Jesus, Gentle and Lowly | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to be talking about Jesus. And in particular, we're going to be talking about the posture of Jesus toward His own.

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In Matthew 11, Jesus invites the weary to come to Him and says that He is gentle and lowly in heart.

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But is that how you have thought about Jesus? Is that how you've heard Him presented? Or have you heard Jesus presented as something that is frightening, scary, unsafe, that He is just waiting to drop the hammer on you and is exacting toward His own?

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If you have, this podcast is for you today. We're going to consider the love, the patience, the mercy of Jesus in both the regular and the members episodes.

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We hope this is encouraging for you. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. ♪♪ Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. John, we have met on an unusual day of the week.

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On a Tuesday morning this time, which is kind of our Monday to record a podcast.

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It's raining outside, so it's a rainy Monday in my world, and I'm feeling that way.

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Feeling that way today, but hey man, we're behind the microphone. Yeah, I get to preach to a bunch of junior high schools tomorrow at Zion Presbyterian School, so we had to shift our record day.

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You know, I don't really get nervous anymore when I preach, but when you preach to a bunch of junior highers you don't know for whatever reason, it's like you get nervous.

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I don't know why. Well, even if you're not like straight up nervous, it's just sometimes an awkward experience.

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Awkward is a great way to describe it. It's kind of like, are they even gonna listen to what I have to say? Who knows? Who knows?

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So anyways, we have a book giveaway today. We are excited. The last one last week went really well.

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That was fun. I guess that would have been like four weeks ago from now, but we gave away Sam Renahan's book on Covenant Theology.

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We gave away a coffee cup. I don't know what else we gave. We gave away another book. It was, oh, by Horatio Bonner.

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Yeah, yeah. So today we're giving away Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund.

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This has been a book that's been circulating around quite a bit. I know that you and Jimmy have read, I think, most of it.

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I think I'm mostly just through the first chapter. I've read all of it. It's great. So we always are trying to recommend good books, helpful books, and since we're actually kind of covering this subject today, not in light of the book, but we thought on our subject that we're covering, this would be a helpful book to go along with it.

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So one of our members, what we do is we go and we put all of our members' names, which is a growing list, and we're so thankful for our supporters.

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We put it into this wheelofnames .com, and by God's sovereignty and their selection,

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Chris Minsky, you get a book today, Gentle and Lowly. So we will send you an email.

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If you reply back, give us your address. We will ship that to you. And if you would like a copy of this book, we're gonna give one away to you as well.

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Every Wednesday morning, we post on our social medias, all of them, a way for you to win one of these books by sharing our podcast and all of that good stuff.

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So if you go to our website, or I'm sorry, if you go to our social medias, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, you will see some instructions there on how to win the book, and hopefully we'll be able to send that out to someone.

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That'll be encouragement to you. So with no more time to waste, Justin, we need all the time we have this morning because this is a subject that is absolutely important to the both of us in our pastoral ministries.

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My friend, talk to us today about what we are going to be discussing. We're gonna be talking about Jesus today.

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Good times. Yeah. We are gonna be talking about Jesus today. And in a particular way, we're gonna be talking about the nature of Christ, the posture of Jesus in particular toward his own.

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And the book that we did give away today, we would heartily endorse as a good resource in considering the posture of Jesus Christ towards sinners and towards his own.

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So we are gonna be talking about that subject matter because in evangelicalism broadly, there seems to be at best,

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John, a confusing picture painted of the Lord Jesus in terms of his posture toward us.

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And at times - I think it's said lightly. Yeah. At times, almost a conflicting message that is presented to us where Jesus feels all kinds of ways about us.

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And a number of those ways are not great and they are frightening. Can I even say without trying to be sacrilegious, it comes across as if Jesus is bipolar.

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Like - Yeah, I mean, I take what - Yeah, I think I understand what you're saying. Well, I'm saying it's like at one moment, he's one way.

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No, I - And to the same people, he's a completely different way. And it's like, how can that be? No, I understand what you mean in terms of not wanting to come across sacrilegious.

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Yeah. I just wanna clarify. I think what you're saying is true in that Jesus is depicted that way, that one moment he is gentle, he's tender, he's compassionate.

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The next moment he is threatening and scary and exacting and is causing us to question whether or not we're in him at all.

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Or if anybody can be. If anybody ever could be, exactly. And yeah, obviously the ministry here at Theocast is characterized by us helping one another, frankly, brother, and also helping those who might ever listen to us to rest in Christ because we are all weary pilgrims as we are making our way as sojourners and exiles in this wasteland called fallen earth.

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We're all pilgrims on the way to the celestial city and we are weary because of living life in a fallen world because we too are still fallen and battle our sin and struggle in all kinds of ways.

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And so it matters very much how we understand our Lord and Savior to relate to us.

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It matters very much, especially in those moments where we're low and down and not doing well.

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How is it that Jesus feels about me? That's right. How does Jesus think about me?

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What's his posture toward me? That's right. Is it disappointment and anger and wrath and is his

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MO one of unsettling me and scaring me into whatever?

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That's right. Zeal and passion and, you know, discipline or is it something else?

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Right, that question is huge. It is. I think that it's the thing that drives you either towards Christ and affection or drives you away from him.

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People feel, I think a lot of the coldness that people feel, the distance, is because they have been handed a

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Jesus that is exacting, that is harsh, that requires you to be on your game, to be the dedicated, those who have figured out how to discipline their life in such a way that it reflects the very nature of Jesus.

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And we're gonna get into this in a minute, but we use law passages that are meant to crush you.

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We use them to motivate us to draw near to Christ. So we're gonna make the argument that what draws us near to Jesus is not the law of Christ.

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What draws us near to Christ is his mercy, his grace, his gentleness, his kindness, and his love.

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Yeah, his love, his patience. That's right. Yeah, all of those things toward sinners. Right, the kindness of God is what's supposed to lead us to repentance.

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But what happens is, and I know, Justin, that you and I have both experienced this style of Christianity, but within the modern, and I would say conservative evangelical world, the

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Calvinistic world, and even parts of the Reformed world, Jesus is used as a whipping post.

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I mean, you take him and you just beat people over the head with, well, this is what Jesus is requiring of you, and you're not doing it.

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How dare you say you're a Christian? How do you even, how do you not question your salvation if you aren't living up to Jesus' expectations of, and then whatever you wanna put in there, whether it's forsaking all wealth, your affections, your time, your dedication, evangelism, then

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Jesus is presented to you as one that requires,

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I would say, not the complete law, because no one could do that, and they would say, well, no one is saved by the law, but a lesser view of the law.

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It's not a full, it's, you know, I think you said it recently well in a podcast a few weeks ago.

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It's not that they're expecting you to be perfect, but you at least need to have the desire, right?

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You need to have the desire to be perfect, and then when you can't make it, when you're not there, you look at Jesus not as one to adore, but you look at him and you wonder how you could even ever consider yourself to be a part of his family, because you can't live up to the expectations he's put upon you.

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Right, yeah, and maybe a quick caveat out of the gate before I say what

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I'm about to and launch us into this conversation, really, is in everything that we're about to say, in no way are we contradicting the idea that we would reverence the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Absolutely. In no way. To understand that he,

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I mean, not to bury the lead here, to understand that he is gentle and lowly and patient and kind, that he loves us, and that he delights to show grace and mercy to sinners who know they need him in no way is contradictory with the fact that he is the

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Lord of all creation and that we reverence him and that we reverence God, meaning that we understand who the

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Lord is and what he requires because he's revealed it to us in his holy law, and we understand that for every lawbreaker, the wrath of God rightly comes upon him or her.

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That's right. So of course we reverence the Lord in that way. We fear him in that biblical sense of that word, that word fear meaning to reverence and to be in awe.

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Of course we are, and part of what makes God so worthy of that is the fact that he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, and that he delights to show that and he delights to forgive iniquity, transgressions, and sins.

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That's right. And he has done that in the person and work of God the

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Son made flesh whose name is Jesus. And so now we're gonna talk about him.

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That's right. And I know I need this conversation regularly in my own Christian life. I know you feel the same, brother, and I trust there are thousands and thousands of people out there who will listen to this who need this as well.

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And so let's start by doing a little bit of, as we like to phrase it, deconstruction, to kind of diagnose what's going on out there that produces this kind of confusion with respect to Jesus and his posture toward us who are in him.

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So we talk a decent amount on this podcast about the distinction between law and gospel and how important that is that we rightly divide those two things.

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And that manifests itself in a whole host of ways, but pertinent to our conversation today, there is a ton of confusion,

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John, in evangelicalism broadly, and maybe even more specifically, as you alluded to a minute ago, the Calvinistic evangelical world.

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There is a failure, I say this humbly, but unashamedly, there is a failure to rightly distinguish between law and gospel when it comes to the speaking, the teaching and the discourses of Jesus Christ, the words that come out of his mouth as recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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So a lot of people out there assume that if Jesus said it, that it must be gospel somehow.

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If it's a red letter, it must be gospel. Go ahead, yeah. And I have to be careful, and you need to understand some of the titles that are presented in the

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Bible are not biblical, like the books didn't necessarily have titles to them. So like the gospel of John is misleading.

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It should be the life and times of Jesus written by John, because not everything in John's letter is gospel.

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Well, and I'll go ahead and say this. To your point. Yeah, I'll go ahead and say this. Some of what Jesus says is gospel. Most of what

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Jesus preaches and teaches is law. Everything that Jesus came to do in our place that we never could is gospel.

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That's right. So his perfect life, his righteousness that's counted to us by faith, that's gospel.

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His passive obedience, his suffering, bearing the penalty of the law in the place of those of us who have broken it, bearing the wrath of God for our transgression and iniquity, that's gospel.

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That's right. His triumphant resurrection, right, that vindicated all of his work, but also secured our bodily resurrection, that's gospel.

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Yeah. Right? So I would even say another way to almost reword gospel is that it's the reward of the works of Christ.

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Totally. We are being rewarded what Christ has done. Well, right. So you and I wouldn't describe, if we were talking about requirements of, it's tricky when you're using illustrations, but you and I would not describe the playing a football game, the middle of the game is the actual reward.

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No, the reward, the win comes at the end. So if you mix those two, which ends up happening, it's like gospel means we are receiving what

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Christ has done but somehow gospel means, no, it's what Christ has done and what you do too.

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Yeah, the gospel is the message, it's the news of what Christ has done. And then that results in the salvation of the elect, the salvation of all the saints because of Christ and because of him alone.

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That's the good news. The good news, as we've talked about recently, actually contains nothing within it that we are to do.

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That's right. So because of kind of reining us back in here before we just riff on law and gospel for half an hour, which would be edifying.

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Yeah, gotta have a platform. The issue at hand here is that when you collapse law and gospel and when you don't distinguish between law and gospel as Jesus is speaking and teaching it and interacting with people, then what you end up doing is giving and painting this very confusing picture of Christ.

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That's right. And I'll just go ahead and say this, John, just to try to be as clear as I possibly can be. When Jesus encounters people who are self -righteous, when he encounters people who are trusting in themselves either that they are righteous or that they can become or achieve that righteousness, he meets that with an exacting posture.

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He meets that with even a threatening and unsettling posture. And he speaks law into those situations and to those people.

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And his aim is to unsettle every person who understands that he or she is well, to unsettle every person that understands that he is righteous.

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He is aiming to crush people with the law that they might see who they are rightly and then be driven to their only hope who is

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Christ himself. That's his mission. And that's what he's trying to achieve. I'll go ahead and say this though, again, not to bury the lead.

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Every time Jesus encounters a person in the gospels, like you said, the life and times of Christ is recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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Every time he encounters a person who is aware of his or her need, who understands that he or she is sick, unrighteous, has no merit, right?

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And are desperate. Every time he encounters such a person, he greets them and meets that with compassion and gentleness, a tenderness, right?

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And he forgives their sins. That's right. That's right. I mean, that's what he even says.

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Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. And he is talking to a group of Pharisees who will not,

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I mean, this goes to, I believe the podcast that comes out tomorrow is Take Up Your Cross. And so we really explain this too of what does it mean to take up your cross.

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And so when Jesus is talking to those Pharisees, they want Jesus to be the victorious king.

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And Jesus is like, no, I'm here to save you. And so unless you see me as that, then you cannot be saved.

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So real quick, I wanna take us to, I'm just gonna go ahead and take us over there for the remainder of our time so we can get this moving. Hebrews, I'm sorry,

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Hebrews, Matthew 11. This is a great point, Justin, what you just made.

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Jesus is having a conversation with this crowd of Pharisees, right? So he is dialoguing with them about the nature of himself, what he is here, and how it is that he is going to save sinners, but they don't see themself as sinners.

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So he, in this - That's the issue. Right, in this conversation, in the midst of his conversation, he just starts praying.

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And literally Matthew says, well, at this time he declared. So he's praying publicly out loud in front of these Pharisees.

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I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.

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I mean, the irony, as you said earlier this morning, the irony of this statement. It's dripping with irony, man. It's like these people are not looking at Jesus with affection at this moment after he says this.

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They're clenching their fists even more. They're even more upset. Well, because he's praying a prayer in their midst that indicts them.

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Yeah, and in the culture, children are a thing to be shunned.

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They're to be quiet. They're to be put off in the background. Well, they represent foolishness and neediness.

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It's exactly right. So Jesus is saying, God has revealed, the Father of heaven has revealed it to the needy and foolish.

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But to you who think you're wise, he's hidden it from you. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

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All things have been handed over to me by the Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the

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Father except the Son, and then here it is, and anyone to whom the

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Son chooses to reveal him. So you have here Jesus saying, if you're going to know the

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Father, it can only happen through me, and if you want to know him, then I'm gonna be the one that reveals it to you, and you who are self -righteous, and you who see no need of me, you're gonna be blind to it.

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Now, it's almost like he speaks past over the shoulders of the people he's talking to, to those in the background who are too afraid to stand up front because they're not as righteous as the

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Sadducees and the Pharisees, and so Jesus looks past them and says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden.

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Labor under what? Well, he just got done talking about those who are self -righteous under the law, a law that really isn't the

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Moses law, it's their law, and then he says, heavy laden. You can feel the weight of your sin under that, and I love this, and I will give you rest, and then he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

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You know, Justin, what's interesting is that Jesus doesn't speak of himself as far as his nature.

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He speaks of the Father's will, the relationship to the Father, the relationship, like I am the door,

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I am the way, I'm the light, I'm the water, I'm the living water, but here he is calling those who are feeling,

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I would say, trashed by the law. Their sins are just weighing them down, and what does

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Jesus use to entice them to come to him? Is it fear? Is it dread?

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Is it the future of God coming and throwing them into some kind of a, no, he says, no, come to me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, which is contrasting the

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Pharisees. They are harsh, and they are not lowly in heart. Well, Jesus over and over again, this is just popping into my mind as you're reading this, he over and over again is clear that he has nothing for people who understand that they're doing well with respect to the law.

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No, except for moral law. Sure, no, I just mean that he'll even say,

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I didn't come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners. I didn't come for those who are well.

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I came for those who are sick. Now, he's not saying that there are those who are righteous in and of themselves. He's not saying that there are any fallen human beings who aren't sick.

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His point is, I came for those who know they are in need, right, and I came for those, in this context, who know that the burden of the law, and yes,

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I agree with your point, that the Pharisees had, if anything, just added to that burden by putting the hedge around the law, right?

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So not only was there the Mosaic law and everything that that contained, there was even more piled on top of it, and so Christ is speaking to people who have been crushed by that, who are quite literally being buried under that burden that they can't carry and they know they can't.

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He says to those people, come to me. You're weary, you're exhausted, you're weighed down.

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Come to me. That burden that's on you, that's impossible for you to bear, I'll carry that for you, right?

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The reason that he can say, take my yoke upon you, right, and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, is because Jesus has taken the yoke of the law upon himself for us and has fulfilled it.

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He has carried that load, and then he invites us to come to him, and he gives us a very different yoke, a very different burden that he says is easy and light, and we'll probably talk about what that is here in a minute.

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Yeah, in a minute, for sure. Yes, this is a word, John, to the weary struggler, to the person who knows deep in his or her heart that I'm not meeting the standard and I'm grieved by it,

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I'm exhausted, I can't do it, and it's effectively, right, the tax collector from Luke 18, right?

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It's the beating your chest, not looking up to heaven, saying, God, have mercy on me, because I'm a sinner.

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I mean, that's who this is to. That's right. And look at the posture of our Lord toward us. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. Well, I would say

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I always find comfort when you look at Peter, Paul, James, and they reflect on Christ.

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And they, in many ways, interpret the Gospels. And you have to understand that sometimes we think that the way that the

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New Testament was written was from Matthew forward. Actually, the Gospels come a lot later.

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For instance, Corinthians was written before the Gospels. A lot of people don't know this. So Paul is describing -

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Galatians is probably the earliest piece of writing in the New Testament. Yeah, exactly. Next to, I think it's

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James is close by. So 2 Corinthians, I mean, man, we know that church is on fire for the

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Lord. They're fighting sin. They're just really, no. 2 Corinthians is not that. It's a good

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American church right there. I mean, I get myself in trouble saying that, but. So Paul describes

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Jesus and he says, listen, listen to what Jesus, listen to what Paul says. 2 Corinthians 10 .1. I, Paul, myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.

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Man, that just, if someone wants to say, John, you guys are misrepresenting Christ here in Matthew and you are not interpreting that correctly.

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I'm just gonna go, well, I'm interpreting it the way Paul does, because he says he's entreating them.

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He's calling them to repentance. He's begging them with what? The meekness and gentleness of Christ.

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I look at that and I go, that makes sense. Go ahead. All right, here's another one. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom

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I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost,

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Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

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That's right. Paul's word there in 1 Timothy 1, 15 and 16 is, I am the foremost of sinners.

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In other words, like nobody's a worse sinner than me. And Jesus Christ has been gracious and patient with me so that you might know that he will be the same way with you.

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That's good. So I wanna real quick go back, Justin. I'm trying to see how much time we got here. Okay, I wanna quickly go back to Matthew and I'm sure you'll be ready for this.

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I've got maybe a couple other gospel passages that we may look at. That I can just riff on. Yeah, go for it.

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So I wanna make a note here. We have more and more increasingly recently, people are confused by rest and not taking sin serious.

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There is no way under heaven and hell that Jesus is saying, come unto me and don't worry about your sin.

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That's not what he's saying. Is he saying, come unto me and I'm going to free you from your sin, right?

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So when he says, rest for your soul, what gives your soul anxiety?

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What causes it to feel guilt and sin, right? Right. No, I mean,

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I was just gonna say like, he's talking to people who are grieved by sin. That's right.

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Period. Absolutely. Right, resting is not a saying, well, then

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I don't have to worry about my sin because there's grace. No, grace leads us to repentance. For any person who is arrogant or comfortable in sin, there is a message that we speak from scripture and it's called the law.

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Yeah, absolutely. And Jesus does that in his ministry. The apostles do it in their writing. We do it,

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John, you and I as preachers and pastors in our local churches. We preach the law toward those who are arrogant and comfortable in sin.

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That's right. So I wanna go back to hearing what Jesus is saying and I love it because it brings so much comfort to know that what we have been saying and preaching and what leads us along is grounded in the very words and nature of Jesus Christ.

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Not as if I needed this, but it's just, when I look at it, as you said, Justin, sometimes we get beat down by, unfortunately, legalism and pietism.

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People will attack you. There's so much of it that is prevalent in popular evangelicalism.

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And I just wanna say, have we not read Matthew 11? Why is this not a part of our systematic theology when we think about Christology?

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So I wanna say here again, he's talking to people who are crushed by their sin.

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The law that's being put upon them is too much for them to carry, those who are heavy laden and burdened.

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And then he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. And why would we wanna do that,

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Jesus? He goes, well, because I am gentle and lowly in heart. My intentions are not to crush you.

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My intentions are not for you to earn your salvation. I am here to give you the rest they and the law cannot give you.

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So what I'm encouraged by is that, then the question is, Jesus has made, in my opinion, Justin, you'll be able to answer this right away,

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Jesus has made his yoke and his burden very, very obvious of what he means by that.

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What does he mean? Where we go find rest in Jesus, he's giving rest to our souls, now what are we supposed to be doing?

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Yeah, he says, all right, you're burdened and heavy laden, come to me, I have taken the burden of the law from you,

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I have fulfilled it. I have taken the burden of your sins from you and have atoned for them. And you will bear none of that anymore.

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Now, he says, I'm gonna give you a yoke that is, I mean, I'm gonna say the shortest and then expand a little bit, where he effectively says to us, now that I have done all that for you and you have come to me, love each other.

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Go love each other. And I mean, also, love me, right, love me, but. And love each other. Right, but love me is more, yes, love me and abide in my love, right?

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Live and rest and dwell in my love. And yes, love me. But love each other.

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So yeah, even if we're gonna say it as, yeah, love me and love each other, we respond to that as those whom

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Jesus Christ has rescued. And we're like, yeah, absolutely. His family, those who he died for.

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What else would we do, Jesus, but to love you in light of how you have loved us and have given yourself for us, right?

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That's Ephesians five, one and two. And then also Ephesians five, one and two, therefore we love each other.

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Of course, this is what we would do. That's right. And that yoke is easy and that burden is light according to the

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Lord Jesus, and it is. Yeah, I have two quotes I wanna read towards the end.

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I'm gonna save them from Richard Sibbes, but I know as soon as I mention this, you're gonna jump in on it, so I'm gonna do it now.

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I want you to pay attention again to Paul. So Paul says in Ephesians four, just giving you the glory of Christ.

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And we probably mentioned this passage every week, but it's so relevant to the everyday life of the Christian. It's like, why not mention it?

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So Ephesians four, Paul says, I therefore prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

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So if we go back to Matthew 11, he says that God or Jesus, if you believe in him, if you've come to him, that's because it's been revealed to you or he has called you unto himself.

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So Paul is saying, if you're one of these ones who have been called, this is the burden that you bear, right?

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I love this. He doesn't point to actions as far as like, these are the watermarks by which you must hit.

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He says, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity and the bond of peace.

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It's like, listen, be nice to each other. That's what I need you to do, be kind. In other words, yeah, love each other, be humble, be gentle, be patient, be kind.

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And pursue unity because we have all been united to the Lord Jesus Christ. We're united to him and we're united to one another in him, right?

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And yeah, that's the message for sure. So a couple of thoughts. I mean, I've got a number of things, just a couple of other verses and principles to hit from the

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New Testament letters. I mean, Hebrews is chock full of stuff, but Hebrews 7 is beautiful, where we read in Hebrews 7, 25 in particular, that Jesus always lives to make intercession for his own.

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And so he is able to save to the uttermost all those who draw near to God through him.

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That's a wonderful, wonderful thought about Christ and his posture toward us. He intercedes for us, right?

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But then also he advocates for us when we sin. First John 2, 1 and 2, right?

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Little children, I'm writing these things to you so that none of you may sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father,

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Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins, right? And not ours only, but the sins of the whole world.

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Christ advocates for his people. Not once we've gotten, and Dane Ortlund does a good job of talking about Christ's roles.

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I mean, we gave that book away. Dane does a nice job of talking about Christ's intercessor and Christ's advocate, and even the difference between the two, you know, that as an intercessor, that's an ongoing role.

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As an advocate, that particularly happens when we sin, and it's not that Jesus advocates for us once we've gotten beyond our sin and we've gotten better.

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He advocates for us in the midst of it, and that's a wonderful reminder in terms of Christ's gentleness and his love toward us, even in our weakness and failure, right?

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If I may, a couple of other passages from the gospels, and these are both from Luke, that come to mind.

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We touched on one of these a few weeks ago, so I'm not gonna labor it. In the aftermath of that interchange in Luke 14, where Jesus is exhorting people to take up their cross and more or less to renounce everything, you know, that they would ever look to in themselves, immediately

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Luke 15 follows, right? And Jesus is speaking to people, and we're told that sinners and tax collectors are gathering around him.

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They're drawing near to him, and the Pharisees don't like it. And then what does Christ do?

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In that context where he's got sinners and tax collectors drawing near to him, and the Pharisees are upset because those kind of folk shouldn't draw near to a prophet like that.

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What does he do? He tells three parables about the joy that there is in heaven when sinners are saved.

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Not the righteous. No, that when sinners repent, when sinners are saved, there's rejoicing in heaven.

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Just like when a shepherd loses a sheep and goes and finds it, brings it back and has a party. Just like the woman who loses a coin, turns her house upside down, inside out and finds it, calls her friends together and has a party.

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So Jesus says it will be in heaven. And then of course, the prodigal son, which is all about the posture of God toward us, right?

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It's all about, you know, our, you know, we've blown it in every way. And then even when we think about how we relate to God, we come back to God with all of these pitches and presentations, let me work for you as a slave.

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Treat me as a hired servant. And the father effectively says, none of that. You know, I've got a robe of righteousness for you and a ring of grace and, you know, shoes of mercy and let's celebrate because you were lost and are found.

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You were dead and you're now alive. I mean, that's who God is, right? And so that's huge that we would understand that whole passage, that whole chapter that's very well known.

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And what is it that gives occasion for it? It is self -righteousness, right?

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People that think they don't need a savior and people who are upset that Jesus would have sinners draw near to him.

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And Christ is like, you don't get it. This is who I am. This is who my father is.

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Go. Well, I was going to say, what's interesting about the story of the prodigal son is that the prodigal never disowned his father.

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He still realized that he was in his family, but what did he try to do? He tried to earn his way back into the good faith.

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He tried to earn. He said, let me work. Let me be a slave. And the father interrupts his pitch.

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That's right. I mean, because he's saying, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

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And he's going to say, treat me as a hired servant. And that's when the father says, bring the best robe and put it on him. That's right.

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Right? It's like, because we do. We think I've got to do this. I've got to somehow plead my case and bring something.

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And the father delights to say, no, that was never what this was about. And of course that robe of righteousness is the very righteousness of Christ that we put on.

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Go ahead. Right. And it's not that the father was justifying the son's sin because the son had repented. He had come home.

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Right. So if you think we're saying, well, God just going to look past your sin, that's not what he's saying. I'm going to read you a couple of passages that are, what

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I would say, prophecies of Christ and even the nature of God's relationship to the sinner. First one is one that's

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Justin and I's favorite. We look to it often, but it's Isaiah 42, three, when he says, a bruised reed he will not break, a faintly burning wick he will not quench.

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He will faithfully bring forth justice. There are so many people in my church and I, man, we've gotten three or four or five emails this morning from the cast listeners from around the world.

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This describes you. You are bruised for a number of reasons. It could be circumstances.

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It could be cancer. It could be your own sin. Then you definitely feel this idea of like, you are barely alive.

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And what we hear in this radicalness, in this description of Jesus, that if you're not full of flame on fire for God, then you should be questioning your salvation.

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You should be questioning whether you're truly in God. And you have here the prophet saying, don't worry.

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For those of you who feel like a strong enough wind that's going to come and snap you, and you're not the strong cedar that, you know, you're supposed to be.

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And for those of you that a little poof is going to blow out your fire, don't worry. That is not going to happen.

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And I'm going to read to you a quote. And I know, Justin, you're going to jump all over this, but I'm going to read you a quote from Richard Sibb's book,

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A Bruised Read in his book. He here quotes Isaiah 61, 1. And he says, he binds up the broken hearted.

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As a mother is tender, tenderest toward the most diseased and weakest child. So does

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Christ most mercifully inclined to the weakest. Amen. Likewise, he puts on instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support.

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The vine steadies itself up upon the elm and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters.

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The consciousness of the church's weakness makes her willing to learn, I'm sorry, to lean on her beloved and to hide herself under his wings.

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So I love this. The church is described as weak and Christ is described as strong.

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We somehow reverse this as if we are the ones to be strong. And Jesus says, no,

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I'll be strong enough for you. Amen, brother. Yeah, there's a great interchange toward the end of The Bruised Read.

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It's a sort of hypothetical dialogue between Satan and a believer. And Satan, of course, is the great accuser of the brethren.

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And so Sibb's is talking about how effectively as we would frame it, the sufficiency of Christ and the love of Christ toward us is what we are able to look to to extinguish the darts of the enemy.

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And Satan, of course, is lobbying all these accusations about how this believer has no faith and no love and all these things.

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And the believer is acknowledging it. Like, yeah, you're right. Like, I don't. I've got barely a hint of faith and love.

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And the devil's like, Christ is not going to regard that. And the believer keeps pointing back to Jesus and the nature of Christ ultimately to say, no,

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Jesus will fan that flame. And he will sustain and fan that flame until he has brought judgment to victory.

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That is the hope of the Christian. And just one last passage, John, from the

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Gospels that I think is really good to illustrate the posture of Jesus towards sinners. It's the woman of the city from Luke 7.

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And I'll do this quickly. This is a woman who is effectively a prostitute, right?

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And Jesus has been invited by a Pharisee to come have dinner at his house. And Jesus is in the house of Simon the

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Pharisee and this woman of the city, because as Luke says, because she has heard that Jesus is there, she comes to this

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Pharisee's house. Like, that's a shocking thing to say in and of itself, that a woman of the city who is a sinner, right?

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A prostitute would come to the house of a Pharisee because she's heard that Christ is there.

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And of course, there's the famous account where she comes in and she cleans the feet of Christ with her own tears and her own hair and anoints them with the ointment she's brought and all of these things.

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And the Pharisee is indignant. He's thinking if this man were a prophet, he would have nothing to do with this woman because of the kind of woman she is.

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And of course, Christ knows his thoughts and says, gives him this illustration, like Simon, I have something to say to you.

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And there's a moneylender who had two debtors. One owed him 500 denarii, the other owed him 50.

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Neither could pay. The moneylender forgives the debt. Who's going to love the moneylender more? And the

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Pharisee rightly answers, well, the one who had the bigger debt forgiven. So Christ then points to the woman and demonstrates that she has done all of these things for him because she has been forgiven much.

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He says that her sins, though they are many, have been forgiven and she has loved much, right?

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And then he just looks at this woman and says to her, your sins are forgiven.

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And then he later on, two verses later, looks at her and he says, your faith has saved you. Go in peace.

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And my brother, it's so good. It's gripping, right? And an observation, not unique to me.

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Jesus offers not one single word of rebuke to that woman. Though her sins are many, he says so himself.

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The only words he speaks to her are words of forgiveness and peace. You're forgiven, daughter, and you can go in peace because your faith in me has saved you.

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Jesus is a friend for sinners, right? There is none like him. And this is how he always treats people who come to him in that way.

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And that's what we are aiming to uphold this morning. And I know what we aim to uphold in our churches all the time.

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And John, I need this. You need this. It's like, I need Christ to look upon me, a wretch, who knows

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I'm a wretch, and say, son, you're forgiven. And you can go in peace because your faith in me has saved you.

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That's right. Well, and to your point, Justin, she doesn't need to be rebuked. She is there because she's a sinner.

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Some would say, well, John, you got to be careful there. Justin, you should be careful because that can make it sound like someone could live in prostitution and just come to Jesus and it's okay.

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It's like, no, she came to Jesus because she wanted forgiveness, not justification for her sins.

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Amen, brother. And she knows, it's very clear in the context, she's got no merit. She's got no righteousness.

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She's got no confidence in herself. She is very, I mean, quite literally in her posture is meek and humble and contrite and is casting herself upon Christ.

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And to everyone who comes to him that way, Jesus says, I will never cast you out, but I will keep you and I will raise you up on the last day.

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Justin Perdue That's right. Justin Perdue Well, I have two things before we go into membership. Justin Perdue Thanks be to God for Jesus. Justin Perdue That's right. Justin Perdue Two things for our membership,

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I'll let you take us into that. One, if you are the smoldering wick and the bruised reed, yeah, me encourage you.

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Paul makes it very clear how it is that you are to be cared for, and it's not by yourself. So Justin, I will explain that to you.

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And secondly, I have some thoughts on people who I would say preachers who come in with the self -righteousness almost of the

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Pharisees and just lay law on those who are the smoldering wick and the bruised reed.

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And it is disgusting. And so I have some thoughts on that as well. Justin Perdue Well, I imagine the members podcast, the one we're about to do, is going to be spirited today.

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And if you want to listen in on that conversation, you can find more information about our membership and ways that you can partner with Theocast at our website, theocast .org.

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The membership and everything related to it is going to be changing in the near future. I know we've been saying that for a number of weeks.

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We're working hard to get that pulled off for you. Justin Perdue So close. Justin Perdue And are excited about what it's going to be like.

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And so the podcast that we're about to do is very much a family time. We're having a conversation with one another, those who have partnered with us to join this

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Reformation. We're going to continue to think about this subject matter in terms of the posture of Christ and even some of the things that John raised, how a number of preachers seem to have a posture that is similar to that of the

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Pharisees. And self -righteousness and all that good stuff. If you're interested in that conversation, we look forward to talking with many of you over there.

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We thank you for listening today. We hope that you have been encouraged as we have thought about the gentle and lowly posture of Jesus Christ towards sinners like us.