Preaching [About] the Gospel

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we will be discussing preaching about the gospel.

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It's been an observation that John and I have made many times that you will hear guys talk a lot about preaching the gospel, and they will describe the gospel and give the facts of the gospel, but then yet will never actually offer the sinner

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Christ, and will never actually preach the grace of God in Christ by which sinners are saved.

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So there's a lot of talking about the gospel, but not a lot of preaching the gospel legitimately. We're going to consider that.

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And then in the members podcast, we talk about preaching sin and obedience in light of the gospel, and we also talk about Christ -centered preaching, what it is and what it isn't.

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We hope this conversation is encouraging to you. Stay tuned. Hey guys, as a quick reminder, if you'd like to join

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To learn more about how to support Theocast, simply visit theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself,

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. John, we sit here today in the aftermath of a strange weekend for all of us.

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We're all adjusting to the new normal of the coronavirus, COVID -19.

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How are you doing, man? How's your family? How's your church? How are you processing everything that we're all just kind of scrambling to wrap our minds around?

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Yeah, it is definitely a strange time. One of the sides of being a pastor, and I think it's hard for some pastors to wade through this, is that we have to stay out of politics.

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It's really not our position. There's very few people in the world that have to do this.

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I think one of them is that we, as pastors, have to shepherd our flock and not get caught up in manipulating them one way or the other.

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Now, we can have our opinions, but it's really not our place to shepherd our church towards one political view or another.

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That doesn't mean I can't hold up moral issues. In other words, I can say homosexuality,

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I think, is against the Bible, abortion is against the Bible, things like that. That's not what I'm saying, but I also don't believe that that becomes your agenda from the pulpit.

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When it comes to this, I've received a lot of text and phone calls, and I'm sure I know you have as well from our own church.

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Then just other pastors from around the world have contacted me and asked what I'm going to do and what are my thoughts.

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I do hold a Roman's perspective here, where the government is to whom

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I'm to submit to, and this is not a religious issue. This is not a religious persecution.

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We are talking about love of neighbor. You and I had this conversation. It's really the love of each other and love of neighbor.

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The government, I believe, is not perfect. They will make mistakes because everyone in leadership makes mistakes, especially in moments of panic and stress.

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Have they made the best decision? According to the news outlets, there are some who think they need to do more.

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There are some who think they need to do less. I'm going to try and do my best to obey what they have given us and make sure that our congregants are safe and that we take care of them.

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I know that you and I hold that same perspective. There are some ways that we're even going to try and help

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Theocast listeners. We know there's going to be a lot more time at home, so there are some more resources that we are going to try and make available.

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There might even be some stuff that we do on Facebook. By the time this podcast comes out, it'll be two weeks from today.

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Today's the 17th, so it'll be a couple of weeks from now. Justin Perdue This will be coming out in April sometime. I'm with you on everything that you said.

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I, as a pastor, take great pains to not share my political views because you're a human being.

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I'm a human being. We're both citizens of this country. You and I would have thoughts and views on various things when it comes to social issues and when it comes to political considerations and the like, but I keep those very close to the vest intentionally.

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The way that I often say it, and I don't even mean to come across as being really punchy about this, but my main objective when it comes to political stuff is to blow up utopian notions that are red and blue and to help people understand that we need to be responsible.

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We need to be citizens of this land. We need to vote according to our conscience, and we hope that our conscience is well -trained.

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At the same time, Christians will disagree on public policy, and that's okay.

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We can exist in the same church together and have sincere disagreements about how to implement things from a public policy perspective.

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I do think it's important for pastors to avoid making very politicized statements, even about something like this, with respect to how the

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COVID -19 coronavirus stuff is being handled politically. There are a lot of really smart and educated people working on this.

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There's a lot more going on from a public policy perspective than any of us are privy to or aware of, and so we need to be thoughtful and mindful about all that stuff.

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I agree with you completely, John, that the government has been ordained by God to exercise certain functions and to use its authority well for the citizens of the land.

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You're exactly right that this is not religious persecution. It would be one thing if the government right now was saying, well, all public gatherings that are large can take place except for churches.

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Well, churches should not gather, but every other large gathering can continue. Sporting events and clubs and shows and theaters and all these things can go on, but we're going to ask the churches to refrain from meeting.

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That would be a little bit different, but the government has placed broad sweeping recommendations and regulations and stuff.

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I know we'll talk more about some of this. I want to read one brief quote. I wasn't even planning to until you said something that prompted me to think of it.

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There was a Presbyterian pastor in the early part of the 20th century named Francis Grimke who lived in Washington, D .C.,

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and he was pastoring during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. He wrote this because in his day, like ours, the government had asked large gatherings to stop for a season.

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He said this, quote, the fact that the churches were places of religious gathering and the others not, the others being theaters and the like, would not affect in the least the health question involved.

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If avoiding crowds lessens the danger of being infected, it was wise to take the precaution and not needlessly run into danger and expect

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God to protect us, close quote. I thought that was very applicable to our situation.

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I even shared those words with our people via live stream on Sunday. So pray for your pastors, man.

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During this season, we're all trying to lead our churches well and try to think about ways to care for our people in an unusual and exceptional time.

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And John, I know you and I spent probably 20 minutes before we hit the record button talking about some of that. So there that was for free.

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We have something else that we want to talk about today, and this has been sort of stirred up in us and particularly

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I think in you, John, just by some things that you've heard recently and some videos that you've watched.

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And we're not going to get into the specifics of the context, but tell us a little bit about what—tell the people,

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I should say—a little bit about what you and I are going to talk about for the next 30, 45 minutes or so. One of the thoughts

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I've been having, and this is a conversation that I just recently had with Justin, and it's been a struggle of mine.

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And when we talk about the gospel, this is what we're going to be speaking about. The title of it is Preaching About to the

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Gospel versus Preaching the Actual Gospel. This is seen not in just the fundamentalist

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Baptist world, which I grew up in, and we preached a lot about the gospel, but we never really got—we kind of assumed it, or it was that last thing that we gave, the five points at the end, boom, boom, boom, now come forward.

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But this can be seen in broader evangelicalism and even in, unfortunately, Calvinistic, even

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Reformed churches, where they will say, we need to preach the gospel.

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We need to be standing firm on the gospel. And then you have the whole gospel -centered movement, the gospel -centered parenting, gospel -centered career.

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I mean, we could just add them all in there. And even in there, the gospel becomes something you do, or even a verb, it becomes a point of action.

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We're gospeling and not a truth that is to believe. It's not good news.

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So today's podcast is understanding the difference between preaching about the gospel, which happens a lot, and actually preaching the gospel.

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There are many people who will say, yeah, I go to a church that preaches the gospel because they hear the word from the pulpit, but to say the word does not mean you actually gave the truth that is centered in that word.

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So what's the difference? I'll give an example, and then Justin, I'll let you continue on here.

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If someone stands up and they say, we need to preach the gospel, and then they give the facts of Jesus's life, so his virgin birth, his life, miracles, death, resurrection, and they give you all of those facts.

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And then they even give you the facts of men, the frailty of men, the depravity of man, the necessity of man, man can't believe.

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That's all great, and I would say that is a part of the gospel. But if you never get to the thing that sets it apart from every other religion, because right now,

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I'll tell you this right now, Catholics, for the most part, are going to believe in the virgin birth, death by resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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They're going to believe in that. They're going to believe that Jesus is the great high priest. They're also, in some respects, going to believe that all human beings are sinners.

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That doesn't separate you from a Roman Catholic. What separates us from anyone out there, including

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Mormons, Jehovah's Witness, Catholics, what makes us evangelical is that Jesus Christ's death, birth, and resurrection is presented to humanity, to the sinner, as a free gift of grace with zero requirements, with no actions, nothing on the response of the sinner other than that they receive and believe.

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And even the ability to receive and believe is grace. All is grace, grace, grace. So, if you preach the facts of Jesus and you never present the truth of grace, which is the final cap end of the gospel, you actually never preach the gospel.

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You presented truth, and there's a difference between presenting truth and presenting the gospel.

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I know it feels like we're splitting hairs, but Justin, tell us why this is not splitting hairs.

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I'm going to pick up on that word truth that you just threw out there, John. I have observed this many times as well over the course of a number of years, where guys who are preaching in local church contexts or at conferences or wherever will get up and get very fired up about the truth.

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I'm talking spit flying, wiping the sweat off the forehead.

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We need to stand for truth and preach the truth and be unashamed of the truth and say the hard thing.

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You and I are in complete agreement with that. We do want to be very precise and stand for the truth.

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At the same time, there is, like you just said, this component that is so often missing from this sort of truth proclamation.

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You get, like you said, a lot of facts. You get a lot of dealing with the biblical text and a concern for sound exegesis, but we never actually get to what

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I would say, and I know you agree, is the point of the entire scripture, that Jesus Christ, the

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God -man, God the Son who took on flesh, came to do for sinful man what sinful man could never do for himself.

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He came to fulfill God's law and atone for man's sin and to accomplish everything necessary for our salvation.

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Then, like you already alluded to, John, nothing is left to be done other than to trust

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Christ, to rest in Him, to look to Him, to hope in Him, to turn. That repentance piece, that metanoia change of mind piece, is a change of mind about God and myself and about Christ and the way of salvation.

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That's incorporated in faith, but what are we doing? We're casting ourselves upon the grace of God and Jesus Christ.

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What's missing most pointedly, I think, from so many sermons and from so many conference addresses and everything else is the thrust of the

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Bible that's encapsulated so beautifully in Isaiah 55 .1, where God offers, out of His own grace and mercy,

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He offers to sinners what we need for free. It costs nothing.

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It doesn't require anything of us. Isaiah 55 .1, the Lord speaks to the prophet, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come buy and eat.

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Come buy wine and milk without money and without price. That's the invitation, and it's all, like you said, it's all of grace.

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It's unmerited. You could never earn it. You could never do it, and God says, here it is, in my

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Son, and it's free. Isaiah 43 .25, He says, I am

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He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will remember your sins no more.

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It's not a message of guilt. You and I were talking about this before we hit the record button. It's so terrible when the gospel, as it's so called, comes across as this message of guilt.

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If I can, one more thought, and then I'm going to give it back to you. This fires me up too. When people will talk about the total depravity of man as part of the gospel, or will talk about the holy, righteous requirements of God as part of the gospel,

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I'm like, look, bro, you're all about precision and truth. Well, you need to get it right. The gospel is not any of that.

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The message about the depravity of man is in the Bible. The message about the law is in the

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Bible. God is holy and righteous and requires perfection and all that. That's all there. The gospel, though, is simply the message of Jesus and what

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He has done in the place of sinners that is to be trusted. When we trust

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Him, all is well. We have peace with God, and we have been reconciled to Him. So don't call the law gospel.

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Don't call depravity the gospel. Don't call all of these things the gospel. The gospel is

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Christ crucified for sinners, fulfilling the law for sinners, taking His life up again, and securing the resurrection of sinners all by faith grounded in the grace of God.

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It can't be good news if you do not add to the truth and the facts of Jesus' life that this is given to you as a gift from the

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Father by grace, meaning that it is unmerited favor. The good news of the gospel is mercy.

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You don't receive what you deserve, and grace. You are receiving what you don't deserve. That is the gospel.

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So when someone preaches 45 minutes about the gospel or even on the gospel, they do not emphasize the point that they do not drive home, the point that they do not try to clarify for the heart with the most confusing part of the gospel.

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Religions have been confusing grace for thousands of years now. This is why we differ with Rome, because Rome does not believe in grace, not fully.

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Now let me clarify this. Rome does believe in grace. They absolutely do. So you ever say, well,

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Roman Catholics don't believe in grace. No, they do. They just don't believe it's enough. They believe that we have to cooperate with the grace of God in order to be saved.

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Right. So let me give you some examples of this. When someone is preaching about the gospel and you get done hearing the gospel and you feel guilty or dirty or ashamed or you have no assurance, if someone finishes preaching the gospel and you lack assurance,

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I actually wonder if they actually preached the gospel to you, because the kindness of God is meant to lead us to repentance.

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The glory of Christ is supposed to draw us more into his love, not push us away.

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It's supposed to remove all fear and doubt, not create fear and doubt. A lot of preaching today, even guys who are

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Calvinistic and Reformed, they will preach the gospel. At the end of it, I feel dirty because I have not lived up to whatever standard, because what they actually are collapsing, and we say this all the time, what they're collapsing is the implications of the gospel, what happens after one is transformed with the actual gospel.

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One cannot be said without the other, and you cannot collapse those. What happens to the transformed life is not good news.

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That's the implication of it. That's what ends up happening. For instance, if you jump into a pool, what ends up happening to your body?

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You become very lightweight. You come to float. Part of being wet inside of a pool is the weightlessness.

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But if you're wet, does that mean you're always weightless? If I get wet, does that mean

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I'm weightless? Of course not. Of course not. This is what we end up doing.

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We automatically put two and two together. We automatically say one plus one equals two.

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We think the implications of the gospel mean it's the gospel, and then we collapse them and say, if you aren't floating, then you are not saved.

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I have to say, the moment you begin to talk about repentance, you start talking about obedience as part of one -to -one gospel, that is not good news.

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That is an implication of the gospel. I know, Justin, you probably have a lot you want to say there. I know this is probably confusing to some of you, and you're like, well, what do you mean it's not the gospel?

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This is what the point of this podcast is—clarifying what is the gospel and what is not the gospel.

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called Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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You can get this at theocast .org slash primer. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our Total Access membership—that's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years—or simply by donating to our ministry.

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You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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A few thoughts. The first, just to put a bow on what we were talking about earlier, to reiterate the facts of Jesus's life, even his life, death, and resurrection.

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To just state those things is not to herald the gospel until one has heralded the grace of God and the mercy of God in Jesus Christ and invited the poor, sin -sick, wretched sinner to trust in Christ and to, without payment, for absolutely free, to be justified and to be promised salvation forever with God.

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That's not gospel preaching until you've done that. But then I want to jump on what you just said, and this is something

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I could talk for an hour about it and I won't to spare everybody. The implications, as you just said, the implications of the gospel are not the gospel.

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This stuff is butchered in so many environments, many of which are

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Calvinistic, where you get guys talking about the demands of the gospel, for example.

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You hear this language, the demands of the gospel, what

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Jesus demands of the world, or what Jesus requires, etc.

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Immediately, I want to jump up and down and be like, hey, the gospel is a message about what

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Christ has done, not about what we must do. Last time

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I checked, even if we want to use that language of demand, there is maybe one demand of the gospel, and what is that?

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Believe it. That's it. Full stop. You want a demand of the gospel?

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Believe. Trust Christ. But even that, according to Ephesians 2, is a gift.

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No, it's a gift. No argument, John, on that. But the demands of the gospel, there's one.

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Believe in Jesus, and you can't do that on your own. God must grant that. He must give you the gift of faith and all those things.

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Even when it comes to repentance, I've already alluded to this, I just want to be really clear, that faith incorporates repentance.

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They go together, and God gives both. It's quite obvious that the change of mind that happens comes from the

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Lord, not from us. When we're looking to Christ, we are necessarily looking away from our own goodness and our own merit, and we're trusting in Jesus.

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That's something that's going to continue to go on in our lives, and God is the one who repents us. God is the one who grants faith.

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I see this to be a problem, as you do too, where the entailments of the gospel and the demands and the implications and all this are preached as part and parcel of the good news.

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As soon as we start to include in our gospel presentation transformation of life in any way, we have lost the good news of the gospel.

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Inevitably and inherently, we are now pointing sinners to look to the transformation of their own lives for the ground of their confidence before God, and we can't do that.

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When we talk about good works or obedience or anything, or we talk about these implications of the gospel, the entailments of it, we want to be really clear.

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The question is not, are we to do good works in Christ?

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Of course we are. The question is not, are we to pursue obedience in Christ? Of course we are.

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The question is not whether, the question is why. Why do we do good works?

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Why do we pursue obedience? That's where this thing goes off the rails, because so often the why is misunderstood, and it's misrepresented, and it's poorly taught, which results in bondage and not freedom.

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It results in a bunch of dread and guilt, not delight and joy. There's no peace.

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We're always chasing after something that we can never quite attain. Like you said, John, if you come away from a sermon, from a message, and your initial takeaway is guilt and condemnation, and I'm not good enough, and there is no way that I'm going to make it to heaven, and Jesus is going to tell me to depart from Him.

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If that's your takeaway, friend, I don't think you've heard the gospel. No. Because the reaction of the gospel is, this is unbelievable.

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This is scandal that you're telling me that I am as wretched as I am, and that I've broken all of God's commandments, and I've never really kept any of them, and I still struggle with my own corruption, yet God has counted to me, because of His grace, by faith in His Son, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Jesus.

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That's mine. You're telling me that? You're telling me that God has blotted out my sin, and He'll remember it no more, and looks at me and says, you're telling me that?

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That is scandalous mercy. That's the reaction that we have.

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Anyway, I could go on, dude. I want to throw it back over to you. Yeah. Here's an example.

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If someone comes, I'm still thinking of the virus, and there's going to be people who get to a place where they have nothing, and if someone walks up and says,

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I have nothing. I need. I cannot live on my own. I have nothing to survive, unless someone gives me something.

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I go inside my house, and I walk back out, and I said, I have great news for you.

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Great news. I have an entire house full of water, and food, and shelter, and it is yours, as long as you can pay some monthly rent.

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That's not good news. Not to the person who has nothing. I was going to say, not if you don't have any money.

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That's right. It's not good news. Now, they might think, well, thanks for offering how much money, because I have nothing, and I can't even go into debt because I'm already in debt.

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I'm in so much debt, I can't get out of the debt. That's why when someone hears the gospel, and they hear it's all yours, you can have all of it.

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Here's the difference. The father walks out of the house and says, well, not only am

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I going to give this to you, but I'm going to make you a part of my family so that you forever will never run out, and you will be owned by me, which means you get all of my name, and with my name comes my reputation, and with my reputation comes all that exists that's within me.

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Now, that's good news. He not only just gives you what you need, he takes you in, and he transforms you, and he creates within you a family.

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He brings you into his family, and yes, absolutely, not only do you receive mercy and you receive grace, but you are then receiving a wonderful gift called the transformation of life.

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The transformation of life is a wonderful gift, but it is not the message of the gospel.

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It is an implication of the gospel. It's a result of what you are.

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The danger is, someone will say, unless you are transforming your life, you are not in the gospel, and that's a byproduct.

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That is a byproduct. It's almost like yelling at somebody, unless you are moving 65 miles an hour, you cannot be a

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Christian because you're not in the car. I'm like, you have to be in the car in order to be moving 65 miles an hour.

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We're telling people, you must be doing that, and if you're not doing that, there's something wrong. I'm like, that's a cart before the horse here.

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Cart before the horse. Justin Perdue Well, just like we can't believe in Jesus and trust him apart from God giving us that faith out of his grace, the same is true when it comes to the transformation of life.

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You will never do that apart from God's grace. It cannot happen. You can't change your own heart.

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You can't transform your own life. Like you said, it is an outflow of the good news, and God is the one who does it.

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He is the one who changes you. When we start telling people, we absolutely lose our minds.

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We start to tell people, believe in Jesus, which we should. We should call men to believe.

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Then, of course, we want to preach about how we are to live. There are plenty of words in the Bible about how we live together, especially in the context, the corporate context of the church and how we love each other and the like.

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But to preach that to men as though they can do it is absolutely deluded.

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I want to go a couple of different ways. I've got a bunch of thoughts. I've got a few things jotted down on my handy -dandy whiteboard here.

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Just thinking about the scandal of the gospel, I had a conversation last week with a woman at the

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CrossFit box. She knows I'm a pastor, and everybody there knows

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I'm a pastor. She comes up to me before class. We're all there a few minutes early, just kind of loosening up and everything.

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She goes, I have a philosophical question for you. I said, sure, happy to try to answer it. She goes to a church in the area, at least has been checking it out a little bit, and had questions just about the nature of the gospel.

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If we were even to murder somebody, and we are believing in Jesus, we're still saved.

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If we were to do something really terrible, are we lost?

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I said to her, where we have to start is to understand that there is no amount of sinning.

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There is no degree of heinousness of a particular sin. There is no duration of a person remaining in sin that necessarily means that they're not a

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Christian. Christians struggle mightily with their own corruption and do extraordinarily evil things at points, because here's the message of the gospel.

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The message of the gospel is that Jesus is our righteousness, and that Jesus has atoned for our sin, and that we are looking away from ourselves and to Him completely for the ground of our confidence before the

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Lord and for our standing before God. We can do all kinds of terrible things, and yet God keeps us looking to Christ, and we are safe.

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We're talking about all that. How could that be that Jesus has done all this stuff?

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We started to talk a little bit about the fall of man in Adam and how everything that we lost in Adam, we have in Jesus by faith, that He came to succeed every way that Adam failed.

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By trusting in Christ, we are now in Jesus, and we're taking shelter in Christ.

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He is our representative, and His perfect record is had this conversation over the course of five minutes before a

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CrossFit workout. She just looks at me at the end of it, and she's just like, I've never thought about any of that. This is amazing.

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Yes, it is. It is absolutely incredible that we are in Christ Jesus, and His record is counted to us, and He protects us and shields us from the righteous anger and wrath of God that our sin deserves.

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He took it, and it's over, and we're safe. It's scandalous mercy. We talk about the prodigal son so often,

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Luke 15, with good reason, because that's another text that's so often misrepresented.

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The thing that I wanted to bring up today, which has been mentioned on Theocast before, certainly, if you think about the prodigal when he goes off and squanders his inheritance on foolish living, and he's finally brought to a place where he's eating the food that he's feeding to pigs, and there's all kinds of figurative stuff going on there for us to see.

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Man, this is a horrible situation. He, quote unquote, comes to his senses, and he starts to think,

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I'm going to go back to my father's house, and here's my pitch. I am going to offer myself to my father as a servant.

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I'm going to tell him, look, I've done all these things. I'm wrong. I don't deserve anything from you.

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Here's how I'm going to work, and I'm going to do what's required so that I can just be a part of your house again.

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What happens when he goes? He doesn't even get to that point. The father runs to him, and the father says, put my robes on him.

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Clothe him in my garments. Put my ring on his hand. Put shoes on his feet, and let's celebrate because my child is home.

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We always have these notions that if I just go back, if I repent, and if I go back to God, and I do my penance, and I do what's necessary to appease

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God, he'll be happy to have me as a part of his family again, whereas he won't even hear that nonsense.

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He comes out, and he's like, look, there's nothing that you could ever do. You're here. By my grace, you're here.

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I've got robes of righteousness for you, and I've got mercy for you, and I want to celebrate with you and rejoice over you because my child who once was lost has now come home.

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That's the good news. I've got other stuff, John, but I'm going to throw it back over to you. Let's take it to the opposite side.

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We always use the illustration of the rich young ruler. You have a man.

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He comes, and he asks Jesus a very important question. What must I do to inherit the kingdom of heaven?

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Jesus just answers his question. What people assume is that Jesus gives them good news.

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Oh, John, let him know. He gives them good news. He tells them, oh, the good news is be perfect, keep the law, and the young man says, well,

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I've done that from my youth, which I would love to know what the thought of Jesus at that moment was.

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Of course, the disciples don't know other than what Jesus just says, and he says, well, then go sell everything that you have and come follow me.

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What Jesus was exposing was that this man's heart was full of covetousness. He did not want to give up, so he wasn't sinless.

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Unfortunately, people spend this and say, well, unless you forsake everything and follow

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Jesus, you cannot be saved. No, Jesus was saying, you think you're holding to the whole law. You're not.

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You have failed. Yeah, he turns the temperature up. He dumps the full weight of the law on that man's conscience, and the young man goes away dejected because he can't do what

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Jesus has asked him to do, which is the point. The disciples even are like, okay,

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Jesus, who can be saved? They're despairing. Who can be saved? What does he say?

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Well, with man, it's impossible, but with God, it's possible. You're right, brother.

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How many times have we all heard the rich young ruler preached, and the gospel is presented as surrender all for Jesus?

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That's right. And it's like, look, just like we've talked about before about affections and feelings, when the gospel is presented as you need to desire and treasure

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Christ above all things. To desire and treasure Christ above all things and to surrender all for Jesus are things that I want to do in my inner man, and I never do perfectly.

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So, if that's the good news, then the good news is not so good. It's a law that condemns me because I could never meet the standard.

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The good news of surrendering all is surrender all your self -righteousness.

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So, if you want to say there's a surrender all, absolutely. It is when you hear

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Jesus Christ presented to you. The good news is you can give up on all requirements.

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You can just hand it over. You don't need it. It's not necessary. Not only do you not need it, it's offensive if you try and bring it.

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Just give it away. It's like Paul in Philippians 3, where he talks about not having a righteousness of our own.

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So, in Philippians 3, I love this language where he says, to write the same things to you again is no trouble for me and is safe for you.

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Then where does he go from there? He starts to talk about righteousness according to the law and then righteousness according to faith in Christ.

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So, he's again just beating this drum. He's very clear. I was a rock star Pharisee.

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If we're going to talk about righteousness according to the law, nobody had more than me. But I consider it rubbish.

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I count it as nothing. This is what you're saying. If you want to surrender all, then do this.

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Follow Paul's example in this, where he says, the righteousness that I had, which was substantial,

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I threw it away because it was trash. It was absolutely worthless because I have now come to have a righteousness by faith in Christ.

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It's what Jesus did for me that is my righteousness so that I might be resurrected.

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It's remarkable, man. So, the surrender all is not like give away all your stuff, though there may be times where we're giving stuff away.

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That's fine. We're told not to covet and be greedy and the like. Sure, you and I both agree about that. But the surrender all most fundamentally is to let go of your own notions of your own goodness.

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You turn from not just your sin, but turn from your own good works and look to Christ. That's right.

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This even goes back to another famous passage, which is, unless you forsake mother, father, brother, sister, and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.

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Again, we will then say, the gospel is abandoning all and following me.

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You have to ask, is that really good news that Jesus is presenting? Has anyone ever abandoned everything for the sake of God or for the sake of Jesus?

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Has anyone ever done that? If someone tells me, the greatest commandment of all, let's just trumpet all right here.

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The greatest commandment is, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Have you ever loved God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

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I will tell you, not for a second. I've had people argue with me on that. I was like, listen, there's no way.

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Your heart is still left within sin. God did not remove that from you yet.

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You need something outside of you. There's never a moment where your heart, in the corruption that remains in it, does not taint everything that you're doing, thinking, and feeling.

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It's always mixed. It's never perfect. That's right. Jesus is going after people who are trying to mix even law and gospel.

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They're trying to achieve that which, if I do this, then I will be accepted by Jesus.

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Jesus always takes the volume level that you have it at, which is a five, and he says,

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I'm going to turn to it ten, that pierces your ears. You say, no, all right, you want to do this by the law, then here it is.

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Here it is by the law. You cannot mix me with anything else.

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It doesn't work that way. This is why Paul writes such strong language to the Galatians.

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He says, why would you think that you could mix back in obedience to the law with grace?

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It's no longer grace. You drop one little granule of the law into the pool, the ocean of grace, and it's no longer the gospel.

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You think that's an extreme statement, but it's not. One salt granule of law mixed into the ocean of grace removes hope because the moment you make any requirement, it's no longer good news.

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To the person in debt, it is not good news. It's no longer grace because you have now introduced, even if it's a twinge, it's still a twinge of merit.

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There is something there that the sinner must be doing. Even if it's just this small, if it's one percent, we have now removed this from the category of grace and unmerited favor.

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How else can Paul say there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? Because if there is a requirement to be met by a

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Christian, I promise you, you will fail that requirement. Therefore, you will be under condemnation. We are all condemned if there's a requirement.

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Some of us are deluded into thinking that we're better than we are. But in our sane moments, when we are given a glimpse into our own sinfulness, we realize that if any of this depends on my performance or my affections or any of those things, then

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I am without hope, and I'm going to be lost forever. I'm thinking about Jesus and his words at the end of Matthew 11.

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These verses, Matthew 11, 28 to 30, in large part have inspired the tagline of Theocaste, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, where Jesus calls to himself, come to me, all you who are weary, burdened, and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

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He tells them to take his yoke upon them because his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

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That language of the yoke is a reference to the law. You've been bearing this yoke of the

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Pharisees and all of these heavy burdens that are being placed upon you. Come to me because the yoke that I will put upon you is easy and the burden that I will put upon you is light.

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If you're weary, come to me. It's just like the words of Isaiah 55. It's just like the language of Revelation 21.

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Come and drink of the water of life without payment. That's the bidding of Jesus.

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Come to me. We've talked about this before, John. If you're listening to a sermon or you're listening to a message and there is more burden being put on you, it's not the gospel.

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It's not Christ. If you're listening and the weak are being pounded, it's not

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Jesus and it's not the gospel. If bruised reeds are being broken, it's not Jesus and it's not the gospel.

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If smoldering wicks are being put out, it's not Jesus and it's not the gospel. So often,

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I think that the messages that we hear that are claiming to be gospel -centered and Christ -centered end up doing those very things.

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Demands and burdens are all over the place. Doubt is introduced. Insecurity is introduced.

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Those who are bruised reeds are being snapped in half by it.

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I think you gave this illustration. I don't remember if it was on the show or if it was in our pre -conference.

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You were talking about a time in seminary where there was a guy who got up in the preaching class and more or less just lambasted everybody with law.

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Your professor stands up and his first comment is, is there no balm in Gilead?

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That's how I think you and I feel sometimes. I trust many who are listening to the show feel this way.

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You're hearing a message and you're listening and you're like, my goodness, is there no balm in Gilead?

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Where is the balm, man? Where is Christ for me?

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I think in the members podcast, we will spend time talking about the difference of preaching against sin, which

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Justin and I do. I don't mind. As a matter of fact, I feel it's my responsibility as the preacher of the

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Bible to accurately preach the whole counsel of God. In doing so, I will lead people to feel guilty of their sin.

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I will press down in on that. You should feel guilty for the lack of love and for lust and anger and pride and all of that.

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You should just feel horrible for that. Then the gospel comes in and brings relief.

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That's where you repent of your sin and find joy. This is why every week we do a prayer of confession.

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We confess that which we feel guilty for. I feel guilty for my sin because I have violated my relationship with my

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Father, who has graciously adopted me and called me into his own, and I treated it as trash.

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I treated him as if he could be consumed and thrown into the waste basket. Then he says, repent of that and find joy.

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That leads us to the gospel. We are faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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That's grace. If you do not emphasize grace, you do not emphasize the gospel. So Paul, I just wanted to agree with you and add on to what you're saying about how you and I both believe in and do preach about the horror of sin and want to help our people understand, as we preach the whole counsel of God, how bad our sin is and how horrible it is for our lives.

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So I'm thinking about Paul's language. First Timothy 1 .8, he says, We know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully.

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That's what you and I are after. When we're talking about sin, we're speaking in categories of law.

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The three uses of the law are always in view when I'm preparing a sermon, and I know they are for you too.

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First of all, we're preaching the horror of sin, that we all might feel guilty for it, and we all might know how condemned we are, that we might run to Christ and that we might trust

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Christ, say, thank God for Jesus. Then also, I'm helping people see how sin has never led anywhere good.

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Sin has never done anything good for them in their lives. If you pursue this, brothers and sisters, if we pursue this, it will end up in wreckage and ruin and disaster.

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If we pursue this, God has told us that it will be good for us. We always talk in these terms.

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We're also thinking in Christ Jesus, let us, by the Spirit, by grace, we pursue obedience and conformity to God's word.

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It's like, Lord, give me grace that I might not sin, and give me grace that I might live unto you.

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Give me grace that I might be conformed. Continue to work in me and conform me to the image of your Son. We're always thinking in these terms and preaching in these ways, but never do we collapse those categories to where that transformation or even sin is bad.

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That is not the gospel. The gospel is, again, Jesus and His work in the place of the sinner.

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We're looking outside of us to save what's wrong in us, and we're resting in Christ. That's the good news.

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Well, we definitely have more to say. We are out of time, my friend. This may even be a whole other show at some point.

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One thing that I want to talk about, maybe we'll touch on this in the members area if we have time, is the guys that will champion

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Christ -centered preaching and never actually offer Christ to sinners. Well, let's do it. Let's jump into the members and just do it.

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We may need to do a whole podcast on that as well. We do. It's my job. I'm failing miserably, brothers and sisters, friends, in trying to wrap this show up and get us over to the members area.

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Thank goodness there's grace for me. So, thank you for listening to this episode of Theocast.

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We hope that it's been of some encouragement to you as you think about the work of Christ for you and you think about the safety that is yours by faith through the grace of God and Jesus.

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We're going to make our way, John and I are, over to the members podcast. You might be listening and you're thinking, I don't even know what that is.

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Well, the members podcast is an additional podcast that we offer to our membership every week. You can go over to theocast .org,

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our website, and find more information about our total access membership there. We're still offering a two -week free trial on that membership so that you can kick the tires and see what all this additional content is and give the members podcast a listen for a couple of weeks and determine if you want to become a member.

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So, avail yourself of that. And for our members, we will talk with you in just a moment.