Narnia, the Reformation, and Hopelessness | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to have a conversation about where hopelessness, fear, and anxiety come from and what we can do as a church and individuals to regain the hope and rest and joy in Christ.

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

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

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

And Justin, as always, my friend, it's Wednesday morning, one of our favorite mornings to get together, and it's been a good morning already.

We've had the opportunity to just talk about life and ministry in general, and today's subject was one coming out of Justin and I always,

I don't know, it just kind of seems to happen. We talk about what we've been preaching, what's on our minds. What's going on in our lives, whatever. Great books we've read, and today's subject really kind of came out of something you've been reading your kids.

Yeah, well, I mean, somewhat to some things that you were talking about considering in your sermon on Sunday.

Yeah. You mentioned that, and then I mentioned this other thing, and I said, oh, and by the way, like this other thing struck me.

And so it's kind of cool. It's a little bit of a your thing, and then what happened with me last night reading my kids mashup has produced today's episode.

So yeah, before that, before I do that. Yeah, let's pump the brakes. Let's talk about some other books.

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We love the word vintage. Vintage theology. So, we have a series called Theocast Vintage. And in that series, we have new branding to some of the two books that we've already done.

So, there's Rest. If you're on YouTube, you can see there's the first one, Rest. And there is Safe. The next one that's coming out,

Justin, is Reformed. God willing, in the coming months, we'll have the third installment in the

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And we hope down the road that there's a whole set of these that look cool sitting there and are helpful to the saints.

Yeah, it's been encouraging. As the donations have increased and as the membership has gone up, it gives us more resources to produce these.

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But we want them. We want them out there, and we're excited. We have a lot of ideas of more things that we think are beneficial, not only for our church, but other churches out there and individuals.

Stuff on the church, stuff on covenant theology, stuff on end times, all this kind of stuff.

So, stay tuned. The next one we're working on is Reform. So, Justin, the title of the podcast is

Narnia, the Reformation, and Hopelessness. Let's start with Narnia. And the listener is like, huh? What are these dudes going to say?

Exactly. What does this title mean? Well, we're going to try to set it up for you, and we hope the conversation today is an encouraging and hope -giving one.

So, the way this happened, I already alluded to this. John was considering some things as a part of his sermon this past Sunday, and he was sharing that with me.

And then I shared with him something that I read with my children last night. So, with my older two kids, we have begun to read the

Narnia books, the Chronicles of Narnia books by C .S. Lewis. And the first book in that series is called

The Magician's Nephew. It's sort of the precursor to everything else. It's the ground setter, the table setter for the rest of the story.

And in the final chapter of that book, we finished it last night. In the final chapter of that book, I'm going to be super quick in trying to give context here, and then

I'm going to read this quote that just struck me as I was reading to my kids. First time I've read this book. So, the original two kids in the story are named

Diggory and Polly. They are the precursors to the kids that will come later. Diggory is going to grow up and inherit the house in the country.

He's the one who's going to build the wardrobe from this wood that is from this tree.

The seed came from Narnia and the tree grows in his garden. The tree falls and he builds the wardrobe that is going to be the portal between our world and Narnia down the road.

So, Diggory is still a kid. He has had these wonderful experiences, he and Polly, where they've been in Narnia.

They've been with Aslan, the lion, who is the Christ figure in these stories. And Aslan has literally sung

Narnia into existence and has sent Diggory on this mission to get this special apple and all these kinds of things have occurred.

But Diggory, now at the end of this first book, finds himself back in London, just living life again.

And there's this quote. For the rest of that day, whenever he looked at the things about him and saw how ordinary and unmagical they were, he hardly dared to hope.

But when he remembered the face of Aslan, he did hope. And I almost fell off the couch reading this to my kids last night when

I read that out loud. And then I put the kids to bed and I got the book back out again and looked at this page again, looked at this quote again, made a mark in the book, took a screenshot of it, because I was like, that is epic.

John and I were talking about this. It so resonates with us that this is our experience in this world, living life under the sun as fallen human beings, even those of us who trust

Christ. So often, to use the language of Lewis again, whenever we look around at the things about us and see how ordinary and unmagical they are, we hardly dare to hope.

I mean, what is it that gives us hope? But when we remember the face of Christ, when we remember Jesus and what he's done for us, we have hope.

That's pretty cool. And so what we thought we would discuss today is basically give an acknowledgment to the fact that many of us have this experience in this life.

The things that we engage in on a day -to -day basis are not magical. They're not epic.

They're mundane. They're very ordinary. Some of them feel trivial. Some of them are just hard, unpleasant.

And it is so easy when we look around and survey all that to lack hope and be hopeless.

And not only is it because we're fallen and we live in a fallen world and it's much easier to live by sight than faith, not only is all that true, what we thought we would do today is try to get underneath this in some other ways and think about how things that have gone on in the church, things that even characterize our current church context, the current church moment, have not helped us have hope.

And in having this conversation and maybe pointing some of these things out that have contributed to our hopelessness, we want to try to also speak to, hey, the scriptures and the sound doctrine that's contained in the scriptures and a perspective that the church has had in the past that is otherworldly is actually really helpful.

And may God give us all grace that we might live by faith and not sight. And may He give us grace that we would see these things and be committed to these things and help one another in this and point one another to the only hope we have.

So I'm feeling this a little bit today, man, and I hope this is a good conversation. Justin Perdue It is.

One of the things I love about Theocast is that we want to talk about rich, deep theological truth on a very practical layman level, where sometimes it's hard to, like last night,

I was teaching my third installment of the thing at our church called

Grace Academy, and it's an hour and a half class and it's pretty in -depth. But what I love about the illustration

I used last night was once you understand, like if you ever learned a new game that's pretty intense, like a board game or card game, there's a lot of rules.

Learning those rules is not what's fun. I don't enjoy it. It's obnoxious.

You're trying to figure out strategy. It's more fun once you understand it and intuitively get the game. Yeah. It's like anything.

When you're first learning it, you're just like, well, I can't do that. And then you're even realizing that's a dumb rule. Why is that rule in place?

And then your first couple of hands, you're just like, oh, I think I'm getting it. And then once you understand the game, then it's fun.

And what's interesting about Christianity is that it's not necessarily learning the rules of how to live the

Christian life. It's more understanding the structure behind this relationship that you have with God and this relationship with the world.

We live in two kingdoms, right? Going back to the illustration we had with Van Droonen or the podcast we had with Dr.

Van Droonen, is once you understand how the function of the world happens and how the function of this relationship with this sovereign, powerful, all -knowing

God, then the two worlds become clear and life becomes,

I think, there's a sense of joy that one can have and you go from hopelessness to hope.

So the title of this podcast is Narnia, the Reformation and Hopelessness. What we're trying to point out is why the hopelessness exists.

What was encouraging about the illustration that you gave is that his view of the world created nothing but hopelessness, but his view of the other world and his view of Christ in particular, that's right.

And this is all a type and shadow of Christ, that the whole books of Narnia is designed, I mean, he even says this, it's designed to try and give them a tooth.

I forget what book it is, but it even literally says in the book that they would seek greater things after their experience of Narnia.

One of the, this last Sunday was Reformation. So it's going to show you how many far weeks. Reformation Sunday, yeah.

How many weeks we are behind. So five, we've celebrated over 500 years now of this, what we would say kind of the recovering and it's definitely the covering of the gospel, but what else was recovered on a practical sense was access to the truths of Christ.

They were really bottlenecked up to, by the Roman Catholic Church and by and large, not every place in the world, but by and large, the church had really put behind the closet the reality and the truth of Christ and they had manipulated the truth.

And this is still true today. One of the things that is true, this isn't even biblical truth, this is just historical truth.

The way in which you want, if you want to control a large populace of people, you do it by two ways, ignorance and fear.

And we can see this by the tyranny of men in other world, in other countries, they're not even using it in a religious sense. It's just keep these, you know, the shut the internet down and then they put the fear of, you know, imprisonment and death upon people.

And it's amazing what they'll adhere to. Well, during the Reformation, this is what definitely happened or sorry, before the

Reformation, this is definitely what happened. Let me read to you. This is early on during, obviously during the dark ages, you have the decree from the council of Toulouse, and this is the

Roman Catholic council. This is a powerful statement. Listen to what they, what they decree.

What century is that council, John? Sorry, 1229 is when this 1229 is when this happened.

And it says, we prohibit also the laity should be permitted to have the books of the old or New Testament, but we most strictly forbid them having any translation of these books.

So they're talking about the original translation of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. But then they're like in their common language, absolutely not.

It should not happen. They were so adamant about this. You know, Wycliffe ends up translating the

Latin into English, and they were so angry that after he died, they, in 1415, they dug up his bones and publicly burned them and spread the ashes out in the river as an illustration of just, this is serious.

You know, you should not have Bibles because basically the common man without the gift of the priest, the priest are the only ones who could really, or the church, the

Pope could really only be the one who could accurately study God's word. My point in bringing this is that from that, because of ignorance, the people were taught to live in absolute utter fear because the truth that was being handed to them was the only means of salvation and justification.

And really, this whole other doctrine called purgatory, the only way to get through this was through these seven sacraments.

And ultimately, this is what sparked the Reformation, right? The 95 Cs. Martin Luther, who was not a

Christian at the time, still a very devout Roman Catholic said, now this, what we're doing is wrong, requiring people to pay to get out of purgatory.

And he gave his 95 reasons of why this should not be, should not happen. Well, here's what's crazy,

Justin. We always talk about like, well, you know, thank God that we all have access to the word of God today.

And I know this is a bold statement, but I'm going to go ahead. This is a bold statement and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to stand behind it.

What is scary to me is we do have more access to the word of God than any other time in any generation before us.

If you have access to the internet, you have access to the Bible. And I don't even know what the percentage of the world is, but the percentage of the world is far greater have internet access than anybody else.

And that just means that we now have the capacity to read and listen to God's word at any moment of the day.

In our own native language for most people. Right. And in there, yeah, there's so many translations and, you know, so thankful for the different, there's different ministries.

That's all they do. They go to different indigenous companies or countries and translate off topic. Point of it is what is sad in my understanding.

And when I listen and when I see what modern theological, what modern theology is being taught is that unfortunately, we're still ignorant of God's word.

Having access doesn't mean we have understanding. And the reason

I say that is if you listen to what's being taught, there is still fear and hopelessness.

I agree with you. The access we have to the scriptures is off the charts and we should praise and thank God for that.

But that alone has not cured what ails us. We still, as to your point, are so often governed by fear and we are often characterized by hopelessness rather than hope.

And why is that? If we've got access to the scriptures, why is it that we're still living in fear and hopelessness?

Humbly, but sincerely, we would suggest that there is an ignorance of sound doctrine.

There is an ignorance of what the scriptures actually teach. By ignorance, we mean not that somebody is stupid.

Just to be super clear, you can be an intelligent human being and be ignorant. This is not a lack of intelligence that we're speaking to.

Ignorance means that there is a lack of understanding or a lack of an awareness of sound doctrine and good theology that the scripture contains within it.

Why is it that in an era where we have unprecedented access to the scriptures, we have so many

Christians who are ignorant of sound doctrine and who are therefore living in fear and hopelessness?

We are not trying to say that an understanding of sound doctrine just cures everything and it just gives you hope all the time.

Of course, we're always going to battle sin. We're always going to battle our frame. We're always going to be struggling to some extent or another in this fallen world until the resurrection, but sound doctrine that is centered around Christ and his work in the place of the sinner is a wonderful help to people like us who tend to live in fear and hopelessness.

What we're advocating for and what we're trying to identify is, I mean to be charitable in saying this, but it's a failure on the part of the church and a failure on the part of pastors and teachers in the church to rightly and faithfully teach, preach, and catechize their people.

This just goes back to Paul's commandment to Timothy, right? Preach the word in and out of season, when he means in the season where it's going to be prosperous for the church and the culture excited about it, and in the season where it's not going to be so popular and the culture isn't going to be excited about it because it needs to continue and it needs to be grounded.

One of the things that really sparked this conversation for me, Justin, is that you and I have been around Christianity for a very long time, and I grew up in it.

I've been able to observe different brands and shades, and as I am engaging in it, there is a strong, very strong, no one would disagree that people should understand and engage in their word, in the word.

Let's just be super clear. To study, to meditate on, to process, to wrestle with God's word is a good thing.

No one would say, no, the Bible is great, but it's not like there are differences of opinion on diet or exercise.

John and I wholeheartedly, with Christians through the centuries, believe that we will know God through His word, period.

We need to know the word if we want to know God. And what you'll hear is this massive push for people to be reading their

Bibles. You should be reading your Bibles, reading your Bibles, your Bibles. And here's the rub for me, is that I think there are people who are very dedicated to reading the word, and yet they live in hopelessness.

I mean, they read the word every single day and they don't walk away. Justin Perdue When they live in fear too. Right. They live in not only hopelessness, they live in ignorance.

Ignorance, fear, and hopelessness. I was teaching last night on how to understand the Bible, the arc of the Bible. And we were talking about tools that are very important from covenant theology, things like law, gospel distinction, typology, understanding the third use of the law.

And all of those unlock what I would say the powerful truths of God's word.

But if you don't understand these categories, when you go to read scripture, you're going to be collapsing the law and the gospel.

You're going to be not knowing what the difference is between the type and an anti -type. And I'm not saying that unless you have all of these categories, you are never going to understand scripture.

But the thing that I'm trying to get to is this. Man, this sounds just so, so crazy,

Justin, and we're going to have to walk through this because it's going to sound like I'm reinstituting Roman Catholicism and I'm not.

The primary mission and purpose of the elders of the church are to dedicate themselves to the study of the word.

Why? Because they're responsible for the education and the dissemination of truth to their local congregation.

This is why he says in Acts, get deacons to help with the physical needs so you guys could focus on the spiritual needs because you are the carers of their soul.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest.

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

Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

slash primer. It's the ministry of the word and prayer.

It's what elders and pastors give themselves to uniquely in the life of the church.

The Holy Spirit, who inspired the word of God, is the one who has told us that we need those people.

We need pastors and we need teachers because this is how the Lord has set this up. I was having a conversation with some friends this past Sunday afternoon, a controversial statement.

A group of people from our church each year, we get together and hang out as families and we take our kids trick -or -treating and we do that.

I don't mean to upset anyone. I don't mean to upset anyone. You love Satan more than God. Clearly, yeah. Even though we talk literally, we're talking about Christ.

We're talking about the word. We're talking about the church over dinner. Our kids have a wonderful time and then we meet people in the neighborhood and it's great.

Whoops, just jerking your buds out. Hang on. Welcome to Theocast.

All right, here we go. But all this to say, we were talking about some of this then about the fact that, and we're going to get into some of this later, but the fact that the church is what shapes the

Christian life and that the Christian life is inherently, in terms of its devotion, is inherently church -shaped and it's corporate the way that we do things and how the most significant...

It's great, like to your point, it's great that people would meditate on the word of God and study it. Amen. The most significant time that any of us ever spend in the word of God ever is when we gather with the saints to sit under it.

That includes those of us who preach it. We're under it. We're preaching it, but we're under it. I mean, we're mouthpieces and are affected by what we say and are praying along with the people in the pew that we would have faith to believe what's coming out of our mouths.

So this is the most significant thing that any of us do in any given week when it comes to our time in the word of God.

We do it together. And so that's big in thinking about this.

The last thing I'll say about this, one of my jobs, as I understand it, John, I mean to your point earlier about why the Lord has given pastors to the church,

I want to, in preaching and teaching the word on Sunday, in which I am aiming to extol the mercy, power, grace, love of Christ, that people might trust him and people might say,

I love God and God loves me. I mean, praise be to his name. But then also in teaching doctrine and other outlets in our church's life, my main objective in some of that is to help our people understand the scriptures and to equip our people to actually meditate on and study the

Bible. And sadly, I think this is what has been lacking. John and I are not trying to toot our own horn here.

I mean, there are plenty of other brothers that are doing the same work. I mean, there's nothing unique about us. But there sadly has been a lack of this kind of real doctrinal

Christ -centered preaching and teaching in local churches, and it has produced a lot of bad fruit in the church, including this ignorance of sound doctrine, this ignorance of good theology, and then also fear and hopelessness amongst

Christians, amongst the saints in the church. It's a big deal. I think we're being clear.

I mean, the word of God is incredible. Study it. Absolutely give your life to such things. But do it in the context of a local church where you're being taught sound doctrine and do it with other

Christians. Just going back to the Reformation, and this is a dangerous joke here, but I still make it.

You know, Martin Luther is known famously for a lot of things, but he wasn't the one who started Halloween. But I will tell you, he is the one who's the first to famously knock on the door of somebody on the 31st of October.

Sorry, go back to the Reformation. Go ahead. Justin Perdue I'm sorry, man. We're like, it pump fakes all over the place.

Really quick comment. I saw a dude put this on Twitter the other day. He's another guy that would hold the 1689

Confession, Westminster Seminary guy, and we follow each other or whatever on Twitter.

He put up this quote. I mean, I'm paraphrasing it, but it's basically like, if you want to be a good Berean, Acts 17, right?

You want to be a good Berean. That doesn't mean that you just go sit and read your Bible by yourself. If you want to be a good

Berean, that means that you come to engage with the Word of God with the saints. Justin Perdue That's right. Justin Perdue And it's true.

Again, not that you can't engage with it by yourself, but you best make it primary in your life that you're engaging with the Word of God with the saints.

Justin Perdue Yeah, well, and that's this. So just going back to the nature of Christianity and the

Reformation. So during the Reformation, what was lost were many things. What was lost was...

Justin Perdue Or prior to the Reformation, what had been lost. Justin Perdue Yeah, sorry. Prior to the Reformation, what was lost was the power of the

Word of God resting within Scripture alone, Sola Scriptura, and that was definitely reclaimed.

I mean, Luther also translated into German for the common people and so thankful.

But what you'll never see the Reformers doing is that they wanted the common man to be able to engage in God's Word, but it wasn't for the sake of their own personal development.

It was so that they could believe and trust in the truths that were being handed to them. For so long, they were given truth that they could not verify, and they could not claim to be, thus saith the

Lord. They had to say, thus saith the church. This is why we, Justin, you and I, when we get up, we always tell people, turn here, look with us.

Justin Perdue Put your eyes here. Jon Moffitt Right. And we want you to affirm and confirm the truth that we are proclaiming to you.

This is why expository preaching to explain is so important to us because we aren't giving you the wisdom of life of like, here are five ways to overcome this.

Jon Moffitt Right. I could care less. Paul talks about this. Justin Perdue Neither should you care about my wisdom. Jon Moffitt Right.

I didn't come with you in words of wisdom and in flowery language. Paul says, look, I preached to you

Christ in Him crucified. I gave you the basics of Scripture. Going back to this, what has really been lost in many ways is that the utter requirements upon the leadership of a church, like for instance, the requirements of an elder being not of a novice, being able to teach, who can rightly divide the

Word of God. Those things, it's like you need to be an entrepreneurial, you need to be a business major, and you need to be a public speaker.

And you can basically draw a crowd and you'll look at... And it's like, that is not the role of an elder.

The role of the elder is spiritual grounding. His job is Ephesians 4 to make sure that you were built up every way into Christ, who is the head, right?

It could be stated this way, that if you as a pastor failed in every other area of your ministry, save one, and that one being the right preaching of the

Word of God and the preaching of Christ, you have still done your job. I mean, because that is the primary task that you've been given.

Jon Moffitt Right. So the thing that I think that is important in this, the

Reformation obviously recovered the Scripture for all men.

Praise God for that. You know, we have the five solos that came out of that. One of the things, Justin, that I want to clarify that when they said sola scriptura, that didn't mean solo, meaning that there was no other influence other than the

Word of God and you. In other words, it's you and your Bible. That's not what they meant. And the reason we know that's not what they meant is that we go on to clarify to have our creeds and confessions, and the creeds and confessions were the design for the local assembly.

And I mean, the opening to our confession, which is the 1689, the immediate thing that they talk about the

Word of God, you know what? They say in the first paragraph that God's Word, yeah, but the testimony of it was the public preaching and teaching of God's Word.

I mean, that's the first statement that comes in there, that God's Word is the most effective when it is presented within the ordinary means of grace.

Go ahead. Justin Perdue Well, no, I mean, before we maybe pivot to the second part of the episode, I think that what we're saying is that a lack of an awareness of the faith once for all delivered to the saints that has been written down in other things outside of the

Scriptures, you know, that reflect scriptural doctrine, that's been to the detriment of the church.

I mean, we have ancient creeds that were written, I mean, nearly 2000 years ago, some of them, the Apostles' Creed is written in the second century.

And then you have the Nicene Creed, you know, that was written in the fourth century. I mean, these are things that the

Lord has, I mean, these are treasures that the Lord has given and preserved for his church. But then you also have these confessions of faith.

Many of the ones that we talk about on this program are from the era of the Reformation with good reason, right?

But these things are treasures that help us understand the Scriptures because what they are effectively are exercises in systematic theology, doctrine.

What does the Scripture teach about God and about man and about sin and about God's ways with us and about redemption and salvation and Christ and his work for us and all of this?

What does it teach about the nature of our reconciliation to God? Is it something that we do or is it something that Christ has done that we receive by faith, right?

And so a lack of knowledge, ignorance of all of that stuff is harmful, has been harmful.

And I think what we're clamoring for and sort of pounding the desk for, metaphorically speaking right now, is let's recover this kind of doctrine and theology that's about Christ and God and his plan of redemption that Jesus accomplished.

And let's point people to Jesus and let's point people to their Redeemer and the hope that we have in Him.

And the focus and the emphasis on that stuff has been lost somewhat, it seems. I think if you look at what the church has been confessing for the last 500 years, it's kind of what

I would call a recovery of priority. You know, you look at the Reformed confessions, they're very similar.

You know, there's definitely some slight differences between, I mean, there's a very small slight difference for the West Midstrand, right?

And the overlap is this, is that they are putting back central what is foundational to give the

Christian their hope and security and Christ and assurance in Christ, right?

That's what the Reformation recovered. It recovered assurance and hope. When there was ignorance and fear and hopelessness, what we have now is sound doctrine.

We have a firm foundation, which is our assurance. And now we have a hope that is beyond this world, which is going to lead us into this last section of why this all really matters.

Because, Justin, what is interesting, I mentioned this to you, there's this whole movement going on right now called the

Metaverse. It's super nerdy. And I used to be really nerdy about technology. And I'm realizing as I get older,

I'm like, wow, technology is really like flying past me, really fast. Justin Perdue It's last too, yeah. Yeah. And I'm not as intrigued by technology today as much because it's honestly, it's hard to keep up.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really geared on entertainment. And I find other things to entertain me than technology.

So I don't play video games anymore. I mean, I haven't played video games in 20 something years, but it's not a dig on anybody who does.

But the point of it is, is that when I am, I was doing research on this recently and they are creating really some amazing technology.

You can now be in a virtual reality operating room where students can practice surgery and not mess up and kill somebody, you know, and replace a knee or do brain surgery.

And it's really beneficial for the health of our world. But they're also talking about creating, and they already are, entire worlds where you can go in and actually work a job and build a house all virtually.

All virtually. The one thing I just, you know, what's not going to really be in there and maybe they will be,

I don't know, but what's not probably going to be in there is the bad parts of our world that we don't like.

We're going to leave those out. And what we're trying to create is our own heaven here and now.

To create a utopia anyway. Right. And I'm not here to say anybody that gets involved in the metaverse is sinful.

I'm just not saying that, but this, this, this desire for other than otherness.

I mean, this is why we love the concept of there being other worlds and aliens and other planets because something other than the world that we live in.

And Justin, this just leads us to the podcast that we do with Dr. Van Droenen on Two Kingdom Theology, right?

We had this, the difference between living in God's kingdom and the hope of that restoration and living in this world.

So talk to us a little bit about ignorance and how these two kingdoms often collapse upon each other.

That's really when, I mean, this is what the whole quote in Narnia, he was talking about the concept of living in this kingdom while hoping in the world to come.

And maybe that's the way that I would frame it. And the two kingdoms is entirely legit too, in terms of the common kingdom and the redemptive kingdom.

And that's the whole, like we live in this world, but our citizenship is in heaven also. And I think that there has been,

I think it's fair to say, this has been characteristic of the American church for centuries. There has been a tendency to be earthbound in ways when it comes to how we do church and how we think about theology and doctrine.

The emphasis shifted somewhere. And I mean, we could do episodes and probably will do episodes on historically how this happened, when this happened, ebbs and flows, whatever.

But somewhere along the line, the emphasis changed from the understanding that Christians are pilgrims, exiles, and sojourners who are in one sense awaiting the world to come.

And what the ministry of the church is designed to do is to protect and sustain and nourish those saints as they await the new heavens and the new earth.

And it shifted to something else, shifted away from that perspective to a different one that then began to emphasize not a corporate church -shaped devotion where we together are going to be kept by God, but now it's this emphasis on personal intensity and personal devotion and transformation.

Maybe it's your own personal moral transformation, or maybe it's the transformation of society through the transformation of a bunch of individuals.

And so this has, you can see kind of where I'm going with this. You can have a conservative notion, like the evangelical conservative notion of personal transformation, and maybe the society transformed through individuals.

That still is very this -worldly, right? It's kind of an earthbound perspective in some ways.

But then you can also have more of a liberal bent where it's just almost entirely aimed at society, and we're going to transform the culture in the world and make it a more habitable environment and a better place to live, right?

A more peaceful existence, whatever. Utopia. And that has been very harmful to the church, because the church, even in still holding to, like in the conservative sphere, in the evangelical sphere, absolutely holding to doctrines of heaven and hell and all these kinds of things, and salvation by faith alone, you know, grounded in the grace of God alone, in Christ alone, and all that, preaching that stuff, but still having a very earthbound perspective on it and not living in this kind of like, hey, we're pilgrims and exiles, and we're awaiting the new heavens and the new earth, and we together are being kept by God unto that.

And so, I think what you end up having are people that can easily have their hope sort of choked out by the concerns of this life and the mission that they're supposed to be on, and all of the transformation that's supposed to be occurring in them individually and then through them in the society, that the focus becomes, what am

I doing now? Rather than, we together are going to continue to cling to Christ and point one another to Christ, and we're going to love our neighbor and invite other people in to taste and see that the

Lord is good. You know? And I think what we're also, so I'm pounding the desk,

John's pounding the desk, metaphorically speaking, for, hey, let's go back to this confessional understanding of church, right?

To this understanding of the Christian as a pilgrim, not a warrior crusader, but a pilgrim who is in need, who encounters a thousand spiritual dangers, and the ministry of the church is aimed to help that.

Justin Perdue That's right. Justin Perdue You know? So, let's herald Jesus, and let's love each other, and let's invite others in to taste and see that Christ is, in fact, a

Savior and that He's good. Yeah, sound doctrine and a proper understanding of Scripture creates real joy and real assurance and rest in a restless world.

Justin Perdue Yeah, and it gives hope. Justin Perdue Yeah. What I love about Scripture, when you start understanding rest in Christ and you understand the difference between an alien life and the life to come, let's use

Paul's language, we're an alien. I'm preaching through James, just thinking about James. James is dealing with the massive economic differences.

You have people who are really poor, people who are really rich, and they're feeling it. They're feeling almost that FOMO of,

I'm missing out because I don't have what these other people have. And you can do the very thing that James warns you do not do, where you start to pursue the life, and it says, literally, they will fade away in their pursuit.

This is what he says in James 1. They will fade away, like the flower in the desert that is scorched by the sun, so will the person fade away if they pursue significance in wealth.

And this is, James, you know what he says, the solution to this. He says, let the lowly boast in their exaltation.

What exaltation? It's not earthly exaltation. Where is this? This is the kingdom that is to come, right?

Justin Perdue He's talking about your… Justin Perdue Exaltation in Christ. That's right. He's talking about you going from enemy to adopted child, from absolutely bankrupt and owing everything to the

Father to absolutely declared righteous. And the perspective is you have to see yourself as God sees you, but you can't see yourself as God sees you if you're always looking at your life from an earthly perspective.

This is why Paul could say in prison, after being beaten and shipwrecked and his life is just… towards the end of his life is not well, he says,

I can be content. And his contentment is not in his circumstances. He's not saying, see, I can be poor and be content.

That's not what he means. He hated that situation. As a matter of fact, he even offered to be relieved from it with the whole thorn in the flesh.

God is not sadistic in saying, in the midst of pain, you need to be over there happy and laughing.

You can cry and mourn and weep and long.

He says our bodies are groaning for the relief that is coming. The contentment is this.

You aren't missing out on anything. The contentment is an otherworldly perspective. That's right. I have everything

I need in Christ. I'm waiting for that final resurrection. He who started this work in me will complete it.

It's a perfect work. It's planned sovereignly before the world began. He promised it would be there.

Paul can say, you know what? It doesn't matter whatever circumstance this life gives me. I can be content because I know what's coming.

I've had to have this conversation with someone recently where they were struggling to obey the word content in Scripture.

And I said, hey, brother, it's okay to be upset about the loss and pain and suffering and cancer.

That's not where you should find contentment. That's not what he means. It's okay to go, man, this is not cool.

This is not great. I don't like this, but I'm not missing out. This world, I'm not missing out on anything because this world can't give me what

Christ can give me. And that's where contentment is found. And that can only happen if you're grounded in Scripture.

Amen. Grounded in Scripture, grounded in sound doctrine about Christ and what He has secured for us, which finds its culmination in the bodily resurrection at the end of history that we will go through.

We will be raised incorruptible and perishable. We will live with the Lord and we'll live with each other.

And yeah, I mean, that's the hope to which we've been called, right? Two thoughts from me, and I know we're getting close to needing to land this plane in the regular portion of the show.

All right, thought number one. They're not directly related. The second one is related to Paul, which you were just talking about. First one,

I think one of the things that we want to do regularly in trying to think about hope and even contentment, peace, joy, any of these things, is as a church on the

Lord's day, we together are calling one another and are being called by the preacher and are being called even in the sacraments and the songs and the prayers to behold the face of the

Lord Jesus Christ. To go back to the C .S. Lewis quote that Diggory, the child, as he's walking around London and he's looking at everything and how it's very ordinary and unmagical, he hardly dared to hope.

And then, but when he remembered the face of Aslan, he did hope. That's what is true for us.

How are we going to have hope as believers? We're going to behold the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're going to remember

Christ. We're going to look to Christ and what he's done for us. And so how do you do that most effectively in this life?

How do you do that most poignantly in this life? We do it together. We do it on the Lord's day when we gather and assemble and we consider the

Lord Jesus and what he's done for us. So that's thought number one. So I think that's helpful in trying to pursue hope and joy and peace and rest in this life that is often characterized by anything but that.

Second thought from me, you were talking about the apostle Paul and good observations on contentment and what it means.

I think we both agree completely. It's an otherworldly perspective that would give you contentment in the midst of pain. Pain is not good.

It sucks. But the other world, the world that's coming and the promises of God in Christ give us perspective.

Sometimes people will say that if you're too heavenly minded, you're of no earthly good. And I disagree with that statement.

I know the elders of our church disagree with that statement. I know you disagree with that statement, John. I trust your elders disagree with that statement.

We actually are advocating something different where it's like, no, actually to be incredibly heavenly minded, to be oriented on the world to come.

May God give us grace and faith to live that way. We actually will be all kinds of earthly good. Because we're prepared then to give our lives away in love toward our neighbor who desperately needs our good works.

Our brothers and sisters desperately need our love, our care, our prayers, our affection, our ministry.

Other people need that from us. Having this otherworldly, heavenly perspective frees a person up to say, yeah, it's worth it for me to spend my life seeking to love other people because it's not today we eat and drink and tomorrow we die.

But in fact, there is something greater awaiting us. Paul would say it in these ways, that for himself, it would be better that he would die because he would be with Christ.

But for your sake, he says, it's better that I live. And I think this is what he means. Sometimes people just abuse verses like that.

And then they're like, we need to just be prepared to die for Jesus. And it's like, OK, well, sure. And I trust the Lord will give grace in that moment should we be called to that.

He's given grace to his people through history. But that's not the point of what Paul is saying. The point of what Paul is saying is that, hey, for me personally, guys, it would be better to just be with the

Lord. But it's better for you that I stay because the Lord is using me in your lives. That's not arrogant.

That's a godly, otherworldly posture that we all ought to have. It's better that I be here so that I can love and minister to other people.

And that's what a heavenly, otherworldly perspective frees us up and I would dare say propels us in doing.

It helps us minister to and love others better. Justin Perdue I mean, just going back to that illustration or as we close the show down,

I can't help but think of Hebrews 12, which says, you know, looking unto Jesus, laying aside the weight and sin.

It's those things that distract us. Paul says they may not be sinful, but are they helpful?

Are they really helping us focus in on Christ? I would even think of 1 John. 1

John 3 .1, see what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared.

But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

So what is he talking about? He's talking about the hope to come and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

The point of it is that what's motivating them to stay focused on what matters and live a life of purpose and live a life that's reflective and glorifying to God.

He's talking about the hope of Christ, that which is to come. I mean, C .S.

Lewis, I'm so thankful for him, and at the same time I get angry at him because he wrote some amazing things.

And he wrote some other stuff. I was like, why did you write that? And he's such a good writer that the bad things he wrote sound great.

Yeah, they do. But in the word pictures he is able to bring, I mean, there's just so many just wonderful pictures.

But the point of it was this, is that the focus of the Christian life needs to be outside of ourselves, on Christ, where we find our hope.

I'll leave us with this one last thought. The reason why we did this entire episode is that we want to convince you that it's not a waste of time to ground yourself in the doctrine and understanding of Christ, because the end result should be hope and joy, rest, hope, and joy.

And if your Christian experience is leading you to anxiety and fear and no rest, then our argument would be...

And a focus on yourself. Right. I think a focus on yourself is always going to leave you anxious and without assurance.

Always. Yeah, totally. Unless you're deluded. That's right. I'll close with a statement.

We take the greatest comfort from our Savior who says coming to Him should lead rest to your soul.

And if it doesn't, then something's wrong, and we need to correct that. And I think confessional and creeds are ways to guide us into that rest.

We should use them and definitely be at a church that will guide you to rest in Christ. Now, we are definitely not done with this conversation.

We have more to do every week. Justin and I do a second podcast. We love this podcast. It is unscripted.

It is wild and crazy, and it is fun. I don't know about wild and crazy, but it's fun. Sometimes you definitely get wild in there.

I'm just playing around. Wild amongst two pastors is, you know, we might raise our voice a little bit.

Let the hearer understand. It's called Semper Reformanda. The reason why we get excited about this podcast, it's where we talk about how to continue this reformation.

We set up the subject. We give you a lot of great hope. And then this is battle plans.

This is where we go to talk about how does this happen? Where do we make this shift? And how do we continue what was started 500 years ago in recovering the glorious grace of the gospel?

This is for our members. It's a private podcast that we do. So if you'd like to know more about this and joining our community where we have online and local groups that meet, we have our own personal app, our

Semper Reformanda app on Android and Apple. All of that good stuff is available at our website at theocast .org.

Go get our new books, or I should say remade new books. And I'm excited.

Come join us in the Facebook group. I don't know where else. Just engage with us. We're excited to have you here. If you're new, get our free ebook.