Can Christians Not Go to Church? | Theocast Clips

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Well, what's hard about this is that the entire Christian faith has nothing to do with individualism.

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The question that we love to ask is entrepreneurial country, like we live in a country that's expanding, right?

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We have rapid expanding. I was just watching some stuff on Elon Musk this morning, just fascinating how his brain is and what he's been able to expand.

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Yeah, what an incredibly gifted human being. He's eccentric. He's always asking basically what works.

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What works better? We love that question. That's the question of pragmatism.

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In many ways, I absolutely am a Christian pragmatist. Under the authority of the

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Bible, we are. I want to know what works best, and we learned that from his word.

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Like I want to know how to become mature in Christ so that I'm not tossed about by every wind of doctrine.

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Because if I'm not being tossed about, it means I have rest and I have assurity. I have joy. I have the capacity to suffer long.

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I have this capacity to be patient and give to others. Sacrificially, I can lay my life down.

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I want to know the pragmatist way of doing that. This is why God's Word becomes so powerful for us, because it's not silent in this.

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As a matter of fact, I'm just going to go ahead and read it because it's a beautiful way of summarizing what you and I were saying.

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This is Paul writing to the young pastor, encouraging him. You know, 2

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Timothy 3 .16, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching and reproof and for correction, for training and righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.

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So I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by his appearing in the kingdom, preach the word.

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He's emphasizing the word that you have. You need to go proclaim it, because there are going to be people in the midst of you preaching, reproof, rebuke, exhort, and patience in teaching.

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There's coming a time where people are going to be looking for other ways, because they're trying to fulfill their own passions.

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I would say, Justin, a lot of what we see today as acceptable living as a

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Christian is people trying to fulfill their own passions while pursuing maturity in Christ.

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Let me explain to you what I mean by that. We can put this in the notes here.

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I think, Justin, I'll probably do a podcast on this soon. I recently preached a sermon on basically reclaiming what is biblical love.

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Here's the short story. God says that his love is unconditional and full of sacrifice.

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Just read Romans 8. When you look at human love, human love is looking for an experience in two ways.

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It's transactional. You make me feel good. The second part of it is that I love things that are beneficial to me.

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This is the complete opposite of biblical love, because biblical love, according to God, the way in which we're supposed to love is there are no conditions that you need to meet in order for me to give you love.

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Secondly, it's going to require everything. This is John. No greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.

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What's hard about this is that the entire Christian faith has nothing to do with individualism.

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It is 100 percent. I seek God's love for me. It's unconditional and it's full of sacrifice.

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Then he says, I want you to live that way, which means I'm immediately drawn into the family of God.

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I do not put conditions on my brothers and sisters, and I lay my life down for them. Then Jesus says, I will give you joy.

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He goes, when everybody does this, when the body functions properly, everybody is built up into love, which means we all have joy.

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That is a complete opposite view. The world says, no, human beings are frustrating.

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The church is messed up. The church is full of hypocrites. I'm just going to do this on my own.

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That is not a biblical view of Christianity. We would never really word it that way.

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I love this because every lie is about 99 percent true. Satan has convinced us that you don't need the church to grow in Christ.

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You just need the Bible. That's all that really is needed. Justin Perdue You need the Bible and the Holy Spirit. You can do this.

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You can do it. That's basically the message. Obviously, you're not sufficient.

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No Christian is going to claim that they're sufficient. They know they need grace. They know they need God's Spirit. That's true, but you also need the church.

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That is not a slap in the Spirit because he's the one who tells you that you need the church in his

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Word. You read Ephesians 4 earlier. We need the gifts of pastors and teachers. We need the gifts of our brothers and sisters, the ways that they're able to minister to us.

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We need one another. Like you said, we're adopted into the family of God, and then immediately we're told how to live alone.

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No, we're told how to live together. It's clear that the New Testament is a corporate emphasis.

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I want to make this very clear. We are not saying that the private

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Christian life is insignificant. We're not saying that your private life is irrelevant. We're not saying it doesn't matter, but what we are saying is that your corporate life as a

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Christian drives your private life. In the American church, we have that inverted.

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We think that the private stuff, my personal time, etc., is what makes me useful as a

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Christian so that then in a corporate setting, I might do something meaningful. In reality, corporate worship is given to you for your nourishment, your sustenance, and your protection because you're a pilgrim and a sojourner in this world.

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Having been fed by God, being met by God, and being ministered to by God on the

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Lord's day as you gather with God's people, you then are nourished and sustained in such a way that you can go about and love your neighbor throughout the rest of your week and love your family so that you might be useful there.

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Justin Perdue goes back to pragmatism. We want the results the

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Bible promises to be completely full of joy and built up in love. You can't have that unless you're mature in Christ.

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Paul prays this to every congregation. I pray that you are mature in Christ. I pray that you are in Christ, that you're full of Christ.

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That's all we're trying to help expose everybody to. The Bible isn't optionable.

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Sometimes people wonder why they have such deep struggles in their faith, why they are constantly feeling like they're under attack.

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That's because when you are alone, you are going to be weaker than you are if you are alone.

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Hebrews says that the elders, the design of the elders, are to watch over your soul. They're supposed to give care for your soul.

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Galatians 6 says, Bury one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ.

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We just flippantly say that, but think about what Paul says. When you care for each other, that requires you to be with somebody.

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You can't carry a burden. Justin Perdue says, love your neighbor as yourself and do all these things for one another as the fulfillment of the law.

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That's Galatians 3 and Romans 13. I want something that works.

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When I think about investing in money or if I'm thinking about building a house, you want something that actually is going to work.

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It's not going to just be in theory. I know this works. This is what's great about the Word of God.

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If you want that joy of being mature in Christ where you are resting in the absolute promises of God, that doesn't mean sinlessness.

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That's impossible. What it does mean is that we can find that true status of rest and that capacity of enjoying the love of God.

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You can actually have joy sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. You can have that, but we have been duped and misled.

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I was going to go back to the whole 99 % lie thing. Satan has convinced us. He isn't convincing us to go away from the

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Word of God. He's not convincing us to abandon God in general. He knows where the source is.

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He has access to the Bible. He knows where the source is. The source is in the gathered church. Justin, you had made a comment and I want to just add one thought to that.

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When Paul says, when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love, you know, when it says, grieve not the

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Holy Spirit, he's talking about the gathered church in chapter five of Ephesians. We tend to think about grieving the

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Holy Spirit as an individual thing, whereas in reality it's all about how we speak to one another when we're together.

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The beginning of the chapter he says, be eager to maintain the bond of peace. Tearing apart the unity of the church through how we speak and divide.

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This is the whole book of James, which we had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, that James is writing to a congregation that is dividing itself.

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He's encouraging them to set down these divisions. He says, why do you fight? Is it not because your passions are at war with one another?

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Individualizing Christianity is the greatest way to deconstruct it and make it ineffective. What I mean by ineffective is that it's not literally giving people hope and joy and rest.

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You have Christians wandering around doubting their salvations, being hateful and mean to each other, and not actually being effective in building each other up.

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We're tossed about. I'll say this one last thought and I'll throw it to you, Justin. People get angry with bad theology.

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I don't get angry with bad theology. That's the result of us not taking serious God's word.

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This is what ends up happening. Poor people who are God's precious children are being tossed about by all kinds of bad stuff.