Fantasy Christianity | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. If you listen to many people talk in the church, it seems that our

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Christian lives should be characterized by happiness, by excitement, and by always overcoming difficulty.

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But this life, if we're honest, is often characterized by pain, by toil, and by suffering.

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So what exactly do we do with that? And what is it that we're called to in the church?

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And then in the members podcast, John and I have a conversation about the mission of the church and what it looks like to keep the main things, the main things.

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We hope that this episode is helpful to you. We hope that it's liberating and encouraging to you.

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Stay tuned. Hey guys, as a quick reminder, if you'd like to join Theocast and helping other people find rest in Christ, a simple way of doing that is simply by leaving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

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To learn more about how to support Theocast, simply visit theocast .org slash give. 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, always good to be around the microphone with you, man.

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I've enjoyed our pre -recording convo today, and I'm eagerly anticipating your pro -con for this morning.

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You've recently returned from a little family getaway, and you are a

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Californian, and you're going to be talking about things that pertain to the water and the surf.

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So you are an expert in this area and are qualified to speak on it. I'm sure the listeners can't wait to hear what you're in favor of and what you're against.

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So give it to them, man. You know, this is one thing we didn't talk about, but I was talking about it last night with another Californian.

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You're always springing something on me. So do you know what tri -tip is? What kind of meat tri -tip is?

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No, okay, yeah. I thought you were talking about something pertaining to water sports. No, tri -tip. So when

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I first moved out here to the South, I learned this recently. They also call it the

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California cut, but it's a part of the cow that Californians love because it's a lot cheaper to buy, but it has a sirloin flavor and style to it, and you don't smoke it.

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It's not a smoked meat. It's one of those things that you cook it, you kind of block, you scar the meat, you know, and then keep it.

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Anyways, we're just talking about California, and I just found out that there's a local meat market that sells tri -tip.

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So I'll be buying some tri -tip this weekend. And if you don't know. Go ahead.

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Every time you say California, I keep thinking, remember the Titans, like California. California.

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What a great movie. I know you don't like football movies, but that one gets a pass. Well, that one's

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Denzel, man. It's Denzel. Anything with Denzel Washington in it is at least pretty good.

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Yeah. Anyways, tri -tip. That's for free. If you've never had tri -tip, I would encourage you.

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Bonus content today on Theocast. That's right. That's right. Tri -tip. Anyways. Don't say we never do anything for you.

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My pro con, I am, I'm gonna start with my con. My son and I tried to, we bought skimboards and we tried to do some skimboarding down at the, down in, where we were in Georgia.

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We were right just south of Savannah in Tyvee, and we were trying to do some skimboarding. And I'm gonna just tell you right now, it's a whole lot of work and not a lot of joy.

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It's one of those things that looks really cool and fun, but I'm pretty sure we didn't know what we were doing.

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But I got, I came to the conclusion that I'm not a fan of skimboarding. And then

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I watched all these videos of how to do it. And I was like, yeah, I think their boards are different than my board. But I will tell you,

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I am a massive fan of boogie boarding. My kids, my two middle, my 12 and 14 year old and I, we stayed out in the water for five or six hours, faces completely scorched and just had some of the best time we've ever had.

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The water, it was warmer in the water than it was outside of the water. And this time of year, that would be true.

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But man, we caught some unbelievable waves that were just, it was one point we had all figured it out and all three of us were riding these waves into the beach.

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And as a dad, it was one of those things where I was like, I wish I had a GoPro right now just to like capture this moment.

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Yeah, exactly. Kind of hold on to this one. Oh, it was on. And then I found, so my, my daughter, my oldest daughter and I were walking the shores and that we had this game, like who could find the biggest complete shell.

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And so I, I'm like, she's coming back with these, you know, pretty good size, you know, fit in the palm of your hand.

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I was like, it's on. So I run out there and within two minutes, what is this amateur hour?

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Exactly. Within two minutes, I see this half a shell sticking out. And I was like, I'll just see what this is.

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And I pull out a conch shell that's completely like, it's no, nothing's cracked bigger than my hand.

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And I come walking with the winner and she's like, that is so not fair. So back to the, the water, back to the water sports stuff.

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What you're saying is that boogie boarding is all kind of fun and pleasant, but that there is a lot of toil associated with skimboarding.

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Yeah. No joy. It's the fear of falling over. See, the, my thing is you're skimming across the dirt and if you don't do it right, you're going to fall.

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And as a, you know, a man that's getting up in his age, I don't, I just wasn't excited about falling at all.

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So there's that. I hear you. I appreciate that. John, you miss my service. You miss my,

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I saw it. I just went right past it, man. You did. You just zoomed right by the day.

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I mean, you didn't even slow down to look. You just like flew right by it. I surfing is something that I've never done, but would like to try.

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And I appreciate the athleticism that it would require. Yeah. You know, growing up in the mountains of North Carolina, I just, you know, went to the beach a decent amount, but there's also not a lot of great areas to surf.

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You know, in the like Carolina coasts and all that, like where I would have, or even in the Gulf, you know,

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Mexico, it's very, very calm. Anyway, we will transition to what we want to talk about today.

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So in, in thinking about pleasantness and joy and toil and struggle and all of those things, we want to have a conversation today about real

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Christianity over and against what we might call fantasy Christianity for those fantasy football participants and fans out there, a little shout out to you.

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Fantasy football is something that I've never allowed myself to get into because I'm afraid that I would get hooked on it and it would be bad for my life and my marriage and my family, but that's another conversation for another day, but fantasy

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Christianity versus real Christianity. We live in a world that's fallen and it's a world characterized therefore by suffering and by toil and by hardship.

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Often, it's not that there aren't pleasant things in life. It's not that there's nothing good. God and truth remain.

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All of that is true. There is a point to this life, but a lot of times as human beings in a general way, and more specifically for the purposes of our podcast, people in the church have very unhelpful notions of what life should be like or what life will be like, and in particular, what the

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Christian life will be like. We've talked about things like triumphalism, where everything's kind of happy clappy and the trajectory of the

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Christian life is just always onward and upward. We've discussed those things before, but today we want to talk about a realistic approach to trusting

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Christ and living life in the church. We want to recalibrate expectations in ways that we think are biblical and in ways that we hope will set people free, will liberate people from a bondage that they maybe have placed themselves under because their lives don't look like they think they should look.

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We want to just have an honest discussion and a transparent discussion about suffering and toil and struggle and pain and what that looks like in light of God and his faithfulness and the promises that he's made to us in Christ.

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We want to think about what we're called to as followers of Jesus in the church in particular.

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I'm hopeful, John, personally, that this is a conversation that is comforting to people, that is liberating for people, that doesn't depress people, but will give them an honest, sincere, realistic hope in Christ and perhaps a better handle on the things that are most important and what we're called to in terms of our life together in the church.

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I know you feel the same way. So, why don't we start out maybe by just talking in a real and honest way about life in this world, unless you have something else that you want to begin with?

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Justin Perdue No, I agree. We've been told that in Christianity, the primary focus of the

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Christian life is our improvement, how we become more and more morally better.

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So, it is all about self -discipline. It's all about our relationship with God.

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We had a visitor at our men's Bible study last night. We were even talking about communion and how communion, common union, the very nature of communion is communal, meaning you come together as a unified community.

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We were having this conversation about how to have communion by yourself. I'm like, this is the epitome of modern -day

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Christianity. How do I do this by myself? How do I do this on my own?

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How do I become the self -made man? How do I become the self -made woman where I can look back and be proud of my accomplishments?

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Well, most Christians look back and they're humiliated by what they haven't accomplished, what they haven't done, what they failed in, the amount of sin that still remains in their life.

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If someone's honest with themselves, there's nothing to be proud of. You may not be a murderer.

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You may not be the worst parent in the world, but there's plenty to be ashamed of and there's plenty to be guilty of within any and all areas of your life.

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Then you go to church and you hear about how you need to be better, and you're just not. You're not better.

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I had this thought the other night. I was laying in bed and just thinking about politics and the presidential debate and just what a circus that was.

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You would bring that up. You would bring that up. I know. And then I just started thinking about the world in general.

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The United States is not the only country that's fractured right now. The world is falling apart, but the world's been falling apart for how long now?

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Well, it sounds like from the garden. From the jump. Pretty much from the jump. We have been told that everybody has these plans for utopia and everybody has these ideas of this is how the world can be made better.

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And then you start wondering, what are we doing anyways? What is life all about? Because it doesn't matter what anybody does.

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They die. They suffer and there's pain. It doesn't seem like there's any solution that's being offered.

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I said this before we recorded. There's a pretty good book that's been written on a lot of this stuff that we're discussing, and it's called

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Ecclesiastes. I would highly commend it to people, where they could pick that up and read it. And they could listen to Solomon, who was given wisdom that was superior to any man that had lived or lived since.

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God gave him a unique insight into life and the things of this world and God and everything else.

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He writes a lot like what you just said. I mean, he says that there is a vanity to this life.

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There is a toil and a struggle that's associated with life under the sun. There are so many things that happen that, frankly, are just bad.

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He writes in a way that we don't let ourselves talk in the church a lot of times. He acknowledges that there are things that are just wrong and hard and that things should not be this way, and yet they are this way.

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What do we do with that? People a lot of times want to come in and put their hands over Solomon's mouth, so to speak, with respect to Ecclesiastes.

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It's like, you shouldn't talk like that in the church. It shouldn't be this way.

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He's like, yeah, but it is this way, so what do you got for me? We live in a world –

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I want to say this maybe before we get too much further into the conversation – it does nobody any good to diminish the hardness of difficulty and pain and suffering.

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We don't want to act like things are just easier than they are. We don't want to wallow in self -pity, but at the same time, we need to acknowledge the difficulty of the hard.

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And we live in a world where we bury our children, and people suffer, and cancer is a thing, and financial hardship is a thing, and hunger is a thing, and sin runs rampant.

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Only a fool would look around and say that things are as they should be and all is well, because it's not.

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It's not yet. And so we want to be, as God's people in the church, we want to be able to call things as they really are.

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I think that we all, as human beings – because again, citing Ecclesiastes 3 .11, God has written eternity into the hearts of man.

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So we do all have a longing for utopia, like you have alluded to already, and we have a longing for the epic.

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The problem is we so often think that that's what life should be like now, and we expect it to be that now.

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If we just think the right way, if we are just disciplined in the right ways, if we just get our theology straight, if we just get our hearts right and get our minds right and all these things, then we can be delivered from suffering, weakness, pain, toil, and struggle.

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And the answer to that biblically, the response to that biblically is you have been redeemed by Jesus Christ if you're trusting him, and at the same time, you have not been bodily resurrected yet unto this incorruptible existence that will be your reality forever.

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That has not happened yet. And so we want to be able to help people think about what they can expect in this life, and at the same time, not fall off the other side of the horse into this nihilistic, everything's meaningless perspective, or this cynical, jaded approach where everything sucks, and we just may as well just stick our heads in the sand because it's all going to hell in a handbasket, and what can we do?

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That's right. Well, my kids suffer from this. If they can't do something perfect, they don't want to do it at all. And I was like, that's not how life works, because if you can't do anything perfect, then you're not going to do anything at all.

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So it's almost like if I can't have utopia now, or if this isn't the design that God has for me, then why care at all?

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I left in his Bible study last night with some of the prayer requests that were offered, and they're painful.

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They're really, really hard. People suffering from cancer and children that may not be viable at birth, and there's a lot.

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So then you tell people, well, we need to have faith and trust in the Lord, and God will provide, and all things will work for good.

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And he's going to teach us contentment in all things and all that. Yeah. All that's true.

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Right. People go home to their quiet homes or to their messy homes or to their kids that are screaming, and all those platitudes mean nothing.

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They still have anxiety. They still are suffering. They're still hurt and upset and angry.

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If I may briefly, the whole God works all things together for good, Romans 8 .28,

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that people just slap up on the refrigerator and act like we've now solved the problem of pain. We should not be that reductionistic.

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I know you and I agree on this. That promise of Romans 8 .28, and all the promises, by the way, of Romans 8 .28

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are eternal promises, and they are true and they are real in terms of what

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God has done, is doing, and will do for us, eternally speaking. At the same time, none of those promises mean that our lives will go well, and it is a fool's errand for us to try to read through all the lines of God's providence to try to figure out exactly what he's doing, because that's not what they're for.

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For me to look at the difficulty and the suffering and be like, all right, well, God's working all this for good, so let me just mine through all this and try to find the good.

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I think you will exhaust yourself if you do it that way, but what you're clinging to is the eternal hope and the promises that God has made to you through Christ, and that at the end of the day, it will all be well.

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I know we're going to come back to that in a minute. Keep going, though, man. People go back to their homes, and they're still angry, and they're still sad, and they're still anxious.

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What do we do with that? Yeah. There was reading our Minsk Groupers going through Truths You Can Touch by Tim Chester, which we'll probably do a podcast on that here soon.

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He gives this illustration of someone saying, Christ is sufficient for you, or Christ is sufficient for you, and the single mom who is going to go home to an empty house where she longs for human touch, like to be held by a man, to love and care for her, and to be a father to her child, and then she hears you say, well,

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Christ is enough. She gets home, and how is Christ enough for her in that moment?

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That's where reality sets in. When a spouse dies, and then they go to church, and they hear,

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Christ is enough. How? How is Christ enough? Those are the things that basically we sometimes—this is the fantasy side of Christianity, where we just throw phrases around, and we just throw it out there, and assuming that it's going to—this is what people do when people die at funerals.

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They say the most unhelpful, unthoughtful phrases. They mean well, but they say things that are frankly stupid.

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They've been trained to say the most unbiblical things. This is why

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Paul says you weep with those people. You close your mouth, and you cry, because that's the appropriate thing to do.

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One of the things that we want to always do is we want to solve the problem, but you can't solve the problem.

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It's unsolvable. It's not—you can't fix it, and that's where Christianity thinks we have the answer for everything, and there's no mystery involved.

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I am speaking from a lot of hurt and pain, and you can probably hear it in my voice, because I'm so tired of seeing

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Christians suffer needlessly when they can have hope, but that hope is being offered in a way that is so unbiblical that it actually squashes the real hope that's offered.

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We are excited to announce that we have a new free e -book available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. 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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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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The promises of God to us in Jesus do not take pain away. In the moment, it doesn't take grief away.

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It does, sure, give us a framework and a filter to push that pain through, but for us to think that even saying that Christ is enough is going to make somebody feel better about the death of a loved one or a cancer diagnosis or whatever it may be is foolish.

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That's right. We're going to get to why those promises matter and what they really are intended to do for us as Christians in just a minute.

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But even along these same lines, John, think about James chapter one, where James does tell us to consider it joy when we encounter trials of various kinds because of what

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God is doing in us. He is working in us to produce really good things and all that stuff.

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People will often cite James one and say, man, you're going through some terrible stuff, but you need to consider it joy because you're encountering trials and God's going to do good through this.

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To which I want to say, yeah, okay, true, but James's theology in James one is a statement about the greatness of God to be able to work through pain and suffering to produce good.

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It is not a statement about the goodness of the trial and suffering. Trials and suffering, by definition, are bad.

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The miracle is that God actually uses pain and suffering and bad stuff to produce good things in his people.

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Yes, steadfastness is what he says. Right, exactly, steadfastness. What is that?

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It's a continued hoping and trusting in Christ and the promises of God through him. We could have a great conversation about that sometime.

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But it's not as though we should invite suffering upon ourselves, that we should look for trial, that we should pray for it so that we might be sanctified.

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It's like, no, these things that God uses in our lives are things that we would never sign up for.

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Again, it's a statement about his faithfulness and goodness to us, not about the fact that trials are good or that suffering is good or that death is good.

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None of those things are good, and we need to stop talking in reductionistic, foolish ways like that in the church.

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It sounds really spiritual, but if you think about it for five seconds, it becomes quite clear that this is crazy talk.

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You're just telling me that basically, oh my gosh, my cancer is a blessing or that the death of my loved one is a blessing from the

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Lord. No, it's not. It's terrible. Yes, I continue to trust the

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Lord. I don't want to get too far mired in the weeds. No, you're good. I think this is at this moment where we're going to go from fantasy to Christianity.

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Everything that's been offered to you is not real. It never can be and never will be, and you most likely are feeling it.

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If you're listening to this podcast, you know that what you've been offered from Christianity has never delivered.

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It's kind of like that goalpost that keeps getting moved. The moment you think you're going to achieve it, they just move it again.

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They just move it again. It's like we said a few weeks ago, it's

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Linus and Lucy in the football. Every time you come up to kick the ball, it's just removed from you and you're on your back looking like a moron.

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That's right. So real Christianity, Christianity that comes from Scripture that we would argue comes from a

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Reformed perspective. Reformed meaning that the way in which the Bible has historically been understood and applied comes from this tradition that was regained during the

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Reformation. We hold to a covenantal Reformed perspective from a Reformed Baptist 1689 perspective, and so a lot of what we're about to say comes from our understanding of Scripture.

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I will tell you that real Christianity is more than this, but if we're going to make it simple for our conversation today,

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I would say that the purpose of the Christian life, what you're going forward, and what is offered to you, first of all, is a real hope.

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I would say a sure hope. A sure and lasting hope.

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Right. So everything that the Christian life is drawing you towards is not assurance in yourself and not assurity in yourself and not the assurance in your moral improvement or your performance improvement where you're performing better than you were before.

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But Christianity is driving you towards a hope that is outside of yourself and a hope that is not in your faith.

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You're not having faith in your faith, but you're putting faith in the object of your faith, which is Christ.

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So the entire Christian structure, real Christianity, is about the day -in and day -out structure that is pushing you towards the hope that is outside of your current circumstances.

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I don't see anywhere in Scripture where you are told to put your hope in your current circumstances.

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These circumstances cannot bring hope because we live in an already -not -yet situation, meaning that I'm already a child of God, but I'm not yet living with him.

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I'm already considered pure and holy, but I am not living in that reality because I don't have the new body that Christ has promised me.

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Right. God tells me all the time that he is faithful and that he loves me, and yet my life is just wracked with pain and suffering.

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How do I reconcile those things? That's right. If he truly loved me, why wouldn't he prevent this from happening?

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Why would he prevent my child from dying, from getting cancer, from this and this and this? So we live in that constant tension.

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I think we have to understand a biblical worldview that's real Christianity, and the real

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Christianity is that God has a purpose and a will that he is accomplishing, and we don't fully understand that.

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That's the mystery of Christianity. We don't fully understand how God is accomplishing what he's doing because I don't understand all of the pain and suffering that goes on in this world, but it's not needless.

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That's entirely right. This sure and lasting hope that we have is found in Jesus Christ and in him alone.

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You've already stated that it's outside of us. It stands unchanged regardless of how we're doing or how we're feeling or what we're thinking.

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Jesus Christ will carry the day. He has saved us, is saving us, and will save us, and we trust and rest in him.

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The deliverance is coming, but it's not here yet. Even to think about Paul's language that is quoted often, that he's learned contentment in all things.

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The only way that you learn contentment in all things is to realize that there is something more ultimate that's coming.

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When he'll say that these light and momentary afflictions are not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us, that again is a statement about the greatness of the glory that is ours in Christ that will be our experience one day.

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It's not a statement about the fact that the trials are actually small. Many of them are huge, and so we are orienting ourselves in clinging to this steadfast and lasting and certain hope that we have in Christ.

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At the end of the day, a lot of times that's all we have to cling to because everything around us is giving way.

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Like we sing, when all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. That's essentially our experience, but a lot of times we're in the midst of stuff that's really, really hard.

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Yeah, well, and I will say to add to what you're saying, Justin, when

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I say real Christianity is about a sure hope, what people assume

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I'm saying is that, oh, we need to just focus in on the gospel, and if we just focus in on the gospel, we'll have that sure hope.

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Well, actually, I'm not saying that. What I'm trying to say is that your sure hope, as it's handed to you, comes from outside of yourself, and the way that it's sustained in you comes from outside of yourself.

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It has nothing to do with your individual effort. Right, and a lot of times,

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I'm tracking with you, brother, and what I want to reiterate to people is that a lot of times, even when we talk like this, this sure and lasting hope, we're clinging to Christ.

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Even in those moments, my mind and my heart are all over the place, and I don't feel it.

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I'm not in a good place mentally or emotionally or even spiritually sometimes, and I'm just acknowledging the fact that I'm a wreck and that things aren't going well in my life, and I'm feeling all kinds of ways about that.

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When we say that this sure and lasting hope is found in Christ and the gospel, that does not mean that it will produce a feeling all the time of contentment within you.

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It doesn't mean that it will produce a feeling all the time of peace in your soul, but what we mean is that even when you are not content and even when you are anxious as the day is long,

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Christ has you, and he is not going to let you go. It's not like the gospel is this consolation that is just going to always make you feel differently every time you think upon the

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Lord Jesus. I'm going to offer a quote from C .S. Lewis that I think is really good that speaks to,

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I think, some of what we're getting at. He says, Talk to me about the truth of religion, and I'll listen gladly.

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Talk to me about the duty of religion, and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion, or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

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It's so good, man. Just for anybody that's interested, that is taken from his book called

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A Grief Observed that he wrote after his wife died. He wrote it under a pseudonym because he was so concerned that those who had been influenced and impacted by his writings would be devastated to see his wrestlings with life and suffering and pain.

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But then later on, it was published under his name. It's a good read for people that are able to really look into the heart and mind of a man they respect and trust and see him all over the place, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

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But even a man like C .S. Lewis, who many of us have profited from, he was not immune to the things that we're talking about because this is every

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Christian's experience. Justin Perdue That's right. One of the conversations that Justin and I had this morning, we were just talking about sports and life and TV shows.

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Justin made this observation about how a lot of sports movies depict the one percent reality and even its fantasize of what football is.

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Justin grew up playing football, played college football. What you see on TV Sunday and Saturday and what you see in movies is they show you the the high points and everybody assumes that's what playing football is like.

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And it's not. And if anybody's ever played sports, you understand that that's like the smallest.

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I mean, it's great. And while we play sports, it's very small. Yeah. But the majority of it is the grind day in and day out and working and practicing.

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And it's all the mundane things that are not fun. They're not enjoyable. They're actually just pure pain and work.

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And one of the things when we talk about A Sure Hope, the fantasy Christianity is that you show up on Sunday morning and there's this hoopla and it's all hype and it's big and it's glorious.

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And you hear people think and say, I just want Monday through Saturday to feel like Sunday at 10 a .m.

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And they assume somehow if they can get there by listening to Christian music and reading Christian books, that they can live on that spiritual high.

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And if they live in that spiritual high, then the rest of their life is going to fall in line with it.

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And that's actually what they're told on Sunday mornings as well. And that's not the Sure Hope we're talking about.

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Nah, bro. I mean, yeah, I could riff on the whole football thing. You know, like when you're practicing, you're wearing helmets that don't have decals on them.

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Your practice gear is very plain looking. You know, it's not shiny. It's not, you know, you're not spatted up and you're not wearing armbands.

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And it's not this like rah -rah excitement all the time. A lot of times you're just like, man, the last thing in the world

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I want to do is go to practice. And the game is not as like, you know,

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Hollywooded, dramatic as it's depicted. It's, if anything, more violent, but it's more of a grind.

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And I could talk about that for a long time. But I had a great conversation, John, along these same lines, just to try to illustrate in another way what we're trying to get at.

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Had a great conversation with a brother in our church yesterday about his job. And he's recently taken a job that he likes, that he wanted.

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And he said, bro, yeah, I'm glad I've gotten this job. I'm thankful for this job. And I'm really glad when Friday gets here and I have the weekend off because I'm tired, you know, by the time

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Friday rolls around. And then we talked about how this modern notion that you should like love your job so much and love what you do so much that you'll never work a day in your life, you know, and like that's the goal and that's the ideal is utter nonsense.

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Because the reality for humans for thousands of years have been that they are toiling in their jobs.

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You know, the curse, last time I checked, Genesis 3 is still a thing, right? So like there's going to be toil in our labor and until Christ returns, that will be true, right?

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And it's not, there's going to be futility in a lot of the things that we do in life under the sun until Christ returns, that will be true.

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And so we are foolish if we think that with respect to our jobs or any arena of life that we're just always going to be like springing out of bed every day because we're just so daggum excited to go live this day.

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It's like, well, you're going to have some stuff that's good and you're going to have some days that are pleasant and you're going to have things to look forward to and thank

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God for that stuff. And at the same time, many, many weeks of your life, you're going to look at your day planner and think,

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I do not want to do a single thing that's on there. You know, and that's just the reality, brother, that we all are faced with.

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And I think we would be much helped by a perspective of, you know, we were created for the epic, but the epic is not here yet.

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We were created for a perfect existence, but it's not here yet. God and truth remain.

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And so there will be good things, praise be to his name, and I want to receive those with gratitude. And at the same time,

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I expect there to be toil. I expect there to be hardship, and I am going to aim to trust

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God through it and realize that I'm going to feel different ways at different times about it, and I'm going to be in need of my brothers and sisters in the church to come alongside me, to help me bear these burdens, to point me to Christ, that sure and lasting hope that's mine and that's ours.

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But I'm going to need people to weep with me. I'm going to need people to lock arms with me. As we make our way along in this pilgrimage to the celestial city, that will be epic, and that will be perfect, and that will be blissful, and it's going to be awesome, but we're not there yet.

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So let's talk about it. You've already mentioned the sure and lasting hope, and we're called to that. And we're also called to, as you put it before we recorded, a fellowship of love in the church.

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Yeah, so when you think about, okay, well, this is what life looks like, so what does

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Christianity look like within this painful, confusing, sin -struggling world?

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The one hope that we have, one of the hopes that we are given is the fellowship we'll have with our

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Father and in the physical presence of Christ, but also the fellowship of the saints. We're promised of this.

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The one part of eternity we can actually have a glimpse of now is this fellowship.

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It's the one part. We can't get rid of pain. We can't get rid of sorrow. We can't get rid of death. We can't get rid of sin.

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And so the one promise that we do have, and the most important part of it, is this fellowship of believers.

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And I don't want to say—the reason I picked the fellowship of love as the way of describing this is that there's a lot of things that we fellowship over—football, entertainment, movies.

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People gather together, and fellowship is not like a Christian word. It just means people gathering together, a communing over something.

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And when we talk about it, Christians talk about it, we specifically mean the fellowship that is centered around love.

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So Paul says in Ephesians chapter four, when the body functions properly, and in that functioning, there's the gifting of teaching and spiritual gifts, ministry, and fellowship is in there.

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He says when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love. What does Paul get at on the Corinthian church? He gets so upset with them because they're doing all these spiritual acts, but they're not doing them with love, the point of it.

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So even in James chapter two, he talks about the love that you should have for the brothers of first John.

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So when we talk about the purpose and the goal, yeah, real Christianity is your goal, your mission, your primary objective as a believer is the fellowship of believers for the sake of love and unity.

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We aren't told that. We're told the primary mission of the Christian is improvement, make myself better.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, I mean, I have a number of things running through my brain right now. One, just a brief observation, is you mentioned earlier how we kind of live our entire

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Christian lives seeking after that quote -unquote high that we experience at 10 or 11 a .m.

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on Sunday, and I mean, I agree with that statement completely, and at the same time,

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I do think there are experiences that we have in corporate worship sometimes that are really great, and it's a foretaste of the deliverance that's coming, right?

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But I wonder how many evangelicals have ever stopped to think that maybe the reason that you felt that way for that moment and you got that glimpse into what eternity is going to be like is because you were with the saints.

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You were assembled with the saints under the Word, coming to the table, using the means at our disposal to fellowship with one another in Christ Jesus.

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That's when you were like, man, okay, this is real. Those moments often don't happen when you're alone.

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They typically happen when you're gathered. Just an observation, but I completely agree with you in terms of what we're called to being to love one another in the church.

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You've mentioned John 13 in the words of Christ there. You've mentioned 1 John. That epistle is replete with language about loving each other.

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James is calling us to love one another. Paul, at many places, exalts love. You already mentioned

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Ephesians 4. First Corinthians 13 is a famous passage where love is this great thing that we are called to in the church and how we live together.

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Even when we think about Christian liberty, what is it that governs our exercise of our freedom? It's our love for one another.

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We could just go on and on about how love is the banner. In particular, love one another is the banner that flies over the church.

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It is what we're called to in this life, to a community and a fellowship of love.

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We need it desperately, and it is a worthwhile endeavor. If you're sitting and you're listening, you're thinking, man, life is hard.

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What do you have for me, guys? We've already talked about trust Christ. You have a sure and lasting hope that stands outside of you unchanged, and Christ has you.

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Also, be involved in a local church and give your life to the pursuit and the end of loving your brothers and sisters and to being loved by them because it is absolutely essential in the

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Christian life, and it is something that is of great value to give your life to and to prioritize.

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We are not saying that everything's pointless. No, it's not. Christ is real.

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God and truth remain. Love your brothers and sisters in the church, and you will live your life well if you make these things your goal.

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You're going to need your brothers and sisters, and they need you in a life that is wrought with trial.

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I think there's satisfaction. There's the promise of joy. Let's do this promise from Christ.

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I preached this earlier last year, and it has still rocked my world.

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John 15, which is an unbelievable passage about abiding in Christ. Jesus says this.

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It's the only time he makes this promise, and I don't know why. Someone needs to write a book on this one day.

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Jesus says in John 15 and 11, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

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Can you get more joy than Christ has? You can't. It doesn't exist in the universe. Jesus has ultimate joy, right?

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So he says my joy can be in you, and it can be complete. He goes, I've told you these things.

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This is what he says next. He says, this is my command that you love one another as I have loved you.

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So he is making this equation of resting and abiding in Christ, and the way in which that finds joy is by taking this rest in me and loving one another, and you will have the joy that I have.

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Because he says the next thing he says is greater love has no one that someone lay down his life for his friend.

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So the real Christianity is not your improvement in impressing

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God, but real Christianity is you resting in the sure hope, hearing it preached to you, receiving it in the word by the means of grace that are given it to you week in and week out, and then taking that sure hope and using it as your motivation to love sinful, broken, hurting people, and finding your satisfaction in life and your joy in life by actually loving your brothers through fellowship and your sisters in fellowship.

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Justin Perdue That's entirely true, brother. I mean, maybe last of this kind of three -pronged approach that we're offering, we've talked about the sure and certain hope, we've talked about a fellowship of love in the church, and finally, what is it that the

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Christian life is about and what is it that we're called to? We're called to an eternal mission, a mission that's eternal.

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All of these things are linked together because even the fact that the mission is eternal is inextricably linked to the fact that the hope is eternal and that what we're promised is an eternal promise of rest and peace forever in Christ.

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You already mentioned John 15. I'm mindful of the words of Christ in John 16, where he says,

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I've said these things to you that in me you may have peace, and he says, in the world you'll have tribulation, but take heart.

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I have overcome the world. Well, what does he mean? Does he mean that we're going to overcome the world in this life? Well, of course not.

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He says, you're going to have tribulation in the world. You're going to have tribulation in this life, but I have overcome it, meaning that I have done everything necessary to deliver you from this, and that's coming.

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That's coming. What you've been called to is something that is eternal, that is in some ways beyond your comprehension, but it will go well for you ultimately.

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One thing I say a lot at CBC is that we live from the end of the story backwards, and so we are always looking to the end.

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In God's kindness in Scripture, in Revelation – I don't just mean in the book of Revelation, though I mean that in part – but in God's revelation in the

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Bible, he has told us how this ends. He has given us a glimpse into the future and what forever will look like, and so that we cling to as well.

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Sincerely, this is not all there is. This is not what our existence will be like forever. We will not forever battle sin.

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We will not forever battle the fallenness of the world. Right now, the creation is groaning, and so are we, but we will be finally delivered.

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Christ will return, and he will make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found, as we sing in joy to the world.

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So that eternality of the promise and the fact that a future and final deliverance is coming motivates us and sustains us on our mission right now in life in this world, in life under the sun.

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Yeah, I would say the Bible is not silent on the way in which you should deliver your life.

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It's just very different than the way you've been told. You've been told that it's about moral improvement and pietism, and we're arguing those lead to despair and no hope and hopelessness.

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Well, brother, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and the alternative is that Christ is calling you into communion with him, with his people, with a mission and a purpose that actually matters and will matter for all of eternity.

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I think that's where we should put our focus and aim in time. Justin Perdue Yeah, final comment from me before we head over to the members area.

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You just mentioned pietism and moral improvement being emphasized all the time.

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I think for a lot of people where there is a hyper focus on their discipline and on their morality and on their feelings and affections and everything, those people would rightly lambast the prosperity gospel, that we're going to obey and do certain things in order that our lives would go well now and that we would be blessed and that we would prosper in this life.

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That theology is bad, but I think we at Theocast – and John, you can tell me if you disagree with this. I'm speaking for myself here, but I think you agree with me.

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Pietism, this hyper focus on our feelings and our disciplines and stuff, and this hyper focus too on our moral improvement, is a kind of prosperity gospel light.

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It's a kind of easy listening prosperity gospel in a way because it is still, just like the prosperity gospel, pietism and an emphasis on moral improvement is earthbound.

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It is sadly, and I would say it's almost anemic in its earthbound character and nature.

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If you are thinking that the primary purpose of the Christian life is anything that happens right now in terms of you getting better or you doing better or your life just going better, then we, according to the apostle

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Paul, are above all people to be pitied. And I think it's evident in a number of ways that in the church, in America, in the 20th century, so much of our theology and our singing and everything is wrapped up in what happens in this life, and it ought not be that way.

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We are trusting in Christ now for the final deliverance that he will accomplish, and it's as good as done, and so we have peace and we have hope and we can have joy in the midst of suffering because we know the end.

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If you remove that eternal reality from this equation, there is no way to have any kind of hope or peace or joy in the midst of life in this world.

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There is none because depression is reasonable in this world. Divorced from Christ and the promises of the new heavens and the new earth and the safety that we have in Jesus, depression and suicide would be the only reasonable conclusion.

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So I'm not trying to be morbid, but it's just a thought. If your emphasis and your focus in the

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Christian life is anything that's happening in this world, we are to be pitied. Thank God that we have an eternal hope in Jesus, and we need to all remind ourselves every

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Lord's Day that that's what we're longing for and we're living for. We're loving each other for that reason.

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Oh, and that perspective is not going to be popular with the world and with modern

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Christianity. It's absolutely not going to be popular, which leads us into our membership. I think we've been clear enough to say that that doesn't mean that you just stick your head in the sand and wait for Jesus to come back.

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No, you love your brothers and sisters, and you trust Christ, and you do good because you know that the end is secure.

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That's right. There's much to do. So this is going to lead us into some current topics that have been flying around that I know that Justin and I are very passionate about.

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There's been some recent news about different churches and pastors saying different things about culture and the protection.

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There's even been some movements of people who are standing in front of courthouses, and there seems to be a lot of energy being put into our freedom as Christians, how we will and won't meet as Christians.

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There's just a lot of debate going on, and I am so disappointed in seeing fracturing anger.

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Really, we're fighting the government as if the government is a Christian entity, and there's so much energy being put into this to where, in the end, what are we trying to accomplish?

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Are we actually furthering the eternal mission of Christ, or are we hindering it? I know there's a lot of mystery in what

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I'm saying. I'm going to unpack that a little more in the members' podcast. Justin Perdue Let the listener understand.

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Justin Perdue Take us in, brother. Justin Perdue Well, thank you for listening, as always, to this episode of Theocast.

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We are about to head over into our members' podcast, and if you don't know anything about the members' podcast, but you would like to know something about it, you can go over to our website, theocast .org,

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and you can find out more there about our membership and what all that entails, the content that that gives you access to.

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