. It it is incredible. I'm blessed every time I listen, but I felt like I could hear you preaching as I'm reading your notes. You did an amazing job as you got to the end of Romans fifteen. connecting to other themes and and chapters of Romans. But you also mentioned that as you arrived at this passage, this isn't necessarily where people flip their studies open to Romans and land in 14 through 33. How how did this section challenge you? how did you prepare for it maybe differently than you you mentioned 14 and the first part of 15 are so applicational and almost like a prayer. Just walk us through as you started studying this and doing your method just if you can remember eight years ago. Yeah. H how did this passage sit as you were preparing?

speaker-0: Well, here's what I remember. This is a a turning point in Romans. So starting with context, you recognize Paul has come to a place in this correspondence that he's writing to this church where he is kind of done with his theological argumentation that he's been following all the way through and he's concluded with the practical section, the the here's here's how you should respond to the gospel and chapters twelve. And thirteen and and into fourteen. And now you get to fifteen. And and when you get to verse fourteen and in chapter fifteen, you're at a point where Paul says, Okay, now I just want to talk personally to you. And I want to update you on my ministry and and what's been going on. And I want to talk about what I'm hoping for the future. So it's a very different part of the letter, which means we have to approach it differently from an interpretive standpoint. But Paul is no longer Teaching here, he's he's becoming personal and relational. And yet again, God the Holy Spirit has a divine purpose for this being included in what we have today. And so as I approached it, I I looked and said, What's on Paul's heart? What is it that's his burden to share with these people? And what is what what is Paul's heart then mean for us today and how we should be thinking about The mission that God has us on, what he's called us to, what faithfulness looks like for us, what can we learn? Yet Paul says at one point in his epistles, he says, Follow me as I follow Christ. Be imitators of me. And so when we read this section, I think we can read it and say, Okay, how can I imitate Paul here? What what is this? I'm I may not be called to be a church planting it itinerant evangelist Right. But I am called to serve the body in my context. What can I learn from Paul's faithfulness that applies to how I faithfully live out my life?

speaker-1: Amen. So you're you're you're studying the section that is very personal after wading through all of this theology and then some I mean, some of these passages in twelve through fourteen, I mean, they just set set up the preacher today, don't they? I mean, the the outline is almost just right there on the text. W was there a challenge for you? Because this maybe wasn't as fun for lack of a better word, as a preacher to study and you're you're kind of seeing this like context that Paul had in the Roman Empire and with the Roman Christians that he had never met before, that it seems like there's these assumptions and these these understandings that we you you as a preacher have to work a little bit to try to figure out, okay, what is he saying? Yeah. Was there a temptation for you to to treat this passage differently or maybe kind of try to just barrel through it? How were you able to in your own heart let the word of God abide in you and Take a the same approach with this section that you did with other sections.

speaker-0: Well, I I always have to start with how much can I cover? And I I typically am going slow through a a passage. So when I just I just taught through Ephesians four one through six, and I think it took me six weeks to get through that passage talking about the unity, the spirit, and the bonds of peace. but then when you get to a passage like this, you you don't want to come down and say, We're only gonna cover four verses today. Right. that's that's to belabor a point. So I I look and said, okay, I'm covering a whole lot more text than I would normally cover. That's that's my first challenge is to make sure that I'm not I'm not leaving substance on the floor that needs to be up on the table. You know, that I I make sure I cover what's important here and yet at the same time I'm not going to be getting into specific words or phrases at the level of depth and detail that I might have back in Romans twelve two when I was saying, okay, what does it mean to be transformed by the renewing of your mind? We're gonna stop and explore that. I I might not take a phrase from this section and dive into it as deeply. So th that's kind of a starting point. And and with this, knowing that I'm at a point now where the Apostle Paul is is sharing heart to heart and just out of his experience, I I look at it and say, I'm getting to know Paul here. Mm-hmm I I'm getting to know the person. I'm getting to to to it's a different approach. When when I'm reading Romans three about the depravity of man, I'm not learning much about Paul. But when I'm reading Romans 15, I'm learning a lot about Paul and what drove him and what his passions and burdens were. And so I I'm reading it differently because I'm I'm getting into the biography of the most influential man in the history of the church outside of the Lord Jesus. Right. And so I'm approaching it from that standpoint. And that's where I find I I I kind of found the the the heartbeat for me in this passage looking at it and saying, I'm I'm learning about Paul as an itinerant church planner. I'm learning about Paul as a shepherd and how he cares for his people. I'm learning about him as a pioneering missionary. And And I I see those three categories and all of them are are referenced in this longer section of scripture. So what can I see about God's call on Paul's life and how he's trying to respond to that faithfully, and what does that tell me about how I should respond faithfully to God's call on my life?

speaker-1: You know what I loved, Bob, is even though your your outline points and my outline points are are different, our points of emphases of emphasis are different, there's some common denominators. And what I love about your message in reading through it is that even though Paul is getting personal, and you can see in these verses, can't you, that Paul is a real man, just like us, you're also seeing theology. In fact, your last point was that Paul it was precise. And so he's going to scripture and he just can't help it. The man was a man of God's word, a man who focused and centered on Christ. And you even see that come out in his real interchange with this group of people that he longed to meet. Well, Bob, thank you. Thank you for for walking through this with us. Thank you for letting us get to know you, your your method for preparing for a sermon and these great nuggets out of a section that often pastors and Christians Overlook. Before we close though, I do want to acknowledge for those of you who are watching on video, look at the spiritual giant that I interviewing and his background and look at look at me. Pop culture. So I'm I'm learning from you, brother, even in the background for this podcast. Brother, thank you. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your investment of decades into ministry, Christianity, and the local church. And I'm grateful for your friendship and know that our listeners will be blessed by our time together.

speaker-0: Privilege to do this, Jeff, you know, of my deep respect for you and my admiration for the ministry there in Kansas City. I really do look forward to being in Kansas City in February, even though the weather is is scaring me to come up and but but we're gonna it's gonna be warm inside as we talk about marriage. I can't wait to be there with your folks and to do that. And and let me just say, as as as your congregation listened to you preach this message from Romans, there may have been some who went, I You should have talked about this or you should have talked about that. And I always think to myself, No, that's the Holy Spirit tapping you on the shoulder and saying, I had this for you. Because as preachers, all we're doing is we're we're holding up the word of God and saying, Here's what I found, but what are you finding in this? It's a dialogue that's going on between us, and the Holy Spirit is our teacher, and we're just trying to be catalysts to the work of the Spirit in people's lives. So Yes, you and I find different things in it, and that's by God's design, and it's where we all come together and learn from one another, and that's a part of the glory of the body of Christ.

speaker-1: Couldn't have said it better. That's a great way to end. Thank you, brother. Thank you for your time. Thank you, our listeners, for engaging. And we'll look forward to our next episode of the Add in Color Podcast.