Spiritual Depression Pt. 2 The Foundation

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Spiritual Depression Pt. 3 Seeing Clearly

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Part 2 of spiritual depression, we're going to review a little bit.

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Remember, we're using the book, Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure, by this gentleman here,

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Martin Lloyd -Jones. Again, just a little review. What is spiritual depression?

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We went over this and we're using Psalm 42 .5 as kind of our verse for this whole topic.

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Why are you in despair, O my soul, and why have you become disturbed within me? That's what the psalmist is thinking, and he utters it in his psalm.

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But that's kind of the idea of what we're talking about with spiritual depression. Remember, we're not talking about clinical depression.

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We're not talking about anything that is diagnosed by a psychologist or a psychiatrist. We're talking about a condition that appears in the scriptures, most often elucidated in the psalms.

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Most Christians, of all times and in different circumstances, at some point in their life, find themselves downcast, unhappy, and in despair.

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It's just a part of the human condition in a fallen world. Again, that's the working definition we're using for spiritual depression.

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Why is it important to study this topic? Again, this is a review. We went through this last week. First, it's not uncommon to see

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Christians live a major portion of their life in this condition. We could all probably name somebody that we know who professed believer in Christ, and yet perennially not happy, not joyful, and always downcast or sad.

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And so they are missing many of the blessings of the Christian life. Second, for the sake of the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom.

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A depressed Christian is a poor ambassador of Christ. That's simply just the facts of life, so to speak.

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Then we looked at some of the general causes of spiritual depression. We looked at temperament, and again, we'll pick up on some of these in the future.

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Temperament, physical conditions, physical ailments, injuries, reaction to a great blessing.

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Remember, after a great blessing, we saw Elijah on Mount Carmel and then falls into the

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Valley of Despair. Spiritual warfare is one of those that's behind pretty much everything.

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We can never lose sight, even when we have physical ailments, physical infirmities, that spiritual warfare is behind all of this.

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And then there's always an element of unbelief. So what is the treatment of spiritual depression?

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And again, we looked last week at just two very general treatments for it.

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Two general found, and these are found in Psalm 42. First, examine yourself to see where you are spiritually.

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The Apostle Paul has also told us that, that we should constantly examine ourselves.

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Second, talk to yourself. Remind yourself of the promises of God. And you remember what we talked about is usually we allow our inner selves to just talk to us.

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When things don't go right, you get that impression of, oh, woe is me and whatnot. But we have to consciously talk to ourselves instead of letting ourselves talk to us, if that makes any sense.

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If not, we'll get there. Because you need to remind yourself, among other things, of the faithfulness of God.

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When things aren't going your way, it's easy to curse God, is exactly what

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Job's wife told him, remember? Why don't you just curse God and die? And what does

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Job say? Though he slay me, I will serve him. So you remind yourself of the faithfulness of God.

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And I'm going to just add one more. Don't take the situation for granted. If you just say, oh, well, this is just your lot in life.

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And as the book of life says, it's not a lot, but it's a life, right? But if you just accept the fact that, well, this is just my lot in life.

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This is the way it's going to be, and I'm going to be depressed. I'm not going to have any joy. Then you're never going to come out of it.

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All right, so I just added one more, and we'll go through several others as we go through the study.

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All right, I just titled this Another Cause. I gave you five causes, and this one is pretty serious.

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Spiritual depression seems to be more manifested among those who have been brought up in a, quote, religious environment.

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I found that this is a point that Martin Lloyd -Jones makes in this particular chapter.

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And it's interesting that he should now, he was in ministry a long time.

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I think 40 -some years that he was the pastor of a church, besides writing books.

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And this is his observation. And I would have to say, I mean, I'm closing in on about 28 years in ministry now.

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And I would have to agree with him that looking at who are those people who tend to be spiritually depressed, that it is those who are coming from an environment where they grew up in the church, so to speak.

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And this is what he says. There can be no doubt that the condition known as spiritual depression is a very common complaint.

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Indeed, the more one thinks about it, and the more one speaks about it, the more one discovers how common it is.

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What's interesting is it shouldn't be this way, should it? I mean, if you're truly saved, of all people, we should be the most joyful.

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And yet you find that as you travel in Christian circles, that it's not the case.

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And that's what we're going to be talking about. Why would this be true? Yes? It's brought up in a religious environment.

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I was thinking maybe some kids, and I think maybe the reason is maybe because the parents are too demanding of their kids.

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Yeah, but that's not the normal one. I'm not going to deny that there aren't parents who are overbearing and whatnot, but that's not the general cause.

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And we'll get to what the general cause, why this would be in a minute. And I think it might surprise you a little bit, but then again, maybe not.

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So the question is then, why would this be true? Here's the underlying cause, a misunderstanding of justification.

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Why don't you just think about that for a minute? What is it that we're saying? I'm not saying they're not saved.

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I'm not saying they are saved. What we're saying is the underlying cause of this particular phase or genre of spiritual depression is because they misunderstand justification.

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They concentrate on sanctification and can't seem to arrive at a place where they are content.

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Now, I want you to just think of that for a minute. Remember, I'm not trying to cut up our salvation into nice, neat little packages because all three phases of our salvation are related to one another.

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But you can distinguish between them. Justification is when you're born again and your sin is removed from you.

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Sanctification is the progressive working out of becoming

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Christ -like in your life. So now look at why I'm saying a misunderstanding of justification.

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They're not certain exactly, even though they can articulate it. And I'm going to go through this in a little bit of detail.

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Even though they can articulate how they've been saved, maybe even an experience, yet they misunderstand it.

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And so they are focused on becoming like Christ when they haven't even yet worked out how they were saved.

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You can see what that would lead to. Works -based salvation.

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You see it? If I'm just working on it, if I'm constantly working on it, I've got to be better.

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And by the way, don't take this the wrong way. We are commanded by Scripture to work out our sanctification with fear and trembling.

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We are commanded to become more like Christ. That's the reason He saved us,

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Romans 8, that we could become. So we're not saying that that's a bad thing.

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What we're saying is that if you're concentrating on your sanctification and you have misunderstood your justification, it's going to put you in a bad place.

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Why is this true? They look at other Christians and ask, why can't

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I be like that? In other words, they're trying to work out their sanctification, they don't seem to get there.

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And so what do they do? They start looking around and comparing themselves to other Christians. And here's the funny part.

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Some of the Christians that they're looking at are worse off than they are. You have no idea how many times somebody has...

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I've counseled somebody in the church and they say, you know, Pastor, I just don't feel like I belong.

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Well, why not? Well, because everybody in the church, they've all got such perfect families. And I say, if you only knew.

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See, I don't suffer from this because I know. I know how dysfunctional all your families are.

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I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I couldn't resist.

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No, I mean... No, what I'm saying is you come in for counseling, and so I understand that there's no family in this church that has it all together.

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That's right. I mean, everybody is struggling. I mean, that's the Christian life, is one of sanctification.

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But somebody coming in, and why would somebody think this way? Because Sunday morning, we not only put on our

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Sunday best clothes, but our Sunday best face. And everybody walks in, everybody's smiling and everything else.

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They say, oh boy, I wish I could be like that. Okay? So, they start looking at other

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Christians and ask, why can't I be like that? They attend meetings, go to conferences. Okay?

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But their souls are still cast down and disquieted. Now, how many conferences they go to?

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You know, they can go to... How many? Seven Steps to Freedom and all kinds of other things, and it just doesn't work.

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Some of these people are not Christians, but many are. In fact, I would say probably in most churches, most of the people who are going through this are in fact

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Christians. But yet, they're still spiritually depressed. Now, here's an interesting one.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones uses John Wesley as an example of this. All right?

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And I think he picked a very good example. Wesley was an ordained minister, and yet he was on a boat with the

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Moravians, and he noticed that when they hit a storm, the

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Moravians were fine, and he was petrified of dying. Now, here he is, an ordained minister, could articulate the doctrine of heaven and the various doctrines, and yet he was petrified of dying.

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Okay? And he actually started looking. He says, what do these Moravians have that I don't have?

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He's confronted with the Moravians, saw something in them that was different than him.

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Now, here's... Martin Lloyd -Jones gives this analysis of Wesley in his book. In fact, the whole trouble with John Wesley really was that he had never understood or grasped the doctrine of justification by faith.

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Okay? He had not understood this verse that we are considering. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

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It seems almost impossible that such a man, who had been brought up in an unusually godly home... If you've never read, like,

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Susanna Spurge... Susanna Spurge... Susanna Wesley, her story, you've got to read it. It's unbelievable how she would train her children at home.

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Okay? Had been brought up in an unusually godly home, and who had spent all his life and all his time in Christian work, should be wrong about a first and so fundamental a point, and should have been wrong at the very beginning.

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But so it was. So it was. Now, think about that.

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If that could happen to a guy like John Wesley, all right, it can certainly happen to the average

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Christian, you know, sitting in church. Why would we see that in America today?

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I want to just kind of focus on our society and in our churches. One of the reasons is because there's such poor teaching concerning justification by faith.

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Every Christian will say they are justified by grace through faith alone, but how do they really understand it?

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Okay? So here we see another principle in action. It's unwise to build a structure if the foundation is not right.

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Trying to build a Christian life on a faulty foundation. Now, where have we heard that before?

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All right, this was taught by Jesus himself at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Remember as he's bringing the

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Sermon on the Mount to a close? All right, this is what he says. Now, for everyone who hears these words of mine, an axe on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

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And the rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and slammed against that house, yet it did not fall for it had been founded on the rock.

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All right? And then, of course, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

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The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, slammed against that house, and it fell. And great was its fall.

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All right, now what does that have to do with this? The foundation of our salvation is

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Christ alone. Remember, this is one of those great doctrines.

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We have the five solas that were recaptured, biblical teaching that was recaptured during the days of the

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Reformation. Any view of justification other than Christ alone causes problems.

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You've got a weak foundation, and you try to build on a weak foundation, and we know what happens.

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All right, just ask those who built the Leaning Tower of Pisa, right? I'm not going to say anything where that location is, but...

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The average person in churches today regard men as Christians because they do good works.

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Now, I want you to think about this. Most churches,

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I'm not talking about the liberal ones that have ceased to be churches a long time ago.

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I'm talking about those who preach the gospel, all right? If you ask the average churchgoer, why do you think that person's a

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Christian? What do you think he's going to say? Well, he's a good man. Look at what he's done.

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I'll even bet he tithes. Tithes. Tithes. Tithes. Right?

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But that's what... Even though they would articulate salvation by grace through faith alone.

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Okay? This was also the era of the Pharisees. Remember what the Pharisees taught.

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The law of God was given, right? For what purpose? That if you keep it, you get to heaven.

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That was the teaching of the Pharisees, and that's what they taught to the Jews in general. So, at the time of Christ, the general consideration, the general explanation for how do you get to heaven is keep the law.

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Okay? Now, we have very few churches that would teach that dogmatically today.

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But in the essence, it comes out the same way. Because the view is still widely taught. All right?

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What do they teach? You've got to make the right decision.

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God can't save you apart from what? Your agreement.

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You have to cooperate with God in order to be saved. That's not salvation by grace through faith alone, is it?

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And this is one of the major causes of spiritual depression. Yes? I think it's just a tremendous advantage coming from a reformed point of view.

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Because if you have faith at all, you know that that's a gift from God. And if it's a gift from God, He's begun that work in you.

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So, where someone who doesn't think faith is a gift from God, if their faith starts waning or faltering, they think it's up to them.

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They have to reestablish it. But when you recognize that your faith is a gift from God, and if you turn in repentance and obedience, that faith is always going to be there.

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You're absolutely right. Okay? And if you have such a faulty view of justification, there's no peace, no joy, no contentment if the person doesn't understand justification properly.

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Yes? There are also churches that teach decree and declare, name and claim. And so, if people are praying in this manner for anything, and it doesn't turn out the way they want it to, or the way they're praying for, then they turn on themselves and say, well,

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I guess I'm not Christian enough. I'm not trying hard enough. Something's wrong with me. They internalize it because they're taught that they can just, that they have the power to decree and declare anything.

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Exactly. So, what does that mean? That means I have to do something better. You see how it works?

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And if I have to do something better, and it's not happening, that's where people start getting depressed.

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They lose joy, etc. Okay? So, now here's where we're getting, oh, we're still under cause.

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If a person is not convicted of their sin, they will have doubts in their daily life. Okay? The assurance of salvation brings joy.

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If you are absolutely assured of your salvation, I mean, that makes a whole lot of difference, doesn't it?

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In how you go about your daily work, your daily life. If I know that I'm saved, and I can't be lost, all right,

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I'm going to face things differently. Okay? So, it's a very important point.

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The watered -down gospel offers blessings without regard to dealing with sin. This kind of goes along with what

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Norma said. That's exactly what they say. You just name it and claim it.

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All right? And, but, dealing with sin is given honorable mention at best.

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All right? The biblical principle, however, is this.

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Misery precedes joy. Now, what does that mean? Okay, misery precedes joy.

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You can't remember a verse that says that exactly, can you? All right? What I mean by that is, if a person does not understand their sinfulness, they will not understand the mercy of God.

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Ever watch Ray Comfort go through his evangelism? All right? And what does he do?

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Shows them the law. You got to get them to see that they are sinners. Because a lot of people don't think they're sinners.

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Okay? So, if they don't understand their sinfulness, then they're not going to understand their need for mercy from God.

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And Paul spends the entire third chapter of Romans on that exact point.

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What does he do? As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one.

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There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless.

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There is none who does good. There is not even one. That will tip you off your seat of good intentions, won't it?

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I'm doing really well here. All right? Until I'm faced with the gospel. You know,

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Francis Schaeffer, I love Francis Schaeffer. All right? I mean, I don't agree with all of his theology, but he had some very valid points.

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He said evangelism is cruel. All right? And here's what he said.

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He said, because, he says, picture Joe Pagan sitting in his house.

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He's got this nice house. He's all warm and toasty in his house. He says, and then you come, and with evangelism, you take the roof off the house and show him that he's exposed to sin.

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He says, well, you leave. He says, the roof doesn't go back on the house. Now he knows, and he's miserable, unless he comes to Christ.

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But that's exactly what evangelism does. Evangelism opens you up to the idea that you need a savior.

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Nothing can take the place of Christ in saving you.

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And that's a major point in salvation. If a person does not understand this, they may think they can earn their way to God.

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And Paul spends the entire third chapter refuting that point. We also see it in the

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Beatitudes. Now, I don't know, some of you may not have noticed this before. I want you to remember what the

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Sermon on the Mount is. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus instructing his disciples concerning how to live in the kingdom of God.

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There's some very poor teaching out there that has been around for 50 or more years that the

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Sermon on the Mount is reserved for a future generation after Christ returns premillennially.

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And that's what this is. That's the application of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the

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Mount is meant for you and I in this age on how should we live in the world.

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So that's what the Sermon on the Mount is. How does Jesus start the

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Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Now, I'm only going to use those first two.

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Not that the rest aren't valid, but these are the ones that I want to highlight.

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What is verse 3? Poverty in spirit. What is poverty in spirit? How is a person saved? You have to be shown that you are destitute in your spirit.

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You have nothing spiritually to present to God. If God comes to you and says you want to commit to my heaven, what do you got?

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What's in your hands? Nothing. You're poor in spirit. That's exactly what that's saying.

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What is your response when somebody shows you that you're empty handed?

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You can't get to heaven. You mourn. Without mourning, there's no heaven.

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If you don't mourn for your sin, because if you're not mourning for your sin, you're never going to confess it.

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You're never going to repent. You see how important this is? This is

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Martyn Lloyd -Jones again. You must be made miserable before you can know true Christian joy. It goes against the modern teaching, doesn't it?

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And then we wonder why are so many people spiritually depressed? They don't get it. Thomas Watson also recognized this important principle.

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I've mentioned Thomas Watson and his doctrine of repentance a number of times, so I'm finally going to pull the excerpt out.

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The doctrine of repentance, he explains the nature of true repentance, and notice how it's very similar to what we're looking at in the

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Beatitudes. He says repentance is spiritual medicine made up of six ingredients.

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First, the site of sin. You have to see yourself as a sinner. You have to see that the way you've been living your life is sinful.

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Second, you have to have sorrow for sin. Right back with the Beatitudes again, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn.

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If you're not sorry for your sin, you're never going to come to true repentance. Confession of sin, you have to confess it.

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You have to confess it to God. Shame for sin. Are you ashamed for what you've done?

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Now, this is especially relevant for people who have come to faith later in life, but even little ones because they're all sinners, all of us.

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You want to see an example of total depravity? Put two two -year -olds in a room and one toy.

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There's total depravity right there. All right. Then you have to have a hatred for sin.

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Can you actually say that you look back at your life prior to Christ, that you hated it, you hate what you did?

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And then, of course, the sixth, which is absolutely essential for repentance. In fact, repentance in the

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Greek literally means change of mind, so it's turning from your sin. Now let's get to the remedy.

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You have to have a right view of justification. You have to understand what it means to be justified.

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You have to see your sinful condition, and then you have to understand the righteousness of Jesus Christ because your justification is actually that two -part.

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What happened on the cross? Who was it who called it the great swap, the great exchange?

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Okay, what happened? Christ took our sin and gave us his righteousness. All right, so we have the sinful condition of man, the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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If you don't understand those, you're not going to have that assurance of salvation. The only remedy for man's sinful condition is the righteousness of Christ after your sin has been paid for.

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If a person is relying on anything but the righteousness of Jesus Christ, they will never come to a true conviction of sin and will never have the real joy of the

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Lord. You see how this is very, very basic. This is why doctrine is so important.

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Go to a church, and we've seen this over and over again. You start talking about doctrine, and I can't tell you.

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It's one of the reasons I don't go to pastor's meetings much anymore outside of those that are like -minded because you start talking about sin and things of that nature.

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We don't want to focus on that. We just want people to focus on the joy and then the good parts of salvation.

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Well, here's the problem. They're never going to be content. They're never going to have assurance.

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They're never going to have joy unless they understand how they were saved and that it can't be taken away from you because of the promises of God.

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And so you start talking. If they don't want to talk doctrine, what do you do? They're living up here in a mushy, gushy type of world where you can mold a scripture, make it say whatever you want it to say.

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Okay. Martin Lloyd -Jones again. The essential point is that the way to know yourself a sinner is not to compare yourself with other people.

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It's to come face -to -face with the law of God. And this is why, and this is another.

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I hope you're starting to see a pattern here. How many churches teach the law of God? Many churches say, will come boldly and say, the law of God is not for us today.

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We're only in, we're in grace. They've never read the book of Romans.

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Does grace nullify the law, Paul says? May it never be. It establishes the law.

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All right. The law is still extremely important for our salvation.

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We're not saved. In fact, actually we are. We're saved by the keeping of the law,

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Christ's keeping of the law. So the law is not irrelevant. So not merely to see if you violated specific sins in the

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Ten Commandments. I put that up there. Sometimes what we have to do is we start, if you start talking about the law of God and sinfulness, what do we do?

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We go to the Ten Commandments, which is not a bad thing to do. We go to the Ten Commandments and we start ticking them off.

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I haven't committed that one. I'm not doing too bad. I got, you know, five out of five is, you know, five out of ten isn't too bad.

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You know, all right. But ask yourself, have you violated the essence of the whole law?

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What do we mean by that? Remember what Jesus said? One of the lawyer asked him, what is the greatest commandment?

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And what did he say? Hear, O Israel, our Lord, our God is one. You shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. That's the essence of the law. Don't worry about going.

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You don't have to worry about going to the Ten and making the checklist. Just ask yourself, have you lived up to this?

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Because guess what? If you haven't, if you're not loving God with all your being, you're a sinner.

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Because that's a commandment. Jesus said that's the sum of the whole law, is loving him and then loving your neighbor.

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So the big question that must be answered is this, do you know God? Now, why would we say that?

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Because Jesus says that's eternal life. In that great high priestly prayer, John 17, 3, this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So it's not a question.

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There's no formula. Do you know God? Have you lived up to the whole law? Of course, the answer to this is no.

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Let's follow this thought through. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Do you live up to that?

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Then you're a sinner. If you have never realized your guilt or guiltiness before God, you will never have joy in Christ.

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It's impossible, says Lloyd -Jones. It takes the removal of sin and the imputation of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to justify the sinner.

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If people don't understand that, they will be susceptible to falling into spiritual depression because they're going to try to fix their

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Christian life in ways that are not biblical, and they're never going to get there.

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Only when a person understands this can they have real joy and happiness, and only then is their assurance of salvation because the sinner realized that it doesn't depend upon his works or his righteous actions.

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And then as Paul, the apostle, said, boasting is excluded. You must realize that in and of yourself you will never be good enough for heaven.

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It's amazing how many people think they have to be good to get to heaven. You don't have to be good to get to heaven.

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You have to be perfect, and that perfection only comes in Jesus Christ. If you think in any respect that you must become better to be saved, you will be depressed.

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It makes sense because there's a standard that you cannot attain. I want to quote

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Martin Lloyd -Jones one more time as we bring it to a close. He said, Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression?

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The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ.

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Never look back at your sins again. Say it is finished. It is covered by the blood of Christ. That is your first step.

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Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness and look to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying.

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No, just begin to say, I rest my faith on Him alone who died for my transgressions to atone.

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Now, he's not saying don't work out your sanctification. He's just talking about you have to make sure that you're not putting your sanctification as a co -equal with your justification.

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And then, it's kind of our theme song here at Hope, but look at it.

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My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust my sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.

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On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

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Great song, isn't it? Any questions? Yes?

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I was just thinking as you were going through how the Roman Catholic teachings of penance and purgatory and other things like that that you have to do to make up for the loss of your lack of being as good as the other person was.

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Yeah. Plays right into that. Sure. They must, I don't know how many of those people are depressed or if they think they can just go on Saturday.

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Have you ever heard of Catholic guilt? Never. They go to confession and everything is good.

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Until five minutes after confession. That's a long time. Yes, somebody.

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Hi. I see that hand. Oh, no. I think also in congruence with our conversation about the sorrow that produces joy also reminds me of Psalm 73 where Asaph is talking about how besides the guilt that leads to repentance is also like the struggle with the flesh that the other people in the world don't seem to have and it's so easy to look upon their lightheartedness and misperceive it.

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That's one of my favorite psalms, by the way. Yes? Do you think that spiritual depression is caused by a lack of knowledge between law and gospel?

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I would say that's another one. We're trying to do it systematically. There's a lot of different reasons for it.

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And the treatment isn't always the same either. But it's all going to come down. We can sum it up this way.

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It's all going to come down to faith, understanding what the

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Scripture says, and believing the promises of God. But it's helpful to break it down this way.

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Now, why would he say then that this is mostly for people who've grown up in the church?

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Because they hear the messages over and over again, and it goes right over their heads.

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You hit somebody, you know, somebody who has never darkened the door of a church, and he's hit rock bottom, and you go and you give him the good news.

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Firstly, you try to convince him he's a sinner. He says, I know I'm a sinner.

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You don't have to convince me of that. Whereas somebody who grows up in the church, they say, well,

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I've been a good girl, good boy my whole life. Even though they may have heard that everybody's a sinner, it's one thing to acknowledge that.

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It's another thing to really believe it. And a lot of people, especially in our society today, what are you being told?

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No, you're a good person. You know, there's nothing. Don't listen to anybody. You're a good person.

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You deserve everything that you want. All you deserve, you deserve these things.

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And if you can't get them, well, just pray to the federal government and they'll give them to you.

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Shouldn't I have said that? Yes. And also on that line, raised comfort starts off with the question, do you consider yourself a good person?

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Yeah. See, a person who has really hit the skids, you go and you tell, do you realize you're a sinner?

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Of course I'm a sinner. I know that. And then when you give them the good news that that sin can be taken care of, they embrace it with joy.

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Whereas somebody growing up in the church, it's almost like familiarity breeds content.

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You've heard that adage before. Okay. Yes.

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I think another contributing factor is, at least in my experience when growing up in a

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Christian home, you are basically hit with a lot of cliche

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Christian words and Christian needs. Oftentimes your parents might take for granted, for example.

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For me, I was always told I needed a personal relationship with Christ, but I had no idea what that meant.

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And it wasn't until I actually was being drawn by God and heard the gospel and started reading the word for myself that I understood that it was more than just something vague and abstract like that.

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This is the importance of teaching doctrine. Even some of the things

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I said today, the Bible says that you have to know God. What does that mean?

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There's 10 sermons. And what does it mean to know God? It's not by accident that J .I.

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Packer, in probably his most famous book, titled it Knowing God. He's got a whole book on it.

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Okay. In fact, he was at first several people criticized and said, well, why don't you write the book? Why don't you title it

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Loving God? He says, no, Knowing God. Go through it. Go to scripture and you'll see how important that phrase is.

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What does it mean to know God? Okay. Yes.

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I think that with the reformed faith, it's your sanctification is.

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It's so important that from before we came into the reformed faith, it was always

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I'm safe. I'm good. It doesn't matter what I do. I know

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I'm going to heaven. And the reformed faith makes you really meditate on what

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God has done. And it's just amazing. And it's it can't make

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I mean, it can make you depressed, but it can't. If you see what he's done for you, it's it's just absolutely such a difference with the old way.

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I used to think then going into the reformed faith. Sure. We'll leave it again in the prayer of Jesus in John 17.

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He says, sanctify them in the truth. And then how does he say thy word is true?

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You know, so and what does that mean? Teach doctrine. Maria.

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I was just going to respond to what Trish said in terms of like it's kind of that analogy with the milk versus meat, where it's like because there's so much incongruity in terms of who

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God is and actually knowing him in terms of sovereignty. Yes. That because I mean, it's just my hypothesis, because there's that blockage there, you can move on to more digestible pieces of scripture.