The Insufficiency of Christ | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and I'm here with Justin in Knoxville, Tennessee, actually together.

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And today is an important subject on the insufficiency of Jesus. And we have a pretty lively conversation about,

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I would say, why people have to grasp onto something other than Christ when it talks about their legitimacy and their relationship to God.

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And then we've started a brand new membership. We have a brand new ministry called Semper Ephraimanda. We'll talk about that a little bit later in the podcast.

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Stay tuned. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging warrior pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Yeah, conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed, and I would say, pastoral perspective.

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We hope so. Absolutely. Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Nashville, North Carolina.

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In Knoxville, Tennessee. He happens to be in Knoxville, Tennessee today. And I'm John Moffitt. I am the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Nashville, Tennessee, or south of Nashville, actually in Spring Hill.

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One of my church members got upset at me for saying that. So we're in Spring Hill, just to be clarified. In Spring Hill. Justin, we just did the

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Wheel of Names. Well, first of all, what are we giving away? What are we giving away? All right. First thing, I'm excited. Yeah. It might look to the listener like we're not in the same space because of this line that appears to be right here, but we are.

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We are in the same space. Actually, we have this technology where I can reach to the screen. Yeah. So talking about technology,

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I have been as detached from the Wheel of Names as the listener has been until today.

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Until today. So the Wheel of Names, for those who don't know, is the software that we use to randomly select—all under the sovereignty of God—but we randomly select a book giveaway or an item giveaway winner every week.

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And I got to see the Wheel of Names work its magic today. And our winner is none other than Scott Davis, our friend.

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We were on his podcast. Yeah. Assurance of Pardon. Assurance of Pardon. Not long ago. Scott, if you're out there listening,

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I hope you're doing well, brother. Today we are going to be giving away a copy of Michael Horton's Christless Christianity.

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And Scott, if you've already got a copy of this book, which you may very well have, you can just give it away to someone. That's right. Because we trust that somebody you know will profit from reading it.

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Now, we're going to give away another copy of Christless Christianity via the social media interwebs.

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And so today, as you listen to this podcast, will be a Wednesday—at least I think it will a few weeks from today.

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And so what you can do today, Wednesday, as you're listening to this podcast, go to any one of our social media accounts—Instagram,

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Facebook, Twitter—and there will be instructions on how to enter yourself into the second giveaway situation.

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And so just follow those instructions, do what it says there. And then tomorrow, on Thursday, we will select another winner who will also receive a copy of Christless Christianity.

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I think Scott needs to send us an email or something like this, or we've got his email. All right. So yeah, Scott, we'll make sure to get you the book, man.

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Great resource, Christless Christianity by Michael Horton. We would heartily recommend it to all of you out there. And it is related to what we're going to talk about today,

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John. Yeah, just so people know, I mean, Justin saw that wheel of names spinning. I did not just pick one.

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So it's definitely random. It is legit. I mean, I'm sure big tech has something to do with it, but I wouldn't worry about that.

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That's right. Yeah, that's right. Anyways, so yes, we have a good subject today, a subject that you and I are very passionate about.

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I would say we probably never talk about a subject we're not passionate about because then that would be a waste of both of our times.

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But today is definitely one that I'm excited to hear about. So Justin, why don't you give us a little bit of an intro of what it is we're talking about today?

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You know what? I'm going to just tell the listener right now, the Masters is on. We didn't choose this location because of it.

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God chose it for us. It is. It's on. You probably see the corner of the TV right over there. And the

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Masters is a pretty wonderful thing, which we're not going to talk about right now. It is. For those of you that love golf, this is a good weekend for golf lovers.

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Totally is. All right. So the title of the episode, because you've already seen it, is The Insufficiency of Christ.

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And we were aiming to be provocative with that title and hope that many will give this episode a listen.

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So we've had a number of conversations in our time together today here in Knoxville, Tennessee, working on a lot of stuff. But in between our work, we're talking theology and we're talking the

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Christian life and we're talking the church and all these kinds of things. And it seems very clear to us, and we say this humbly, we hope that this comes across very clearly.

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We don't mean to come across as though we have this all figured out or that we don't struggle to sometimes be distracted by other things ourselves.

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And we certainly don't want to come across condescending, so we pray we don't. But it is very clear to us that for many people in the church,

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Jesus and the gospel actually are not enough for their Christian life.

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There always has to be something else for people to feel right about their

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Christian faith, about their Christian life. And so this could take any number of forms, I'm sure we're going to talk about all of We can use different words too.

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Right, safe, excited. They need to be validated. Exactly. They need to feel legit about their

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Christian life and their Christian faith. And it seems that for many people, for that to happen, Jesus and the gospel is not enough.

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There has to be additional things thrown on top of it in order for me to feel right, and to feel validated, to feel legit about my life as a

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Christian. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm ready to launch into several, but man.

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So let me start by this. Please do, John. Start us. Pastor us, man. I want to go back, and there's really two goals that I have when we're doing this podcast and we're having this conversation.

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One, this episode is for the person who's probably brand new, someone recommended this to you, you're being introduced to theocast,

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Reformed theology, or maybe the concept of resting in Christ for the first time, from our confessional

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Reformed perspective. I also want to talk to the person who's been listening to us for a while. Yeah, both.

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Because what happens is that when you, kind of what I like to say, get out of the boat and get into the water, and you've been swimming in the water for a while, you forget what it's like to be out of the water.

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You forget that the weightlessness that we feel in the water is we love to be here, and we don't remember the dredge and the fear that exists within Christianity.

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So we get to a point where we look at those who are adding things to Jesus, we get angry with them.

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We get upset with them. Sure. We can. And we can even start arguing with them, which

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I see happens in the Facebook group, and things are sent to me all the time. So I think when you can see where someone's coming from, and why it is that they feel the need to add something to the sufficiency of Jesus, saying that he's insufficient, then it's helpful to obey

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Paul when he says, be gentle and kind and patient for bearing longsuffering, because you're understanding the perspective they're coming from.

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So the point of this is to demonstrate the danger of looking at Jesus as insufficient, and also for those of us who are coaching and bringing people this direction, or I would say coaching is a bad word, but really loving people as they're making this transition to resting in Christ, looking at it from their perspective.

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Helping people see maybe ways that they are prone to add things onto the gospel too, because we all are.

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And to help people maybe even make some sense of what they see going on broadly on Christian Twitter, for example.

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That's right. Stay away from Twitter. Yeah. We could do a podcast one day called Christian Twitter. I don't know. That would be a discouraging conversation.

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Yes, it would be very much. But yeah, so I mean, hopefully this is some diagnostic stuff, some discerning type stuff, and clarifying stuff, and then yeah, we're going to,

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I'm sure, end up talking about Christ in the gospel. And as much as it depends on us, that's what we want to keep doing, is just preaching

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Christ. So what does the insufficiency of Jesus look like? What does it sound like?

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I mean, it depends on the scenario, right? But basically, what we're trying to get at is a situation where in the church, or just amongst

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Christian friends, or whatever it may be, your Christian community, whatever those communities might look like. There's this kind of posture where like, yes, we all agree on the gospel, amen to Jesus.

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He is our Savior. We never move on from the gospel. We've got the gospel. We believe the gospel.

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We need the gospel. All of that is agreed on. But then functionally, nobody feels validated.

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Nobody feels legitimate. Nobody feels like appropriately challenged even.

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If there's not all this other stuff then added to Christ and his sufficiency and what he has done for us.

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And then the exhortations that accompany that, like live under that, live in that, love each other. People often...

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Any number of things, John. I mean, we'll just maybe take them one at a time, I guess. Yeah, go for it. Let's maybe start with something that came up here with our group as we were just beginning to move toward recording this.

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A lot of people, when they think about preaching, when they sit and listen to sermons, you and I have gotten this critique from people who have visited our respective churches,

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I think, where they'll say like, oh my gosh, the preaching of Christ and the gospel is incredible. But where's the application?

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Or when, pastor, are you going to tell me stuff that I need to be doing? Because that's what I really need to hear.

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I got the gospel. I know the gospel. I know that Christ is my righteousness, but tell me what

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I need to do. That's one way that this creeps in. That's right. And this is very common. And so let's dig into, you know,

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I know you and I both love to do this. Well, we're going to bring out the criticism, but we don't just want to criticize bad thinking or bad theology.

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I want to go behind the thinking behind it, because then that helps someone walk this direction. So I understand when someone says,

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Justin, I love everything you're saying, but when I leave here, and it comes from a good heart, you aren't giving me things that I can do for the

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Father. You aren't encouraging me to be a better husband or a better wife or a better father.

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You're not giving me exhortations to actually then obey the very commands in Scripture that we see.

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That's the heart behind it. And I mean, just a brief interjection here. I'm preaching Ephesians right now. I'm preaching the last sermon in that book on Sunday.

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I think if you ask any person who's attended our church through the course of this sermon series, there has been plenty of exhortation to love each other, to love one another in your marriage, to love your children, to think about how you speak with one another, etc.,

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to flee from sin. All of that's there. It's in the text, right? But your point is still made that week in and week out,

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John, what do you and I aim to emphasize unashamedly as the primary takeaway?

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Jesus. That's right. Christ for you. The sufficiency. The sufficiency of Christ. How He is enough.

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And when we say enough, we don't mean something sentimental, right? We mean that He is enough for your salvation.

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He's enough for you to have peace and rest and to be safe. Yeah, He's enough for everything.

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So your salvation, your sanctification, and your glorification. Amen. Because what people misunderstand what we're saying, and those who don't go to our church or maybe don't listen to Theocast long enough, and this is the criticism of the

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Reformed world of those who are Christ -centered, what they think we're doing is we're only preaching sermons that are about the work of Christ.

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And that's it. So that's all we say. Right. Or the nature of Christ. And that is not what we're doing. Because I believe that Genesis 3 .15

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absolutely is about the sufficiency of Christ, and every book after is about the sufficiency of Christ.

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Because if God does not fulfill His promises in His covenants, which was first promised to us at the very beginning of the event, post -fall, to Eve, saying that from you will come the one who is going to make all things right.

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So the sufficiency of Christ is seen through Genesis 3 .15 all the way through the end.

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So it doesn't matter where you're preaching. So just so you understand, the listener of this, if you're new to this, when we talk about our focus being the sufficiency of Christ, we are not saying we only preach

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Christocentric passages. Or that we only preach justification. That's right. Absolutely.

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Because you're right. I mean 1 Corinthians 1, 30 -31, Christ has become to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

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That's right. And so we do understand that our union with Christ handles everything.

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That's right. Not just our justification being declared righteous and reconciled to God, but also our sanctification and secures our glorification as well.

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That's right. And so, yes, ultimately for us to preach Christ, we understand we are preaching the

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Christian life. Yes. And we are preaching what makes the Christian life possible. We are preaching what makes sanctification a reality.

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And that's what we want to clarify. And we do, as we exhort people from the Scriptures to love each other and to serve one another and to consider others as more significant than themselves, etc.,

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we're doing that always under the banner of Christ in the gospel, and we're helping. Here's the thing.

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We do application, but we are always doing application in a way that is clearly connected to Christ and what

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He's done for us. That's our goal anyway. That's right. And we'll fail as preachers, but that's what we mean to do.

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And so even those things that might feel more practical, like boots on the ground kind of takeaways, are all driven by Christ and what

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He's done for us. So going back to this criticism, the heart behind it, we understand.

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And it's a good posture. I want to glorify and honor God. I want to obey.

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But I will tell you that when I start sitting down with these, I have a congregation full of them, and so do you, because we are constantly counseling them and shepherding them and encouraging them.

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We have to peel back the layers of the why. So I never criticize the heart behind it.

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There is a genuine desire to do what is right, but I think the theology of why they want to do what's right is what's off.

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For instance, I'm going to go off of experience here, and this is a comment that was made recently in the last year or so, and someone was thinking about my sermons.

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They were thinking about it in such a way where they said, I understand what you're saying, but you don't ever give us application of things to do, which he was in a context that was so different for him.

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I was giving them application every single week, but they didn't want to obey the application I was giving them. Because they were so trained, their ear was so trained to hear more of the application of this is how you confirm your salvation, this is how you sustain your salvation, or this is how you sanctify yourself.

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This is how you validate yourself. Right. It's a validation. So Jesus is great to get you into the team, into the family, but now here's your role, and the role is not in relationship to what we say is biblical

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Christianity, which we're going to get to in a minute, but the role is in you better be doing these, whatever, put the list out there, to validate you are truly a child of God.

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The entire list of obedience is here's how to find, I would say, assurance of salvation.

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And people, they're wanting application in a way that I think, again, good motivations, but I think misunderstands the real battle and the real,

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I think, challenge of the Christian life, which is to trust Christ. Oftentimes, I would say all the time, the most difficult thing to do and the thing that is most impossible for us to do in our own strength is to simply trust

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Christ and only Him. That's right. And so what we're doing is aiming to preach

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Christ in such a way where we help them see, help people see that to trust Christ, to rest in Christ, to be even fueled and motivated by that peace and that rest and that security, and the fact,

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John, that your sanctification is certain. That's right. Now go love people. Love your wife.

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Love your kids. Love your neighbor. Consider how you talk to each other because you need to build each other up, of course.

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Forgive each other because God in Christ has forgiven you, but all of those things are driven ultimately by that preaching of Christ rather than us up there simply telling people something that they need to be doing, like you're saying, in order to validate them.

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And so we're aiming in all of this, brother, to use the law lawfully. We use it on the front end to crush sinners and bring them to Christ, to show them their sin and then offer them

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Christ. But then even in using the law as the guide, we use it in such a way where it's

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Christ now is driving that sanctification piece of your life.

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You're trusting him for that. And the law is simply your guide in what that looks like.

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So it's scary. It's frightening for people. It's disorienting. It's right. When you have been trained your entire life that the preaching of God's word, your time in the word, books you listen to, books you read, podcasts you hear, are all designed to equip you for,

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I would say, a performance -based Christianity or a Jesus plus Christianity. So it's almost like we're hitching our wagon to Jesus by our own efforts.

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Or people will say, I need to be equipped so that I can do the work of ministry.

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But I think there's a misunderstanding of what that even means. Because the work of ministry that we are equipped for is the building up of the body of Christ.

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To each other, ministering to each other, not to yourself. Correct. So it is very disorienting when you begin to hear sermons and theology and you're in a community and the community is not focusing on what you're doing to assure yourself or focusing on what you're doing to progress in this concept of,

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I am affirming that I truly am the child of God. It terrifies people.

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I will tell you this right now, man. The criticism we get is that if you're not careful, they don't say it this way, but this is how it comes across.

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If you're not careful in giving people rest in Christ, they're going to live however they want. They're going to take this freedom that they have, and this is what they hear.

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I have had people tell me over the years that, John, I am afraid that if I don't do these things, like for instance, if I don't read my

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Bible, or they literally, the words out of their mouth were, I want to go to a church where the pastor is telling me

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I must read my Bible, I must do these things, put whatever it is in there, otherwise I'm afraid I won't do them.

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They are living under law, and Jesus isn't sufficient enough for them to say,

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I am good with the Father, I will be sanctified, I will be glorified, he who began a good work in me will complete it.

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Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. That is not enough for them because they have been so trained. It's almost like the

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Stockholm Syndrome of Christianity. They need that slavery in order to feel safe.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest.

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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. Yeah, it's basically that response when

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Christ is being held out and he is being heralded as the point of everything. People deep down are wrestling with, okay, well, when are you going to give me the rest of it?

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And we're like, well, he's the whole thing. Now there's stuff underneath we can talk about, but he is it.

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He is all we ultimately have to offer. So I think something that I've observed, I'm going to pivot us and maybe transition to another observation here, that I think is related to this same concern.

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If people, I mean, we don't need to like date this and timestamp it or anything, but if people have been looking at social media much at all in the last week, there's been a lot going on on Christian Twitter over various issues, particularly right now surrounding complementarianism and what that looks like, how men and women relate to one another in the church, in the home, and all that.

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It becomes very clear in times like now, and it's not just over complementarianism, you pick your secondary issue, right?

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When stuff like this happens, people come out of the woodwork, it seems, to quite literally,

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Christians quite literally crucify each other on social media. And it seems that many people are almost addicted to controversy and they are.

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And I'm not trying to sound punchy or jerkish in saying this, but it's like they don't know how to live the

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Christian life if there's not something to argue with. Something to fight for. And there's not something to argue against. I need to always be defining myself by what

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I'm against. I need to always be like polemical in the way that I think about Christianity. And I've always got to have an opponent in view who

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I am trying to take down in order to feel legitimate and to be invigorated as a

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Christian. It's like to simply believe in the Lord Jesus, to simply rest in the Lord Jesus Christ, and to love my neighbor, to love the saints.

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It's not enough. To be about the work of the local church. It's not enough because what I need to be doing,

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I need to speak the truth. I need to be a bulldog for truth. I need to stand on the wall and make sure that nobody is in error.

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And I think that part of what's going on for people like that is this issue, that to rest in Christ and be about the business of the local church is not enough for me to feel legitimate and good about myself as a

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Christian. And so I need to be making sure that all these other people are orthodox and I've got to be fighting with people all the time.

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There's always an argument to win. There's always a battle to be waged. I mean, what

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I want to say to that is, well, in as much as it depends on us, one, we're going to be over here preaching

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Christ and seeking to love our neighbor. But then two, I want for people who are doing this and engaging in this, it's like secondary issues matter a lot.

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It's not that they don't, but they really matter in your own local church where you have a shared confessional standard and you are all submitting yourselves to the discipline and doctrine of that church and these pastors.

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And we need to agree about these things. But then when it comes to other people out there, it's okay that there may be some disagreement and we want to keep the main thing, the main thing.

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That's right. Yes. I have two thoughts to that. Please. Those people that I think what

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I would call are watchdog junkies, right? All they do, they're orthodoxy police.

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Yeah. All they do are watch YouTube video after YouTube video about how all of these, there's all of these theological errors.

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And don't get us wrong. Theocast has no problem with pointing out theological errors. We care about the doctrine.

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Right. But the goal is not to point out the error. We never want that. I mean, the tagline of our ministry is encouraging worried homes to rest in Christ.

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We're more designing or peeling back that which is weighing you down. Like Hebrews 12 says, setting aside the weight and the sin that easily besets you.

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We're trying to help point out these weights that we put on us, pietism, and we want you to pull those off.

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But there's a difference when the end result is we want the person we are talking to to rest in Christ.

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Man, when I hear these watchdog junkies or these, what do you call them? Orthodox police. They just want to shred these people.

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They want, they want to mow people down and they throw the heresy word so fast and so quick that if you ever even wanted that person to listen to you, there's no way they would because you have so quickly mowed them down.

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This is the two things I was talking to Andrew about this on the way up here when we were driving. He asked me the question, what does pietism produce?

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And I was like, well, it produces really three things. It produces fear. It produces a lack of assurance, but it also produces self -righteousness.

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What happens in this watchdog attack mode type of a thing that this is where, and you can see people, man, they are invigorated.

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They are excited. They're standing for the truth. We are protectors of the gospel. We are not going to compromise.

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Defenders of the faith. Right. But what it really does is create this unbearably stinchy self -righteousness that I honestly can't stand.

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When it destroys, in some situations, John, it destroys unity around the gospel. It destroys unity around Christ.

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And I agree with you. I think a lot of the identity in that kind of a situation for people that are engaging in this, a lot of their identity is derived from this stand for truth.

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My stand for truth is validating me as a believer.

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I am dedicated. I am of the number who are sincere and zealous and committed.

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And the line of thinking in that situation often too for people, they say things and people get angry with them.

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And the takeaway for them always is, well, people are only getting mad at me because I'm speaking the truth. Again, it's this validation thing.

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People are mad at me because I'm saying the truth and people hate the truth and they hate God. And it's like, well, I mean, they might be mad at you because you're being a jerk and maybe you haven't considered that.

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But again, what we're trying to drive at here is where is your identity found? Where is your sufficiency found?

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It's not found in this stuff and how many people you mow down on Twitter.

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Your identity and your sufficiency is always and only found in Jesus. And then what I pray we would all engage in is maintain our doctrinal standards and our confessional heritage, but then look for unity in any place we can, because we have

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Christ in common. That's right. So when we talk about doctrinal standards, sometimes

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I think people hear me or Justin say it is an almost an either or scenario.

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You were either gracious and unifying frou -frou. Right. Where there's unity around no truth at all.

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So it's all marshmallows and float and puff or there's people over here are like, oh, we're going to drop the rock, bro.

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Like we're, we don't care if you shatter truth is truth. We're going to stand for truth. It's not either or Andrew and I were talking about love.

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They actually go together. The rock of our salvation, the God in the flesh, the living word.

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Was surrounded by sinners, surrounded that I get an amen over there.

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Surrounded by sin. So there's no way God compromised his beliefs, his doctrine, his theology.

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He did not set them aside. He did not lower them. He did not excuse them.

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And yet the very nature of who God is drew centers to himself. So I have to take note of this in that even when

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Paul says, speaking the truth in love, our significance, this rest that we find in Christ, it doesn't cause us to be less excited about the truth.

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It causes us to be more excited about the truth because the goal is not, let's put it this way,

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Justin, when I listen to these people, the goal is to be right. We're right. And you're wrong.

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Yeah. The goal is to be right. And I'm like, no, no, the goal, the goal is to love these people.

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And the way to love them is of course, give them the truth. And they'll even say this. Well, I am loving them by telling the truth, but it's like telling the truth in love though.

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The goal at the end of it, you want this person, even though they may disagree with you, they may say, yeah, I hear your truth and I don't agree with it.

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I reject it. Yeah. They should still feel loved. Well, and honestly, bro, I, I think that if we're going to offend people, we want to offend people with the preaching of Christ and the gospel, he is a stumbling block, right?

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I mean, he is a cornerstone and I mean, those who fall and crash against him will be broken.

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That's true, but they'll be broken because they're, they're trusting in something else other than him.

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Yeah. Uh, they are proud and arrogant and their sin and don't see their need of Christ and we want to offend people with the preaching and the proclamation of Jesus and his sufficiency in the place of centers, not alienate everybody over these secondary issues.

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Not that we shouldn't contend for truth. Amen. We should, like you said, it's not either or it's both. And, and we want to love people and be clear about what matters most.

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That's right. And then be charitable over which about the things, certainly that we can disagree about. And then even in the ways that we engage conversations on secondary issues, let's be charitable and gracious and keep the main thing, the main thing.

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So John, I'm going to, let's go and say this, the way that we aim to operate here at Theocast, it's intentional. There's a reason why we have

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Lutherans and Presbyterians and Baptists and all kinds listened to us because we aim to never divide over issues like that.

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Now it matters for our local churches, how we understand baptism or theology. Don't confuse that.

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We don't have doctrinal standards that we hold to. For our own local churches, those things matter very much.

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You know, if you're going to be a member of Covenant Baptist Church or Grace Reformed Church, they matter tremendously, but when it comes to this and what we're doing here, and when it comes to Christianity broadly, like in America, for example, or Christian social media, our posture is, you know what?

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We are going to keep heralding Jesus and we are going to be very charitable about things that we know we have disagreements with other brothers and sisters about, and we're not going to beat those drums.

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We're going to beat the drum of Christ because He is ultimately the person who we all unify around because we all know that we need

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Him and He's our hope, He's our peace, He's our sanctification, He's our salvation. And so let's do that.

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That's right. Right? And so Jesus is enough even to unite us, and then in our own local churches, absolutely, let's hammer these things out.

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That's right. Well, and I would even say there's nothing wrong. You and I have had wonderful conversations with our brothers in Christ that are

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Lutheran, who are Anglican, who are Presbyterian, and some of my dearest friends fit all of those categories, men that I love and I trust.

31:51

So what ends up happening though, and I would say fundamentalism and pietism is a great example of this, where we blur the lines on primary and secondary issues, right?

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What is a secondary issue and something that you and I should be able to disagree over but not necessarily separate over, we blend those two.

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Just to be clear, primary issue would be something you need to believe to be a Christian. That's right. Secondary issue would be, the way

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I would define it, is you need to agree about this to be in the same church. Right. Right. Right. But it's not a test of whether or not you're a

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Christian. No, like primary is an orthodoxy issue. It's an issue of orthodoxy and heresy. That's right.

32:28

Yes. Right. So, you know, these are just for the listener who may not understand that you're talking about the nature of Christ, the

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Trinity, the nature of God. The primary issues. The nature of justification, sanctification, all of those things. Secondary issues would be things like complementarianism, baptism, you know, those sorts of things, church government, things like that.

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Right. Which Justin and I, we openly are 1689 Lenten Baptist Confessional.

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We're Covenantal Baptists and we are unashamed of that. Right. And we are very convicted in those beliefs, but we understand that when we look at the theology of our other brothers in Christ, that some of them are not even confessional, but we will look at them and say, they do understand this and they are properly heralding sufficiency of Christ.

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Man, let's encourage that. Let's not tear them down. Sufficiency of Christ, distinction between law and gospel.

33:18

Yeah. Right. Justification, theology of the cross. I mean, there are so many things that we agree on. Why would we, even on a podcast like this, take shots at other

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Christians over stuff and argue over these things when we can promote unity around the Lord Jesus and how

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He has saved us? Because the goal is to help people see that Jesus truly is sufficient.

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Right? So when you ask Justin and I or Jimmy what we're trying to do at Theocast or what we're trying to do in our churches, we want people to know, trust, rest in Jesus as being enough.

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Like we're even starting a conference called Enough. Hopefully coming next year. Yes, very soon. Because this message, we believe, has been cluttered and it has been,

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I think, damaged because we now live in a culture of Jesus plus, and the reason of it is because we have started fighting about secondary issues.

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Totally. We started losing sight of the sufficiency of Christ and preaching Christ's sufficiency. Even your quote by Beza a couple of weeks ago, we're talking about when we don't distinguish the law and the gospel.

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It's done more damage than anything. It causes all kinds of damage. So we want to pull the clutter off of that and say, no, the sufficiency of Christ is enough, and we understand that it's scary to trust something other than just Christ.

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We want to somehow say, I'm good because of this, and if this isn't

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Jesus, then we're here to say, then you're not good. And that's scary to hear. And, you know, part of the podcast today is to say, if you feel that tug and you feel that war within you where it sounds scary to think you can, and Justin, I would love for just a couple of minutes before we have to move on.

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When we say rest, people hear quit. When people hear rest, people hear stop.

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That's what they hear. They hear quit trying, stop, or I would even say they also hear, we're not concerned about holiness.

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So I do think when we say rest in Christ or when we say that Jesus is sufficient, those are the two phrases that you and I use the most when we're just talking to each other and when we're thinking about anything that we want to put out broadly related to Theocast or our ministries.

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Rest in Christ, the sufficiency of Christ. By those things, we certainly don't mean quit in terms of quit seeking to honor

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God with your life. Let go and let God kind of - No, I mean, it's not at all what we mean. We do mean quit trying to save yourself with God's help.

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That's right. We do mean quit trying to validate yourself before God because he's already told you what he thinks of you in Christ.

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There's nothing that can separate us. He has told us who and what we are. We have a new identity now.

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We're not chasing after that. We have a new status now. We're justified. We're declared righteous. We're not chasing after righteousness.

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So in that sense, we are saying quit running like a hamster on a wheel after your identity because God's given it to you in his son.

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Quit running after your status in terms of righteousness because God's given you that in his son.

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No righteousness will ever be required of you that Jesus hasn't provided for you. No debt will ever be demanded of you that Jesus has not paid in full.

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So quit trying to do that. But by all means, try to love your neighbor.

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Try to give your life away for the good of your brothers and sisters. Pursue all of that stuff knowing that you're safe in Christ and that you have rest in him.

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And so that's what we mean. It's not give up and quit wholesale. It is give up on trying to justify yourself because we all try to do that.

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And we're exhorting people, rest in Jesus, see the sufficiency of Christ, and now that you're free and you're safe and you know that your sanctification is certain and that you know that your glorification is certain.

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We need that reminder all the time because I mean, I'm even as I'm saying this and these words are coming out of my mouth, I'm like, Lord, give me faith.

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Right. But as we preach that message to one another from the word all the time, we now are free to go and love one another and to build up the body of Christ and to love our neighbor and to consider them as more significant than ourselves.

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Because my eyes are now not just simply fixed on me and my own performance. I can actually fix my eyes on other people.

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That's right. So when you when you start hearing sermons, you'll be able to pick out the difference of when someone believes that Jesus is insufficient to provide for you all that you need versus someone who truly believes that Jesus is sufficient.

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The person who believes that Jesus is sufficient is trying to pull out of your hands all that you are claiming brings you clarity and hope and put

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Christ in there. And the person who is confused, they are going to be handing you means by which you can prove your sufficiency.

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And it sounds in the forms of, you know, it's always a list of here's the five ways of doing this and the seven ways of that.

38:30

And let me just I think the easiest way of Justin of knowing the difference between sufficiency and self versus sufficiency in Christ is where are they pointing you towards where you can say this is where safety is found.

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Right. If it's in Jesus and this is where legitimacy is found. That's right. I am legitimately safe and can rest because I am doing this.

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That right there believes Jesus isn't sufficient. But if you can say I am legitimate and safe and I can rest because of what

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Christ has done for me, that at that moment, Jesus is sufficient.

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And that is a message that you want to embrace. Yeah. Amen. So all right. So we have a new podcast.

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This is kind of we announced it earlier in, I guess, the Facebook group.

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And by now, it's already been out a couple of weeks. So we got rid of our old membership. It was great. We loved it.

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But now we have something new. It's called Semper Reformanda. And the whole idea, if you are loving what you're hearing and you want to be a part of this conversation, there's two ways that you can do it.

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One, Justin and I are about to do a second podcast. It's called Semper Reformanda, where we take these weekly episodes and we take it to the next level.

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I definitely would say it's a step up and unfiltered, where we are going to really kind of pull up a chair around the table and say, hey, sit down, process on the fly with you.

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Let's process how how did we get here? How did we come to these conclusions? What can we give you that you can help other people come to these conclusions as well?

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So that's Semper Reformanda. And then we are providing ways for you to go and meet in your local community and discuss this with other listeners.

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So once you sign up, you can sign up for the we have an app that you can download and you'll be able to use that app to find a local either online community if there's not a community in your area, or you can go and start one and continue this conversation about furthering the

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Reformation. So we're going to head over to that conversation. If you want to know more about it, you can go to Theocast .org

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and it'll be right there, right there on the top. It'll say Semper Reformanda, join the Reformation, join the

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Reformation. So we'll look forward to having you a part of our team, a part of those who are helping other people find the sufficiency of Christ.