Simple Christianity | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and we want to kick off the new year talking about the simplicity of Christianity or simple

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Christianity. We have cluttered Christianity through all kinds of lists and requirements.

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There's all kinds of movements, and many people aren't quite sure what it is they're supposed to be doing or not doing.

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Every week they show up to church and there's a new requirement. There's a new list. They read a new book. They listen to a new podcast.

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What used to be simple, when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, now seems complicated.

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Here are the different ways in which you must come to find rest. Justin and I want to do our best to simplify this message, create a new foundation, so that for the rest of this year, you can truly know what it means to rest in Jesus Christ.

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We hope you enjoy simple Christianity. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a Reformed perspective. It is good to be back behind the microphone, and today we have two of us.

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We have with us Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Chile, Asheville, North Carolina, and myself,

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John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. I got up to 51 yesterday.

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Is it actually cold in Asheville right now? Yeah, it's in the 30s. It's actually a relatively mild morning, so not terribly bad today.

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I talked with Jimmy yesterday, and he said it was a high of 35. They were really excited.

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It's been a little chilly the last few days. It's been a strange winter, though. It's been generally mild. I don't know if that's going to change in January, February, or March.

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Oftentimes, that's how it works. If it's really mild up to now, March is often really hard, so we'll see.

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Awesome. Well, I'm sure people don't want to hear us talk about the weather. It probably annoys me more than anything to hear someone talk about the weather, and here we are.

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I hear you, dude. I mean, you're the one who started it, John. It's right here. It's because I'm getting gray. What happens when you get old?

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You've got nothing to talk about about the weather. I'm getting grayer as well. We can't do that anymore. Yeah.

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Yeah. We're, uh, so obviously this is our, maybe this isn't obvious to the audience, but we'll just go ahead and say, this is our first recording of 2020 and we're knocking, knocking the rust off, getting back in the saddle.

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We may or may not have had to try to intro this like three times. Three times.

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That's my fault. And we're missing Jimmy. Jimmy will be back with us next week, covering a really great topic.

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One of his ideas. Yeah. You know, we'll talk about that in a little bit, but man, it's 2020 is a big year.

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We've got, we have so many announcements. I wish I could make them all right now, but stay tuned. Uh, if you don't, if you don't follow us on email, you should go there and join us.

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Cause we'll be making a lot of announcements there, but we've got several books coming out, one collaborative, and then

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I know Justin's working on one. Jimmy's working on one. I'm working on one. Some of them are books. Some of them are primers and we've got some good interviews coming out, uh, that I'm excited about too.

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We're going to be kind of, uh, spread it out a little bit. It'll be a little different. We're going to bring on people that you may have never heard of or don't know about, and we're going to cross denominational lines.

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Um, we've, uh, we've had some Presbyterians, we've had some Lutherans and some Episcopalians, and I guess it's time to bring on some

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Baptists just so, you know, they don't feel left out. We don't want them to feel left out. No, not at all. Cause you know, we are, we are that big that the

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Baptist, you know, they probably do feel left out. Oh my goodness. We are equal opportunity though.

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We want people to realize that, that we, in every good way we could mean it, we're together for the gospel, you know, and if, if people get, if no,

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I mean, I'm, that's, that's sincere. And if people are all about the sufficiency of Christ and things like law, gospel distinction and covenant theology and the rest, we're happy to, happy to talk with them about it.

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Yeah. I mean, people ask us all the time about kind of what is, you know, what, what is theocast?

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Cause a lot of times podcasts are connected to a denomination or personal belief and, you know, like 1517 would probably be one of those that would be similar to that.

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But we're, we don't necessarily have, we are, we all hold to one confession, but that doesn't mean that theocast is a

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Baptist podcast. It was kind of described as that way recently. And I was like, Hmm, that's interesting. We actually have more people who become

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Presbyterian listening to our podcast and they do Baptists. Yeah. I mean, even though we all,

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I guess you might call us reformed Baptists or particular Baptists because of the confession that we hold to.

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I know that you, John and Jimmy and myself, we might all articulate a little bit differently.

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Like if we were describing our own churches, even we might say things a little bit differently, but we all confess the same confession.

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But yeah, we're, we are happy to talk with guys who are, who are confessional Lutherans, who are Westminster confession guys and the like.

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And so, yeah, we should do a podcast on that. Yeah, it'd be good.

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It'd be really good. I know we've been talking some, you and Jimmy and myself recently about theocast moving into the new year and our tagline has been, and I trust will continue to be something like encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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And that, that is essentially what this ministry is about is pointing, pointing saints who are often weary because life in a fallen world is hard, pointing them to Jesus, His sufficiency,

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His work, His merit in their place and helping people find rest and peace and joy in Christ is what we're about.

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So we hope that the conversations in 2020 have that kind of flavor about them.

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Yeah. And all of our, the books that we have coming out are, you know, if I, I, it has been described that theocast is kind of the gateway drug into Reformed theology.

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And we love sitting right there at that place. Um, if once you're in and, and you are, you're ready to go deep, man, we've got recommendations for you.

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We've got books for you. Sure. Um, but it's kind of like, you've got to go to, you got to go to, uh, high school before you can go to college.

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So, you know, I guess maybe we're the, we're the high school ministry.

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I don't know. Let the listener understand. I'm not sure. Anyway, today,

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John, I'm going to go ahead and transition us into our, our topic, if you're cool with that. Yeah, let's do it.

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So I don't know if people out there have had this experience. It has been mine at points in my

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Christian life. Looking back, Christianity is often made to sound and made to be very complicated.

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And it is our conviction here at theocast, as we have understood scripture and as we look to the confessions and the like, that the

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Christian life is not complicated, but in fact, it is very simple. And we're going to clarify what we mean by that.

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When we say that the Christian life is simple, we don't mean that it isn't deep. When we say that the

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Christian life is simple, that doesn't mean that it's easy. In fact, it's impossible in our own strength, and it's only by living by faith in the

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Son of God and reliance upon the Holy Spirit in us that, that we live the Christian life. But we want to have a conversation today about how things have gotten so complicated.

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How did we get here? Why is it so complicated? Why am I given 3 ,900 different things to do and think about and wrestle with?

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And then maybe give some people some practical thoughts about what really does matter in the

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Christian life. Yeah, no, I think that's super helpful. One of the things that you come into the new year with is that there's, and we're going to, we don't want to steal from next week.

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We're going to talk about the new year next week. But one of the...

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Yeah, we will. We'll talk with Jimmy more about New Year's resolutions and the yokes we put ourselves under this time of year.

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I had the privilege of having a pretty long conversation with a student from Westminster Theological Seminary who is home.

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He goes to a church here in Nashville, and he's about to graduate, and I think he's going to go get a secular degree in counseling.

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And we were talking about just the human nature and human problems.

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And one of the things that I have after, you know, I guess I've been in pastoral ministry now for almost 20 years.

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One of the conclusions I've come to with my own struggles, my own family, my own neighbors, my own city, and my own country is life is really complicated.

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And when you think about involving history and sin, and you have struggle with death, and you have struggle with identity,

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I mean, there's so much that we as humans just don't remove any type of religion, just as on a human level, we struggle with so much.

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And then you walk into a Christian church, you're already beat down by the culture, because if you watch

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TV at all, those people are all perfect and beautiful, they all have enough money, and it seems like they're all happy, which we know is a lie, but it still feels that way.

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And then our jobs aren't enough, we're not good enough parents, we're not good enough neighbors, everything about our life feels like it's at 50 % or less.

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And then we walk into a church and it's just piled on.

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On top of that, what should be a place of rest, or even what's described as a hospital, a place of restoration, you hear law, and the reason you hear law is, okay, you haven't met this standard, you aren't accomplishing all the requirements, and so you come from a complicated life, and you walk into even more complications of a religion, which should be creating, as we say, rest and assurance, but you walk out defeated and beat down because you do not feel like you can measure up, and that's really what we want to be pulling back and saying, maybe we've missed the complete essence of the gospel, because the gospel does not complicate

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Christianity. I think it is one of the most simplifying and unifying messages, but somehow we've put so many layers onto the gospel that it's so complicated and so cluttered that people walk into church and go,

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I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing, or there's so much I'm supposed to be doing, I don't think I can do it all. Like you said, life in a fallen world, life in this world is complicated.

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It's very complex. There's a lot of layers to human beings, and there's a lot of layers, often, to the challenges that we face, the trials that we encounter, and the rest.

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It's a sadness when you walk into the church and you get, on the one hand, on the outside looking in as you observe people, you get the church's version of the

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Instagram life, the Instagram family. Everything looks really good and everything's nice and tidy and neat and put together, but then you start to wrestle with what the church is teaching, and it does just pile it on, to use your words there,

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John, piles it on us. Like, my gosh, my life is hard enough as it is, and I'm already struggling with feelings and haunting thoughts of my own inadequacy and all the ways that I'm not measuring up in every sphere of my life, and now

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I'm being given all of these things to do and all of these standards to meet in the church, and I just can't do it, and the gospel, like you said, is either confused or it's assumed, and people are not pointed to someone who can, in fact, give them rest.

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And so I know it's our thought. We were talking a little bit before we hit record that what makes Christianity simple is its foundation, and well, who is that?

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I mean, the foundation of Christianity is obviously Jesus Christ and the gospel that bears his name.

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It's Christ's perfect life in the place of sinners that is counted to us by faith. It's Christ's atoning work that is counted to us by faith, and it's his triumphant resurrection that will be ours one day because we're united to him.

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And so essentially the Christian life is founded upon Jesus and his work in the place of the sinner, and we trust that.

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We trust him, and we are reconciled to God. Every standard has been met for us, and then we can have conversations about how we live, but it's never put upon us as though this is something that you must do in order to be safe, in order to know rest, in order to know peace, because Christ has secured that for you.

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And whatever we move beyond that or leave that, we're going to go all kinds of astray and put all kinds of burdens on people that the

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Lord does not intend to be put upon them. So today, one of the things we want to do is bring some simplicity to, we would say, the conversation of Christianity.

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And to do that, we have to look at the foundation of what the modern -day

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Christian experience is built on. And then look at Scripture and ask ourselves, are these two matching, or is one pragmatism and is one a self -improvement model, and is the other one what we're going to argue for, which is a biblical model that creates rest and stability?

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So J .P. and I were talking beforehand that really this whole conversation about Christianity being simple is a foundation issue.

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So if you begin on the foundation that, okay, sure, if you're evangelical, if you've grown up in a

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Christian church, whether it's Baptist or Bible church or just broadly evangelical, then you'll be fairly convinced that your salvation is based upon faith alone.

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In other words, you know it's been pounded into your head. You're not saved by works. You're not saved by a combination of works and baptism or whatever it is.

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But the problem is that as soon as that's established, which that would say we establish that at the end of sermons, whether it's on altar call or raise of the hand or talk to somebody or whatever it is, but immediately after that, what we call standing or you've got your ticket to heaven.

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I'm good. I said the prayer. I walked the aisle. I wrote the card, whatever it is that you think it is that brought you into heaven or into a relationship with God.

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So we've established that I have a relationship with God and we'll use things like personal relationship with God, which we will talk about one day, probably in our discipleship podcast, that from that moment, now we must maintain and develop that relationship with God.

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And it sounds good language. Like, you know, it's the gospel gets you into the relationship and now it's time to develop that relationship.

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And there's some truth to that. Of course, Paul talks about growing in our faith that we shouldn't be babes longing for the meat of the word.

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But really what's happening is if you go back to revivalism, which if you've been listening to Theocast for a while, you kind of know what this is.

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If you don't, you know, back in the basically the turn of the century in the middle of the 18th century, you have a fear of people coming to church and then living like the devil.

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And so they're basically saying, okay, listen, if you're calling yourself a Christian, you better start acting like a Christian. And they started putting all of these rules in there.

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You can't go to bars. You can't drink. You can't dance. You've got to dress a certain way. You've got to look a certain way.

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And if you don't, then we're going to start questioning your Christianity. Well, that's just transformed into all different kinds.

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I mean, maybe it's not drinking and maybe it's not music today, but it comes down to performance.

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And as Jimmy likes to say, the new sacrament or the new way in which we have a promise from God that we can be developed into a better person is through Bible reading.

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And so the foundation now is no longer Christ and Him crucified. He is our representative.

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He is our replacement. And we sit firmly on that foundation. Our foundation now is, what are you doing for Jesus now that you're in?

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That's the foundation. And that is not a simple foundation because as Justin Lee asked you this question, who has the right list of what

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Christians should be doing in order to be accepted before God? In order for God to say, look at you, well done, good and faithful servant.

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I'm happy with what you're doing. Who has the right list? Well, I'm going to play the game.

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If you look around at the evangelical context, everybody's got their own list, so that makes it really hard because it depends on which leader you're following, which

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Twitter account's your favorite. You're going to be told a bunch of different things to do. In terms of how to meet

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God's standard, God's word is very clear. It's His holy law and you must keep all of it perfectly or you're done.

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And so we're either trying to do that and merit God's favor or we're looking to the one who has done it for us and are thereby right with the

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Lord. I don't know if that's the answer that you're looking for, John. But as I said, everybody's got their own list and that's a problem.

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And I've grown up in different contexts where the list changed.

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That's sort of what I'm getting at. Yeah, absolutely. So, no one has the right list. I mean, the list will typically have like Bible reading and prayer.

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There are a few common things. Right. And then there's just a complication. And then, to be honest with you, that list, even if I were to say to you,

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Justin, in order for you to be accepted by God, you need to read your Bible. You have to ask an important question. What is the question, sir?

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How much? That's right. That's right. And the same thing with prayer. How much do

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I need? Like, how deeply am I meditating on the Bible? How much am I recalling? How much do

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I need to be memorizing? There are all kinds of things that we could ask in terms of what kind of Bible reading is adequate.

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And nobody can really answer that question for you either. The assumption is generally going to be, well, the more the better.

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And that may be true, but we're going to get into this more next week. This is how people end up with the best of intentions setting off on these really rigorous

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Bible reading plans or something. And then literally in day 10, they've fallen off the wagon and are absolutely despondent by day 17 and have given up by January 31st.

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And I know that we'll, again, get into this more later, but, and by later,

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I mean in future podcasts, less can be more actually, and a little bit is good.

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And so setting reasonable goals for yourself, not yoking yourself to something that's going to crush you is wise.

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And yeah, there's a lot. Well, I mean, I would even, yeah, the famous words, I just, I would go to Christ and I would say our ministry is really based on this, when

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Jesus is talking to those who are beat down by the complications of religion, they are beat down by the law and he says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and he means all of you who are just so tired of trying to obey the law and the system.

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Yep. I will give you rest. Rest does not sound like here's a list of everything that you must do and do it faithfully and consistently if you want to rest.

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That doesn't sound like rest to me. Sure. And I'm preaching through Mark right now, and John, I know that you've been in John's gospel.

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So we're both wrestling with these things weekly in our sermon preparation.

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Jesus sets himself over and against the religious system of his day that is absolutely based upon codification, that's based upon a system of sacrifices and things to do and things to abstain from, and he's dealing with people who are elite in their ability to live by a code, but then he makes it clear over and over again that the whole thing is upside down, the whole thing is backwards.

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And that true real religion is not based upon those things, but is in fact based upon a right understanding of God's law and what it requires, and then that driving people to Jesus, to him who has accomplished everything that they need.

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And there in, we find rest because Christ bids us, like you just said, he bids us to come to him, come to me.

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And he provides righteousness. He provides atonement. He provides redemption.

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He's done it. And he takes the yoke of the law off of his people, and then we can live in relationship with the law in a way that isn't burdensome, and so when you get that mixed up, man, it causes all kinds of problems, and I think you're right.

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If you're an evangelical, if I can just talk about this for a moment, if you're an evangelical, I agree with what you said earlier, that you've grown up with it pounded into you that we're not saved by what we do, but we're saved by faith.

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And a lot of people, praise God this is true, can recite to you, I'm saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, to which we say, amen.

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Now let's be consistent in how we talk about the Christian life in light of that reality, because what happens for so many people is that as soon as that wonderful gospel message is proclaimed, the rest of the exhortation and the teaching goes on to sometimes contradict that reality, but at best undermine it.

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It undermines the assurance and the peace that we have with God in Christ Jesus when we're told, yeah, that's true.

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You're saved by faith, but now if you're sincere in your faith, you're going to be doing all these things.

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And if you're really serious about Christ, then your life is going to look this way and this way and this way. And if you're not sincere enough, and if you're not serious enough, you should be afraid because you may very well be a carnal

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Christian or one of those people that Jesus is going to come back and look at you and say, yeah, depart from me.

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I never knew you. And this is how people wrestle and struggle mightily with assurance or lack thereof, though they've been in the church their whole lives and are sincerely meaning to trust

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Christ. And it's a sadness, really. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. And 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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And you can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. And 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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And 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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So one of the things, as we have announced, and Theocast is a

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Reformed podcast, and what we mean by that is we look to the theology that was regained during the

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Reformation. And what was really regained at the Reformation was assurance.

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And another way of saying that is the way in which God looks at you and determines

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His actions towards you is what we call a position. So at birth, your position before God, His attitude towards you and the way in which you stood before Him was enemy and convicted as guilty and on your way to punishment.

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And then, of course, which is the glorious simplicity of the gospel, is that Jesus came who was perfect, who was sinless, and He had to be perfect and sinless, and had to be human, and stood in your place, and then removed the position,

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He moved you out of the position of guilty into innocent, and then also didn't just move you from guilty to innocent, but had the position change of unrighteous to righteous.

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So God just doesn't say that you're innocent. He says you're innocent and righteous. To have righteousness means that you've actually performed or can be considered to be one that is holy or has done righteous acts.

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I was just going to jump in on that part. I think many people in their evangelical experience have gotten the

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Christ died for my sins piece, but then that portion about Christ's fulfillment of the law perfectly,

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His perfect life, His perfect record of obedience and holiness is counted to me by faith, and it is as though I actually did all of the things that Jesus did.

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That is an insane, mind -blow reality that demonstrates the scandal of the gospel and the beauty of it, that not only is it as though I've never sinned or never had any corruption, it is as though I have actually done all of the holy, perfect, obedient works that Jesus did.

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They're credited to my account. And so, yeah, it's like all of the righteousness and the works that I would ever need have been credited to me.

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And then, yeah, I will, by God's Spirit, walk in the good works that He has prepared for me to walk in, but it all flows from what

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Christ has already done for me, and that's rock -solid, man. It's unshakable.

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It's permanent. Anyway, go for it. No, so here's part of the foundational issue, is the position.

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To get into the position where God says, not only are you cleansed, but you're righteous, meaning

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I fully accept you and I have nothing against you. And not only that,

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I mean, at that moment, you are described as being adopted, so you're His child.

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He was your judge, now He's your Father. Right. So the question now is, how do you continue in this position as saved, adopted, imputed, or you are now wearing the jersey of Jesus?

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Like, hey, I have all of, you know, I've got Jesus's righteousness. You're wearing

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His robes. That's right. So Jesus is about to leave the earth in John 17, and He's talking publicly.

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He's praying to the Father, but in their presence, so they can hear what He's saying, and He says something that is absolutely profound, and this is the foundation that He sets up for His disciples.

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This is foundation rest right here. So in verse 9, He says,

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John 17, 9, no, I'm sorry, verse 10, He says, All mine are yours, and all yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.

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And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are ones.

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Now, Jesus and the Father are one, and there's nothing, nothing that can separate that, nothing.

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Nothing in the universe or any universe that's out there. And Jesus is saying that same unity.

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He does not say to the disciples, disciples, do this to stay there. He says to the Father, Father, you keep them, but He doesn't end.

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That's right. While I was with you, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except for the son of destruction, which

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He says was prophesied by the scriptures. So He's asking the Father now, through it's the

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Father's power. And in this whole entire section, Jesus is not speaking to potential believers.

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He's speaking to men He assumes are His believers. Judas is gone, it's the 11 disciples, and He's very clear at the beginning of the chapter and all throughout chapter 16, that one, the only way you can enter in a relationship with the

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Father is through believing that He is the Messiah. And faith alone.

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And He's very clear, He does not put a quantity or quality on the faith.

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He says, belief. And it's very obvious that these men don't have a very strong faith because they all, in about a few hours, are about to abandon

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Him. But He, before they abandon Him, before they all leave Jesus, before they are pressed down by the circumstance of fear of death,

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Jesus makes sure these men hear, listen, you'll be kept in this position as child by the

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Father, not by you, because you're all about to abandon me. Especially you, Peter, you're about to deny me, not only once, but you're going to do it later in your ministry again.

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And Peter is never questioned. His position is always secure because he belongs to Jesus, not because he has faith.

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You know, we've talked about this, just faith. Jesus is the one who's saving him, and Peter believes that.

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It's not faith that saves him, it's Jesus that saves him. And his faith is the evidence that Jesus is saving him.

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Well, in Luke's account, in Luke 22, when Jesus is telling Peter that He's going to deny him,

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He goes ahead and tells him, and when you turn back, strengthen your brothers. So Christ is very clear about that reality, that Peter will turn back and that God is the one who reigns over this and will keep him in spite of his own weakness.

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Yeah, I think Jesus, if anything, you mentioned the quantity of faith issue. We've talked about this before on Theocast.

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If anything, Jesus does not prescribe a high amount of faith, a massive quantity of faith that's necessary.

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He talks about how if you have faith that's even like the grain of a mustard seed, you can move mountains. Well, what's the point of that?

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It's that any faith will do. Any faith in Christ will do. Why? Because it is not about our faith even, the quality, the quantity, the strength, the sincerity, pick your descriptive, right?

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It's not about that. It's about Christ. It's about the object of our faith. And that can't be said enough. I'm sitting here listening to us talk,

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John, this is kind of a pivot. And it's interesting, we're talking about simple Christianity and what have we been talking about now for 25 minutes or so, we're just talking about the gospel.

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We're talking about what Christ has accomplished and that's no accident because the

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Christian faith obviously is founded and grounded upon the gospel and Christ and his work and everything else, but it's the only way in being really, really doggedly clear on the gospel all the time that we will ever get the

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Christian life right, and this is why in our churches, I know for you and for Jimmy and for me, we are committed as much as we can be as imperfect men to herald and extol the graces of Jesus Christ to our people every

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Sunday, because that's what we need more than anything. And so you can't ever assume the gospel.

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You can't ever move beyond the gospel. We live under it all the time and it's only in this heralding of Christ and pointing one another to him and looking to him and trusting him that the

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Christian life can ever be in fact simple, where we are free, really free.

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And I know that for me, man, when people would talk about freedom in Christ, for the longest time,

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I would think to myself, I have no idea what they're talking about. I have no idea what that means to be free because in my experience, it's been anything but that.

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It's been, yeah, I know that Jesus is legit and I love him and I'm thankful for him and on the one hand,

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I know that he's my righteousness and my savior and my redeemer, but there's all this other stuff and I'm concerned and I'm stressed out and I'm looking at all this stuff that I'm not doing well or well enough and I feel anything but free and I trust that's the experience of many of our listeners.

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And so maybe we can pivot the conversation, John, if you're cool with it, to let's talk about simple

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Christianity and what that looks like. Yeah, I think you legitimately cannot have this conversation if you do not have the correct foundation because you're not going to know what we're talking about, so if you are convinced and part of the transition out of legalism, out of fear, out of this treadmill life of I just feel like I can't do enough for God, to get out of that, you have to establish a new foundation and that's a positional foundation that if the good news of the gospel is

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I have a right position before God based on faith alone and he will keep me and take me home not ever based upon how faithful I have been or how much energy

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I've put into Christianity because that's dangerous. The moment you qualify that, that's dangerous, so it's complicated.

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So the simplicity of Christianity is my relationship to God is always secured by his love for me, we love because he first loved us, by his choosing of me, and the evidence that this is real, if I can just say, yeah,

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I believe that, even at a half a percent, the evidence of that is I believe. And we know there's a lot of people who listen to us and they say, yeah, but John, faith without works is dead.

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And we do not disagree with that 100%, but I will tell you right now, the emphasis of the

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New Testament is not on works. Now for someone, James and Paul will come after you if you are claiming to be owned by Christ and yet you are unwilling to love someone.

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That's what they're coming after. See, normally when people say, yeah, but faith without works is dead, faith without works is dead,

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John, and I'll say, okay, what you mean is morality. You mean a do list.

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Faith without a do list is dead. What the authors are saying, faith that works is dead, is that faith without reflecting the love of Christ, because 1

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John just flat out says, if you say you love me and you have love not for your brother, you're not a believer. So let's not confuse and add on to what's not there.

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Even James is talking, I mean, what does the whole conversation flow out of for James so much is the fact that there's favoritism being shown toward those who are rich and powerful in the church and those who are weak amongst them are being neglected, that is a lot of what's going on in James and the rebuke,

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I agree, from James is like, you're not loving each other and yet you're claiming Christ and that's absolutely true in 1

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John, as you've already said, Paul is crystal clear and Jesus, my goodness, what does He exhort

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His followers to over and over again in His earthly ministry? It's without question, it's obviously trust me, but it's love each other.

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Love each other is the command that Christ gives and so, yeah, it's interesting, like you said, when people will raise, yeah, but we got to be doing good works.

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It's like, well, on the one hand we agree that works will be there, but the work that we should be concerned with above all things is to love the brothers and love our sisters and if we're not, then yeah, we need to back the truck up and reconsider everything that we're doing.

37:42

You know what Jesus, it's interesting, I've been completely flipped upside down by John and one of the things that has just been so tremendously helpful for me in dealing with,

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I don't know about you, but doesn't it seem like 2019 in general worldwide was more complicated than 2018?

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It just felt like a weird year, like something universally was just wrong.

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Yeah, I honestly, John, sort of feel like that all the time. I don't even know if it's a 2019 reality, but I'm not disagreeing with you.

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Yeah, and probably because I moved in 2019 and I changed the name of my church and moved, I mean, there was so much that was going on, but just in general in life, it just felt like there was a lot more tragedy than usual and so preaching through John has been helpful.

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But here's how simple Christianity Jesus makes. He says this, okay, you're clearly condemned and doomed and he goes to those who understand that.

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It's like Jesus is known to be a friend of those who have destroyed their life. He gives them grace and mercy.

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They believe, he calls many of them to be his disciples, so some of the men that are there are tax collectors and fishermen are pretty rough guys, and in this conversation with him, he gives them the greatest motivation in life.

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He says, listen, you can have absolute, complete joy, which is my joy.

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He literally says, you can have my joy if you do this one commandment, right?

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John 15, he says, if you keep my commandment that I'm about to give you, you will have the greatest joy in life that you can have, and he says, love one another, and he gives an illustration of what kind of love he's talking about, which he says, like I laid my life down for you, you just need to make your life about loving others.

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For me, you give me a command in the

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New Testament that somehow is not connected to loving someone else, right?

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I mean, you have patience, kind, eagerness, giving, sacrifice. They're all about an outflow, and so for me, that simplifies it.

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If I am to look at God's love for me, that's commandment number one, right? Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, commandment number two, love your neighbor as yourself.

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It doesn't get any more simple than that because I'm flowing with grace from God constantly.

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I'm learning and living underneath this new position that I'm having, and then the second thing I then do is say, oh my, this is a wonderful gift, and Jesus says, now give it away, and if you do, you'll have joy.

40:35

I mean, it's crazy to think that's a command. It's like, that's a command? That just seems like logic. Yeah, a couple of verses that are really good in thinking about this.

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Romans 5 .1, having been justified by faith, Paul says, we now have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ, and it's very clear in the context with the things that he goes on to say that that peace is not something that's temporary.

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It's not just here and now, that this present justification, peace, reality secures peace with God forever, and so that's massive, and then think about Galatians 2 .20,

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where Paul says that he's been crucified with Christ, right, so he really has died to the law in Jesus, the penalty's been paid, but then he says, in the life that I live in the flesh,

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I now live by faith in the Son of God. What a wonderful, simple exhortation that is, and a descriptor that is.

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I live by faith in the Son of God now, and so I am at peace with the Lord. I live by faith in Christ, and I'm free.

41:38

So then I have this conversation a lot, John. I know you do. There are several, a number of people in my congregation that I've had this conversation with, and there are a few guys in particular that I'm pretty tight with here that I can remember when,

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I can remember the moment. I can remember where we were and all that when he looks at me and says, all right, dude,

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I think I'm getting it. I think I'm really understanding what Christ has done, and this is incredible, and I realize the peace that I have with God because of Jesus, and it's fantastic.

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And I want to learn more about what it is to be free in Jesus, but seriously, man, if Jesus has done everything, what do

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I do now? What do I do? And I take great joy in looking at them, and I say to them,

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I'm like, well, you're going to do a lot of the same things, but for different reasons. I'll say that, but then I just give them a few simple things.

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Like, all right, well, here are the main things, bro. Or sister, if I was talking to a lady in our church, trust

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Christ, so continue to trust Him, love your brothers and sisters, and honestly, show up to church on Sunday.

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Just keep coming, and if you concern yourself with trusting Christ, loving your brothers and sisters, and just keep showing up, it's going to take care of itself by and large.

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I'm not saying that there's nothing else to consider, but those are the main things. And it's incredible to watch people that take that counsel and implement it in their lives.

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Their joy increases, their freedom increases, and they just become incredibly fruitful in the church.

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And they're like, you know, they start telling people, you know, hey, your primary ministry in the church, honestly, is just to show up.

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Just show up and love each other. And it's amazing, bro. And I mean, everybody wants to say, but yeah, there's all this and this and this, and it's more complicated than that.

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Well, sure, there's more to say, but my Lord, if we talk in these terms, man, we set people free, and the

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Christian life can be full of joy, and we grow, and we change, and we love each other, and the church becomes a haven for sinners, and hearts are knitted together because we know we desperately need

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Christ, and we move forward. You know, it's fantastic, as I've seen it even in our own local body.

43:52

Yeah. Well, I'll give us one more verse before we run over into the members podcast. You've got

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Hebrews 12, one and two. So all of Hebrews, you have the writer who's trying to convince you that the person you should be focusing on, who is greater than everything and everyone, greater than the prophets, greater than Moses, greater than the angels.

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Don't leave Jesus. Don't leave Jesus. And then he says to him, you know, Hebrews 12, one and two, he says, look, he's the one who put you in this new position where he's the author and finisher of your faith, right?

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And the author says that you are to remove the weight, and he clarifies the difference between weight and sin.

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And he's saying anything that keeps you from looking to Jesus or holds you down from going to Jesus, you need to get rid of it.

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And for me, that is the complication of evangelicalism. We have put so much on us that we have to be doing this.

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We have to be doing this, that this is the clutter I'm talking about, that the person that we should be looking to, the person that we should be excited about is the least focus of our day because we're focusing on how

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I need to do this, how I not need to be doing that. And the author says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.

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The simplicity of the Christian life is Christ is our focus, learning more about him, not more about what we must do for him, but what he has done for us.

45:29

I mean, I'll just throw this out there and I'll throw it back to you, JP. If you look at the Bible, and this is an estimate, and one of these days

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I'm going to get an accurate percentage, but I think it's pretty close. If you look at the way the

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Bible is structured, you have primarily narrative almost through all of the Old Testament, even the

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Old Testament. I mean, if you just put in the law in there, that's probably 5 % of the

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Old Testament. So the majority of it's a narrative and the narrative is about how do we get to Jesus, right?

46:01

Yeah. And even the wisdom writing, which is only a small book in Proverbs, that's compared to the rest of the

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Old Testament. Okay, we'll give it 10%. Then you get into the New Testament, and then you get into the

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New Testament, and the New Testament is four gospels, and the majority of that's narrative, which there is some great helpful instructions in there, but most of those instructions is belief in Jesus or love one another.

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Or he's preaching the law to drive people to himself. That's right. Then you finally get to the epistles, which is a very small section of the

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Bible, and the majority of the beginning of those epistles is gospel. And then the latter part,

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I would say, fair enough, that instructions to the believer that apply to them in a church context is about 5 % of scripture.

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The rest of it is pointing you to why you should be obeying. 95 % of the

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Bible is convincing you Jesus is worthy to be trusted and rested in, and then obedience comes from that.

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And so it makes complete sense when the author says, hey, get rid of the clutter and get rid of sin that gets in your way of Jesus, because Jesus is where you find rest and Jesus is where you find peace and hope.

47:12

Nothing else can provide that. Yeah. So thinking about the letter to the Hebrews, one thought that popped into my mind as you were talking,

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John, in Hebrews chapter two, when the author exhorts his readers, let us not neglect such a great salvation.

47:28

What is he talking about? It's so funny. I think in our context, I'm not trying to be punchy when

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I say this at all. I think a lot of people would read that and assume that what is meant is do not neglect your spiritual disciplines, do not neglect to do the right stuff, do not neglect abstaining from the bad things, and if you don't take those things seriously enough, you're going to end up lost.

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That's not at all what the writer to the Hebrews is saying in that context. In that context, when he says, let us not neglect such a great salvation, what he means is, let us not neglect

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Christ and return to the law. That's his argument. Don't go back to the law.

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Why would we ever go back to the law? Something that was merely a shadow and a pointer to the one who would come and accomplish redemption.

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And so it's amazing how we have voluntarily placed ourselves back under a schema that really, we talked about this earlier, the

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Reformation was about the recovery of the gospel and the recovery of assurance in Christ. We have sort of made our way back towards a very medieval

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Roman understanding of cooperating with God, and it leads nowhere good, and there's no peace, and there's no simplicity in it because it's a very codified life.

48:57

That's right. Well, we clearly are going to continue this conversation on, and we have what's called a members podcast, and it's there that Justin and I are going to take off the theological filter.

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And if you're the person that really wants to dive into this conversation and you like to read footnotes, then this is going to be the conversation for you.

49:16

We might be using a few more big words. Yeah, we're going to talk about a little bit more history and really deconstruct this concept a little bit more.

49:24

So if you want to be a part of that, you can get a 14 -day free trial over at theocast .org, and there's more information there.

49:30

All of our old podcasts, we have over 200 podcasts that are there, and all of our membership podcasts are there, and then we've got a free book, and there's just a lot there.

49:38

Really, it's a great way to not only interact with our material, but to support our ministry. For the last two years,

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Theocast would not be able to afford to continue without our members, so we want to thank you for participating in that.

49:51

If you want to know more about Theocast, go to our website. We have multiple books there. There's three books that are available that you can get that very much will continue in the conversation that we have today.

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We look forward to having Jimmy back with us, new pastor of Christ Community Church. He's an official pastor there.