Crusade for Glory | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and 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. A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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

To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org 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 Theocast 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. And Justin, we only have a couple more weeks of recording and then the year will be over.

So true. Yeah, we're excited. We're getting, so 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. Oh, three years, three years. So we have, I can't announce it yet, but we have a, where I think we have a lined up a pretty cool podcast interview in California.

So stay tuned for that. And then 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.

And then we're going to obviously get Justin and his wife on there often to participate.

So anyways, I just committed you to something that you haven't even agreed to. We'll discuss it.

It's 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.

So anyways, that's, um, uh, that's all the niceties and stuff, Justin, and 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.

So 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.

And so 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. So 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.

And 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.

And 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, right?

And we all know this. And many people, not just Christians, but I mean, 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?

And it's interesting, the answers that they give. And 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.

And 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. Which, brief insertion, 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, well, 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's 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. If the church, 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. That's right. And that 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, you know, it's on the, you know, just to joke around, right?

I mean, it's like we're on the final lap and the checkered flag is about to wave America on into hell. You know, I mean, that's basically where we are in the minds of many.

And 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.

And 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.

So today's conversation is effectively us maybe picking apart some of these observations for a moment, but then we want to talk about what really matters and what's mattered for 2000 years.

And 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? That's right. Yeah.

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. Do you mean people criticize us? Yeah. Something like that.

I'll give a weird illustration. I grew up in Los Angeles, and so you had Laker people who were big

Laker fans and you had Laker haters like me. But 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. There can be a, no,

I actually don't fit in either one of those. What's interesting about the modern church is that this kind of happened through COVID, I think.

No, let me restate that. It didn't happen. It was exacerbated through COVID. COVID was an occasion for this to be made manifest.

Spotlighted. Right. Where it's like you either are this conservative or you're woke and there's nothing in between.

It's like you're a liberal or you're a conservative who's going to fight the government. You cannot have an altering position because those are only the two positions.

This is where I would say, actually, 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.

I'm like, actually, both of those are not biblical. I'm not trying to take a balance between the two. It's kind of like when people do this with Calvinism and Arminianism, they're like, oh,

I'm going to take the balance of the two. It's like you actually can't. You can't do that. That's a third position. That's also wrong.

Well, actually, Calvinism is not wrong. I would say that's right. But when it comes down to the problem in America, and I'm going to name names, so whatever.

We'll just deal with it. But I've been following ministries for many, 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 and I was helped by him and following his ministry. I remember the first time

I watched the debate with Doug Wilson and Dawkins, and I was introduced to the

Wilson's ministry. For the last 20 years, I've just kind of been watching people and I've been fascinated by them because they're conservative evangelicals who promote

Calvinism and confessionalism. It's been interesting to kind of watch their trajectory and their ministry.

Then from them, you can kind of see there's some new ministries that are popping up that are starting to gain traction and YouTube really is great because we're helping a lot of people on YouTube, but YouTube also destroys a lot of people's faith.

And so there's the negative and the positive of that, but go ahead. 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, is that from the perspective of many people, the church is to be on a crusade to change the common kingdom of this world.

Right. Well, that's where I was going. It's been interesting to watch men that their message has actually changed over time, which is interesting to me to watch.

As the culture has shifted further, that's not surprising to me. Right. That's my point. It's like all of a sudden, what they used to emphasize and what was important theologically is now not, and 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, because really what we're doing is we've done a podcast on this before, and we'll put in the links, but 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. And that was what the cross was. Christ gave everything to gain us eternal life with the

Father. Yeah, for the joy set before Him. And so death produced life. Theology of glory is earthbound, and it's related to one's effort and work and involvement and expansion here.

And so there's a contrast between the two. And 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. And His kingdom, which we're going to get to this,

His kingdom is unseen. It's not of this world. And so it's not going to look like a powerful earthly kingdom.

And that's all associated with a theology of the cross versus a theology of glory, which says the opposite, that no, actually it will look powerful in the eyes of the world.

And somehow the folly of the cross is going to become, 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. 1

Corinthians 1, I don't know what you do with it. 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. Yeah, all of a sudden they're going to stop suppressing the truth. Correct. Yeah, and that what God has given us over to—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. That's right. So, I think it's interesting that you see the rise of conservative political movements, which

Justin and I are thankful for, because we obviously love the idea of marriage and children and all that kind of stuff.

So, we're not woke, and we're not liberals. 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. But then you have the rise of things like theonomy, which has been around for a while, but it's definitely growing.

You've got some 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 kind of where this conversation was birthed out of, when

Justin and I were kind of just assessing and looking at who's saying what and why they're saying it. We've kind of created this—you're either 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, like this woke liberalism. And so, 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.

And 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. So there's that.

Justin Perdue Yeah. So 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.

Justin Perdue And it has nothing to do with politics. Justin Perdue No, and I think the problem was created by this crusade for glory, meaning that they're trying to bring

Christ's kingdom to be ruling and reigning now. I mean, this is the mistake that they made in the early church, right?

Hosanna the King is here, and Jesus is like, well, you've missed it. I'm on my way to the cross. Well, 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.

And that was evident in how they responded to Christ. And 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 and sexuality and everything else that is just obviously

God's design for us. And 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. So 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.

And 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. Well, the thing that we don't understand is that we're a part of an invisible war. That's the thing.

Like 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. And even Jesus is talking about it.

Like there's this, there is definitely something happening. But I'll just say, you know,

Justin, sometimes when I hear people talk, it's like the sinners are the enemy, you know, it's because they're opposing

God. They are opposing God. I agree. And so are we.

This is what Paul says. And we once were like this. We were once opposing God. So when you see someone who's promoting abortion, who's promoting homosexuality, they're promoting debauchery and all of it, that's our mission, right?

That's our crusade. Our crusade is to take 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.

Right? We have to lovingly share the gospel and pray 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, I think, has always been a tendency to talk as though we are a part of salvation somehow, like that we contribute something.

That's always been an issue that there'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 and we then as the church, the church has always done this, 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.

That's. I mean, church history bears it out. World history bears it out. And so what, what do we need to concern ourselves with?

It's what the apostles write about in the new Testament. Clarity on Christ in the gospel, meaning 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 were 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.

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

You know, 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.

And so 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. But 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. And I think we'd be more valuable in the common kingdom, John. We'd go about loving our neighbor better and we'd be of more use to our fellow man in general in the

United States or whatever country you find yourself living in. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

Faith vs. 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. I want to make a statement that I'm going to make a pivot to the positive because we've got some time left here.

You know, Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy, I think this verse is just so powerful.

2 Timothy 2 .4, no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

Okay, well, that's a powerful statement. His aim is what? To please Christ, who is the one who enlisted us in this war, right?

So in other words, he gives us our priority. He gives us our aim. He gives us our focus. So 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 outpost in our church and congregation. We are to bury each other's burden, strengthen each other, encourage each other so that we can take the light of Christ into the culture around us.

But 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.

So my aunt, she runs seven pregnancy crisis centers in the greater areas of Chicago, and I financially support there.

I'm a part of what she does. I'm excited about what she does. She's really helping babies. And what's exactly 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.

You know, and what's sad is, 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. And I'm like, what are we doing, guys? Exactly. But the point of it is, I'm not saying there's a difference between me involving, helping, and even if there was one in our town serving at it.

Sure. Understanding like 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. It's not. If that becomes the mission, which is called transformation, right, we have now taken a crusade of glory.

And I know it's so crazy, Justin, because people are like, you know, it almost sounds like we're kicking, you know, we're kicking puppies.

Right. You know, it's like that's not what we're doing. Here's the issue, man. In part, the mission of cultural transformation.

It really does. I mean, it's very old. I mean, there's a lot of this in the medieval church. For sure, which many listeners will understand, that was the church of Rome.

And I'll just leave it there. But then even in a more Protestant context, a lot of this transformation emphasis at the individual and societal level, it hails from revivalism.

And that's a big deal because anybody who's advocating for this massive emphasis on transformation, and that being like 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 was all about your internal commitment and fervor, your conversion experience, your transformation 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.

And 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, and that is to the detriment of the church and to the confusion of the saints.

And so 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.

And we are in a war. We're a part of the kingdom of light by God's grace.

We live in a common kingdom. I mean, last time I read the Bible, John, Satan is still called the

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

And so 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.

And what is the light? That's the question. The light is not morality.

The light is not even simply the law. Or cultural transformation. 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 what?

Is who? It's Christ. I mean, he is the light. And I mean, even his own parables that he talks about, you know, like in the gospels where he'll talk about a lamp being set on a table, you know, and that everything that's in the room is thereby lit up and where you can see it.

I mean, he is the light. That came into the world so that we might understand the plan of God from all of eternity and everything.

And so the light is Christ. And so 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. I mean, there are two tools that every soldier has, a mirror and the light.

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

And that's the law. The law is the mirror and Christ is the light. And the light is the gospel. Right. Christ exposes us to the glory and then the law says, you're not that, you're not glory, but you can be through Christ.

So this is going to, the last few minutes that we have here, I want to kind of pivot us to what has motivated the church biblically in the past from scripture.

And then where we should find our motivation. You know, Justin, one of the things that you and I have been talking about and just kind of offline and I'll bring it online now.

You know, I love asking people this question, you know, just back up and say it this way, you know, human beings are built and designed to have a meaning and purpose.

When someone loses their purpose, they'll even find themselves committing suicide. Like when you finally get to the moment where you just have no meaning for your life, like you can't see past tomorrow.

So by nature, we always, you know, and the world often gives us our purpose, right?

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

Right. And that's kind of the crusade of glory is really the mission is the advancement of self and the awareness of how powerful one is.

And then when you think about what the purpose of the Christian life, it's so opposite of that, right?

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

And so when I ask somebody what's the purpose of the Christian life, they always say, well, to glorify God. Well, I agree. It's like Jesus says, you know, your kingdom in the

Lord's prayer, right? That the glory of God might be the very existence of our life, but I don't meet very many

Christians who wake up every morning excited about that. You know, they're just kind of like, you know, okay, I'm going to glorify God today, but there's no tangibleness to that.

And the last few minutes, I just kind of want us to talk about where Paul literally says we lay our life down, right?

We are here to sacrifice everything. Like even when Jesus says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things, what the world is pursuing, right?

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. And when he's riding through the Colossians, he commends them for their faith and get this, for the hope they have in heaven, right?

He doesn't point to earth realities. Well, go ahead.

I was just going to say, I mean, 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, because in that same sermon on the mount, he'd already said like, blessed are the people who are persecuted for my sake.

I mean, so 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, right?

And so we're all prone to this. We're all prone to think in earthbound ways. And I think the church in the

West and the church in America has been very earthbound for a long time. And I stand as one of those numbers.

I mean, I'm not saying that you and I have this all 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.

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

So using kingdom of God, king of light, 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 droids that we get from pastoring, but a lot of you will reach out and just kind of talk about this aha moment you have where the gospel becomes real to you and rest in Christ.

And, you know, someone was like, I'm 69 years old, whereas it's been my whole life and that right there, that's 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, right?

Justin Perdue Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, so I, even in my own life today, I get, this has not been a, this has not been one of those days.

Like I, I didn't feel great earlier. There's just a lot going on. Uh, one of those days where for me personally,

I really am not excited about having to do anything that's on my calendar today. And, uh,

I know we all have these days. I have them. And so, um, getting on and talking with you is always good.

And even when I don't feel like doing it, but then this evening I'm going to be teaching, um, theology night at our church.

And we're learning more about covenant theology together. And as I reflect on things, um,

I was just thinking a little bit ago, as you and I were talking about it, I know where my heart and mind have been today. Um, and I just want to be super clear.

I'm just going to say this cause I think I can, John, just to let people in on where we are with stuff. Um, I mean, yeah, so I'm here,

I am. I'm up early today. I came into the office early today, as I often do spent time reading, spent time praying.

So even the way that I felt today is not a result of a neglect of discipline. I just want to say that. Uh, and so there that was, and I'm still struggling in my heart and mind and conversation with you has helped.

But then I had a thought why, 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. Don't feel great. Like, man, I wish I didn't have an evening commitment tonight.

But then now, as I reflect on it, I'm like, man, what a privilege it is that, uh, I get to teach

God's dear people, like 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, and how that is unfolded beginning in Genesis 3 15 in the scripture.

And, uh, yeah, what a joy that is. And so that's effectively my own maybe testimony to this, that this is what we are called to.

And this is what's meaningful in this life is 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, and He's going to do that in the church. Yeah. Well, when you think about the diet that's been given to us, you know, um,

Paul tells Timothy to preach the word, you know, in season, out of season, and then we're handed physical means to remind us of our spiritual feeding every single week.

And 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. And the diet should constantly be being reminded that we are in a, 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. And so we're going to need a constant, you know, being cleansed and we're going to be constant comfort and we're going to need constant strengthening because that should be our diet.

But Justin, we walk into churches and that's not, if you're in a liberal church, you know, it's the woke agenda of like, you know, cultural transfer, you know, a different kind of cultural transformation.

And if you're in revival, you know, the, the, the SKUs of the leftover revivalism, it's what we're not doing, right?

We're not drinking, we're not doing this and we're not doing that. Moralism and God and country stuff. Right. And that becomes your diet.

So your motivations are driven by that, right? We're, we're going to remove this over here to get rid of this problem because that's the diet

I'm receiving. Or, and, and, and this is why Theocast exists because we're reclaiming that we're clarifying the gospel and reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom, right?

If you do not have gospel, which is a clear diet of Christ for you and 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, right?

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 which these things, they will come, they will go.

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

Like it sets them free, not only here, right? And we can enjoy a life of, 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. I mean,

Justin, I'm just going to, 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, right? He says that we are to, 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.

So 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%. 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 think this landed differently on Christians. I'm just thinking about the first century context into which the apostles wrote, it kind of hit different.

I mean, 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, has become the relatively common religion of the land at one point or another in England or in the

United States, and that has a lot of fallout. There is some common grace benefit to that, but then there is a lot of real problems produced, and 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, and 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.

Another conversation for another day, right? Paul is a citizen of the Roman Empire, and there's a lot going on there in a geopolitical sense, right?

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. The 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? That's right. But 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.

But that's the emphasis of Christ and the apostles, and 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 in the world it is we're doing, because 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. Justin Perdue That's right. We move from the front lines back to be restored, cleansed, and healed.

Jon Moffitt 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.

Justin Perdue 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. Europe failed.

That's where they're at today, and America is 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.

Jon Moffitt 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.

Justin Perdue Yeah, and it's not because of some political party or political position. That's why that kingdom is...

Right, and we could get into all that. Well, you're abandoning the joys of the freedom of preaching the gospel.

The fact that you guys can do this podcast is because of... Listen, all of that kind of stuff. Jon Moffitt And we should pray that we can live peaceful and godly lives, quiet and dignified in every way.

Justin Perdue That's right. Well, I got criticized for that recently because I was criticizing Theotomy. And they were saying basically that the whole reason you can do this podcast is because of Theotomy.

And I'm like, whatever. Anyways... Jon Moffitt Great way to sign off. Justin Perdue 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, 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. Like you're mine forever.

And this is what I need to do. I'm going to leave you here because there's 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. And you're probably going to need to die for that.

But you will live forever. So every day when you wake up, take me and my inheritance and the connection you have 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 Perdue That's it.

That's all right. Take us out. Well, Justin and I clearly have a couple more thoughts, a lot more pointed thoughts about some stuff.

And we do a second podcast every week called Semper Firmanda. It means always reforming. And that ministry is a ministry that Justin and I started to help support what we do here at Theocast.

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

And 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.

And so if you'd like to listen to this podcast and if you'd like to be a part of the Semper Firmanda 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 podcasts, go to theocast .org.

Thank you so much for supporting us. Last year was so overwhelming. We had doubled in so many different ways.

And we're excited about 2023, about the Church Network, Grace Reform Network, if you've not looked into that.

That's a church network Justin and I are part of. We're helping more churches be planted and encouraged.

And so 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. But while we wait, with us over.