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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we're going to be looking at a command from Jesus in John 17 where he says,

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I didn't take you out of the world, but I left you in the world for a specific mission. In this mission,

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Jesus also makes a request to the Father for protection. If you don't know what that request is, you might think it's to keep us safe or to keep us healthy or to keep us from suffering, but that's actually not what

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Jesus asked for. It's specifically connected to the mission of the Christian.

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Justin and I are going to talk about this request that Jesus makes to the Father and also what is the mission of the

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Christian. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Today, our hosts are

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in the beautiful state of North Carolina, specifically in Asheville, and myself,

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John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church just south of Nashville in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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And Jimmy Buehler, who is the pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota, is not with us today. He is giving out finals to his students.

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He will be joining us next week. We miss you, brother, and the conversation will only be three -fourths as good.

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Hey, JP, what's going on in your neck of the woods?

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You've got woods out there. We do have woods out here. We have mountains, bears, and all those kinds of things.

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Arguably, fall in Asheville might be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

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People come from all over the place to see the leaves and the fall colors. It is pretty here in the fall.

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I was sitting thinking, I'm glad you're not a math teacher, John, with the fractional work that you did there just a minute ago on the three -quarters versus two -thirds and everything else.

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As soon as I said that, I was like, this is why when

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I'm helping a guy who's finishing my basement, he does the tape measure and I just carry the wood. Exactly.

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I wouldn't trust you to do that. There's a lot going on in my neck of the woods.

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It's a weird winter here, weather -wise. It's mild right now. That makes me think that February and March is going to be intense.

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That really is not the point of much of anything. We don't need to talk about the weather right now. As far as the life of our local church, even

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Covenant Baptist Church here on the south side of Asheville, we have been meeting in a YMCA for a while.

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We're really up against space issues and other things. The Y is now open at 10 a .m.

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on Sunday morning, this facility. That's causing all kinds of conflicts. It's pretty pressing, our need for a larger space and a different space.

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As any church planner understands and would sympathize with, I'm in the throes, along with some of the other folks at church, of really looking hard for a space to meet in.

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We are pursuing, potentially trying to lease a space that we would have Monday through Sunday, 24 -7, that would be a calculated risk financially in the short term, but we think would be really good for the growth of our church and the impact of our church in the community over the long term.

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We did a facility tour walkthrough with some guys from my church, one of whom is a contractor, even this morning.

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We're trying to think about upfit costs to a potential facility. All of those fun kinds of things are going on in my life and world, in addition to just normal preaching, teaching, pastoral care concerns, and stuff.

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I feel like life and the plate is pretty full at the moment. I know we're going to pivot to what we're talking about today.

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I'm going to go ahead and start segueing us there, and then you jump on this at whatever point you want. We're looking for this bigger space for our church.

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We're looking to be able to upfit it so that it's a nice looking space, so that it's an inviting and welcoming place to be, where we can make just being there a good experience for people.

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In addition to preaching the word and coming to the table and singing and praying and all those kinds of things, we want it to be a nice space to be in.

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We're not doing that because we're just simply seeking comfort or aesthetics or whatever for their own sake.

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We're doing it because we really do think that it will benefit our local church, it will help our church grow, and it will allow us to do ministry and to do it well and effectively in our community.

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I think that that's a nice sort of softball and transition towards our conversation topic for today about the mission that we're all on as Christians and what we're to be pursuing in this life.

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I'm going to kick it over to you, bro, because I know that you may be able to introduce it more specifically than that. I preached a sermon recently on John 17, 15 through 19 at my church, and I told my wife it was probably one of the most difficult sermons to prepare for, only because of how close to home it really does come.

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Even someone who has been exposing pietism and talking about legalism for years now, it's humbling to see how the gospel can still just wipe the floor with you and expose your heart and expose just how broken and bonkers, as someone just recently said to me, we really are.

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In John 17, Jesus is finishing up his earthly ministry.

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It's the last intimate conversation he's having with his disciples. He's praying publicly in front of them to the

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Father for them to hear. In this conversation, he makes several requests.

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One of the requests towards the end of his prayer, which is in verse 15, he says specifically, I'm about to leave the world.

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I'm going to go away. I'm going to sit at the right hand of the Father. Jesus could have requested a number of things for us.

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I would say, if I were to ask you, what is it, without reading the verse, and if you don't know the verse, what is it that Jesus made a specific request to the

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Father for you? People would be convinced that Jesus prayed for our safety.

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He prayed for our well -being, or he prayed for our health. There could be all kinds of things that would come out.

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What's fascinating is what Jesus actually asks for. He says, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one, which is an interesting request.

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Why is it so important for Jesus to make this request? It's directly connected to the following verses.

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In verse 18, he says, as you sent me into the world, so have

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I sent you into the world. Why was Jesus sent into the world? He tells us in Luke, I've come to seek and to save that which is lost.

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That was the whole mission of Jesus. I've come to call sinners, not the righteous.

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I've come for the sick. That's right. What is the one force or one being that has the most success in distracting believers away from what it is that empowers them to accomplish this mission?

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What empowers Christians to actually advance the gospel and preach the gospel is their faith.

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You aren't going to pursue something you don't believe in. Satan is described as two things.

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One, he's called our accuser. He's going to come after us with our sin. The second thing he's described as the father of all lies.

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He's going to lie to you to get you to believe something other than you are safe and secure with the

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Father. Then he's going to come after you when you do fail and make you so discouraged that you don't trust in the forgiveness of your

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Father. What does Jesus say? The one thing that can distract these poor, dear people off their mission is

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Satan. If you back up the verse before that, he warns his disciples.

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He says, gentlemen, the world hated me because of my mission, of who I am, and the righteousness that I bring, and the message that I have.

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If they hated me, they're also going to hate you. Then, of course, Paul picks up on this in Philippians 1 .29 and says, it's not only been granted to you to believe, but also to suffer for the sake of Jesus Christ.

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Jesus does not say, Father, keep them from suffering, keep them from pain. He doesn't even say keep them from death.

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Paul even says, we are going to suffer unto death. You're going to suffer even death for the sake of the gospel.

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Today's conversation is really about how in the Christian life, in the modern

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Christian community, what's being written and what we focus our attention on week in and week out seems to be the opposite of what

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Jesus makes the request here. In other words, we do not focus in on, okay, I need to make sure that I'm staying grounded in the gospel and that I'm staying away because he specifically says to his disciples in verse 16, they disciples are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

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What he means by that is the attitude and the actions and the pursuits of the world. You aren't part of that anymore because you have a new home and you have a new hope.

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That hope and home is what guards what you are, which is otherly. You're outside of this world.

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A great another example of this is Ephesians chapter two, one and following. Paul describes the unregenerate person who is in the world.

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They are pursuer of the flesh. They are obedient to the laws of Satan. It's very obvious.

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It's not that we're not in the world as far as monastery goes, like we're separating ourselves physically. He's talking about a spiritual and attitude position.

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Spiritually, your hope is somewhere else, and because of that, your attitude is something different than the world.

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And so within just a few verses, Jesus creates this mission and what matters to the mission, and in essence, just simplifies the

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Christian life. The Christian life is about pursuing what it is that Jesus came here to pursue, and that is accomplished.

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I'm just going to set this all up, JP, and we'll pull it apart. The way in which this is accomplished is through the protection of the

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Father from Satan and also the Father sanctifying, another word for separating, our attitude and hearts away from that of the world.

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This is verse 17, which is sanctify them in the truth, and then

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Jesus clarifies, just in case there's any confusion, your word is truth. When we think of sanctification normally here, we think of progress and holiness.

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I believe in context. Jesus just said, you're not of this world, and the way we're going to separate you out of the attitude of the world is through the word of God.

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So, the word of God is kind of renewing your mind idea, you know, like in Romans 12. That's kind of the setup of what we want to talk about today and where we want to go with this.

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JP, what's your initial thought and response to all this? I want to add one small thing, and then

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I'll talk about this sort of a pan back broad perspective. So, you've already talked about what

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Jesus is praying for is essentially for the faith of his followers that God would keep and protect them from Satan, the great accuser, the great liar, the one who takes your failure and then just piles it on you, causing you to doubt

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God's love, God's favor, all of those things. Also, he's praying that they would be set apart, as you've already said, through the word, through the renewing of our minds according to God's word so that we would think that way, not as the world does.

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Then also, he immediately is going to go into praying for the unity of believers in the church, which is not insignificant in this.

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So, the mission and what we're being called to and what Jesus is praying for us is for our faith, for us to be set apart according to God's word, and then also for us to be unified as the body of Christ in the world as we're going about doing these things.

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That's a really, really beautiful thing to think about, our Lord praying for us. As you and I were talking about this a little bit before we hit record, my big initial thought is that so much of what we talk about on Theocast, about pietism and things related to it, we're making a distinction between a confessional biblical perspective, which is always outwardly oriented, versus a pietistic perspective, which is always inwardly oriented.

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I'll unpack that for just a moment. The confessional biblical perspective is that we are always looking outside of ourselves for our salvation, for our righteousness and justification.

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Namely, we're looking to Christ to save what's wrong in us, but we're also outwardly oriented in that we are concerned primarily with loving

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God and loving neighbor. The pietistic perspective inevitably boomerangs everything back around to us somehow, where we become hyper -focused on what's going on inside of us.

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We're concerned about the strength and quality of our faith, perhaps. We're concerned about our transformation and progression in the

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Christian life. Am I growing in my sanctification, which for most people just means, am I growing in my morality?

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We're very concerned about our circumstances. Often, even when we talk about good things like evangelism, we usually are more concerned with how we're doing.

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Am I doing it well? Am I doing it enough? It's just a very different perspective than what

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Jesus clearly has in view here as he's praying for us clearly to live an outwardly oriented life, loving

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God and loving neighbor in the context of the church as we seek to accomplish the mission of the church, which is to call sinners to repentance and to call those who are sick to the one who can make them well and to seek and save the lost through the proclamation of the gospel.

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That's my initial big take, man, is that outwardly oriented versus inwardly oriented dichotomy and how we tend to get this wrong in our church context.

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I would like to break the conversation up into two sections just to add on to what you're saying. The first section being the spiritual side of it.

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When we think about the mission of Jesus, let's compare to what Jesus is focusing the disciples on to what

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Christians are focused on today. Then let's talk about the physical side of it. You have the spiritual and the physical side of it, which we'll get to in a minute.

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If you look at the primary message coming to modern Christians on the broader evangelical scale, it doesn't really matter what denomination you're talking about.

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Unfortunately, some Reformed confessional churches can find themselves in this same boat because pietism is so easily ingrained.

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You can be in a confessional context and still be a pietist, that's true. Absolutely.

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Sometimes the most pietist. I would say that there's two sides of it. First of it's assurance.

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People focus their entire Christian life trying to establish a secure relationship between them and the

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Father. They are so concerned that they are right with God.

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I can't tell you how many Theocast listeners and church members at my own church where they would go to bed at night wondering.

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They would fall into sin and just say, well, a real Christian wouldn't do this. Books, prayer, confession, and Bible reading are all focused on,

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I need to figure out if I'm saved. They spend years and years of trying to establish.

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Their heart is unsettled, and because their heart is unsettled, their actions are going to follow that.

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They aren't going to feel confident in sharing. I can't tell you how many people who struggle with their assurance who don't feel confident in sharing their faith.

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How can I share my faith if I too don't know? If myself, I don't know if I'm saved. I know that there are people probably listening right now who have had that very thought.

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Why would I ever share the gospel? If one of my church members said this to me, I just don't feel adequate to share because I often wonder.

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If you go back, and I would just encourage you to read John 17, or even just John 15 -17,

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Jesus very, very clearly gives us an explanation that if the

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Father is the one who saves you through his power sovereignly, he's also the one who keeps you, and he will never let you go.

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It's very clear that Jesus is trying to establish for the disciples who, just so you know, he had already warned they're about to fail him.

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He knows they're going to fail him, and I mean full -on denial abandon Jesus. He gives them the full assurance, you will belong to the

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Father even though you're about to abandon me. Your security does not rest in your performance or your level of dedication to me.

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Your security rests in the fact that you believe me. You have faith. It doesn't matter what level of faith you have.

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The moment someone's freed from this burden that I have to make sure that I'm doing something to establish my salvation, you can actually then focus on the very mission that Jesus has given you.

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People can't focus on what we have been left here. Jesus says, I'm not taking you out of the world. I'm leaving you here because I'm leaving you here for this mission.

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The one mission these poor people have is not to advance the gospel to the lost. It's to advance the gospel to themselves so they can find out if they're still lost.

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It's devastating to hear of people who struggle in this way.

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That would be the first one. I have a second one, JP, but I don't know if you want to add something to that. I want to jump on that for a moment.

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The reality that you're painting is, I think, it is reality and it's accurate.

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If you're constantly chasing after assurance and you're scrambling and trying to keep your legs under you with respect to your standing before the

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Lord, am I secure? Am I safe? Am I going to make it to heaven? Then it is a crippling reality in every way.

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Not only does it cripple you in terms of your own thoughts and your own feelings and your own experience in following Christ and living in the church and everything else, it will cripple you in terms of living your life on mission in terms of the mission that Christ has described.

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As you already described, John, your efforts and your energy and your angst, your emotional and mental effort and everything else is going toward doing enough to prove to yourself that you're legitimate versus it being a situation where, no,

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I am resting in what Christ has done and I'm resting in the love of God and the grace of God shown to me in Christ, which then liberates me to concern myself with loving

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God and loving neighbor and doing good works for my neighbor's sake, not my own sake.

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It frees me up to be concerned about my neighbor, my family, members of the church where I'm a member, and just people that I come into regular contact with.

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I can, in fact, be outwardly oriented because I'm not wigging out about my own personal standing before the

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Lord. I think it's a great thing to be reminded of, as you already touched on, Jesus is praying these things for his disciples.

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He is comforting them on his last night that he's on earth, knowing, having told them that they'll deny him and that they're going to scatter.

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I'm preaching through Mark's gospel right now and so recently have been in the section where Jesus predicts the disciples' denial of him and Peter's denial of him and everything else.

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It's remarkable that his love toward the disciples changes not at all in the light of their failure.

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His grace towards them changes not at all in the light of their failure. He predicts their failure and says, but when

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I'm raised up, I'm going to go before you to Galilee. Implication, you're going to see me there. You're going to deny me now.

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You're going to scatter. Peter, of course, pipes up and says, even if everybody else does, I won't.

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Jesus is just like, oh, Peter, it's going to happen three times tonight. In Luke's account, we know that Jesus tells

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Peter that he's prayed for him. Satan has desired to sift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

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When you turn again, strengthen your brothers. The grace and compassion and love of Christ is astonishing towards those of us who are weak and frail.

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That's the comfort, and it frees us because we're safe in Jesus. It frees us to live our lives with an outward focus of loving our neighbor and aiming to see people come to Christ and aiming to see the elect come to faith.

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That's it, man. I would say that so many sermons are geared in this way.

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They preach the sermon and then they say, if this isn't true in your life, you should wonder about your salvation. It's not bolstering the faith of a believer.

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It's constantly just picking at it and digging at it. We've said this before, but it's a fear -based reality.

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I was thinking about this as you were talking, and one of the examples I have in my own personal life is that when

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I played basketball in high school, I had a coach and I loved my coach. They sat every single player down and said, listen,

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I want you to understand my relationship to you. I want to help you be the best basketball player you could be and the best teammate you could be.

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Everything I say and do, I want to make sure that that's what you get. Thirdly, I want to make sure that you enjoy your time here because it's a game and that's the point of it is to have fun.

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Whatever that coach told me to do, I always knew that behind the instructions was love, care, and affection in my best interest.

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I played my guts out for that coach. I did everything. If they said run a mile,

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I did it. I trusted that. I then went to college and played college ball, which by the way, high school ball and college ball are not the same.

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Six -one white guys get crushed in college ball. The coach there, he decided to use a fear tactic.

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Every practice, you were trying to impress him and he would determine whether you were going to play or not.

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Every team member lived in a constant state of fear because it was basically, I want the best guys, and I'm only going to play the best guys.

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You got to prove to me you're the best guy. It was more to him about winning and his reputation of winning than it was about the player and making sure the players were improving and they were the best they could be and that we were the best team we could be.

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It changed the attitude. I could see it in the guys and how we practiced. Guys became individualistic.

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It came about their scoring. It came about how well they were improving. It completely corrupted the team.

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It was the worst experience I'd ever had. I played four years in high school and loved it. I played one year in college and hated it because of the coach.

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I think this is the two kinds of coaches we have going on in Christianity. You have Christ who's calling people to absolute rest and security.

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You have nothing to worry about. I have your best interest at heart. I've done all of it for you.

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I need you to rest and I need you to go do this in absolute confidence that all is secure and fine.

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The other coach that we've been presented with is that God's angry at you. If you don't do this, God's going to abandon you.

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If you don't do it exactly how God has said, then your security and hope is in question.

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No wonder people say, the Christian life is just too hard. It's too complicated. Why do

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I want to pursue this? Because God's really got a hammer ready to pounce on me.

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We're excited to announce that we have a new free e -book available at our website called Faith vs.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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The sports analogy, I want to pick up on that for a moment. It's generally understood to be the case that when players feel like they have a very short leash, like if I make one mistake in the game,

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I'm going to be benched. That never does anything good for a player. Whenever a player understands, no,

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I'm going to be able to stay in the game and play through some mistakes and all that. There's some freedom and there's some latitude here.

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It frees guys up to just let it loose and play. That's absolutely true in sports.

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You already alluded to something else. Whenever it becomes all about your performance and there's too much competition amongst teammates, it destroys the cohesiveness and the chemistry of a team.

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It destroys unity. The same is true in the church. So, if we feel like what you used as the illustration of the athletic team and then transitioned it over to the church, if God is in fact this angry taskmaster, he's got the hammer and he's got it raised and he's ready to drop that bad boy on anybody who makes a mistake, then that is a hindrance to actually going and pursuing the mission of the church as a believer.

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If we know that we're free and secure and we're at peace with God and we're safe, then we are set free, as we've already been alluding to, to go out and love neighbor and be all about the mission of the church because we know that we're okay.

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But then also, the other big thing, Jesus prays a lot for unity in John 17, the unity amongst the church, amongst the saints.

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Nothing will destroy unity more than this internal focus on how well am

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I doing? How am I doing compared to other people? How sanctified am I? How much am

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I growing? How much am I transforming? How much am I getting better? That will destroy the unity of the church because what it produces is self -righteousness and pride and this kind of measuring thing that we do, and it destroys the mission rather than fueling the mission.

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That's the great irony of this, is that you think, oh, well, if I'm hyper motivated to grow individually, then

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I'm going to be a better part of the church and the team. Wrong. If you are more concerned about, obviously, trusting

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Christ, but locking arms with the brothers and sisters in the church, and you all together, corporately loving your neighbor, and you're taking your eyes off yourself, you're going to be all kinds of more useful, and you'll actually be free, and there will be joy in the task.

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We could go on and on about this, but it's like Jesus knew what he was doing. Seriously, it's like Jesus knew what he was doing.

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I want to jump on that. It is the purpose of why you were left here.

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Jesus says, I left you here to do what I was doing, and yet the very purpose, which is an outreaching.

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We are to reach out and bring in and care for. The entire Christian life seems to be 95 percent focused on,

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I need to be making myself better. I need to discipline myself. I need to read more.

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I need to pray more. It's all about self -growth, and here's where it comes from, in my opinion, I think, from all the experience that I've had myself growing through this, and it connects to the second part of it, is that we as humans seek naturally, like we naturally, a part of our human nature, we seek comfort.

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We want to be comfortable. We want to be safe. We like safety, and then we also like wealth, because wealth creates comfortability for us.

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Here's what's dangerous. We assume two things.

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We assume that spiritual progress means that we're going to get rid of sin. Sin is horrible because it causes all kinds of uncomfortable circumstances, and it causes slavery in us, and we hate sin.

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Progress in Christianity creates freedom out of sin. Secondly, God blesses those who obey.

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It's ingrained in our mind that if I'm doing well, then God's going to give me a good home.

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He's going to give me a good job, and he's going to keep me safe. So what ends up happening is we pursue what ends up giving us comfort.

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Here's some examples of this. Let's just think about prayer for a second. When Jesus is praying for his disciples, and even when he's giving them examples, even in the

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Lord's prayer, you're asking for enough to last you today because you've got to accomplish the mission today, not tomorrow.

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Even in that prayer, there's not a prayer for safety. It's a prayer of keeping you from the evil one, the one that can attack you and pull you off of mission.

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But if you think about the Christian life in most people's perspective, they are constantly praying for health.

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Lord, I don't like to be sick. I don't want this cancer. I don't want to die. They'll spend thousands of dollars on books learning how to say the right prayer with the right attitude, with the right spiritual level.

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If you do these things, then God will answer your prayer. Or wealth. People spend so much time praying for the right job.

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It's almost like you're not asking for a job. You're asking for this specific job because you know that job will accomplish your mission, which your mission is to be comfortable.

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Or safety. I mean, look, sometimes I laugh about when someone says, you know, we were almost in a car accident and we almost died.

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We thank the Lord for the safety, but yet the person you hit died and they too were Christians. So God kept you safe and not them.

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I mean, this is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, Paul never got the memo on the prayer of safety apparently because the poor guy never found himself in a safe moment.

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I mean, how many times was he shipwrecked? How many times was he beaten? I mean, on top of all of that, a snake bitten.

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You think God couldn't have kept the snake from biting him? I mean, it's ridiculous. And yet Paul understood part of life in general was this world is broken.

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It's groaning for Jesus to come back and restore it. Secondly, he understood that he was going to suffer for the sake of the gospel and embraced it and encouraged other

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Christians to understand, hey, this is part of what we do for Christ. Yet our energy, we spend so much energy making sure that we don't suffer, that we stay wealthy, we stay healthy, and we stay safe.

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Here's the reason I mentioned all of that. When our wealth is gone and our health is gone and something bad happens, we look to God and say,

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God, why did you let that happen? And then we look to ourselves and say, well, maybe God's punishing me because I did something wrong.

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Because in our minds, God's supposed to be the one protecting that, and he didn't do it. Now we want to know why.

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Justin Perdue A funny analogy, and then maybe a more serious comment after that. Talking about our circumstances and God's perspective on that, a funny way to talk about it is, again, going back to sports.

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I am always amused by the kind of thinking that's clearly prevalent.

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Whenever guys, after a victory, thank God, and whenever coaches will say, all glory to God after a victory.

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Then fans of certain teams are just like, oh my goodness, we were praying and this and that. It's almost like the favor of God was shown to such and such team in their victory.

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I chuckle at that because I'm like, this is absurd on so many levels. Yes, God is sovereign over everything that happens in his world.

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I absolutely agree. At the same time, when you talk like that, you act like they're the only

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Christians in the world playing for a certain team. Do you not think that there are believers in the other locker room too?

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Do you not think that there might be believers on the other coaching staff too? What about them? Are they somehow outside of God's favor because they lost the game tonight?

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Give me a break. They're playing an atheist school. Only when you play an atheist school. My goodness, dude, but it's so prevalent.

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You can see it. It's just kind of interwoven into our thinking in so many ways. It's like, oh, well, God smiled on us and we won.

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But what about the dudes that are trusting Christ and lost? What about the dude that's trusting Christ and got his leg broken?

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My goodness, it's just crazy how we talk. That's just one small illustration of the fact that there is no such thing as God's team in college football or any other sport.

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It's stupid, but we talk like that so often. You were talking about our comfort and how we're so often motivated by our comfort.

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You mentioned this in a kind of drive -by way, even in talking about how we think about fighting sin.

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Just a comment on that. We do often think about our battle against sin from the perspective of comfort.

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Now, you and I are the first to say that sin is terrible for your life and that fleeing from sin and not sinning will do all kinds of good for your life.

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The Bible talks like that. But we also want to point out biblically that you fight sin and pursue obedience and good works, not primarily for your own benefit.

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You are biblically to pursue good works and obedience because it does honor God and it benefits your neighbor.

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So, we ought to be motivated in fighting sin, not primarily by our own comfort so that we feel better about ourselves, but we fight sin so that my neighbor, my wife, my kids, my fellow church members, my co -workers, my friends at the gym, so that they might benefit from my life and thereby give glory to God.

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That ought to be the motivation. Anyway, it's just a thought. We are so inwardly focused in so many of the things, in so many of the arenas of the

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Christian life, and we're motivated by self -interest all the time, which is just an upside -down kind of way of thinking about this.

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Justin Perdue Yeah. So, pietism, as we've mentioned multiple times on this podcast, what pietism does is it causes you to be introspective and naturally turns you into what

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I would say a narcissistic Christian. You become self -loved. Because of that, it's going to naturally bleed into keep me safe, keep me wealthy, keep me healthy.

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It breeds sometimes contempt and frustration towards your fellow believer. That's something that's clearly bad.

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When you're so concerned with yourself, you a lot of times get frustrated with other people that you don't think meet the standard that you have somehow achieved, or they're an inconvenience to you, and therefore, you're frustrated all the time.

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Anyway. One of the questions I received after my sermon was, what about these Old Testament passages that talk about God protecting

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His people? My answer to that is you have to understand the context that the people of God during that time were a nation that He was promising to protect.

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There are times where David is talking about his protection, and he isn't speaking of a physical protection.

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He is speaking of a spiritual protection. His sins are cast as far as the east is from the west.

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It's a great example that he is not going to be judged. He is safely protected in that because of God, not because of his performance to the law.

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The law will not keep him safe, but God is the one who keeps him safe. On top of this,

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I do want to bring some clarity that Justin and I were before our pre -talk. I want to be very clear that pursuing a job or pursuing money or comfortability is not a sin.

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That's ridiculous to think that that's the case. What we're talking about is if we are safe and secure in our one standing before God and understanding our progression.

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Let me go back to John when he says, Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth.

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He means separate them for the purpose of the ministry or the purpose of the mission and the way in which that is accomplished.

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God is the one who does it, and He does it through His word. The preaching of the word received, the sacraments received, the table of prayer and baptism.

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We are receiving God's word, and He uses that to separate us from the world so we stay focused on not appeasing

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God or pleasing God. Jesus is saying, I'm separating you from the world so you stay on mission. For me to pursue a job that provides well for my home and provides well for my church, which is part of the mission, there's nothing wrong with that.

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As a matter of fact, guys who go out and make millions of dollars, they have this talent or they have the ability to go make millions of dollars.

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There's nothing wrong with doing that. If they are doing it because they think that money will give them happiness and will give them security and wealth, then they're in a world of disappointment because they're still going to die.

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They're going to lose all of their money and nothing you do in this world. You can live in a bunker with all the supplies you could need for a lifetime, and an earthquake will happen and collapse on you.

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It doesn't matter how big a sinkhole is. There's no way to protect yourself from this world. You could get a disease and die.

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You could get cancer and die. There's nothing that's going to keep you safe. Trying to keep your wealth, your health, and your safety is futile.

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This is why Jesus does not ask the Father to keep us safe because He didn't promise that.

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He promised us a new world, and in that new world we'll be safe. Secondly, there's nothing wrong with it.

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Justin and I both have very comfortable homes, and we are constantly trying to keep our homes up and well and clean and nice.

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One, we want to make sure that our home is a place to love and care for our family, but also to bring others, the outside world, into our home so that we can love and care for them.

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If your home can't do that because it's distracting, then yes, of course.

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There's nothing wrong with, culturally speaking, having nice things. This is not a call to be radically abandoning everything that you have and giving it to the church for the sake of the mission.

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Your home and your family is part of the mission. It's not separated. It's not only the church that is your mission.

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You live in the world, so it's part of it. I know JP, you had thoughts on that. I agree with you. Even on the home front,

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I know we're very grateful for the home that we have now. It's tight for a family of six.

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I have my office in my house. We're in the process of, we're under contract on a piece of property and we're hoping to build a house this year that would be a little bit larger, that would fit our family better, but also it will facilitate a lot more hospitality.

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We'll be able to have people over more frequently and be able to entertain people better. It'll be more comfortable for us to be able to do all of that.

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Even as we're thinking about our house, and we're not holding ourselves up as some gold standard example or something here, but even as we're thinking about our home,

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I'm thinking about it in terms of my wife and children. I want to provide for them in a way that is good for their lives, that will remove unnecessary stress and angst from them.

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We are also thinking, my wife and I, about how can we use our home to facilitate investment in people, to facilitate inviting especially people that are maybe even newer to the church or maybe you're just coming to know

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Christ. How can we invite people into our lives? Those kinds of things. We can do this in a way.

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We can pursue things like houses, jobs, vehicles, and the like for our good in this life and at the same time for the purpose of loving our neighbor well.

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It doesn't have to be all about us all the time. Do not hear us say that to have nice things is wrong.

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Do not hear us say that to make money is wrong. Do not hear us say that to try to have a nice comfortable home is wrong.

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John was very clear about all of that. We can, as believers, use those things and leverage those things in good ways for the sake of the mission of the church.

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That's all we're encouraging us to, is to have a perspective that is always thinking about the mission of the church that Christ has given us, which is to seek and save the lost, to proclaim the gospel that God's people might come to faith in Him.

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Even as I think about my life, my stuff, my role as a pastor in the church,

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I'm always thinking about bringing people into the church, into my home, so that I might shepherd and love them and point them to Christ and lock arms with them so that we might together make this pilgrimage to the celestial city.

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That's the goal. That's the driver. That's the ambition. I would even say there's nothing wrong with entertainment and hobbies.

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I would encourage you to do that. The more you can participate in those as far as when it allows you to interact with other people outside of yourself on a social scale, you should do so.

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One of my deacons, who now helps lead worship at our church, the first introduction that I had to him was he got invited to a

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Super Bowl party. His friends said, hey, we're going to go hang out at this guy's house.

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You want to come on over? He came, and we ended up going to lunch the next week. The next thing I know, he's faithfully coming to church.

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There's nothing wrong with using hobbies and entertainment. When you hear what we're getting at, and we're going to unfold this a little bit more in our membership podcast, this is what we call an attitude or heart focus.

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What really matters, what I've been left here to do as a follower of Jesus Christ, is to find rest in Christ.

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The moment I have rest is to then take that and give it to other people. It's not to pursue sanctification.

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That is part of resting. It's not to pursue pleasing God. That's part of resting. Jesus says,

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I'm leaving you here so that you will find the lost sheep. We're going to walk through a little bit more in detail on how that really happens through the church.

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It's not an individual. Sometimes when we hear find the lost sheep, we think personal evangelism.

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I need to be sharing the gospel with everybody that I meet. I need to be street preaching. I need to be putting up billboard signs.

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That is not what we're talking about because it's very obvious in the New Testament of the instructions that Paul gives to the congregation.

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Just a couple of quick thoughts, John, before we transition. Is that cool? Just picking up on what you were talking about, about having hobbies and enjoying things, whether that's arts, entertainment, fitness, athletics, whatever.

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Pick your thing. It's good to have those kinds of interests because it is a good way for us to engage our neighbor.

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I meet a number of people through the things that I like and enjoy, whether that's fitness -related stuff or music -related stuff or even just the food and drink scene here in town.

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It's amazing how many people you can meet. When we take groups of people from our church to breweries here in this city where craft beer is a thing, it allows us to meet all kinds of people and have conversations and stuff.

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It's points of intersection with neighbor. Then one of the things that I think matters too is when we engage in these normal things like arts and culture and sports and the like, we're living as normal people in the society in which we find ourselves.

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If we're going to reach the community and we're going to engage people, like Jesus will say, we're in the world, but not of it.

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He's not saying don't be in the world. Don't engage in things that are here. God has made the world good, and there are all kinds of things in the common kingdom that are good.

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We engage in that stuff, and we're normal people. Normal people are just a little bit easier to be around.

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Normal people are more approachable. One of my exhortations to our church all the time is to love your neighbor and just be a normal person.

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Be a normal person who engages others. That sounds crazy to say, but sometimes in the church in our context, we almost need to be encouraged in that direction.

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That's right. I think that's super helpful. In some ways, people have made the connection with the

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Apostle Paul. Clearly, he didn't flip on the TV and watch the news. He mentions a lot of athletic references.

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Maybe that was before he was a Christian. The point of it was it wasn't offensive for him to use that as an illustration.

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We're going to transition over to our premium content, which is our paid total access membership.

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For those of you who are listening for the first time, we use this as a way to help support our ministry and also just provide additional content.

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You get all of our past episodes, which we have over 200 past episodes. If you add in our premium content, it's over 300 episodes that we have available that cover all kinds of cultural and theological and Reformation theology.

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You can go and listen to a backlog of that. We're going to continue this conversation specifically of career and church.

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How is it do we evangelize? What does it look like according to Scripture?

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Now that we've set this up, we're going to spend some more time looking at some practical tips on how to evangelize within the context of a church.