There Will Be Weakness | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about life here on earth.

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We're going to talk about the fact that there will be weakness this side of the resurrection. Oftentimes in the church, we're made to think that the

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Christian life is one where we move from triumph to triumph and spiritual experience to spiritual experience.

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But in reality, what we're doing this side of heaven is learning to trust Christ in the midst of weakness and in the midst of our battle against even the corruption of our own flesh.

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So John and I talked today about what that looks like. We talk a little bit personally, we talk theologically, and we talk about how

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Christ really is all we have. And the heralding of Christ and his sufficiency for us is what we desperately need in the church.

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We hope that you're encouraged by the conversation. And then over in SR, for the first time, we take a couple of listener questions and attempt to answer those.

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We hope you enjoy the conversation. 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 weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, Reformed, and pastoral perspective.

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Got them all in there, John. There you go. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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And I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. We are podcasting this morning on a

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Wednesday and it's a rainy one. Kind of gray and dreary like our clothing today.

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And in all honesty, kind of like we're feeling in our hearts a little bit. That's right.

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Yeah, that's right. To bring the listener into the lives of the podcasting slash

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I mean, our lives are pastors. We're not podcasters. We just happen to be one. But one of the joys

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I always have is being able to be encouraged and refreshed or have the opportunity to confess my frailty to my brother.

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And that happened this morning. Yeah, I texted John. It's been a lot going on for me, just pastorally, personally.

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And I feel I'm fine to say these things. I just have felt very emotionally, pastorally, just generally overwhelmed.

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I'm okay trusting Christ, but it's just been my experience of late. And even some of that overwhelmedness is some good things, but it's just like, man, so just a lot going on.

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And I texted John and let him know, like, bro, I'm just I'm looking forward to talking to my friend this morning and before we record and just giving you that heads up.

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And I just kind of need a little bit of time to talk and and then we can do our thing. But I was encouraged and just by processing and by by going back and forth and being just encouraged by John.

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And so, yeah, anyway, what we're going to record today, which John's about to set up for us, is very near and dear to our experience at the moment.

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Amen. So one of the theologies that we have talked about, and we're going to really flesh this out, we call it the upside down nature of the

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Christian life, the theology of the cross versus theology of the glory of glory. We're not going to really take time to explain those as much as we are apply them today.

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And really what we're going to be talking about is the theology of glory. I'm sorry, the theology of the cross, the nature of suffering.

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But you the person that we're talking to just to help you understand our intentions in the audience is the is those who find themselves here.

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Now, listen, this episode is not going to not going to apply to everybody today, but sometime soon you're going to go back to this episode and go, man, they were speaking right to me, because the

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Christian life is full of a cycle of moving from one suffering weakness to the next.

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Yeah. Or people can look back into probably not the terribly distant past and think about and reflect upon times that they were feeling very weak.

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Life felt like a struggle, everything felt hard, you know, the darkness, the pain, whatever it is, it just won't lift.

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And so I think for all of us, whether it's in the relatively recent past or the present or like you said, the probably nearer than not future, this is a relatable, very applicable conversation.

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Yeah. So to the to the to the couple that they're suffering in your marriage, it seems like it's in shambles.

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You've tried everything, doesn't seem like it's going to work to the parent who is on their last nerve and they're not quite sure how they're going to care for these children.

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To the single person who's alone, to the widow who's distraught.

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I mean, to the person that's working as hard as he or she can and just can't quite make ends meet. You know, for people that just you wake up in the morning and you're not even sure why, but you're just like, man,

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I'm just I'm just low. I'm sad. And this has been my norm for as long as I can remember. And I don't know what to do. That's right.

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To the person who has the perfect job, marriage and children and still finds themselves in distress. That's right.

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Their soul gives way, as the song talks about. That's what we're going to talk about, is that the the experience of the

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Christian life is actually of suffering. To set the tone, really,

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James makes a very interesting statement in chapter one, verse two. And I think it's important to understand that throughout most of the

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New Testament, Philippians one talks about this, about suffering. We walk by faith, not by strength, because what is faith?

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Faith is to put your trust in something, a source greater than yourselves. Right. So there's this there's a there's a feeling and a yearning within us to be restored.

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You know, Justin, almost every sermon I preach, I literally think and ask to myself, I hope

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I never preach this sermon because that means it won't I won't need to give people hope because the hope now has appeared.

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Yeah, I know. First John, while we wait, we thus hope. And that nature that we have within us, sometimes we suppress it, we ignore it or we assume it shouldn't be there.

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So today, what Justin and I are going to talk about is that the Christian life, there will be weakness and that weakness is absolutely a part of the experience of all of humans, but specifically of Christians.

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We tend to believe that strength somehow comes from within through dedication, through discipline, through trying harder.

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And it's just a matter of time that we become progressively stronger and weakness becomes less and less in our life.

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Yeah. And what you're describing is the the climate and the general tone and tenor of the contemporary church, where it is characterized very much by a theology of glory, not a theology of the cross.

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And I think that will become maybe more clear in some of the things we talk about today. And like you were saying, we are promised an unshakable hope.

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We've been given a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Right. It's the kingdom of God that we are now heirs of along with Christ because of what

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Christ has done for us. And we know that there's a hope to which we've been called. All of that's true.

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And right now, Romans 8, we face affliction. The creation's groaning. So are we.

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And we hope for things unseen. We walk by faith and not by sight, like you said. Second Corinthians 1, sometimes we face things that cause us to despair of life itself.

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That's right. Second Corinthians 4, you know, we are experiencing affliction now. It's not worth comparing to the weight of glory that's going to be revealed to us.

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But we suffer right now and we carry around these treasures and jars of clay. Right. And then Second Corinthians 12,

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Paul pleads with the Lord to take away the thorn in the flesh and then concludes that because Jesus says his grace is sufficient, it's like, all right,

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I'm going to embrace and I'm going to boast in weakness because that's where the Lord shows himself to be strong. I mean, this is our experience, this side of the resurrection, and we would do well to talk like that.

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Sadly, we don't talk enough like that in the church today.

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We do buy into the lie that if we do the right things and apply ourselves well enough, if we're disciplined enough, then we will get to a place where we are relatively impervious to suffering and pain.

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We'll be able to just press on through it and we're going to just be moving from, yeah, we might suffer, but we're going to move from one triumph to the next, from one spiritual experience to the next.

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And not true. What we're really learning to do, John, at the heart of the matter is to trust

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Christ in the midst of weakness and in the midst of the battle against the flesh.

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And we're learning to depend more and more on grace, even in the midst of trying circumstance and in the midst of feeling like, man,

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I'm overwhelmed here. The Lord is actually doing work in us to produce steadfastness in us that we might know that all we have is

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Christ and Christ has us. That's right. So there is, just to kind of add to what

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Justin says, the theology of glory is the, this is the Lutheran or the reformers kind of really,

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Calvin, they really tried to help explain that it was a description of the Roman Catholic church where one would progress in life by means of discipline and sacrament.

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So they had the seven sacraments, that's right. So as you cooperate with God and do your work, then, and the reason why they call it a theology of glory is because you receive the glory, not

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God, right? You receive the glory for your triumphalists. Or you receive, or the glory is now in part two.

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It's more immediate versus a glory that is in the future. Right. And the theology of cross has a centered focus on the cross because of the sin nature of humanity, because of the brokenness of the world,

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God didn't need to come and purely leave us an example, but the cross was necessary, the suffering was necessary to pay for and restore all of that, which was be broken for a future glory, right?

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For a future glory. Theology, really quickly, John, a theology of glory, though people that advocate some of the things that would be associated with it would not want to say this.

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I think this is true. And you can tell me what you think about it. A theology of glory is inherently two things.

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It's earthbound and it's man -centered. In that, I mean, it's earthbound, it's about the here and now, and it's man -centered in that it has everything to do with me and how

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I'm doing and my circumstances and my strengths, whereas a theology of the cross is obviously

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Christ -centered in that, you know, we're looking to this pattern of suffering and then glory.

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We're looking to the fact that we are weak and our sufficiency is found in Christ. Our hope is found in Christ, but it's also inherently

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God -centered and also a future -oriented, a new heavens and a new earth -oriented perspective.

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Yeah, that's so good. So one of the things that we want to do today is kind of help you from a theological and biblical standpoint, build up your confidence that weakness is normal, that weakness is the experience of the

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Christian life, that we move from day to day, living in the frailty of our bodies and on the frailty of our flesh and the frailty of our souls, but we don't lose hope.

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I think that when we embrace suffering and when we embrace the weakness of our life, it is at that moment we can say what

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James says, and it's so, so hard to understand when James says that it's a joyful thing to rejoice in a suffering.

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And I want to state here, Justin, it's important for people to understand. I don't think James had in mind a flat tire.

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I think what he meant was the kind of suffering that sucks the air out of your lungs, and you begin to question the goodness of God and even the existence of God, because that kind of suffering, it's easy to go through a little bit of a trial and be like, yeah,

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God's got me. But when you get spiritually gut -punched and all of a sudden blood is all over the place and you feel like you're bleeding out, how could this happen?

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Yeah, it's like we're being slaughtered all day long. That's right. Like the ends of the day, the Siding of the Prophets. That's right. And then

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James says, now that's a situation that you don't have to lose heart in your weakness because of this.

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Why? He says, because God's going to prove to you his steadfastness, that in you, his spirit will preserve you.

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He will create within you stability. Now, it's interesting. He doesn't say he'll remove the trial.

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He doesn't say he'll strengthen you as far as some kind of in like this power movement.

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He's saying stability. And what does he mean in stability? That your faith remains where it should be.

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And this is exactly what we already were stating. This is a theology of the cross that you're not moving from experience to experience or triumph to triumph.

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You are learning in the midst of trial and suffering and pain, weakness to trust

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Christ and that the Lord is working steadfastness in us. And it's not even either.

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I know you agree, John. It's not even that the trials in and of themselves are good. We should talk honestly about these things because sometimes in the church, correct, sometimes in the church with the best of intentions, people have been taught or people assume that they need to talk this way, that my cancer is a gift from God.

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No, it isn't. It's terrible. Or this horrible thing that happened over here is really God's gift to me.

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It's like, let's talk better about it and acknowledge the horror of that and the badness of that.

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And the fact that the only reason that has occurred is because of sin and the fact that the creation has been subjected to futility.

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It's the only reason any of this is happening. The miracle is what God does through it. He actually takes this and purposes it for the working of steadfastness in His children.

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That's a miracle. And I take great comfort from men who

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God used to communicate to us, like Paul in 2 Corinthians, when he says, three times

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I pleaded with the Lord. You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with pleading for the Lord to remove a trial, but when he doesn't, we don't need to lose heart because then

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Paul gives us the theology of the cross. He says, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

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For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecution, and calamities.

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For when I am weak, then I am strong. And that's what James is saying is that trials expose our weakness.

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Like a trial means, because think about it, a trial only exists because you can't alter its path, you can't change its course, therefore it's a trial.

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Because if you could change it, you would. Right. And it's no longer a trial. That's not a trial. I mean, you just got through it. Trials are those things we can't alter their course and they expose our weakness, whether it could be in our flesh, our mental status, or our spirituality, and it causes us to look past our own glory, right, and our own power, and we have to look to the cross saying

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Christ's cross will restore me in the midst of my suffering.

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I can even go back to Philippians when he says it's not only being granted to be saved, right, to be chosen, but also to suffer for my sake.

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Like the Christian path is actually a path of suffering. The road is marked with suffering. And it's not like sadistic, like this weird, we embrace it, we want it.

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It's just, it's almost a, hey, if they persecuted me, they're going to persecute you.

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It's just a warning. You know, what I love about it, it's a tender father saying, I'm going to make all things right.

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But the road between now and glory, I'm going to warn you, the trials are coming.

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And that heads up, I don't know about you, Justin, but if you've ever had to do something hard and someone gives you a warning ahead of time, it feels like you can endure it better than if it just smacks you and you're not ready for it.

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You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Because he's telling you, like, this is going to be hard, but it's going to be okay.

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And, you know, even Jesus, like you said, you follow a crucified savior.

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You're going to live a cruciform life. And you also, like me, that you're going to, your life is going to demonstrate this pattern of suffering and then glory.

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And the suffering may be really bad at points, but, but the glory will come and you can know that it will come because I've secured it for you, you know?

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And so this is why we don't lose hope ultimately in the midst of all these things is like, John, you and I were talking about this today, that why do we get up and keep doing what we do?

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We get up and keep doing what we do because we know that, that Christ is all we have and that he has given us a hope that can never be taken away from us and that one day our faith will be sight.

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And so we keep doing this and God, I mean, God is the one that produced that in us. We didn't produce that in us, right?

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And this is true. This is the testimony literally of every Christian who's breathing right now is

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I get up and I continue to do what I do and I continue to love my brothers and sisters and I continue to come to the assembly and, and receive

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Christ in word and sacrament and walk with these people in the midst of trial and suffering and pain and weakness and calamity and all that.

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I keep doing that because I know my God is true and I know Christ has us. That's right. And yeah.

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And go ahead. So one of the things that has really helped me and my faith and my parenting and my marriage recently and pastoring is

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James. You know, James is Justin, you've had this experience when you go through a book and it just completely gives you a new perspective on Christ that it's not new to the theology of the world, but it's new to you.

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It's refreshing. It's, it's, it's, it's life giving. One of the things that's been interesting is that James is trying to help the church understand that they are believing the lies of the world.

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And because of that, they're trying to remove the suffering and they're trying to remove their status. Like he literally says, let the lowly boast in his exaltation, meaning those without money or fame or notoriety.

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It's like, it's okay to be in that state. And as a matter of fact, it's okay to, to rejoice in that state because you know, what's to come.

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That's what he means in exaltation. Um, he later on in chapter four says, uh, humble yourselves and God will exalt you.

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Humility literally means to admit you don't have anything. What's interesting, just when we think about when we find ourselves in conflict with our children, coworkers, neighbors, our spouses,

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James says this. Are we not warring with each other because of the passions that rage within us?

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And he, the passions he means is, is that we're trying to find hope and joy in this world, and we're trying to remove the weakness that we find ourselves wallowing in and all it does is create more pain and more suffering.

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Um, this is why in the beginning, I mean, he starts his letter off with that. Hey guys, trials are designed to keep your eyes on Christ and you're trying to get out of the trials and you're pursuing sinful passions to do it.

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So instead of enduring them by faith and trusting in God's goodness that he'll create steadfastness, you're trying to use sinful means and they're causing you to create greater harm.

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So this is what ends up happening. Justin is because we don't live in a theology of the cross where I know

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I'm weak and suffering, and I know you're weak and suffering. And so my arm is going to link with yours to encourage you. I end up using you to try and help.

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Trying to help solve a problem that's unsolvable, right? This is why he says you're showing partiality.

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You're speaking evil to one another. And so some of us are experiencing this in our homes, in our churches, in our workplace, where we are being used or we're using people in such a way.

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And at the end of it, all we're not any better. The trial's not gone. We're not being satisfied and we've only damaged relationships.

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And this is why it's so amazing that the gospel can come in and actually liberate us from these desires.

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Not that they, now here's the difference, Justin, when I say liberate, I don't mean they are squashed and gone, but they give us a greater hope to look past these desires, to look past our suffering, to say we aren't left hopeless.

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No, amen, man. And I think, you know, I'm mindful of several things. I'm going to go here first. I know in your church and in my church, we both use some of the same corporate confessions of sin.

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And one of the ones that we use has some language about this, how we're confessing the fact that we, in our sin, have tried to heal ourselves.

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And we've looked to ourselves, right? We've looked to our own strength, our own sufficiency, our own works, whatever, disciplines, you name it.

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I mean, you fill in the blank, but we've looked to ourselves to heal ourselves. And we're asking for the

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Father's forgiveness for that, which is appropriate, but then we acknowledge that this has left some of us proud and it has left most of us, or many of us, anxious and depressed and it's like, man, you talk, truer words, it's hard to put truer words in your mouth, right?

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Someone who has experienced that wrote that. Exactly. Yeah. Because this is what we do.

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And I think here's another thing, related. We are, well,

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I mean, it's related to what we're talking about. I don't know if it's directly related to that confession of sin. You know, we're moving onward, moving onward here.

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We are very short -sighted as human beings, and oftentimes we grossly overestimate what can and should happen in the short term.

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We underestimate what can and will happen in the long term, especially when it comes to God and how He works in us, right?

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But in our short -sightedness, we also naively and ridiculously assume that if the

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Lord is with us and if we can, I don't know, find hope in Christ in the midst of pain, that we're just going to immediately feel better.

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And I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it because you might not feel emotionally better, but yet you've got your feet planted on the solid rock, who is

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Jesus Christ. That's right. You can look around at the world, like think about the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon, the preacher in that book.

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I mean, I think we could call him a realist, you know, you maybe could even call him a pessimist in some ways because he looks around and he surveys the landscape and he sees all these things that happen and he writes them down and makes many of us uncomfortable.

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It's like, bro, you shouldn't say that. You shouldn't talk like that. And he's like, but look, all this stuff is happening. So what do we do with this?

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You know, I mean, this is how life is, but he talks about those things as a person who understands that God and truth remain, right?

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And I love C .S. Lewis's quote. I'm just going to go ahead and give it to people right now, because I think this is a good, this is a good thought provoking thing.

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He wrote this in the aftermath of his wife's death in a book called A Grief Observed, and I think this is helpful in kind of moving our conversation onward here.

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He says, quote, talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively, but don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

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So here's the thing. We immediately want to try to say the thing to make people just feel better.

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And it's like, hey, we're good. You know, you're good. Like you should be good. And what we want to realize is that the

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Bible ultimately is about the unshakable hope that Christ has secured for us that's in the future. And we do live in light of that hope today.

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And what we want to do is continue to herald Christ and his sufficiency and what he's accomplished in our place so that we might put one foot in front of the other.

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Keep trusting, keep sojourning and making our way on this pilgrimage with other dear saints who are battling the same weakness and frailties that we are.

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And we all are a calling one another to lift our eyes from the horizon, look to the Savior, you know, as we make our way toward the celestial city.

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Amen. You know, Justin, I will say this kind of this is this is me being raw and open with the congregation.

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Well, with you, my brothers and sisters. I get real uncomfortable around people who aren't weak.

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Like, I just feel like you don't show it. No, I you know, it makes me very uncomfortable because I just as I just don't trust them.

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You know what? It's hard for me to trust somebody who just flat out can't see or is unwilling to see that.

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It's like whatever you're presenting is no one can live like that.

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No one lives without weakness. You don't live like that. Yeah, right. The greatest joy as a pastor,

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I've been I've had the privilege to pastor is an associate in multiple churches.

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And I can say it, you know, being an associate and then being one that's responsible to be the, you know, primary communicator for the congregation, it carries a pretty heavy weight.

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And my congregation, my dear, precious family, they let me be weak. They allow me to be a weak, frail shepherd who gets up and with a shaking hand,

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I hold my finger towards Christ and they all shout and rejoice. They're like, yes, in our weakness, we are all in desperate need of God's grace.

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And there is something refreshing to be able to sit down next to another brother and just exhale and go, brother,

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I'm so glad you're here because in my weakness, I could use an encouragement. And then to be able to, as a weak

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Christian, look with tears in my brother's and sister's eyes and say, you know, it's a good thing that we're weak and he's strong.

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I mean, that there is something comforting about the communion of weakness because it wouldn't, just to go back to your quote, when we don't embrace that,

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Justin, it creates an arrogance and it's really hard for a weak, frail person to be around arrogant people because it exhausts them and it creates an inappropriate perspective of themselves.

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You know, if you've ever played any kind of a sport and you feel like you're pretty good at it and then you go and you watch a professional do it, you're just kind of like deflated immediately.

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Like I could never live up to that. But somehow we think that we're all

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Christians are expected to be professional Christians. You know, it's like this is your job to be the strong theologians who never have weakness and never crack and to know the answer to everything and they never have a bad day.

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And that's just not what we're called towards. I read so many passages of scripture that, let me go back to this way,

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Justin. Some could say in Romans 15, one, we who are strong have an obligation to deal with the failings of the weak.

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I don't think he means there those of us who are strong as far as like strength where there is no suffering.

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I believe he means there those whose faith is grounded in Christ have an obligation to deal with those whose faith is not grounded in Christ and seems to be flopping all over the place.

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Yeah. I think we would do well to remember that we are pilgrims in this life. This is something that Reformed and just confessional

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Christians in general, so that would include our Lutheran brothers and sisters, have been very clear about through the centuries that that paradigm of the

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Christian as a pilgrim or a sojourner or an exile is the most helpful way to think about our life now.

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What do we mean? We mean that we have been promised a homeland. We know because of God's faithfulness and because of the work of Christ and his sufficiency to save us that we will realize that hope one day.

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But here's the reality. But we're not there yet. And between here and there, there are all kinds of things that we're going to face.

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That's right. We are assailed by doubts and temptations on every side, and there are spiritual dangers every place.

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And so we need, obviously we need grace. We need protection.

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We need nourishment. If we're going to make it, if we're going to endure. God is ultimately the one that's got to do that.

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But then he's going to do that through the ministry of the church. And how is he going to do that through the ministry of the church?

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Well, he has meant to provide that nourishment and that sustenance and that protection that pilgrims need through the preaching of Christ and through the offering of the

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Lord Jesus in the sacraments, through prayer and song and the fellowship of the saints as we cling to each other, as we all cling to Christ.

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This is the way it works. And this is why, you know, I mean, I don't really want to take us off this tangent, this rabbit trail, but I think sometimes in our day, because of all kinds of things, bad theology, bad practice, and the hyper individualistic spirit of the age, we often ask the question, like, why do

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I need the church? I mean, I think this understanding really would then lead you to ask the question, how could

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I live without the church? Yeah. Because I am weak and God has me,

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Christ has me, and he's going to keep me through my participation in this body.

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And he's going to keep me even through the love and the encouragement, the exhortation, the admonishment of these dear people with whom

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I live life. Consider how to build one another up daily that you aren't hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting too that sometimes we're a little critical of churches because we're expecting them to be a certain way.

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And I'm like, what did you expect? They're full of weak, weak people. Comprised of sinners, last we checked, right?

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That's right. You know, I jokingly say these things on Sunday, but I do mean them.

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I tell people, if you're coming here and expecting the church to be some kind of, you know, professionalism, we're not professionals.

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We're just a band of misfit Christians who are weak and looking to the strength of the Savior. One of the things that, for me,

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Justin, that really shocked me in my early years, in my first few years of marriage was, you know,

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I just, I just never really understood the weakness of life. You know, like we are surprised when we die.

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I experienced death really early in my childhood and early into my marriage.

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I lost my dad, I lost several of my grandparents, my uncle. I just, I faced just a lot of early,

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I mean, my dad died when he was 49. So it's not like, you know, later in life. And so you're, you're just not, you're not ready to experience that.

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And what I was faced with really early is this whole theology of glory fell flat in my twenties because nothing worked as it was supposed to be working.

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My marriage wasn't turning out like I thought. I wasn't parenting like I thought. Nothing seemed to be going with, and it didn't matter how much work

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I put in. I would put in more work. I'd put in more time. I'd, I'd study longer. I'd pray harder.

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And the weakness and the frailty of my life only seemed to increase because I was trying to do it in my own strength.

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I wasn't walking by faith, asking myself, you know, will the Lord provide?

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It was, I didn't believe God will work all things out for good. I thought, man, I need to work all things out for good.

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I need to fix these situations. I need to fix. My eyes were definitely focused in on me, which is the theology of glory.

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Right. I wanted a perfect life now. I wanted a good life now.

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And I wasn't okay. I, when James said, you know, counting all the joy, I just thought, man, there's gotta be another explanation for that because I, trials are, trials are here because I'm not doing something right.

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Or I'm not working hard enough. Often in our experience, we've already talked about the spiritual dangers and we've talked about the temptations and all these kinds of things that we face regularly.

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But I think a lot of times in our experience, we are often weighed down because we see, if we're honest, we see very little of what

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God has promised us in our day -to -day lives in certain seasons. Like we, we look around and we survey life on this planet and how our lives are going, what we're feeling, what we're experiencing.

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And it just preaches such a different word than what God has said He's done for us and He's going to do.

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And we look around and we think about our lives and our experiences again. And, and we see no earthly good whatsoever in what we're going through.

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Just often the case for us. Right. So that's a few things that are, that are clear to me in light of that.

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One, it's only by God's power that we would ever endure. You know,

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He's got to be the one to keep us because we're not going to do this. We're not going to pull this off. Secondly, if we're ever going to have joy, you know, in the midst of that kind of an existence in this kind of a life,

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God's got to do that too. Right. And then thirdly, this is kind of taking my cue from the apostles in a number of the letters and you know,

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Calvin writes some really beautiful things about this to, if you notice what the apostles do when they're writing to churches that are often bombarded by false teaching, they're bombarded by apostasy, aberrant practices of every kind, right?

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What do they do? They immediately ground the saints in Christ and His sufficiency.

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Why do they do that? Because they understood by the inspiration of the spirit that the only thing that can protect and sustain the saints and the only thing that can protect the church from false doctrine and aberrant practice is to have a clear vision of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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And they beat that drum continually. We need to see who

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Christ is for us. That is the thing we need in the midst of weakness and suffering and pain.

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And Satan, his project is to obscure Christ from view.

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He can do that any number of ways. And I mean, we talk about those things all the time here on Theocast. Whenever you start putting things alongside

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Jesus, you know, Jesus plus obedience, Jesus plus disciplines, Jesus plus affections, we're obscuring

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Christ. Whenever you start to talk like theology of glory ways as well about better marriages and better financial stewardship and better leadership, this is kind of why

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Jesus came. Whenever you start to talk like that, so that your life would go better, you're obscuring

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Christ from view. And that's the project of the enemy, not the project of God. And so why is it,

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John, that you and I, for our parts, every Sunday when we're in the pulpit, why do we get up there and herald

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Christ from all of Scripture? Because it's what the saints need and have always needed. You know, and if we're ever going to have hope in the midst of weakness, it's

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Christ for us. And I need to be reminded on the Lord's day, here's who he is and here's what he's done for you.

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And you're a sinner and sinner. Will his work not suffice? And if it will, you can trust him.

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You know, and I mean, I don't want to get emotional right now, but it's just like, bro, in the midst of my week or even the last few months, there are times where it's like, good grief, he's all

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I got. He's all we got. That's right. You know, and yeah, we may be wrong about wisdom calls. We might be we might make mistakes here or there.

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We might get that wrong, but we're right about Christ. Well, what I love is you have you have a lot of New Testament writers,

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James, Peter and John, both all three do this. James talks about trials, then he goes right into wisdom.

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He's like, so what happens in a trial, Justin? Something steps on our neck and what comes out of our mouth? Just putrefaction, right?

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Because what's in the heart of the mouth speaks, right? And then James says, well, if you're lacking wisdom and what he means by that is the fruits of the spirit, he goes, just ask of God and he'll give it to you generously.

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I think it's also important. You were talking about. Pointing things to Christ, pointing people to Christ, we quote this a lot, too, but Galatians 6, 2, right?

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Bear you one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Right. So we ask for wisdom so that we can care for one another and then fulfill the very thing that we're designed to be here for.

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And, you know, this whole thing is driven by the affections that we have received.

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Right. First, John talks about this. We love because he first loved us.

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So when I said this to you, Justin, and this will kind of be my last thought. When we start thinking about life and we stop trying to find joy in the shattered glasses, right, we stop trying to find hope in things that decay and we start realizing that real satisfaction comes in what's the hope to come, right?

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We know that we live in broken bodies that cannot be restored here. Like Justin, we're going to die.

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I think we just need to embrace that. We're going to die of something. Something's going to kill us away. But that death brings life.

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Like just as our spirits died and was raised again with Christ, so our bodies. I mean, this is the whole hope of 2

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Corinthians talks about the hope of resurrection. When we can embrace that, the little things in this life actually can bring us joy, right, because we're not trying to use the world to find hope.

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We have that hope in Christ. Then we can use things to find those glimpses of hope and the restoration of the things to come.

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And it also gives us the energy and liberates us to love one another where we actually do find joy to carry someone's burden because we're offering them relief that cannot be found anywhere else.

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Yeah. One of the striking things to me, John, about the Bible in light of our conversation today is that the scriptures, and in a pointy way, the

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New Testament assumes that the saints will be weak. Yeah. That's very clear. I'm going to close us with these words from scripture.

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Throughout life. Yeah. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

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I mean, such as our condition, right? For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.

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He helps the children, right? Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

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For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Amen. Such as our savior and God is good to us and he knows our frame.

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He remembers that we're dust and he gives us what we need, right? But he knows we're weak. Well, Justin, before we run out to the next podcast,

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I know we're about ready to do that, something new we're offering for those who partner with our membership and listen to our

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Semper Firmata podcast, which Justin will explain in a minute, we're answering audio questions. Now you can send in a question about anything really.

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And so we've got one we're going to play for you just here in a minute. You can hear his question and we'll be answering those questions in the

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Semper Firmata podcast. Justin, explain to them what is Semper Firmata? Semper Firmata is for people who have partnered with Theocast and it is a community of individuals who have various ways to connect to one another.

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In addition to those community platforms, like the app that we have and the various groups that go on as a subset of that, you do get access to an additional podcast every week where you just get more of John and me talking about sometimes the subject matter that we've been covering in the regular episodes, sometimes answering questions like we're going to do today, sometimes just talking more personally and maybe in a family style, kind of around the fireplace way with people who are learning more of what it is to be a confessional

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Christian. So all of that happens in this second podcast we record every week. If you want more information on how you can become a

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Semper Reformata member, you could find all of that info over at theocast .org. We will leave that to you.

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And so we look forward to talking with many of you again next week in this format, talk with you some of you over on SR.

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Grace and peace to all. Yeah, guys, this is Gene Wells. I got two questions that I'd like to hear discussed.

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One of them is the two kingdom theology of Luther and how that is impacted by or how that reflects and is paralleled in reform theology.

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And then the second would be kind of a discussion of pre, post and amillennialism and how that fits in with the redemptive historical view as opposed to the dispensational views, the other views and categories that are used to discuss that.