Crusade for Glory | Theocast

Hi, this is John.

Today on Theocast, Justin and I have a simple conversation around the purpose of the Church and the purpose of the Christian life.

It seems like we wake up and we are given agendas, we are given reasons for life, what we should

lay our life down for, and what we're going to do is compare it to the Scriptures.

What does the Bible say is the purpose of the Church?

Has the American Church lost its way and its purposes and what's driving it?

And where do we find our motivation for waking up every day to love and serve our King?

It's a fun conversation.

We hope.

You enjoy.

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Slash give.

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary, beat up, exhausted, and tired Christians

to find their soul rest in Jesus Christ.

Conversations about that and a lot of other stuff from a Reformed pastoral and

confessional perspective.

Justin, today we are here to clarify the Gospel and reclaim the purpose of the Kingdom, and I am excited to

do so with you, my friend.

The host of podcast is Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in beautiful Asheville, North

Carolina, and I am John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Justin, we only have a couple more weeks of recording and then the year will be over.

Yeah, we're excited.

We're recording in December.

Those will be launched in January.

In a few weeks, Justin and I are going to be together in California.

It's been two years, three years?

How many years has it been since we've been in California together?

It was 2019, man.

Three years.

I can't announce it yet, but I think we have lined up a pretty cool podcast

interview in California, so stay tuned for that.

We've got a new podcast that might be out by now.

If not, it'll be out soon called Outside Eden, a podcast about marriage and family that myself and my

wife are doing.

We're going to obviously get Justin and his wife on there often to participate.

Anyways, I just committed you.

To something that you haven't even agreed to.

Yeah, we'll discuss it.

Always good when we.

Do these things in front of God and everyone.

That's right.

Anyways, one other point I want to make is if you've not listened to our new podcast, it's a daily podcast called Everyday Grace,

where we do sermon clips and podcast clips, and there's potential some other new things coming that way

with that.

Anyways, that's all the niceties and stuff, Justin.

We're going to go ahead and jump into it because I have a feeling we're going to use up every last second of this podcast today.

Talk to us about the interesting title, Crusade for Glory.

John and I, as we always do, we start to talk and we don't always have these episodes mapped out.

When we get on in the morning of recording, we'll discuss what's on our minds, things we're observing, what we're preaching through,

teaching, and that's often where the content comes from.

Today's podcast is no different.

John started to talk to me about things that he was seeing on the interwebs, on Twitter and other social

media platforms.

That began a conversation.

I talked to him a little bit about a Christmas program, so -called, that I was attending

yesterday and things that I observed and was talking with my wife about in the aftermath of said program.

So, here we are, Crusade for Glory.

If you are on the internet and you do follow any Christians on social media,

then the things that we're about to raise will not be of news to you.

I think many people today, given the cultural moment that we find ourselves in in the United States,

given how things—no debate, no argument—the culture is shifting rapidly beneath our feet,

so to put it.

We all know this.

Many people, not just Christians, but many people in the United States are wrestling with

what this cultural shift means for them.

But in the church, in the American church in particular, there are a number of very serious -minded types who are effectively asking

the question, what's wrong with the church in America?

It's interesting the answers that they give.

We are not saying that the stuff that we're going to talk about today is representative of every Christian in the United States.

Far from it.

But there are plenty of voices that are saying the following kinds of things.

They answer the question in a way that gives away their position in terms of how the church relates to the culture

and how the church relates to the land in which the church is situated.

So the answer is, what's wrong with the church in the United States that are often given?

It's like, well, there's too much nominalism in the American church.

Christianity in name only.

John and I agree that nominalism is a problem, and nominalism exists by and large because of something called

revivalism that was prevalent and still is in some ways.

The ideology of revivalism is everywhere in the American church, which we might talk about more in just a minute.

So nominalism, Christianity in name only.

We've got a lot of fakers out there, a lot of people who claim to be Christians and they're not living like Christians, and that's the real issue here.

Another thing that's stated is antinomianism.

There are people in the church that just don't give a rip about God's law.

They don't care enough about obedience and holiness, and they think that because of grace and God

loves us, we can just do whatever we want, and the church thereby has suffered.

John and I would also agree that antinomianism, where it is legitimately found, is a huge issue.

We have ideas about what the antidote to that is, and we may talk about that more later as well.

But it's obvious, John, in the way that many answer this question.

Well, nominalism, antinomianism, the church, in other words, has not been faithful in the

United States.

That's the problem.

There's a lack of faithfulness in the church in America, which has produced in the minds of these people

the American cultural situation in which we find ourselves.

In other words, if the church had been faithful to her calling, and if the saints that comprise these churches had been

faithful to their calling, then the United States would not look like it does.

That's the implication.

If the church would get about the business of being the church, then America could be

redeemed, could be reformed, could be rescued from this clear trajectory that

it's on just to joke around.

It's like we're on the final lap and the checkered flag is about to wave America on into hell.

That's basically where we are in the minds of many.

If we would just get about being the church, then maybe we could remedy that and save this country from

the trajectory that it's on.

There's a lot there, John, that's problematic from our perspective as Reformed confessional guys who would also hold to a

doctrine of two kingdoms.

Today's conversation is effectively us picking apart some of these observations for a moment, but then we want to talk

about what really matters and what's mattered for 2 ,000 years.

Then we want to talk about life in the kingdom of Christ and what would motivate a person day in and day

out.

Is it the transformation.

Of the country and the culture, or is it something else?

There's an extreme that's been created here.

I've experienced it recently.

Theogas has been tacked for some weird stuff recently as well.

I'll give a weird illustration.

I grew up in Los Angeles.

You had Laker people who were big Laker fans and you had Laker haters like me.

There's almost this idea of you either love the Lakers or you hate them.

You can't be neutral about it.

In my opinion, I'm like, you can be neutral about it.

You created those two categories.

There's more than two categories.

I actually don't fit in either one of those.

What's interesting about the modern church is that this

happened through COVID.

COVID was an occasion for this to be spotlighted.

You either are this conservative or you're woke, and there's nothing in between.

It's like you're liberal or you're conservative who's going to fight the government, but you

cannot have an altering position because those are only the two positions.

This is where I would say neither of those are correct.

Neither one of those sides are correct.

It's not like I'm trying to take the balancing act where I'm going to try and balance on both sides.

Actually, both of those are not biblical.

I'm not trying to take a balance between the two.

It's like when people do this with Calvinism and Arminianism, they're like, I'm going to take the balance of the two.

You actually can't.

You can't do that.

That's a third position that's also wrong.

Actually, Calvinism is not wrong.

I would say that's

right.

I've been following ministries for many years.

I can remember when I was young in my faith, 15 -20 years ago, I would listen to a

lot of James White.

I was helped by him and following his ministry.

I remember the first time I watched the debate with Doug Wilson and Dawkins.

I was introduced to Wilson's ministry.

For the last 20 years, I've just been watching people.

I've been fascinated by them because they're conservative evangelicals who promote Calvinism and

confessionalism.

It's been interesting to watch their trajectory and their ministry.

From them, you can see there's some new ministries that are popping up that are starting to gain traction.

YouTube really is great because we're helping a lot of people on YouTube, but YouTube also destroys a lot of people's faith.

There's the negative and the positive of that.

Justin Perdue effectively, if we were.

Going to summarize it, and this is where the episode title came from, it's clear to us as we

observe what a lot of people are saying about the problem with the church in America.

From the perspective of many people, the church is to be on a crusade.

To change the common kingdom of this world.

Justin Perdue

has shifted further.

That's not surprising to me.

Justin Perdue.

All of a sudden, what they used to emphasize and what was important theologically is now not.

The culture now becomes the predominant commentary and

purpose and mission.

I guess we're going to have to explain what we mean by a crusade of glory.

We've done a podcast on this before, and we'll put in the links.

The theology of the cross versus the theology of glory.

The theology of the cross, just as a quick definition, Jesus says that in order to live, you must die.

In order to gain everything, you lose everything.

That was what the cross was.

Christ gave everything to gain us eternal life with the Father.

Death produced life.

Theology of glory is earthbound, and it's related to one's effort and work and involvement and expansion

here.

There's a contrast between the two.

The theology of the cross also says that God.

Works through things that appear to the eyes of the world weak and foolish and

insignificant, but God actually works through these things.

He doesn't work through the things that are obviously powerful, triumphant, and glorious.

His kingdom is unseen.

It's not of this world, and so it's not going to look like a powerful earthly kingdom.

That's all associated with a theology of the cross versus a theology of glory, which says the

opposite.

Actually, it will look powerful in the eyes of the world.

Somehow, the folly of the cross in the eyes of everyone is going to become wisdom.

The message of the cross will no longer be folly, and Jesus will no longer be a stumbling block, apparently.

If we just do it right, then all of that goes away, and

the masses, the world, will see that this is in fact wisdom, and Jesus was no longer a stumbling block,

because everyone will embrace him.

Justin Perdue.

All of a sudden, they're going to stop suppressing the truth.

Justin Perdue.

Correct.

He's already done this, by the way.

What God has given us over to, somehow, we are no longer going to be given over.

To it.

I think it's interesting that you see the rise of conservative political movements, which Justin and I

would definitely be thankful for.

We obviously love the idea of

marriage and children and all that kind of stuff, so we're not woke.

We're not liberals.

Justin Perdue We uphold a biblical definition of marriage, and we clearly

believe that biblical definitions of sexuality hold, and we believe that abortion is murder.

At the same time, we think that we should pursue justice for all men, and if that has exploded your brain, I'm not sorry,

effectively.

Justin Perdue.

Then you have the rise of things like Theonomy, which has been around for a while, but it's

definitely growing.

You've got key social media and

YouTube.

You've got guys who are promoting it now that is really gaining a lot of traction, and now you've got Christian nationalism that is starting to gain some

traction.

This is where this conversation was birthed at, when Justin and I were assessing and looking at who's saying what

and why they're saying it.

We've created this.

You're going to be politically pushing for conservatism in either Christian

nationalism, Theonomy, or even we would say the good old boy of America, as Justin says, the gosh darn American guys.

Or you're the second category, which I refuse to be put into, this woke

liberalism.

If you're not heavily promoting this over here, you're a part of this other category over there.

Justin Perdue.

I just want to be super clear here, and this is not the point of the show, and I'm going to do this in 30 seconds.

It is possible to uphold a biblical definition of marriage and sexuality, to think that abortion is

sin, and to at the same time acknowledge that there has been systemic sin and huge problems in the history of

the United States.

Those things are not mutually exclusive, and we are made to think that they are, and that's a sadness.

The only confidence I have for this entire conversation around politics in America amongst

Christians is not in the public square.

It's having relationships with people who are different than you and entrusting the fact that our union in

the Lord Jesus Christ and the relationships and the friendships we have will bear difficult conversation.

There's that.

Justin Perdue.

To go back with this, I want to talk about the problem of the

church in America.

There's definitely a problem, and we would agree there's a massive problem, but this is what this particular

podcast is about.

It has nothing to do with politics.

I think the problem was created by this crusade for glory, meaning that we're trying

to bring Christ's kingdom to be ruling and reigning now.

This is the mistake that they made in the early church.

Hosanna, the King, is here, and Jesus is like, you've missed it.

I'm on my way to the cross.

What you mean is the Jews to which.

Jesus came, the people to which the Messiah came, were expecting an earthly kingdom.

They were expecting earthly deliverance from earthly power, and they were sorely disappointed.

That was evident in how they responded to Christ.

It's ironic, to your point, that many Christians today are expecting some big,

powerful earthly kingdom in the church somehow, or maybe not the church proper,

but at least this kind of idea of a Christian kingdom where we

all can agree upon biblical principles of morality, sexuality, and everything else that

is obviously God's design for us.

That is not what Jesus says about his kingdom.

He says that his kingdom can't be seen.

His kingdom is not of this world, in particular, before Pontius Pilate.

My kingdom is not of this world.

If it were, things wouldn't be going like this.

There's a theology of the cross for you, and yet we have bought into the

lie of Satan and our own intuition that if something is good, then it

must be big and powerful and obviously glorious to us.

We have forgotten not only the words of Christ, but we've forgotten the fact that we're pilgrims and sojourners and exiles

in this land, and that our ultimate homeland awaits us upon Christ's second coming.

Jon Moffitt.

That's right.

The thing we don't understand is that we're a part of an invisible war.

Jesus says, put your sword away.

That's not the thing we fight with.

We are in a war.

We are fighting.

That's for sure.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, which means there is a war.

There's a wrestle going on here.

Even Jesus is talking about it.

There is definitely something happening.

Sometimes when I hear people talk, it's like the sinners are the enemy.

It's because they're opposing God.

They are opposing God.

I agree.

So are we.

This is what Paul says, and we once were like this.

We were once opposing God.

When you see someone who is promoting abortion, who's promoting homosexuality, they're promoting debauchery and

all of it.

That's our mission.

That's our crusade.

Our crusade is the light of Christ that can change their heart from hating God

and loving the ways of Satan to loving Christ and hating the ways of Satan.

But that cannot happen by outside pressure.

It happens by a spiritual act of the proclamation of the word by means of

love.

We have to lovingly share the gospel and pray that the power of the Spirit comes and opens their eyes.

They're not the enemy.

They're the mission.

Let me put it this way.

The cure to what ails the church in America is not a greater emphasis on faithfulness

when it comes to your responsibility to transform the culture.

That's right.

That is not the problem.

The problem in the church has always been a tendency to talk as

though we are a part of salvation somehow.

We contribute something.

That's something that we must do, whether that's a decision for Christ on the front end or sanctifying ourselves on the

back end.

We talk in ways that are irresponsible.

The church has always done this.

It has hitched its wagon to social and political concerns in a way that obscure Christ in the gospel.

Christ in the gospel always tends to be obscured whenever the church gets really involved in common kingdom

pursuits.

Church history bears it out.

World we need to concern ourselves with is what the apostles

write about in the New Testament.

Clarity on Christ in the gospel means that Jesus is God the Son incarnate

who became a man so that he could redeem people who were born under the law.

He too was born under the law so that he could redeem those who are under the law.

He came to fulfill righteousness.

He came to atone for our sin and to take our shame and guilt upon himself so that we might be absolved and set free.

He died so that he might conquer the one who has the power of death, who is the devil, so that

all of us who have been subject to lifelong slavery through the fear of death might be liberated.

He did that.

He rose triumphantly, conquering Satan and hell and sin once and for all.

He's going to come back for us and establish a kingdom then that will be visible in the new heavens and the new

earth.

This is the message of the gospel.

We need to be clear on that.

Then we need to be clear on what union with Christ means for people.

We talked about this some in recent weeks.

A doctrine that is clearly missing in the church these days is union with Christ and everything that that means for the believer

upon being united to Jesus.

What does that mean for your sanctification?

What does that mean for your weekly living?

It means a ton.

Lastly, we would all be helped if we would keep clarity.

The distinction between the church and the world, the common kingdom and the redemptive kingdom of Christ, we'd keep

that distinction in view.

In particular, if we would rightly emphasize life in the church, which is Christ's kingdom on earth, the fact that we are

citizens of that kingdom and we live in outposts of that kingdom called local churches.

If we would be plain about these things, then I think we would actually help folks a lot more.

I think we'd be more valuable in the common kingdom.

We'd go about loving our neighbor better, and we'd be more used to our fellow man in general in the United States or whatever country you find yourself

living in.

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I want to make a statement and then I'm going to make a pivot.

To the positive because we've got some time left here.

Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 -4, No

soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please

the one who enlisted him.

That's a powerful statement.

His aim is to please Christ, who is the one who enlisted us in this war.

In other words, he gives us our priority.

He gives us our aim.

He gives us our focus.

I would say as churchmen, as those who are part of the outpost of the kingdom of God, Justin and I know the advancement of the

gospel is the primary purpose.

We are to implant it into the hearts of those in the outposts in our church and congregation.

We are to bear each other's burden, strengthen each other, and encourage each other so that we can take the light of Christ into the culture around

us.

I also know that I am called to love my neighbor.

Justin, I get involved in a lot of political things around here and in our country.

My aunt runs seven pregnancy crisis centers in the greater areas of Chicago.

I financially support there.

I'm a part of what she does.

I'm excited about what she does.

She's really helping babies.

Justin Perdue.

And what's sad about it is that a crisis pregnancy center is not a political issue at all.

A crisis pregnancy center is a common grace, love of neighbor kind of service that is a

good thing.

What's sad is that many people hear you say crisis pregnancy center in our day, and immediately we're going into categories of

the Republican and Democratic Party.

I'm like, what are we doing, guys?

Justin Perdue.

The point of it is, there's a difference between me involving, helping, and even if there was

one in our town serving at it, understanding that this is a great way to love neighbor and

advance the gospel, versus this is how we're going to fix the world.

It's not how we're going to fix the world.

It's a great balm.

It's a great medicine.

It's a great way to help bring relief and protect the innocent, but it's not God's mission.

If that becomes the mission, which is cultural transformation, we have

now taken a crusade of glory.

It's so crazy, Justin, because people are like, it almost sounds like we're kicking

puppies.

That's not what we're doing.

Justin Perdue.

Here's the issue, man, in part, the mission of cultural transformation.

It really does.

It's very old.

There's a lot of this in the that was

the Church of Rome.

I'll just leave it there.

Even in a more Protestant context, a lot of this transformation emphasis

at the individual and societal level, it hails from revivalism.

That's a big deal because anybody who's advocating for this massive

emphasis on transformation and that being the warp and the woof of

the Christian mission and the Christian life is transformation of the individual and transformation of society.

I would argue that we found ourselves in part in the mess that we are in because of that kind of thinking, where

religion was subjectivized so much in the period of the revivals,

where it

of life thereafter, and an emphasis on transforming others around you.

It's not born good fruit.

I think what we do as humans is we put the cart before the horse and we try to reverse engineer things all the time.

Rather than trusting the heralding of the gospel and the preaching of the Word, the ministry of the sacraments, and all these things

for the transformation of people via union with Christ in the church, we then make the emphasis

transformation itself.

We make morality and political and social positions the emphasis.

That is to the detriment of the church and to the confusion of the saints.

What we are standing on the table for is clarity on the gospel and clarity on the

church's mission, which is the preaching of Christ, the administration of the sacraments for the

salvation of God's people.

We are in a war.

We're a part of the kingdom of light by God's grace.

We live in a common kingdom.

Last time I read the Bible, John, Satan is still called the God of this world.

It's not because God doesn't reign over him, but it's because that's how things are right now.

We're in a war and we're advancing.

I love your imagery that you often use.

We're advancing the light into the darkness.

What is the light?

That's the question.

The light is not morality.

The light is not even simply the law.

Justin Perdue.

Or cultural transformation.

Justin Perdue.

Right.

That's what I mean.

Certainly it's not cultural transformation, but it's not morality, and it's not even the law.

The light is who?

It's Christ.

He is the light.

Even his own parables that he talks about in the Gospels, where he'll talk about a lamp being set on a table

and that everything that's in the room is thereby lit up and you can see it.

He is the light that came into the world so that we might understand the plan of God from all of eternity.

The light is Christ.

If we're not advancing the kingdom of light in its mission through the proclamation of Christ so that

others might be brought into the light and delivered from darkness, I don't know that we're doing Christ's work.

Justin Perdue.

No.

There are two tools that every soldier has, a mirror and the light.

We shine the light of Christ and then we hold up the mirror and go, that's not you.

That's the law.

The law is the mirror and Christ is the light.

Christ exposes us to the glory, and then the law says you're not glory.

You can be through Christ.

The last few minutes that we have here, I want to pivot us to what has motivated the church biblically

in the past from Scripture and then where we should find our motivation.

I love asking people this question.

Human beings are built and designed to have meaning and purpose.

When someone loses their purpose, they'll even find themselves committing suicide.

When you finally get to the moment where you just have no meaning for your life, you can't see past tomorrow.

The world often gives us our purpose.

They give us our meaning, whether it could be fame, pleasure, joy, glory, whatever it is.

That's the crusade of glory.

Really, the mission is the advancement of self and the

awareness of how powerful one is.

When you think about the purpose of the Christian life, it's so opposite of that.

We're weak, we're frail, and we objectively look to the object of our faith, which is the power outside of

ourselves.

When I ask somebody, what's the purpose of the Christian life?

They always say, glorify God.

I agree.

Jesus says in the Lord's Prayer that the glory of

God might be the very existence of our life, but I don't meet many Christians who wake up every morning excited

about that.

They're just like, I'm going to glorify God today, but there's no tangibleness to that.

In the last few minutes, I want us to talk about where Paul literally says, we lay our

life down.

We are here to sacrifice everything.

Even when Jesus says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things, what the world is pursuing, food,

shelter, and clothing.

God's like, those things, you don't even need to worry about those things.

I'll provide that.

You need to find your existence, your purpose, your pleasure, your joy.

I love this.

When he's riding to the Colossians, he commends them for their faith.

Get this, for the hope they have in heaven.

He doesn't point to earth realities.

I was just going to say, even in the words of Jesus that God's going to give us everything we need,

you still got to reconcile that with the fact that there are plenty of Christians who die horrible deaths on

Christ's account.

In that same sermon on the mount, he'd already said, blessed are the people who are persecuted for my sake.

Whatever our understandings are of God taking care of us and pursuing a kingdom

and a righteousness, it has to be related to Christ's kingdom that is unseen, that is yet

to come in its consummated form.

We're all prone to this.

We're all prone to think in earthbound ways.

I think the church in the West and the church in America has been very earthbound for a long time.

I stand as one of those numbers.

I'm not saying that you and I have all this figured out, but we've got to talk like this so that we might have

more of a kingdom of Christ perspective on our daily living.

Let's, for the next five minutes, talk about some of the emphases of the New Testament when it comes to this.

Jon Moffitt.

Right.

One of the things that encourages me, and I share most of this with Justin when they come in, but a lot of you have been able

to, and this is outside of our own church and the joys that we get from pastoring, but a lot of you will reach out and just talk

about this aha moment you have where the gospel becomes real to you and rest in Christ.

Someone was like, I'm 69 years old, whereas it's been my whole life.

That right there is the thing that I wake up when I'm tired, I'm sick, I'm frail, I'm thinking

about my sin.

Why am I going to go into this dark world one more day?

Because God is leading me to one more person who's chained by sin,

who's bound by Satan.

Justin Perdue.

Yeah, 100%.

Even in my own life today, this has not been one of those days where I didn't feel great earlier.

There's just a lot going on.

One of those days where, for me personally, I really am not excited about having to do anything that's on my

calendar today.

I know we all have these days.

I have them.

Getting on and talking with you is always good, even when I don't feel like doing it.

This evening, I'm going to be teaching Theology Night at our church.

We're learning more about covenant theology together.

As I reflect on things, I was just thinking a little bit ago as you and I were talking, I know where my

heart and mind have been today.

I just want to be super clear.

I'm just going to say this because I think I can, John, to let people in on where we are with stuff.

I'm up early today.

I came into the office early today, as I often do.

I spent time reading.

I spent time praying.

Even the way that I felt today is not a result of a neglect of discipline.

I just want to say that.

There that was, and I'm still struggling in my heart and mind.

Conversation with you has helped, but then I had a thought since we've been on about the fact that I'm teaching tonight.

Earlier today, I lamented that fact because I'm tired and just a little worn out.

I don't feel great.

I wish I didn't have an evening commitment tonight.

Now, as I reflect on it, I'm like, what a privilege it is that I get to teach God's

dear people, His treasured ones.

I get to teach His saints tonight about the covenant of grace and about His plan to save us

from before the world began and how that has unfolded beginning in Genesis 3 .15 in the Scripture.

What a joy that is.

That's effectively my own testimony to this, that

this is what we are called to, and this is what's meaningful in this life, to help God's

treasured ones come to faith in Christ and to help His treasured ones grow in faith in Christ and be

established in it as they learn the faith once for all delivered to the saints and as God leads them in

His paths and guides them in His truth.

He's going to do that in the church.

Jon Moffitt.

When you think about the diet that's been given to us,

we're handed physical means to remind us of our spiritual feeding every

single week.

The diet that should be handed to the believer should always be Christ and Him

crucified, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the union with Christ.

The diet should constantly be being reminded that we're waging war against our flesh, so that's the

first war that we battle.

The second war that we're battling is advancing the light of Christ into the kingdom of darkness, and so

that's the second thing that we're battling.

We're going to need a constant being cleansed, and we're going to need constant comfort, and we're going to need constant strengthening

because that should be our diet.

If you're in a liberal church, it's the woke agenda of a different kind of cultural

transformation, and if you're in the skews of the leftover revivalism, it's what

we're not doing.

We're not drinking, we're not doing this, and we're not doing that.

That becomes your diet, so your motivations are driven by that.

We're going to remove this over here to get rid of this problem because that's the diet I'm receiving, and this is

why Theocast exists because we're clarifying the gospel and reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom.

If you do not have gospel, which is a clear diet of Christ for you in all of Scripture over and over

again, your motivations will be influenced by the physical realm because Justin,

you and I are pulled by it every day by what we eat, drink, see, wear, what we buy.

It's just constantly pressing us, and Jesus is saying, abandon this world, which is so hard

to hear.

He goes, don't worry about these things.

They will come, they will go.

What you need to worry about is my kingdom because that liberates people for eternity.

It sets them free, not only here, and we can enjoy a life of peace and joy and

harmony with Christ, but we're going to enjoy it forever.

This is why he commends them for their faith in the gospel, Colossians 1, and the hope of heaven.

Justin, this will be my last thought, and I'll throw it over to you.

How many times does Paul talk about the hope of heaven?

Think about Colossians 3 later on.

He says, where are we put to set our minds?

On Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father.

Why?

Because he's the king who's reigning now, and he's going to bring the actual kingdom on

earth, but it's not yet.

Where are we putting our minds?

Where are we putting our hearts?

We're putting them not on this world, but on Christ and the kingdom to come.

Justin Perdue.

100 percent.

Jesus and the apostles wrote and spoke the way that you just described, with an emphasis on a

kingdom that is to come, a kingdom that is being inaugurated with Christ's first coming, and a kingdom that will come

finally in its consummated form when he returns again.

I'm just thinking about the first century context into which the apostles wrote.

It kind of hit different.

We're in a weird, unique context now, especially Christians in

America or certain other nations in the West where Christianity has

become very influential.

It has become the relatively common religion of the land at one point or another in England or

in the United States.

That has a lot of fallout.

There is some common grace benefit to that, but then there is a lot of real problems

produced.

I think we struggle to understand Christ and the apostles sometimes because we just have not lived in a context

where we are obviously the counterculture.

It's obvious to me.

Just take Paul.

He's a Roman citizen.

He lives in the Roman Empire, which I'm not trying to offend any Americans listening to this,

but the Roman Empire is the greatest empire in the history of the world.

America is a new kid on the block, relatively speaking.

That's another conversation for another day.

Paul is a citizen of the Roman Empire, and there's a lot going on there in a geopolitical sense.

How much ink does he spill about trying to transform the culture or transform the empire?

The answer is none.

What does he spill ink on?

Christ and the transformation of the heart.

Union with Christ, the new birth, life in the church, and then all of his language about how we're to live

with one another is all within the context of the church.

He even says, who am I to judge those who are outside?

He's writing to those who are inside the church.

This is 1 Corinthians 5, for example, when there's gross immorality going on.

The assumption is there's gross immorality all over the place in the world, but who am I to speak to that?

I am to speak to what's going on in the church for people who have claimed Christ and are claiming the name of brother

or sister, and we're now going to live together in these ways.

Then there's a way we go about doing this.

That's the emphasis of Christ and the apostles.

It is always forward -looking to the new heavens and the new earth, to the return of Christ

again.

May God give us those eyes.

May we remember that we're hoping for things unseen, and that our hope is certain, and that we're going to

inherit a kingdom that can't be shaken, but that kingdom is not life on earth now.

This is why grace is required and why we live by faith and not sight.

This is one of the reasons why we gather every Lord's Day to be reminded about what the world is we're doing.

We're bombarded by all these concerns about life on earth, Monday to Saturday anyway.

I need a day where I'm going to be recalibrated and reoriented as to what really matters and where we're headed.

Right now I'm a sojourner, but what a great Savior we have.

He's done it all for us, and we have each other now.

We have His Spirit now,.

And one day all really will be well.

We move from the front lines back to be restored, cleansed, and healed.

Justin Perdue.

Exactly.

Then you talk about, why do I get up?

What's my motivation?

Where's my hope?

Where's my peace?

It comes from all that stuff.

That's right.

When people get so discouraged because they see whatever direction the United States might be going or whatever country they're a

part of, and we actually have a lot of listeners that are outside the United States, this applies to a lot of people around the world.

Just think about Europe and where they were.

He was like, well, Europe failed.

That's where they're at today, and America's not going to make that same mistake.

I'm like, listen, the kingdom of God does not fail.

Nations will rise and nations will fall.

The kingdom of Christ is flourishing in.

Asia and Sub -Saharan Africa and all kinds of places to the praise of God's glorious grace.

Yeah, and it's not because of some political party or political position.

We could get into all that.

You're abandoning the joys of the freedom of preaching the gospel.

The fact that you guys can do this podcast is because of all of that.

We should pray that we can live peaceful and godly lives, quiet and dignified in every way.

That's right.

Well, I got criticized for that recently because I was criticizing Theonomy and they were saying basically that

the whole reason you can do this podcast is because of Theonomy, and I'm like, whatever.

Anyways, great way to sign off.

Listen, I want to encourage people.

This is my last 30 seconds of encouragement to you.

You have been enlisted by the king.

The king came and called your name.

Oh God, I'm going to cry.

He called your name.

He says, you're mine.

I've paid for your sins.

You're going to inherit my kingdom, and there is nothing that will ever separate you from

me.

You're mine forever, and this is what I need you to do.

I'm going to leave you here because there are brothers and sisters out there who are enslaved to the enemy, and I need

you to go and lovingly be patient with them and share them with Christ.

You're probably going to need to die for that, but you will live forever.

Every day when you wake up, take me and my inheritance and the connection you have with me to every

person you meet and show them that this kingdom is death and my

kingdom is light.

That is what you wake up every day and

do.

Justin and I clearly have a couple more thoughts, a lot more pointed thoughts about some stuff.

We do a second podcast every week called Simple Reformanda.

It means always reforming.

That ministry is a ministry that Justin and I started to help support what we do here at Theocast.

If you'd like to be a supporter of what it is that we do, we have an additional podcast and a whole app.

On that app, we have a fun community where Justin and I are interacting on there, posting quotes and ideas and interacting

by answering your questions.

If you'd like to listen to this podcast and if you'd like to be a part of the Simple Reformanda app, you can go to theocast .org

and participate with us over there by giving us a monthly donation.

If you'd like to learn more about our ministry in general, our books, our additional podcast, just go to theocast .org.

Thank you so much for supporting us.

Last year was so overwhelming.

We had doubled in so many different ways.

We're excited about 2023, about the Church Network, Grace Reform Network.

If you've not looked into that, it's a church network Justin and I are part of.

We're helping more churches be planted and encouraged.

Continue to pray for that as well.

We'll see you guys next week, either in the presence of our King or on the podcast, preferably

with the King.

While we wait, with us over.

See you next week.