Have I Gone Too Far? | Kingsmen

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Welcome to the

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Kingsman podcast, I'm your host John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and one of the hosts of Theocast, a weekly podcast about Reformed theology.

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And Kingsman is dedicated to helping people understand when Christ says, seek first the kingdom of God, what does that look like?

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And how do we find rest in our king and his kingdom while we advance the kingdom? And that's what this is about.

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So one of the, we've been talking a lot about the advancement of Satan and his tactics and how he discourages us.

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And one of the titles that's given to Satan is he is the great accuser, he accuses the brothers.

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And we hear things like that, but we just don't really know what to do with it. What do these accusations sound like?

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What do they look like? Well, the title of this podcast is Have I Gone Too Far? And that's absolutely one of his accusations.

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He sees you and how weak and vulnerable you are. And the lie that is told to you is you have gone too far this time.

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You are beyond forgiveness. You are beyond restoration. And he uses that to enslave people, to keep them down, to keep them discouraged.

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As if there is a limit to grace, there's a limit to it. And it's really sad because grace is far more radical than that.

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And yes, I use the word radical because I don't even fully understand just how radical grace is.

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I think it is not, it should not go unnoticed.

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The one of the most controversial stories that Jesus tells is about a boy who went too far.

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He went so far that he not only destroyed his life, but he destroyed half of his father's life.

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And we all know this as the prodigal son. And that's one story. But what about the story of David, right?

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Or the story of Peter? And we could keep going down the list of men and women who have destroyed their lives.

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And yet God is the one who brings them back and loves on them and cares for them and never justifies their sin and never condones it, but tells them, but there is more grace.

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I mean, going back to last week in James chapter four, and James calls the church an adulterous people.

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I mean, that's like a really big offense, you know, I would hope never to be accused of being an adulterer, you know, cheating on my spouse.

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In the verse he says right after that, he says, but there is more grace. And that's what makes grace radical. I don't want you to hear me out.

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If you're sitting here and you're like, but you don't understand, you don't understand what I've done. Now listen, I'm not, I'm not justifying if you're committed crimes and you've hurted people, you've hurt people, you need to make that right.

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And you need, you need to submit to the authorities if that's the case, but that doesn't mean that you're going to be held accountable before the judgment seat of Christ on the last day for that.

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That's what grace is for. That's the point of it. It's unmerited favor of God. Mercy removes the sin and grace covers you with righteousness.

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And this is why during the Reformation, Sola Fide, faith alone is so, um, it's hard for the heart to understand.

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How is it that if I truly believe that God's grace is sufficient and I believe that alone, that he will absolutely forgive all of my past, present, and future sins?

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That's because God sets the terms. We as humans aren't allowed to set the terms. I think if humans were allowed to set the terms, we would put something out of obligation in there that we could participate in.

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I really do. And that's the lie of Satan. This is where legalism comes in. This is where false religions come in, that there's always something to be done.

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If you want truly God's love, then you need to do your part. You need to be cleaning yourself up.

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I'm all for it. We want to submit ourselves to the ways of righteousness, right? We want to repent and live for the

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King. But what keeps people from doing that, what allows people to stay in their sin, what people keep, uh, they never pray and receive the benefits of mercy, as Hebrews says, right?

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With boldness, run into the presence of your father and ask for mercy. I think the prodigal son is an amazing story of this.

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He didn't do it with boldness. He did it reluctantly, right? Who with boldness ran towards him?

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His father. His father came and gave him forgiveness and grace immediately the moment he saw him.

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Put a robe on him, put a thing on him, and immediately had covered all of his shame. He covered his shame with himself.

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And the writer of Hebrews says, you can, with boldness, come into the presence of your father and ask for mercy and grace because that's the relationship that you have with him.

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You're adopted. He loves you. And he loves you so much, he will never allow anything to stay between you and himself, including your own stupidity and sin.

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So have you gone too far? Yep. For your own self -righteousness, you sure have. And you do feel ashamed and guilty and you feel the weight of your sin.

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Yeah, that's the law. And that's the purpose of the law. And the law is there to remind us that the consequences of sin never pay.

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It never pays out. You never have true satisfaction and joy and hope and love.

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But if you live by faith, trusting in the power of the Spirit, if you walk by the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

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You know what that means? You believe in Jesus' promises, so when the temptation of the flesh comes, it goes, nope,

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I'm not going to believe that because I know where it leads. I'm not going to believe that. I know where it leads. This is why he says, walk by the

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Spirit. The Spirit teaches us the truth of the gospel, that God loves us unconditionally. It's his mercy and grace that covers all of us.

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We walk every day and he comes over and says, yeah, but you could be satisfied with this. He goes, no, I won't. That's a lie.

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I'm going to walk by the truth of Christ because Christ has never once lied to me. He's always delivered on his promises. And I know for a fact that one day

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I will be with him in all of eternity. So instead of indulging in the flesh, I'm going to indulge in the

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Spirit. So have you gone too far? Let me ask you this. If you think you're unredeemable, if you think you've gone too far, you've now stepped outside of scripture and you created your own

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Bible. Those words don't exist. The only way you've gone too far is if you look at Jesus Christ and his blood and say,

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I don't believe that Christ's blood can save me. Now you've gone too far.

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But if you think you've done too much sin and you've done it too long, that's not in scripture.

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It's not there. If you trample underfoot the blood of Christ, well, then there's no hope for you. And that's what the writer of Hebrews says.

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If you don't believe his blood is sufficient, and I believe in my heart of hearts that I know from the power of the

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Spirit and the trusting of the word of God, that no matter what you've done and who you are, you can be redeemed and you can be restored.

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And this is why the preaching of the gospel and the community of the gospel is so important to us as believers, because Satan and his lies will come in and he will accuse us in our hearts and our minds and we'll believe them and we will wander from the truth and we will say we're unredeemable and that's a lie.

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There is nobody who's unredeemable and there's nobody to whom God's grace cannot cover. And I am so thankful that I can say that not because I am a kind of a bad sinner, it's because I'm a great sinner and he's even a greater savior.

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So my encouragement to you is if you want to believe this to be true and you're struggling, go find a place called a church where there's people who say they're in desperate need of God and listen to the grace that they preach, because that's a sinner proving to you that God's grace is sufficient to save even them.

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Go to church and hear it preached. If you can't find a church that preaches the gospel, move. Your heart and your rest and the satisfaction of Christ depends upon it.

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Move. Find a church that will preach to you the gospel. May God's grace be upon you, we'll see you next time.

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Real quick before you go, if you'd like to find a like -minded church that preaches the gospel, the link in our bio will send you to our website where there's a church finder, and hopefully you'll be able to find a church near you.