For God So Hated the World | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to be talking about God, and in particular, we're going to be talking about God's posture towards us.

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If you listen to many preachers and many theologians talk, it seems like God, deep down, kind of hates the world and hates us, and yeah,

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He redeems us and He saves some sinners, but He does that purely for His own glory, but He doesn't really want to do that.

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And then even Jesus Himself came into the world kind of holding His nose and not very happy about the mission that He was on, and in all of His interactions with sinners, was really just there to rebuke and yell at people.

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God is presented as harsh, and Jesus is presented the same way, and what this has produced in so many

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Christians and so many of us is fear, where the thought of standing before Christ or being with the

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Lord is a terrifying prospect. So the question is, is that presentation of God biblical?

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Is it accurate? Is that presentation of Jesus accurate? That's what John and I are going to be talking about on today's episode.

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If this interests you, which we assume it does, stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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We have met again, John, to record a podcast. My brother and I have been encouraged already this morning in our one -on -one conversation before we hit record.

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I, like anybody else, am prone to struggle in this life and can battle this kind of melancholy and feeling flat and gray, and that's definitely how

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I've been feeling this morning and have been encouraged in our conversation about Christ even before recording this.

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So I hope that that even can come through in what we say here in just a minute. We did laugh a decent amount and made jokes and made fun about things, but we were having a conversation kind of getting ready to record this episode, and I'm excited to talk about it, and I know you are too.

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So hey, man, but before we get to the content at hand, we want to give away a good resource like we've been doing every week for a minute now.

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Yeah, absolutely. We had someone reach out to us to give something to us, which I need to contact them back. We had a pastor here in Tennessee offer to rebind some

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Bibles for us, so we should probably give him a shout -out. We'll get his work first and then give him a shout -out on the podcast.

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We're going to be giving away a book we've given away before. We get to a point where we want to repeat some of these books because they're just that good.

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And this one's a classic. We're going to be giving away A Bruised Reed, and it was written in,

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I think, 2021 or 20 -something like that of the year 1600.

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I was getting ready to say, homie. I mean, Richard Sibbes was born in 1577. I was just seeing if people even knew who he was.

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We're giving away a relevant modern author. You know why they're relevant to us,

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Justin? Because they're dead and their theology is completed. Justin Perdue And they say wonderful things about Jesus.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, well, sometimes you almost kind of want to wait to promote certain people until they die because you're not quite sure what they're going to say that contradicts what they said before.

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So that's why we read a lot and recommend a lot of dead authors, except for Michael Horton, who's not dead.

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So there's that. Justin Perdue Yeah, Sinclair. Anyways, it's not a rule of thumb, but Rich, A Bruised Reed, we've given this away before.

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It's going to be an excellent resource to go along with our podcast today. If you've not read it, you can get a link to it down in our notes.

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There is an Amazon link. If you use that link, Amazon will give us a portion of that purchase. If you don't want to purchase it, you have an opportunity to win it.

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We are giving away to one of our members. He's a new member. So thanks for partnering with us in our ministry,

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Dustin Keyes. You will be getting a free copy of this. We'll have it shipped to your house, so we'll shoot you an email, get your address from you.

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So congratulations to one of our Semper Firmanda members. And then also, if you'd like to win this copy, we're going to give it away to you, one of our listeners.

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All you need to go to is one of our social medias. It has to be on Wednesday morning when the podcast drops, and it will have all the instructions there.

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And then on Thursday, we will give it away, and then we will announce next week's podcast, which is four weeks from now for us.

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But Justin, I don't know if you know this, but it's already come out by this point, but has not come out for us, is our critique of Lordship Salvation.

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So that'll be next week, which is four weeks ago. Isn't that weird? It's almost like being in the Matrix somehow.

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Back to the future. I don't know. Or what's the one where they go like in a dream, within a dream, within a dream?

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You mean Inception? Inception. Yes. Oh my gosh, what a good movie that is. Yeah. My kids got to watch it.

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Anything with Tom Hardy in it, sign me up. Yeah. You are a Hardy guy. Justin, what are we talking about today?

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Not Tom Hardy. I can say that with confidence. Even though Tom Hardy needs Jesus. So there's your transition.

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Maybe we could talk about that in Semper Reformanda. This is a good conversation we're going to have.

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This has been prompted by a number of things, even some posts that we've seen recently, but I think this is more of just an ongoing observation.

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I know certainly for me and John, I know you agree. I think a lot of times the way that God is depicted in general is that deep down,

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God really just kind of hates us. He hates sin. He hates sinners.

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He is just completely and altogether displeased with us. The only reason that he would ever save sinners like us is because it brings him glory somehow, but he kind of reluctantly does that.

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Then even Jesus, the second person of the Trinity God, took on flesh and entered into this world.

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He really did it, holding his nose, not wanting to be here, not wanting to come and do what he did.

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He interacted with sinners on earth and just kind of hated it the entire time. All he really did was he came to yell at the

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Jews because they had misunderstood true religion. He also came to spend time with tax collectors and sinners, but he only did that so that he could effectively rebuke them and yell at them too.

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It just is this depiction of Christ as a very harsh and exacting, threatening, and even frightening person.

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The last thing in the world you'd want to do is be near him. It's very clearly a misrepresentation of him,

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John, because sinners, in particular people who knew that they had no righteousness, could not stay away from him. The people that thought they were righteous had a problem with him, but those who knew that they were bankrupt and devoid of righteousness seemed to flock to him in droves and wanted to be near him and hear what he had to say.

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Not bearing the lead here, the title of this episode is one of the punchier titles we've come up with in a while,

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For God So Hated the World. What we're trying to depict here is that far from God just full stop hating all of us and hating everything and reluctantly saving us and all of these things, and Jesus coming into the world hating his mission and hating us and really just coming to rebuke everyone.

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The Scripture actually bears witness to the fact that Jesus willingly did this, that God loves us. He delights to save us.

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He is gracious and merciful and compassionate and tender. Jesus says these things about himself. He came the first time not to judge us but to save us.

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This is the testimony of the Scripture. The reason why this matters a lot to me, John, and I know you agree, is

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I know for myself personally because of the kind of teaching that I was exposed to for years combined with my natural constitution and an anxious conscience.

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What this means is that still for me in my low moments when I'm melancholy and struggling and feeling flat and dry spiritually,

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I do not have good feelings naturally in those moments about standing before Christ at the end of time.

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I think for many people, they feel the same thing. The thought of standing before Christ at the end of it all is a frightening and terrifying prospect.

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The last thing in the world that you think would be good for you is to be near him because the only picture you've really ever been given of him is that he is holy and terrifying and hates sinners.

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We today in this podcast want to be able to unpack the biblical representation and presentation of Jesus in his earthly ministry and then connect that to God because Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the

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Father. I hope that this conversation is really comforting for people and encouraging.

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I trust that I'm going to be comforted as we keep talking about this stuff because I already have been in my own mind as I was thinking about some of these things this morning and then certainly talking with you before we recorded,

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I was comforted. Let me throw a quick disclaimer out, John, before we go any further because we don't like being misunderstood and we don't want to be in this episode, so nothing that we're about to say should be understood to mean that Jesus came into the world indifferent about sin.

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God hates sin, and there's a reason why he sent his

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Son so that we could be delivered and rescued from it and so that we could be given a righteousness that we don't have.

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So it's not that Jesus was indifferent about sin or that Jesus came with all this compassion and gentleness and meekness and he never told anybody they were wrong or that he's just affirming people in their sin and just saying, hey, do whatever you want.

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It really doesn't matter. All we want to do is just celebrate everybody, and we ought just not judge each other.

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That's not at all what we understand Jesus to have done, so we're not communicating that in any way. What we want to do is use a little bit of law gospel and some other tools that are in our tool belt and approach the ministry of Jesus from an accurate perspective and chop it up.

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This is where law gospel distinction is very important. If you're new to this, in our notes, we will provide a couple of podcasts.

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We have a specific one on law gospel, but what we'd like to do is then use that paradigm to explain

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Scripture, explain the nature of God and the nature of Jesus and the nature of men.

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We believe firmly that in the Reformed tradition that we have been handed that we do use a law gospel distinction, law being that which only condemns and gospel being that which brings to life of good news.

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You were describing that just in the introduction. The way I had it in my mind is Jesus, the righteous son, walks around and says, hey, you peasants, if you don't repent of your evil ways,

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I shall boot you out of the kingdom. It's like, I'm here to deal with you peasants, and you're annoying to me that I have to come here because y 'all can't obey.

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This is not the Jesus we were talking about. I don't know what accent it is. It's not an accent of any culture.

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It's just one I made up. So there we go. I'm not picking on anybody. My wife makes fun of my accent. She says, what is that?

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I'm like, I don't know. It's different than the way I talk. It's just something different. The thing about it is when we think, we don't understand the position versus the disposition of God.

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So it is clear in Scripture that the position that we have in relationship to God is a child of wrath, an enemy.

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We can use passages like Psalm 711 where it says God is a righteous judge.

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He has indignation all of the time. You and I had mentioned Nahum chapter one and following verses two.

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We just read you a couple of verses and we'll jump down, but it says the Lord is a jealous and avenging

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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

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So you can see right away, even if you jump down to verse six, who can stand before the indignation, who can endure the heat of his anger.

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His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

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So we will uphold with firm foundations the absolute indignation and righteous holiness of God.

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Under the law, that is true. This is why you can't lower the law or make the law achievable.

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Otherwise, you are saying that you can endure God's wrath. The point of the law is that you see the law, see the requirements of the law.

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Let's just do one, Justin, one command of the law. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength above all else, all other gods, anything.

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We don't even look at the rest of the Old Testament. Don't even look at the rest of it. Just do that one law. You should say, yeah,

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I am condemned. Then the conclusion should be, now you know what Nahum is saying about you.

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If that's the greatest commandment, I have so failed to keep it that I am ruined.

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By God's nature, what's hard for us as humans to understand is that we somehow categorize

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God into emotions or we categorize Him into responses. Some describe

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God as an angry God, and then you have other people describing God as a it's too separate.

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Yet in the complexity, God can be both, and we don't understand His anger and love can be something that is true of both statements.

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Outside of Christ, He is angry at me. Inside of Christ, He's not, but that doesn't work with how Paul describes things.

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What we need to think about is the difference between our position. A lot of times, the Old Testament prophets and even

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Paul, when he says, there is none righteous, no, not one. We're all under God's condemnation.

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That is your position, but that doesn't mean that's God's disposition towards you. While we were yet sinners, what does it say?

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Christ died for us. I think we can acknowledge our position as sinners and underneath the wrath of God, but we have to also acknowledge the rest of Scripture that I think describes the disposition of God towards sinners.

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Right. That He's a Redeemer. That's right. It's not just that He saves people because it brings

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Him glory. Of course it does, but it is His nature that He delights to pour out grace and mercy on people who, by definition, don't deserve those things.

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Can I read verse 7? Please. That we had mentioned. This is Nahum chapter 1. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble.

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He knows those who take refuge in Him. Amen. So those are the kinds of things that we understand—law and gospel.

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That Nahum is a great example of law and gospel. That passage. His indignation and wrath are so intense.

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What is the only hope for sinners? It's to take refuge in the rock of ages, man, where we can hide ourselves.

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So there's our introduction. So Justin, let's go ahead and get into the meat of what we really wanted to talk about today is

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Jesus' disposition towards sinners. What does Jesus want us to know about Him?

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Word. And I think, very last maybe preliminary statement—sorry, John—I don't want to impugn anybody's motivations.

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I assume that when people are preaching holiness and wrath and some of the things that I described, maybe in a punchy way where Christ is depicted as a frightening figure,

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I assume that they mean well and that what they're meaning to do is give legitimate credence to the holiness of God and the righteousness of God.

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Like you said, God's indignation rightly against evil and sin. But I think rather than producing reverence and awe before God, all it ends up doing is producing a fear of Him that causes us either to hate

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Him or to be absolutely terrified of being near Him. Rather than,

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I think, the right preaching—I know you agree—of law and gospel and really of holding Christ out as He has described

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Himself and as His ministry would depict Him. When you do that—preach law and gospel and hold Christ out to people—I think what you do end up producing is reverence and awe before the

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Lord that this holy God loves me and that He is graciously inclined toward me and that He's given me mercy.

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And He has done so much for me that He's provided me with all the righteousness and holiness that I need.

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He just gives that to me. He has dealt with my sin because He is righteous, but He has done it in such a way where He took the punishment that I deserve.

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Now it's like, oh my gosh, I want to be near Him. I want to worship Him. I'm in reverence. I'm in awe of Him.

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Jon Moffitt And I would say the greater the authority, the greater the mercy means. For instance, if my neighbor gives me mercy because I accidentally mowed over onto his side of the lawn too far, versus a judge gives me mercy because I murdered somebody.

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The level of authority and the level of intensity—I think when it says fear of the

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Lord, it's one of those things that says understand His authority, understand His position, understand

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His power, but yet you don't walk in trembling as far as you're waiting for the hammer to pounce you.

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That's the exact opposite description we get from Jesus. So the way that I might start this conversation about Jesus and His earthly ministry is with this,

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I hope, clarifying comment. If you were to survey the gospel accounts—and again, those are maybe not always the best names for them, but it's the life and ministry of Jesus according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—I think that we will notice that Jesus and His disposition towards different groups of people is different.

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There are times when Christ does act and speak in a way that is very direct,

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I mean, breathtakingly direct. At times it comes across as harsh, even condemnatory, and then there are other times where He speaks and carries

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Himself in a way that is very gentle, compassionate, tender, lowly, meek even.

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People have a hard time, I think, parsing this out because in some measure they don't have a good distinction of law and gospel in view in terms of what

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Christ is meaning to do. There may be other things associated with this. But I would suggest, John, that as I've studied these passages in these books of the

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Bible, that pretty much without exception, the times when Jesus is harsh and breathtakingly direct and condemnatory,

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He is interacting with people that think that they're righteous, are trusting in themselves that they're righteous, or think that they can achieve righteousness through the law.

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And then on the flip side, pretty much without exception, whenever He is around people who know that they're sinners or who are not claiming to be righteous or understand that they're in a position of need and they are coming with no confidence whatsoever,

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He is compassionate and gentle and tender and forgives sins. I think that's incredibly instructive for us if we're going to rightly understand

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Christ. I don't know which one you want to start with, brother. Maybe we start with the direct, harsher stuff first and maybe unpack some of that so that we can then land on the sweeter stuff.

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How does that sound? No, it sounds good. Why don't you start us off? Great. Why don't we just start? The first one that often comes to people's minds is when

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Jesus is flipping tables over and fashioning a whip and is basically like wrecking shop and turning the temple court inside out and is rebuking people.

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You know, this is my Father's house, it's meant to be a house of prayer for all nations and you have turned it into a den of robbers.

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You and I were talking about this passage before we recorded. The way that you and I both understand it, and Reformed Christians have for centuries have understood this, is that all of this hoopla, it's not the sale of animals itself, it's not that that is so wicked that Christ— No, it was necessary.

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It was necessary, actually, because of the sacrificial system and people coming from a long way away, they couldn't have brought animals with them, etc.

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The reason Christ is upset and is indignant is because where all of this hoopla and this circus was taking place is in the court of the

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Gentiles. So it's the only place in the temple complex where the nations could come and have access to God and in particular have access to the forgiveness of sins in the

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Lord's name. And so Christ is indignant that this whole enterprise and this fiasco that's going on is hindering people, it's hindering the nations in coming to God for the forgiveness of their sins.

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And so he is indignant about that, rightly, and that's why he turns the place inside out.

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But a lot of times we just see that as just a blanket indictment on everyone that Jesus is upset about inauthentic worship and false worship wholesale.

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Basically, every one of us is in the crosshairs here, and Jesus is just generally telling all of us that our worship is illegitimate.

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

22:34

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. If I were to summarize,

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I would say Jesus is upset about people who are blocking the gospel. They're blocking grace from the nations.

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And so he gets upset saying, you should be getting, you need to get out of the way. And what breaks my heart about the interpretation of what some people do with this is that they immediately turn it into some kind of repentance of sinners.

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He's not upset at the Gentiles, he's upset at the Jews, the religious system that blocked grace from people, which

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I too, and Justin often on this podcast, get very upset when people block the gospel or block grace from people, requiring something of them or putting a hurdle in their way and almost making

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Jesus impossible, I'll just say hard to believe or hard to follow. Yeah, it's not that Jesus is just indignant at sinners in general.

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He is indignant, like you just said, about barriers that are being erected between people and redemption, forgiveness of sins and salvation.

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That's right. That needs to be said. All right. Next example that we came up with was

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Luke 13. So this is where Jesus is talking again to a Jewish audience and people bring to his attention the

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Galileans who were slaughtered by Pilate, mingled with these other pagan sacrifices.

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Jesus says to this group of people, do you think that these people were any worse than you?

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Well, they weren't. You need to repent or you too will likewise perish. Or he says, he mentions,

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Jesus does. What about those people in Siloam, the 18 people on whom the tower fell and they died? Do you think that they were worse than you?

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Well, no, they weren't. You too need to repent. So he again is talking to people. It's very clear in the context.

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He's talking to people that think they are better than other people. Their base mentality is, we're not like those people are, and thereby are not as sinful or not in the same kind of need or maybe not even worthy of the same kind of judgment or bad things happening to them.

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And Christ is meaning to blow up that kind of stupidity and help people see themselves for what they are.

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Go ahead. Yeah, the word repent there. We have to ask ourselves, what does Jesus mean by repent?

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What are they repenting of? We just throw that word out there if it always means repent of immorality of some sort.

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That's what we always think it is, repent of immorality. Can I say something? Yeah, go for it.

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I think you're exactly right. And I think what Jesus is most often aiming the gun at when it comes to repent, he is telling them, repent of your self -righteousness.

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Exactly. Repent of all of these things that you're trusting in that are not going to save you.

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And in fact, you're trusting in stuff that is like at best, filthy rags. Stop. That's right. Yeah.

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Well, there are some sections, which we'll get there, where Jesus is dealing with the immorality of a woman.

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He says, go sin no more. That is a repentance. But look at his posture towards it. You can put an

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Excel spreadsheet together of who Jesus tells to repent of righteousness versus who he tells to repent of sin.

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And he's always poking the finger in the self -righteous eye because without the righteousness of Christ, you have no righteousness.

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And so he's always telling them, repent of your own righteousness. But even that account that you just mentioned where he tells the woman, this is in John 8, and I understand that that's a disputed text, but still the point is made, it's in our

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Bibles. I mean, and he tells her, go and sin no more. What has he done in that circumstance? He has protected her.

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He has defended her. He has protected her in particular from Pharisees who wanted to stone her.

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And he says, woman, who is left to condemn you? And she says, nobody. He says, well, neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more.

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He is gentle and encouraging. You've just been forgiven, clearly.

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Now go and sin no more. To which we say, praise be to God. To which, as an eschatological note,

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I don't believe it was a part of the original text, but I don't think it's inconsistent with the nature of Scripture where Jesus is.

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I don't think it's been included in the canon by Scripture. Other examples are like how

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Jesus is very, very confrontational with the Jewish religious leadership regarding the Sabbath day.

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There are a number of passages we could point to where they are trying to either trap Jesus or Jesus will raise things in their presence.

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Whether it's over healing a man with a withered hand or plucking a head of grain on the

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Sabbath and all these things, and Jesus makes it very clear that these people, this is one example of many, of how they have codified a godly life to death and how they are trusting in living a codified life to earn them something before God.

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We're clearly crushing it and doing what the Lord would require of us and desire of us in the ways that we have put this fence around the

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Sabbath, and Jesus, again, is blowing up that kind of a system and that sort of a schema of religion that, no, you have not understood this at all.

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In fact, you think that man was made for the Sabbath when in reality the Sabbath was made for you.

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It's for your benefit. I am Lord of the Sabbath and my word stands.

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Justin Perdue Yeah. It is hard. You know what I've noticed, Justin, is that one of the things

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I'm teaching my church is to look at all of Scripture before you make conclusions about one particular section of Scripture or a doctrine.

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We did this last night at men's group. Someone was mentioning Romans 10 and a section of Romans 10, and I said, yes, but let's read that in light of what all of Scripture has to say about justification, not just one.

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What ends up happening is that someone's disposition towards a particular theological bent like angry

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Puritan preachers or even modern -day street preachers is they tend to emphasize one aspect of the nature of God or of the nature of redemption, which is the law, part of redemption is the law.

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We have to do it in balance. I think when we look at Jesus, you see the balance and what Jesus goes after.

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I think we have to use the posture and the nature and the purpose of Jesus. I mean, Jesus literally says, I have come to do the will of my

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Father. What was the will of His Father? It wasn't to bring a sword. He brought redemption.

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He laid down His life. That was His purpose and will. You're alluding to John 6, amongst other places, where Jesus says that basically

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He came to do the will of His Father, which is to save sinners, and that He would actually lose none of any who come to Him. That's right.

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And any who come to Me, I will never cast them out. That's right. It is the will of My Father that anybody who believes in Me should not perish but be raised on the last day, and I will do that.

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I love the descriptors the New Testament gives Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

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He is the shepherd. He is our brother. The good shepherd. For sinners, He is living water.

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For sinners, He is living bread. He is the bread of life that came down from heaven. For sinners.

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That's the thing about it. We somehow think it's for those who have made this transition.

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It's while we were in sin, Christ died for us, not when we repented, Christ died for us.

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Or once we have repented adequately and feel the way we should about our sin and are fighting hard enough, then

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God is pleased to sustain and bless us and show us grace. It's crazy. A lot of this is rooted out of a comment that we had read recently, and this is not an uncommon statement within some areas of Christianity.

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Jesus is with sinners, and the reason He's with them is to call them to repentance. Let's just do an analysis again.

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Jesus described as friend of sinners. Jesus spends time with sinners so much that He's being described as a drunkard, being criticized for letting prostitutes touch

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Him, which is completely, just to be clear, not an inappropriate way.

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She's a dirty woman. How could you let Him touch your feet? When He's dealing with sinners,

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He describes Himself as gentle and lowly. When He's dealing with self -righteous, He is angry.

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John the Baptist, as you had already said in our pre -conversation, called them a brood of vipers. Jesus calls the

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Pharisees whitewashed tombs because on the outside, they look good. They're doing the right stuff.

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They're checking the boxes. You've got all these codes that you follow, but inside, you're dead. What's the difference between a

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Pharisee, a whitewashed tomb, and a sinner? What He's describing is Jesus says, I have come to save the lost or find the lost.

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As a sinner, it makes sense if Jesus is saying, these people understand why I'm here.

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They have no righteousness. They have nothing to cling to, and they want Me. The Pharisees or the self -righteous are clinging to their own sin.

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He's calling them to repent. They're clinging to their own righteousness. That's right. He calls the self -righteous to repent, and He tells those who are beat down by the law and beat down by their sin,

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He says, come to Me. Repent to one people. Come to the other. Yes. We've already kind of naturally made the transition.

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There are many other passages we could go to where Jesus is dropping bombs and setting grenades on the table and pulling the pin, but we're already transitioning naturally to some of the other things that He says.

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What you just said, John, it's exactly verbatim. For example, Matthew 9, verses 12 and 13, where Jesus says the

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Pharisees have challenged Jesus and they say to Christ's disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

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Why does he do this? Then what does Christ say? When He, Jesus, heard it, He said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means.

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I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

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To your point, this is why He came. I didn't come for those who think that they're righteous already.

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I came for those who are sinners, and this is why I'm here. What's His posture toward those people?

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Matthew 11, 28 to 30, which is where we got our tagline from, for goodness sakes, where He says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden.

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With what? The demands of the law. Perhaps even the code that had been thrown on top of the law by the

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Pharisees. I will give you rest, He says. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

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For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. That is the invitation of Jesus to sinners.

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Gentle and lowly. Yes, and I will give you rest. If you're weary and you're burdened and you're just weighed down and getting crushed,

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I'm who and what you need. Come to me. I will say this again, and it needs to be said a thousand times.

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If the invitation of Jesus does not lead you to rest, you have got the wrong invitation from the wrong

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Bible. How can you miss the point? Weary sinners who feel the weight of the law, which is the purpose of the law.

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We need the law. The law must be preached. Jesus was the greatest preacher of the law, bar none, period.

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He executed that position clearly because without the law,

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Jesus cannot be the redeemer, and so he presses the law on people to the point where the disciples say, well, then who can be saved?

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The rich young ruler, who can be saved? And he says, well, with man, it's impossible, but with God, all things are possible.

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That's what the law should do to you. You should say, well, then that's impossible, and I love how the modern day pagan will say, well, everybody's a sinner.

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That's not what you should say. What you should say is, well, then who could be good? And the problem is nobody.

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Justin Perdue That's right. I'm just struck by the fact that the way that Jesus came and did ministry, did he call people to repentance?

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Yes, but just to reiterate, what we often mean when we say that is repent of your immorality, and that's really it.

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Whereas what Christ means is repent of, yeah, your immorality, but repent of your own virtue in your own eyes, and your own righteousness in your own eyes, and effectively come to me.

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That's what he's calling people to do. Come to me and trust me. Justin Perdue Find your righteousness in me, yeah. Justin Perdue Find your righteousness here, and find your rest here.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, as crazy as this sounds, and we can probably do another podcast on this, but I think it's impossible to repent of all sin.

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Justin Perdue Yeah, of course it is, from our perspective. Justin Perdue Because I can't love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, even though it's my ambition.

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I can't do it. Justin Perdue There's a million sins that we commit that we're not aware of. Justin Perdue That's right, which is why you have to repent of the one sin, which is your self -righteousness.

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Like, don't hold onto that. Justin Perdue So, I mean, going on, I mean, this is not the words of Christ, but this is

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Matthew's description of Jesus, citing the prophet Isaiah, which is where Richard Sibbes got the title for his book,

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The Bruce Reed. So Matthew is talking about Jesus, and he's healing people, and he's doing these things, and Matthew says, this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet

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Isaiah, because Jesus is telling people, don't make me known yet. Behold, my servant who

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I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the

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Gentiles. He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

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A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory, and in his name the

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Gentiles will hope. So again, you have this posture of the servant of God, who is

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Christ, who will not break a bruised reed, he will not snuff out the wick that is just flickering and barely hanging on, but instead, he will bring judgment to victory for all those who trust in him.

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What a marvelous presentation of Christ and his mission. It's not how, at least the tone and the tenor of that sounds very different than how

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Christ is often preached. One more illustration to kind of throw in there.

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I remember preaching John 4, the woman at the well, and Jesus knows who this woman is, knows what this woman has done, and completely engages with her, which is a surprise to the woman.

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How is it you being a teacher asking me for water? And she's a Samaritan.

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It's right. And what does he end up doing with it? What does he offer her out of the gate? Living water, not repentance.

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What she needs is, so she's trying to quench her thirst by the flesh, and Jesus says, are you tired of that yet?

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How about I give you water that you will know? And she's like, give me that water, which she doesn't really understand that. And when he finally reveals it to her, she loses her mind and runs back into the city to tell people, do you know who

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I just found? And what I love is that Jesus always has these missionaries that are just the broken of the community.

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It's like, they're the scum of the earth. And you've been thinking about Zacchaeus, right?

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The missionaries of God, I can't get off of this, but John 20, when

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Jesus walks into the room and the disciples are there, they abandoned Jesus, the doors are locked, Luke describes them as screeching like little girls when

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Jesus appears to them and he says to them, peace be with you, and he shows them his scars in his hand and in his side.

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And then he commissions them to complete the father's mission. It's like, I love that Jesus is the one who is grabbing.

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This is Paul. Paul finally makes the description, right? Not many of us are wise. Not many of us are strong. He describes those whom

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Jesus saves and he saves the weak, rejected, no -names people, and that's who

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God uses because why? In the end, Jesus gets all the glory and we don't want any because we don't have anything to be happy about because we're a nobody.

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That's right. Yeah. I mean, and to be clear, like what I said at the outset, I mean, God most certainly is glorified in the work of redemption.

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That is not up for debate, but we totally, I think, misrepresent him when we do not say, like Luke 15, the parables of Christ, that he,

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God, delights and finds great joy and actually celebrates over sinners who repent.

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And like God is brought joy in this whole enterprise of salvation.

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It is not just that like he's going to be renowned and praised. Of course he will be, but he in his person delights to do this.

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And that to me is one of the biggest mind blows in the universe, John, that the holy God who made us against whom we have committed cosmic treason, to the words of R .C.

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Sproul, loves us so much and delights to save us in such a way that he is effectively throwing a party in heaven every time a sinner repents.

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It's astonishing love and mercy and grace. So another passage, I mean,

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Jesus in John chapter 10, I mean, calls himself the good shepherd, and this is picking up on the language of Ezekiel 34, where the

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Lord says that he will be the shepherd of his people and he's going to seek them out and he's going to save them and bring them to pasture.

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And gather them from where they've been scattered. It's been dark and scary, but he's going to get them and they're going to be safe.

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And he's going to set up over them, his servant, David. And David, by the time Ezekiel is alive, I mean,

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David's been dead for a minute, right? So he's talking about the Christ, the greater David who would come.

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And Jesus says, I'm him. I'm the good shepherd. And I have come not like a hired hand, right?

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But I have actually come. I know my own sheep and they know me and I have come to lay my life down for them.

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The father has given me this mission, but I do this of my own accord. That's right. I lay my life down willingly.

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Nobody takes it from me. And yeah, he's not reluctant in this. And then like later on, you know, a few chapters later in John's gospel, when he's talking to the disciples the last night that he's on earth,

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I mean, what is, what is all of that from like John 13 on through the high priestly prayer? It's all a words of comfort because we're told that that Jesus had loved his disciples while he was on earth.

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And then he loved them to the end. And he gives them all these words of comfort, including like the beginning of chapter 14.

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Like, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe also in me in my father's house are many rooms.

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If it were not so what I've told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you,

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I will come again and I will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. And he prays for us in John 17, 24.

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I desire that you'll be with me where I am to see the glory that the father gave me for the foundation of the world.

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Like Jesus wants us with him. Good. Yeah. Well, I mean, just one last illustration and I know we have more fun.

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I mean, we'll bring it over to the SR podcast. Cause I know we have more in an SR. I would love to talk about like adoption, like as a doctrine in scripture.

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Go ahead. Yeah. Adopting the unbeliever, not the repentant boy. Come on now. So what is just to close it with this.

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And then Justin, you can bring us out, but what does Jesus say to the woman who's washing his feet, who's in the

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Pharisees home too much has been forgiven. What does he say?

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Much love. The point of it is this woman understands her position and understands

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Jesus's disposition towards her. She fills the freedom and the right to be with Jesus.

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She, think about this. She feels the freedom and the right to wash his feet, not out of fear because she knows he loves her and unreal.

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And obviously like the posture that she's coming with is one of humility and meekness too. Like she's not arrogant. She's not trusting in herself.

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She's a prostitute of the city for crying out loud. I mean, she's crying over her forgiveness.

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Exactly. And obviously Simon, the Pharisee is wigging out and is thinking to himself.

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Like if Jesus knew, if this man was a prophet, he wouldn't have anything to do with this woman. And Jesus of course knows the thoughts of man and confronts the

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Pharisee. But where that all ends up is like to your point, Luke 7, 47 and following.

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These words are incredible to me. Jesus says to Simon, the Pharisee, therefore, I tell you her sins, which are many are forgiven for she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little.

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And he said to her, so how does Jesus treat this woman who is a prostitute of the city?

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Does he drop the hammer on her? What are his first words to her? He's just said in her presence to the

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Pharisee, she's forgiven. But then he looks at her and he says, your sins are forgiven.

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And then, you know, then those who are at table with him began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins because only

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God can do that. And then verse 50 to conclude the account, Jesus says to the woman, your faith has saved you, go in peace.

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Your faith, not your faith in and of itself, but your faith in what? In me. Has saved you, now go in peace.

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That is Christ's word to wretched sinners such as us who come to him knowing that we need him.

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Right. What's waiting on the other side of when we come to Jesus? Peace. When Jesus tells the disciples, peace be to you.

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And he shows them the scars in his hand. Like, the thing is the Jesus that's being presented to you, which we'll get into in SR, the

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Jesus is presenting to you is not one that you come running to with your sin is the wrong

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Jesus. You've been given the wrong Jesus. He is gentle and lowly.

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He draws sinners to himself. He has already taken on your sin. You can run to him boldly according to Hebrews and to receive mercy and grace and it's promised to you every single time you ask for it.

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That's the Jesus of the Bible. Amen, brother. What an encouraging thought. What an encouraging, like epically incredible message that this is the

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God of the universe and this is what he's done for us and Jesus, what a friend for sinners, right?

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It's been a good man. It's been good for my heart just to talk about it. And I'm encouraged, I'm encouraged by God's word and talking about this and just thinking about the life and ministry of our savior.

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And I hope for those of you who have listened to the conversation today that you too have been encouraged and comforted. And your takeaway from this is that Jesus loves me and offers me peace and rest.

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And I can go to him because of that. So John and I are about to continue a conversation.

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I think we're going to talk more about the posture of Christ and even the disposition of God toward us, maybe even in thinking about how

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God has adopted sinners into his own family. And he's not given us a spirit of fear, but rather a spirit of adoption through which we call him father now, which is a mind blow in and of itself.

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And so that podcast that we're about to record is an additional podcast we do each week called Semper Reformanda.

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And that is for people who have become Semper Reformanda members who have partnered with Theocast to see this message of the sufficiency of Christ spread as far and wide as possible.

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And so if you're curious about that podcast and you want to know how you can get access to it, you could go over to our website, theocast .org

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and find out more there about Semper Reformanda and what that means. We've got an app and all kinds of other things, a community that's being built of people just like you who are learning, just like John and I are still learning about what it means to rest in Christ.

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And we can lock arms together virtually or in geographical groups and all these kinds of fun things that are going on.

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So go over to the website, check it out. And I just want to add, if you want to have a conversation like Justin and I just had about this, then that's what the app is for.

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It allows you to connect with other people and talk like Justin and I just did. So avail yourselves of all of that.

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And you can get that information at the website, theocast .org. So for those of you who may not be heading over to SR, John and I will talk with you again,

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Lord willing, next week in this format. And for the SR members, we will have another conversation with you in just a moment.