Is the Gospel Peace & Security or Fear & Self-Examination?

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You wanna talk about power of the gospel, right? I was listening to Dr. Bob yesterday with Dr.

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Godfrey and he, man, he suffocated us for a long time, just long. And it was great, because it was the righteousness of Christ when he comes to expose us all.

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And you can feel that, and that's when all the air gets sucked out of your lungs, you are longing for the fresh, pure air of the gospel.

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And when you suck it in, you're realizing that I don't want anything else, right? Like, and he did it right.

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He completely sucked everything out of you in the law. And then it's like, all right, now here's Christ. Unfortunately, what we try and do is we don't want to suck the air out of everybody, so we'll do law and the gospel.

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Like, well, here's how it kind of both makes sense. And then you get no power, because all you get is exhaustion.

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Yeah, I think it really shows though how impossible faith is apart from it being a dying gift.

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That's right. Because, you know, that's just too good to be true, because it doesn't seem to touch on the experience

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I had, which you addressed yesterday. The experience that I have with indwelling sin. Listen, there's a difference in the

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Christian. In the Christian, he doesn't sin according to the whole man.

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It's in his fleshly sinful nature that he sins, but his desire, his desire, because he's renewed in the inward man, in his inner being, is to love

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God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. But if you're touching on experience, and because there's so much continued struggle, even failure, it's really hard for the sinner, apart from the grace of God, to, it's impossible forever to see and embrace this.

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You will always say, no, that's impossible that God could love me. Or, it's impossible that I'm right with him, if we're all honest.

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It's like, yeah, that's always kind of there. And that's the, yeah, it's always kind of in the background of my mind.

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It's always kind of in the recesses of my heart. John Owen, in communion with the triune God, he makes it plain that it is normal for us to have hard thoughts of God in our flesh and blood, right?

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And we think, and you said this yesterday, we think it's presumptuous. Flesh and blood, creaturely, sinner, all these things.

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I ought not think of God as kind and tender and gentle and loving. I'm way out over my skis.

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I shouldn't talk like that. And that's why we need the constant preaching of the gospel, to be reminded of the fact, like you just used the language of, there's no way that we're good.

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There's no way that he could really love me. Like, oh, but he does. Yeah, maybe for the guy over there, but right.

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I need to be showed, I need to think more often of how the Lord is pleased with me, how he loves me, he's for me, he's with me.

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And this has been accomplished by Christ because he has accomplished peace, reconciliation, all of the curse, all of the judgment, he's taken it.

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There is no more anger. There is no more wrath. Richard Sibb's wonderful work, the Bruce Reed, there's the account that he gives, it's towards the end of this hypothetical dialogue between a believer and Satan.

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And Satan's accusing the believer of the weakness of the believer's faith and of how little the believer has loved.

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Jesus is the one who does not break Bruce Reed's. He doesn't put out smoldering wicks, right? He's effectively, he's gentle and lowly, right?

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As Satan says to the believer, yeah, but you've gotten to love, you got to have faith.

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The believer says, you're right. Just a flicker of faith and love. Satan says, well,

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Christ will regard that. To which the response is, oh, but he will.

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He will cherish it, that flicker. He will cherish it and he will nurture it until he has brought judgment to victory, right?

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And that's the word. And that's, I mean, I have chills saying it because like that's the peace and the security that the gospel alone gives.

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I mean, that's the power of God. That even the great accuser, he's got nothing because Christ will cherish us.