What the World Needs Now | Theocast

Theocast

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to solve the world's problem. That is, we're going to tell you what the greatest need everyone has in the world today.

00:12

I know, big topic, but we think it's going to be helpful. And in the members podcast, we have a discussion around who are the most difficult people to live with.

00:20

We hope you enjoy the conversation. Stay tuned. Hey guys, this is a quick reminder if you'd like to join Theocast in helping other people find rest in Christ.

00:28

A simple way of doing that is simply by leaving us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

00:34

You can also leave reviews on all of our books. They're available at amazon .com. And if you haven't started following us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook yet, that's a great way to take our content and then share it with your friends and family.

00:47

To learn more about how to support Theocast, simply visit theocast .org slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging worried pilgrims to rest in Christ.

01:08

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Your host today around the microphone is

01:15

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina, that is, for those of you that are interested.

01:21

And myself, John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. It is good to be with you today.

01:28

Our friend Jimmy is not able to join with us, but it's good to be with Justin. My last podcast

01:33

I recorded was without Justin, and this time it's without Jimmy. One of these days, well actually next week, we'll all be together here in Nashville, Tennessee to record a special new class coming out.

01:47

We'll leave that there, just that mystery, but you're going to want to hear it. So JP, it's good to be with you, buddy.

01:53

It's good to be with you too, man. I'm getting back in the saddle here, knocking the rust off. We took some time off, all of us did, in the month of July, and I was not with you and Jimmy last week.

02:04

I was away with family. I'm excited to have the band back together in Music City next week.

02:10

It's exciting stuff. Yeah, that's going to be good. I hope the weather is like it is right now, because it's like a high 81 and like 63 and 4 at night.

02:18

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I hope the weather is good too. It's good to be back around the mic, man, and I'm excited to have a good conversation with you today.

02:28

What's your pro con, brother? Tell me what you like and what you don't like. I'm seriously curious. I have no idea what you're going to say.

02:34

I know. So this is going to apply to maybe, I don't know, three or four people out there that this may resonate with.

02:43

I don't assume this is going to be a very broad, wide ranging, wide reaching pro con, but I feel strongly about it, and so here we go at the risk of sounding absolutely ridiculous.

02:55

I am pro strawberries. So I love strawberries. It's one of my favorite fruits in the whole world, and I don't really feel the need to explain that.

03:03

I think people that have eaten strawberries and like them understand what I'm saying. My con is anything artificially strawberry flavored.

03:13

I do not like it. It is terrible. I mean, so John, maybe you're one of the three or four people that resonates with what

03:19

I'm saying. I think that strawberry flavored pretty much anything is not good. The only exception

03:24

I might make is ice cream, but like strawberry flavored fruit candy is terrible.

03:30

Strawberry flavored like, you know, like freezer pop popsicles, terrible. The strawberry starbursts are the worst.

03:37

You know, I could just go on and on and on. And so I was just like, how is it? Yeah, those like make the side of my teeth hurt, the strawberry ones.

03:43

Yeah. They're like, it's like, how is it that one of my favorite fruits in the world, the artificial flavor is just absolutely terrible.

03:51

So there it is. I mean, I don't know. I'm not really coming out of the gates hot with my pro con, but it popped into my mind this morning and I thought, you know,

03:58

I feel very strongly about this. This is something I'm passionate about and I'm going to share it with the people. I will say that bananas can do that too.

04:07

Artificially flavored banana stuff. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. I don't disagree with you. Yeah. Yeah.

04:13

But I will coconut though. Like my wife's been buying these coconut popsicles and they are. And you're just crushing them.

04:19

Oh yeah. In the summer we go on the porch. All the kids will grab them at the end of the day and go sit on the porch and eat popsicles and drip all over ourselves.

04:26

It's, you know, sticky finger, sticky finger summer. So John, are you, John, are you saying that your greatest need at the end of the day is a coconut popsicle?

04:33

It is. It is. The greatest need at the end of the day is having a popsicle. Man. Well, that leads us into a, that wasn't as cheesy as a transition as we've had in the past.

04:44

We're going to have to ramp up the cheesiness here, man. So today's podcast is one that I think will resonate with many or it definitely resonates with Justin and I because we're both sinners and we struggle as everyone that's listening to this podcast.

05:02

It's with the current climate in the, in the world. And I would say, I don't even think, you know, now that we're talking,

05:09

Justin, I would say it kind of has been this way since like Adam and Eve, relationships have always taken a beat down when it comes to two sinners living with each other or multiple sinners in a family living with each other.

05:29

And then when you have to live and you're in the, as you said earlier, Justin, is the rhythms of life get thrown off and what you normally do.

05:39

And we have coping, you know, we have all, we all have coping mechanisms. There we go. Where if it's a gym or sports or, you know, gatherings or, or going to a movie, we do these things to kind of break up the rhythm of life and deal with the frailty of life.

05:54

And then all of that is ripped away and people are now left with their own sin and their own struggle.

06:01

And what ends up happening? We become hyper selfish and we go so introspective and we look to what makes us feel good and what satisfies us.

06:11

And then of course, what do you do? How do you, how do you get rid of this anger? Well, you get rid of it on other people.

06:17

And social media is one where I've seen people put things on social media that I've never,

06:23

I thought they would never say that or tweet that or video that. And I don't know if that's been your experience.

06:29

You're just like, wow, that, that surprised me that they put that out there. Sure, man.

06:35

I mean, you see a lot of stuff happening right now. I mean, broadly, societally, there's a lot of tension and stress and strain on,

06:42

I think, most everybody. And it's not that the tension and stress and strain creates something in people that wasn't there to begin with.

06:53

What these stresses and strains and tensions are, they are opportunities and occasions for our sinful nature and the corruption of our flesh to just start doing terrible things.

07:06

And in particular, to start doing terrible things to other people. And that's most often going to be the people that we're closest to.

07:14

So that's, it's going to be, you know, our spouses, our kids, people, you know, this is a

07:20

Christian podcast. We're talking to people, I presume, who, you know, are probably members of churches and things.

07:26

So, I mean, people that you're in church with, that you see regularly, and you're trying to, like, honestly live with one another.

07:33

And you start to wound and bludgeon each other, you know, in times like now.

07:39

We do it all the time anyway, but then when we're all kind of struggling and hurting and reeling and rhythms are disrupted and the like, it just, it's like throwing gasoline on the fire, you know?

07:49

That's right. And it's interesting, John, we were talking before we hit record about just all the different kinds of things you hear from all kinds of sources in the church and outside the church in terms of what we really need.

08:03

Like, what is the prescription that will cure what ails us? What will fix this issue?

08:10

And you get a thousand different answers. And yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of curious, man.

08:17

I think I know what you're going to say, but how would you respond to that in terms of what is it that we need and what is it that will actually bring some relief, some hope, some light into these, like, relational dynamics and into some of these struggles that we're describing?

08:36

Well, you walk into the, well, you know, either you log into the church or for those who've been able to reopen, you walk back in to the outdoor, indoor church.

08:45

And you hear a lot of, you know, the diagnosis is correct. A lot of pastors and ministries are diagnosing ministries to be people are suffering, they're hurting, they're angry, they're upset.

08:57

Depression levels are at an all -time high. Marital issues are at an all -time high.

09:03

You know, you and I were both talking about how we've been trying to care and love for people who, you know, are struggling.

09:09

I heard David Zoll say on his podcast this week that he knows of five couples that are very close to them.

09:14

All of them are going through a divorce. I mean, it's just, it's the, it's, it's very sad.

09:19

I'm walking through a couple of families in my church with just, you know, heartaches and disappointments and frustrations.

09:26

And, and how do you, how do you care for these people? And, you know, what, what discourages me is that the solutions being offered, they're not even

09:37

Band -Aids. You know, it's like, it's like, here, here's some Tylenol that's going to get you through the next maybe two hours, but then, but when it's over, it's just going to be worse because it's festered and you really didn't deal with the problem.

09:51

Well, I mean, it's some, I would even argue, brother, some of that's even worse than that. I mean, some of it is worse than treating the symptoms.

09:58

I mean, it's some of the stuff that's suggested, it actually just on the face of it makes it worse.

10:05

Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, so you're right. So what we're offered is either self -help, you know, here's how to help yourself and there are solutions on.

10:17

And, you know, these aren't bad, you know, they're not wrong and they could relieve, you know, exercise, think about ways to get out of the house and walk.

10:25

Or, you know, here's a good reading plan. Here's a good book to read. And all of those things, if you're not a

10:32

Christian, I mean, what, what other options do you have? You know, it's like, if you're not going to believe in Christ, your options are to try and make it work as best you can, but what we're here to do as Theocast always does is kind of peel back the layers and really look at the issue beneath the issue.

10:50

You know, most relational issues, when it comes down to when two sinners find themselves in conflict, whether it's in a work, marital, or familiar relationship, at the core of it, all problems, all conflicts are the result of sin, whether someone, you know, was inconsiderate or impatient or didn't respond correctly or is bitter.

11:17

They've held on to being mistreated. And so all of that, that just festers and builds up.

11:24

And then when you tell someone, you know, your spiritual disciplines, your, your, the way in which you approach your prayer life, your

11:30

Bible reading, all of those, it's, what it's focusing on is if I make myself better, I can make the situation better.

11:37

So what do we end up doing? We become self -focused and when circumstances don't work out, like your kids come in and they bug you while you're in the midst of you and your

11:46

Jesus time, or, or your wife doesn't want to get on board with your spiritual path, or your husband doesn't want to get on board with your spiritual journey.

11:55

And you're, you're trying to drag them along. And this is the, this is, this is what people are feeling.

12:00

The frustration of, I want this relationship to go better.

12:06

I want this pressure to go away. I want there to be resolve and yet there isn't.

12:14

And we're going to come in and I think point to something that is not rocket science.

12:20

It is, uh, it is not, um, as, as one of the guys in my church say, it's not, it's not rocket surgery and, uh, it is actually going to be so basic.

12:32

It's, it's, it's going to be hard to believe that the one thing every relationship in the world needs is this one thing and we aren't going to sell books on it.

12:45

It won't be a bestseller, Justin. I'm going to just, you know, tell you, you can't buy that new summer home. It's not going to work out.

12:51

It's disappointing. It's disappointing. JP, what, what does scripture tell us is the number one thing we need?

12:59

One in our relationship with God and number two in our relationship with other people. What would be your answer to that?

13:06

Uh, the answer to that is, I mean, just not to bury the lead is forgiveness. And we are going to talk about forgiveness and our need for even another word, absolution to have our guilt removed, right?

13:20

So like forgiveness and absolution comes from God to us in that kind of vertical sense, but then that has everything that works itself out horizontally in our relationships with other people.

13:32

And so, yeah, I think one observation to even just kick off this conversation about forgiveness,

13:38

I think it's obvious to anybody who's, who's observant as we look around broadly in the church and outside of the church.

13:47

That there is a demand for atonement.

13:53

There is a demand for forget, like for reconciliation, even there is a demand for all kinds of things in various kinds of relationships all over the place.

14:06

And yet we live in a culture where forgiveness and absolution are nowhere to be found.

14:14

And when you constantly demand atonement, so this is a very law kind of economy.

14:20

Our listeners are familiar with us talking about law and gospel and grace and things like this.

14:26

In a law economy, there is this constant loop of here's the law.

14:32

You transgress it. Now there's judgment and you need to make this right.

14:37

You need to atone for it. You need to make reparation for it, et cetera. And in that sort of an economy where there is no forgiveness and there is no absolution, it is not only just a miserable place to be, there is no way to move forward in relationship.

14:57

Can't be done. And so the hope, I think what we aim to do today is talk some,

15:03

I mean, a little bit about the vertical piece of the forgiveness that we need from God, but then really spend our time talking about forgiveness and absolution as we extend it to other people and how vital that is for every relationship that we have and how if it's missing, it makes relating to one another miserable and frankly impossible in a fallen world.

15:26

That's right. So when we think about our relationship to God, the one requirement God puts upon us when he says, if you want to be forgiven, and then you think about this requirement, which is, this is what makes the gospel preposterous.

15:43

It's what makes it a stumbling block to the self -righteous because God says to be forgiven, all you must do is ask.

15:51

That's the requirement. All you must do is ask to be forgiven and the Father will take all of your sins and remove them as far as the

15:59

East is from the West. As Isaiah says, he throws it behind his back and he sees them no more. It's in the depths of the sea and that's the requirement.

16:11

So what ends up happening is in a relationship, one will not offer forgiveness if one feels as if they have the upper hand.

16:22

So I'm not going to offer it even if someone asks for it. You're right. Why would I ever forgive you because of what you have done for me?

16:30

You don't deserve forgiveness. You deserve to feel my wrath and my anger. You deserve to sit and think about all that you have done.

16:39

You need to feel just how much you violated me, how much you have hurt me.

16:45

You cannot repay. If you give me enough money, if you give me enough fame or wealth or whatever you want to give me, you cannot restore the time, emotion, and how you violated me.

16:58

And so you do not deserve forgiveness. Therefore, I will not give it to you. This is how we treat people.

17:05

And then you think about the God of the universe. I mean, the way in which we're doing some studying on covenant theology, and we're going to be putting this out soon.

17:13

And one of the thoughts that helped me think about my relationship with God is that God is the king of the earth.

17:20

I mean, he's the creator. He's the founder. He's the sustainer. So he's king and he decides how you relate to him in this king relationship.

17:30

And the king relationship is you love and serve and worship me. And no one has ever loved and worshiped and served

17:39

God ever. They've only loved and served and worshiped him. They maybe tipped their hat to him, but that's not what he said.

17:46

He said you were to love, worship, and obey me. And if we think about the constant way our life violates

17:55

God, God has every right. No, you're exactly right.

18:01

No, that our sins against an infinite, eternal, and holy God are so much greater in scope and scale than our sins against one another could ever be.

18:13

And yeah, if God, like, because my sin against you, John, is not an assault on your holiness, because you don't have any holiness.

18:21

You know, my sin against you, John, is not you didn't create me. You don't have any claim on me the way that God does in that he made me and he made the world and it's all his.

18:36

And he is completely good and upright and true, and he is the father of lights.

18:42

There's no shadow of turning within him at all, and he is the one against whom we have sinned.

18:49

And I'm thinking, I'm looking at Psalm 32 and five verses from Psalm 32,

18:54

I think beautifully illustrate just our posture before God and this whole forgiveness piece.

19:00

David writes these words. It's one of my favorite Psalms. Psalm 32, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man against whom the

19:11

Lord counts no iniquity, not that there isn't any, but that God doesn't count it against him, and in whose spirit there is no deceit, and he's going to explain what he means there.

19:20

No deceit, meaning like you confess your sin and you acknowledge your sin. Verse three of Psalm 32, for when

19:27

I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me and my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

19:36

I wasn't confessing my sin. Then he says, I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity.

19:42

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

19:49

Beautiful. Just blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven, whose sins are covered, and against whom the

19:55

Lord does not count any iniquity, this is our great need before God, and this has everything to do with our relationship with other people.

20:04

I'm mindful of a verse, last thing I'll say about this in terms of, you said it before, what is the requirement, to use your word, of God, like if you're going to be forgiven by God, what's the requirement?

20:14

It's that you ask for it. I agree, and I might even phrase it a different way. It's to see and feel your need of forgiveness, which then would prompt you to ask for forgiveness from God.

20:27

In a verse from the hymn, Come ye sinners poor and needy, it goes this way.

20:34

Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream.

20:40

Fitness before God. All the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him.

20:46

It's like, man, all the fitness, the only thing I need to do in order to be fit before God and to come to him is to feel my need of Christ and to know that Christ is the only one in whom

20:59

I can find forgiveness and absolution. That's our posture before God. We are really guilty.

21:05

We have blown it. As the day is long, we have blown it. God is gracious and offers forgiveness and absolution through his son.

21:14

That's right. The woman washing the feet of Jesus, and she's being criticized by all of the

21:21

Pharisees who Jesus is having dinner with. What does he say at the end of his story and at the end of the illustration?

21:28

He says, those who have been forgiven much love much.

21:33

So he looks at the woman and says, she gets it.

21:40

She understands that her posture before me is that she has nothing to offer, and she's washing the feet of Jesus.

21:48

She's using, I mean, it's all of this. She's like, I don't care. I don't care what anyone else thinks.

21:54

This man is offering me that which no one else can, and that's to forgive.

22:00

Forgive what I am in his eyes. To forgive what I am in the eyes of God. One other story

22:05

I think is fascinating is Luke 5, when they bring the paralytic man before Jesus through the roof.

22:16

Of course, the man is now before him, and everyone's watching him. It says that in the beginning,

22:23

Luke records that Jesus has the power to heal. So it's interesting.

22:30

Then what does Jesus say to the man? Your sins are forgiven, which the whole room abrupts.

22:36

How dare you? First of all, who gives you the authority to do that, which is the illustration is that Jesus says, if I have the power to heal, it means

22:45

I also have the power to forgive sins. He says, would it be easier for me to say, take up thy bed and walk than it is to say, forgive?

22:55

The point of it was what this man needed was not healing. What this man needed was forgiveness, which every single

23:05

Pharisee sitting in that room, they too needed forgiveness. They needed it, but they couldn't see that Jesus is the one who could offer it.

23:13

So when we think about our standing before God, most relationships, it's easy to hold something over them when you feel as if they are superior to you.

23:25

They are beneath you because of what they have either done to someone else or what they have done to you.

23:35

What the gospel does and what the law does is it absolutely flattens everyone.

23:42

It comes down and it takes everybody's spiritual hierarchy and the way the law just crushes it flat.

23:48

Nobody has the high ground. That's right. None. When you're standing next to another sinner and you're like, look, my head is above you, and then you walk over to the

23:58

Lord and you realize that his holiness and righteousness and requirements and the way in which you have violated him, it's a speck of dust compared to the mountain that you have violated.

24:11

Well, this is where we must begin. Most people struggle with bitterness and anger and an unwillingness to forgive because they don't understand the forgiveness that was needed between the only relationship that matters in the universe, which is between you and a holy

24:29

God. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

24:37

Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. We, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

24:55

You can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. If you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

25:03

You can do that by joining our Total Access membership, that's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

25:15

You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

25:22

Yeah, so the question could be asked, what is it that fuels, drives, and motivates our forgiveness of one another?

25:32

I'm called to forgive my brothers and sisters. That's fine that I'm commanded to do it, but what is it that will drive me and fuel me and motivate me in that?

25:43

Forgiving people who have really sinned against me and forgiving people who have wounded me and hurt me. It's been painful.

25:48

It's been hard, and I'm going to forgive them. Okay, well, what's going to help me? What's going to drive me to do that? It is what we've just been talking about.

25:55

It is the forgiveness of God in Christ Jesus. My goodness, how gracious, how merciful, how patient has

26:04

Christ been with me? That helps me be merciful and gracious and patient, and it helps me forgive my brother or sister or my friend or my coworker or whoever it is, my spouse, when she, when he sins against me.

26:22

That's just a great reminder to us in the church that in dealing with one another and in bearing with one another, it is good to remember how

26:30

God in Christ has forgiven us and how merciful and patient Jesus has been with us. Then also to remember other things that we talk about on the regular about how we all have struggles and battles that we didn't sign up for, and that's just as true for other people as it is for us.

26:45

But in thinking about forgiving others, we are so prone to withhold forgiveness.

26:50

You were talking about that a minute ago, John, how we have all these criteria that we impose upon other people, and we have this list of demands, not that we write out, but that are in our minds and hearts.

27:02

If you do these things, and if you jump through these hoops, and if you demonstrate adequate this, or if you do enough of that, then okay, yeah, maybe

27:10

I'll forgive you. That is not a godly posture.

27:15

That is not a humble posture. That is not what we are called to in Christ Jesus. You were talking about Luke five.

27:21

Luke 17 is helpful when it comes to some of these things that we're discussing. I'll read the first few verses of Luke chapter 17.

27:30

And he, Jesus, said to his disciples, Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come.

27:37

It would be better for him if the millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea, than he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

27:44

But then these words in verses three and four of Luke 17, pay attention to yourselves, if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

27:54

If he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him.

28:02

It's, I mean, astonishing words. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. Full stop.

28:08

And if he sins against you seven times, and seven, of course, we know it's the number of completion and perfection. Jesus doesn't literally mean seven times.

28:15

He means if he sins against you a bunch of times in the day and each time turns at saying,

28:20

I repent, you must forgive him, and I'm thinking to myself, this is a controversial, that's like the grenade is on the table.

28:28

Jesus pulls the pin, walks out of the room, and it's kaboom. Because we so often in thinking about forgiveness, we will talk about what?

28:38

Like, well, we need to evaluate the sincerity of somebody's repentance.

28:44

We need to evaluate, is there enough fruit of repentance here for us to really forgive the transgression?

28:50

Have they done enough? And I'm just like, man, Christ blows that up.

28:55

If your brother or sister looks to you and says, I'm repenting, forgive me. You must forgive each other, and we would do so well to remember this in our marriages, we would do so well to remember this in our parenting, we would do so well to remember this in the church as we relate to one another.

29:15

If your brother or sister sins against you and asks to be forgiven, you forgive him or her. It's the only way to move forward, man.

29:23

It's a really strong statement that I know that often it can be hard to digest when

29:31

Jesus says in Matthew 6, right under the prayer, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

29:43

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

29:48

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.

29:59

It should knock you back a moment to think, oh, God doesn't take this lightly. I mean, this is a weighty situation, and I think it's a weighty situation because of the comparison.

30:10

He's saying, how dare you not offer forgiveness after being forgiven so much?

30:17

No, you will never, no human in the history of the world will ever offer the level of forgiveness that a sinner has received from God.

30:27

It cannot happen because you cannot be violated in the way in which God has been violated.

30:33

And I know it's really hard for a sinful mind to wrap our heads around that because there have been people who have been hurt and violated in ways that are almost unspeakable.

30:46

I can't even mention them on the podcast because it would be offensive to the potentially of children or families that are listening to this.

30:57

But I understand that. And I have counseled people who say, but John, you don't understand the years and the years and the years and the years of suffering that I've gone through.

31:05

And I don't disagree. I don't disagree with them at all, that it's horrendous and it's horrible and it should never happen, and that it creates anger in me.

31:14

There are times that I have physically wanted to hurt the person who violated them, that I have wanted to show retribution and justice upon those people.

31:24

I feel all of that. But yet you have to understand God has felt that so much so,

31:31

He created a place called hell. God has felt that so much so about you that it said

31:38

He crushed His son. So instead of taking His anger out on you, He took it out on His son as your substitute.

31:48

And God says, listen, if I have forgiven you so much and the violation that you have caused me, you too can forgive.

31:58

And the thing is, sometimes we hear this and it comes to us in an angry voice.

32:04

And I don't think so. I think it's as a father who has this child on their knee and He's loving them and gently whispering into the ear and saying,

32:12

I love you and I have given you so much and I have set you free from the bondage that is called bitterness and unwillingness to forgive.

32:24

I've set you free from that. And because of that, in turn, you can actually be set free from the bondage you have of what this person has done to you.

32:35

You can be set free from it. To keep this little thread going, if you were to ask the average person in a church in our

32:47

American context, what is it that are the key distinguishing marks of a

32:54

Christian? I think, sadly, a couple of things

33:02

I'm going to mention in a moment are not anywhere near the top of the list and they might not be on the list at all.

33:08

I mean, typically, you're going to get answers about abstaining from certain kinds of sins.

33:14

Well, the distinguishing thing about a Christian is that he or she doesn't do A, B, or C, or X, Y, or Z.

33:21

And then, maybe in certain circles, you might get certain other marks of faithfulness in terms of things that people are doing.

33:29

But oftentimes, missing from that list is, I think, the number one thing. According to our

33:34

Savior, it's our love for one another. But then, I think you could also add in there, make a strong argument for a distinguishing mark of a

33:43

Christian, is that he or she is ready and eager to extend forgiveness to people who have wronged them, our love for each other and our eagerness and willingness to forgive.

33:57

I mean, like the language of Paul, we pray and we work for the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

34:03

We're eager to seek reconciliation. One of the things that we tell people all the time in our membership classes at our church is that, look, if you decide to come to CBC and if you become a member, one thing we can promise you is that you will be offended, probably in short order, you will be offended by somebody.

34:22

Somebody will wrong you. Somebody will say something. Somebody will do something that will offend you. And so, that's not a question.

34:29

The question is, what do we do with that? And how do we deal with those things?

34:34

You were talking about Matthew chapter six. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells another parable that definitely has a little bit of sauce on it, the parable of the unforgiving servant, where many will be familiar with that parable where there's a servant who has a large debt to his master, and he pleads with the master to forgive him the debt that he owes, and the master does.

35:00

The master forgives his debt. So, there's that kind of absolution. Like, your debt, your guilt is taken away, and you're forgiven.

35:07

But then that servant who has had this massive debt forgiven goes out into the streets and encounters someone who owes him, by comparison, a very small amount of money, and that person's debtor, the servant's debtor says, well, could you please forgive me my debt?

35:25

And the unforgiving servant does not, and it demands every penny. You'll pay it all, or you're going to be thrown in prison, and that's what ends up happening.

35:35

Well, the master hears about it and then chastises that unforgiving servant and says to him, you wicked servant,

35:43

I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me, and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

35:52

And then the master ends up throwing this unforgiving servant in jail, and Jesus says that so also will my heavenly

35:58

Father do to every one of you if you don't forgive your brother. So again, we will talk a lot in the church about faithfulness and obedience, and there are a lot of sermons preached with a real exacting, threatening tone, but oftentimes the things that are talked about most seriously are not love for one another, and they're not forgiveness, but yet Jesus talks in very strong terms about these things, and we need to take seriously this call to love and forgiveness, to mercy.

36:28

We should be merciful with one another, and not only is that just a critical thing with respect to our understanding of God's forgiveness toward us, it matters in every conceivable way in our relationships, and at a pragmatic level, if we want our relationships to be able to function honestly in a fallen world, there has to be mercy and forgiveness because we're all sinners, and we wrong each other.

36:54

We were talking a lot about marriage before we hit record, and I'm thinking about my own marriage.

37:00

The things that have been most helpful to me and my wife are the tones of grace and mercy, compassion, and forgiveness that God is working and building in our home, and without it,

37:14

I can't conceive of how this would work. Jon, you know? Yeah, I don't know with my wife's personality how much we'd clash if it wasn't for the forgiveness of God towards me and softening my heart.

37:30

I'm not sure what our marriage would look like. I completely echo what you're saying. All three of us, all three hosts, we've talked about the struggle of marriage.

37:41

Sometimes people think that a pastor's home is sterile, white, clean, and somehow exempt from this.

37:49

We don't have disagreements and arguments, and we don't disappoint our wives, and our wives don't disappoint us.

37:55

I live in constant disappointment, and my wife lives in constant disappointment, but what gets us through the day?

38:01

What gets us through the day is that we understand we're both sinners in need of God's grace, and we must extend grace.

38:06

I mean, this is Ephesians 4 .32. It says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted.

38:12

Why? Because, oh, and forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.

38:17

So as we look at the forgiveness we've received from God, it should cause us to be kind and tender and patient because God has been kind.

38:28

I mean, it literally says that the kindness of God is designed, is meant, this is Romans 3, to lead to repentance.

38:36

When we see how kind God has been, he says in turn, you need to do the same.

38:41

Now, I do want to say a couple of things because I know that there are many who will be listening to this who are struggling with forgiveness, and I need to clarify, in Scripture, the

38:55

Bible does not collapse trust and restoration with forgiveness, so don't confuse those.

39:03

So to forgive someone means that you are no longer going to hold over their head how they have violated you, and you're going to set them free from their sin.

39:11

And their guilt. So they've been set free from the guilt, but that doesn't mean, so for instance, if a pastor goes against his calling, and he violates in any way, shape, or form, dishonesty, stealing, you know, whatever, the church can offer him forgiveness and should, and not hold him guilty for that sin, but that does not mean that they should trust him still or restore him to a level of ministry again.

39:43

I would say this is true in a relationship. There are, unfortunately, because of sin, marital relationships that are abusive and have been abusive verbally or physically, and that in order for the one who had been abused to get past that, they need to offer forgiveness and not hold that guilt over them, but that does not mean that they need to restore that relationship because it may not be the safest to do that.

40:07

And nor does that, forgiveness never means trust. And I've had to say this in relationships before with people where I say,

40:13

I have forgiven you, but I do not trust you. And for the sake of my family, we're going to need to keep a distance until the level of trust can possibly be restored.

40:26

Well, not only does forgiveness not mean that trust is completely restored, forgiveness does not mean that everything will look like it looked before the sin was committed.

40:35

That's right. I mean, that just has to be clarified. I mean, so you can forgive someone and decide that the best thing for both of us in a fallen world, like before the resurrection, is that our relationship looks different than it used to.

40:52

That's an important clarification to make, and I'm glad that you brought that up, John, because that is something that we deal with all the time in counseling and in pastoring people.

41:02

And at the same time, circling back to our major theme of the day, there is hardly ever a time, in particular when there's relational conflict, and this most often in the church,

41:14

I mean, let's just be frank, relational conflict just most pointedly occurs within marriages.

41:20

There is never a situation in which I've been in counseling a couple when you don't walk out of the room thinking a couple of things, like this would be so much better, one, if they were each more mindful of their own sin than they were the sin of their spouse, and two, if there was a genuine, sincere ability to extend forgiveness to one another.

41:47

Because it really is, like if we want to talk about a functional pragmatic perspective, from a functional pragmatic perspective, if there is no forgiveness extended, you cannot move forward.

41:59

You will forever be stuck in just this quagmire of bitterness and resentment and animosity and vitriol.

42:10

It will be your life if you are unable to forgive. And again, we go back to, well, you're sitting there and you're thinking,

42:18

I'm hurting, I've been wounded, I'm indignant, what happened to me was wrong. And we say, we hear you and we understand that.

42:27

And so what's the motivation? Why would you ever forgive? Consider Christ and his mercy to you and how much he has forgiven you.

42:37

And that is what will be the driver and the motivator for you to forgive other people who have really wronged you.

42:47

Well, holding on to the bitterness, this is a phrase that I think it was, oh,

42:54

I'm trying to think who said it, but I'll think of it in a moment. But drinking poison, hoping that it'll affect the person that you hate is insane, that's what bitterness is, is to think that if I drink this, it's going to hurt them and being holding on to something doesn't hurt, we think it's going to hurt them, we think, okay, that person's hurt me, so I'm going to be angry and bitter and mean towards them.

43:18

And that's how I'm going to repay them. But it can never cause the damage that they've caused to you.

43:25

I mean, unless you end up just doing the exact same thing to them that they did to you. And that is an absolutely horrible way to live because you're in constant bondage.

43:35

The moment you give retribution, I mean, how many movies that are out there where someone is going to get revenge?

43:41

They're going to have the revenge. And then once they have it, they're empty. There's nothing.

43:47

And now there's a double weight of guilt, right? So they feel guilty for holding on to the bitterness. They now feel guilty for acting out retribution.

43:55

And they're still don't feel any sense of right. It's still all wrong.

44:01

And the only way to have that sense of right is to be set free from the burden of holding that over someone.

44:09

And that's the, this is scripture. This is why there's so much that's commanded as far as forgiveness, because the only way to be set free from that bondage that you have, and it is bondage.

44:21

I've seen people who live in immense depression and they are addicted to appeasing, like the way that they cope with this is addictions.

44:29

And so they're addicted and they're holding onto this bitterness. And the moment you can feel, be set free from that because of the forgiveness you have received, you actually can move on.

44:42

But years and years and years of holding onto this, it's like, you've already tried this.

44:49

It doesn't work. So the one solution that God does give you, which is to forgive, actually does work.

44:56

And you will be fully restored and you will have full restoration when you get into the new heavens, the new earth with a new body and you are restored.

45:04

But until then, we have to only receive that which we have now, which is forgiveness and give forgiveness.

45:11

Amen. So I want to front load what I'm about to read. So I don't want to be misunderstood. To pursue justice is a good thing.

45:19

And so we should avail ourselves of the means that we have in the world, whether that's societally speaking or something else, to pursue justice.

45:27

That's true. But when it comes to how we relate to one another, we have to be honest and just aware enough to realize that there are going to be a million little and sometimes more significant ways that we will be wronged, that there is no really systematic way to pursue justice with respect to them.

45:45

And to your point, if we live our entire lives thinking that I am going to avenge myself against all these people who have hurt me, first of all, it's slavery and bondage and it will produce nothing good.

45:59

But God tells us to do something altogether different. This is Romans 12, 18 and 19. Paul exhorts us, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

46:10

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine,

46:17

I will repay, says the Lord. We have to trust God in so many of these things to be content to say, okay,

46:26

I've been wronged here, there really is not a lot of recourse that I have, and even if I were to pursue it, what good's going to come of it?

46:33

I'm going to forgive this person and I'm going to trust God. I'm going to trust him.

46:38

I'm going to cast my burdens and anxieties upon him. I'm going to pray to him and talk to him about how I've been wounded, and I'm going to trust him and his character that he will make this right and that justice will roll from heaven and that either

46:54

Christ will have atoned for this or this person will bear this iniquity forever. I will let

47:00

God sort this out, and in as much as it depends upon me, I will forgive and I will live peaceably with others.

47:07

That's what we're called to as Christians. Well, we're going to move over to the members podcast, and in there, one of the things that's going to come up is we don't want you to be confused in thinking that once you forgive someone, then all is well and all is set free and there's no scars and you'll be happy now.

47:28

It doesn't work like that. And forgiving someone once, you may say to that person verbally,

47:33

I forgive you, but you may need to learn how to forgive them every single day and what does that look like and how do we do that?

47:41

We'll talk about that in the members podcast. For those of you that are new, first of all, thank you for listening. We hope this was encouraging to you.

47:48

The way in which we support our ministry and continue to produce resources is through our support membership.

47:55

We have people who support us monthly and we like to try and give them some extra material for supporting us.

48:01

You can go over to our website, theocast .org and look at our membership.

48:07

There's just different ways in which you can support us and that helps continue to spread the gospel of rest around the world.