What's It Like to Leave Emotionalism? (w/ Chris Gordon) | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast is Part 3 of 3 of a conversation with our friend

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Chris Gordon, who is the pastor of Escondido United Reformed Church out on the West Coast and is also the host of Abounding Grace Radio.

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A few weeks back, John and I had the opportunity to spend some time recording a lot of content with Chris. And in today's portion of the conversation, we talk about what it's like leaving emotionalism and heading into confessionalism.

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It's quite a transition to make. There's a lot that can be said about it, but we've tried to highlight the differences between a context that's driven by emotionalism and your feelings, your fervor.

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Ultimately, it's about you versus a context that's all about Christ and what he's accomplished. There can be some confusion.

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There can be some moments of weightlessness and like, hey, what do I do now? Hopefully this conversation sheds some light on that and is clarifying for you and is encouraging to you as you think about what it might be like to be a part of a confessional church.

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Hope you enjoy the conversation. Stay tuned. We are excited to announce we have a brand new podcast available called the

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Kingsmen Podcast. It's where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work of the kingdom.

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You can find it anywhere you download a podcast. You can also watch it on YouTube. We have new episodes that come out every

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Monday. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and we hope pastoral perspective.

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Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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John, we have met again to podcast with the hopes of clarifying the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ for us, and reclaiming the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

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Today, we are happy to be able to offer to the listener part three of three of a really good conversation that we had with our friend

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Chris Gordon, who is the pastor of Escondido United Reformed Church out there in Escondido, California, and also the host of Abounding Grace Radio.

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If you're newer, you might not know all these things. If you've been listening, you'll know them. John and I recently, last month, were out in California for the

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West Cal conference at the seminary there, Westminster Seminary, California, and some other events that we were a part of with some other podcasts.

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We got to spend a good bit of time with Chris Gordon. We really enjoyed the fellowship with him. We were encouraged by a number of conversations that we had off air, and then we got to have a lengthy conversation with him in his study on a

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Sunday afternoon. We've released the first two portions of that conversation already. This is part three of three, as I said, and we're going to talk about, in part at least, what it's like to leave emotionalism.

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People are like, what are you guys talking about? John, help people understand. Yeah, it's a great convo.

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We're trying to have it from a pastoral perspective as we're watching. We, first of all, have, Justin and I, both perspectives coming from two different kinds of perspectives, but definitely emotionally involved as far as services are trying to get you into a certain mode so that you can experience

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God in a certain way. When you realize that doesn't work and you desire to leave that, but then you walk into a

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Reform context, it can be so different. Everything feels different and new. Some of it can be like, isn't this what the

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Catholic Church does? We help you process and think through from three different pastors, from three different perspectives, what it's like to go from an emotionally high -driven service to a confessionally

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Reform context. We talk about what it's like when you're walking into this for the first time, what's hard, what's confusing, but also what's really attractive.

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We talk, too, as pastors about concerns that we have for people that walk into a confessional church and maybe don't have categories for everything.

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I hope this is clarifying and helpful for you, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. It gets down to, even with the marrow controversy, two kinds of ministries.

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And we can talk about that. There's two kinds of ministries. There are those who want to put you back under the law for condemnation, and then there are those who want to set you free.

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I remember a dear friend years ago say to me, going to the ministry, Chris, preach the gospel, you'll set your people free.

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They should sense from me every week that I'm for them and that I don't want them to go to hell.

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I don't want them to perish. I'm their friend. I'm their pastor. I'm leading them to the waters.

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I'm leading to the shepherd. Water, by the way, that they'll drink without money and without pay. I mean,

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Jesus did say, hey, Peter, beat my sheep. That's what he said. Three times.

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Oh, goodness. Oh, I'm sorry. It's, it's interesting. The ones, the ones he beat were the preachers doing this.

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That's right. That's so true. Oh yeah. Paul. The ones he beat because this is a family radio program.

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I'm not going to describe you what Paul said about them, but he did describe very, uh, descriptive scribes and Ferris.

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I mean, just Matthew 23 is a diatribe against legal preachers who are completely hypocritical and not preaching

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Christ and receiving Christ. Yeah. Yeah, I could, we could, we could go in on the

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Merrill controversy, but maybe we'll just have you back on to do that. We've got like several other things on here that we haven't even touched on.

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It's fine. And we're already like an hour and 16. Amen. I've already determined this is at least three episodes.

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All right. So I'm just going down to the next bullet, Chris, because we're in Escondido mission of the church worship, or when it, when an evangelical shows up to a confessional church, where are we going?

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Let's talk this. Okay. The last one. The last one. Yeah. The last one. It sounds like the beginning to a joke when an evangelical shows up to a confessional church.

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Yeah. Oh, where do we start? You know, we've got a lot of good things going for us as, as those who, um, who preach the word of God, if you do this faithfully and you are given to preach the cross, you're going to stand out in this church culture in a crazy way.

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Um, people are going to come in and they're not going to know. Not because you want to. No, no, this is not, this is not in the, the, the, the sort of pain.

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We're not just a bunch of contrarians trying to be different. No, this is, we're saying steady, consistent means of grace, normal ministry.

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If you're doing that, you're going to, you're going to be, you're going to be different. That's right. You know, you're, you're going to stand out in a way because I've always said, you know, whatever is contemporary in the moment, there's always something that's coming along that is bigger and better.

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And then that is outdated. So, so the point is, is that, you know, whatever's cool today, tomorrow, uh, tomorrow is the traditional thing.

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We're so far down the line, you know, nobody's even recognized this stuff ever.

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If they've, if they're in the church, I like to say it's like pop tarts. You remember the old pop tart commercials? So, so hot.

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They're cool. So cool. They're hot. Like we're so old. It seems new. I think David Wells and what courage to be

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Protestant talked about, you know, organ stops. That's kind of what we feel like today. Organ stops. Anyway. So you get people coming in and my experience has been, and I'd love,

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I'd love to hear your guys perspective on that. My experience has been, they come into the church, they are just giddy.

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Oh man, that's the best thing I've ever heard in my life. We heard on Ligonier, you know, about a church and your reformed church.

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And we've heard about you guys and, you know, we had to come and, you know, we were just so tired about what was going on in our church.

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And so here we are. And then, you know, what typically happens, you know, and I've never learned my lesson.

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I don't learn my lesson, you know, but I want to minister. I want to minister to these people desperately.

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I, I, I really do. You know, um, I want to help them. I want to encourage them.

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I want to love them. But what tends to happen is because this is a high in the moment, it takes about two to three months and then they come down off the high.

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And then all of a sudden they're looking around and thinking, there's a lot about the reformed, the reformed church that I don't like.

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I, you know what, this feels very kind of rigid. The music's not very good.

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I was singing psalms. I'm not really getting up like I used to. Um, you know, I really want to get close to the pastor.

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That guy is really, you know, I'm used to that in evangelicalism. He's got influence. I got it. Yeah. He's the big name.

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I got to get there. Right. So, you know, all this comes down, it gets brought down to a normal level.

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It's like marriage. You know, you have your honeymoon and honeymoon's great. And then, you know, about, you know, a year down the road, you're back down to normal.

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And now that now the challenges come, well, it's the same thing. You know, you've got challenge, you've got theology, you got piety.

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We're not rocking out every week. So you wonder where's the emotionalism of it. You guys talked about emotions that are important.

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You know, you got piety, then you got practice. So you got these things that are so radically different in a reformed world.

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And all of a sudden they're looking around at the people, they're like, yeah, this really isn't doing it for me anymore. And then what?

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Well, you go back, you say, well, what brought you here to begin with? Was it the means of grace? All of a sudden that's back burner.

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That's not as important. All of a sudden I don't like the people. All of a sudden I don't like this about the church.

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And the experience is generally, it's some crazy thing that all of a sudden they're just gone and you don't even know why.

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And that's one scenario. There's good scenarios. Calvinists are always negative.

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That's one negative. So I got a lot of good scenarios. I got a lot of good ones we can go over. But that's one thing

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I think we've got to help people wrestle with coming into our world. If they don't understand it, we got to work slowly with them.

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I mean, my encouragement to you and obviously all of us, if you look at a shepherd's hands and he doesn't have scars from being bitten, he's not shepherding.

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Let's just be frank. He doesn't know his sheep. And so as we're feeding, not beating our sheep, as we're feeding them, it is hard.

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One of the things I've had that same experience and we want to shepherd them.

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We want to be patient with them, but they've been given a steady dine of emotionalism. I mean, this is out of the results of revivalism, but they're looking for that next emotional high.

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That's what they're wanting. And so they walk in there. We all like new things. Every time we buy a new car, it's like, there's this newness about it.

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And then all of a sudden that kind of dies a little bit. Or this happened to me the other day. I found this new restaurant and it's this fresh

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Vietnamese and it's amazing. I'm kind of over it now because I've had it like 10 times.

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And I'm like, that was cool. And now I'm done. But that's, they're being driven to have that emotional high and the steady, the steady diet of the word and of Christ and in his glory.

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It's hard to retrain that the people, the evangelicals who walk in and who have been burned by emotionalism, they're ready.

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And you have a church of these people. We have churches full of these people. Yeah. We were joking yesterday when we were hanging out about how the dead giveaway that you're not going to be last longer than a month, that I might not see you even next

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Sunday is when you are effusive at the back door. And you're telling me that this is the greatest thing

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I've ever heard. I've never heard Christ preach like this. Yeah. So, okay. Well, I, I, it was, it was, I'm glad you were here today in my mind.

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I'm like, glad you're here today. I I'm going to give it two, three Sundays tops. Yeah. You know,

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I mean, for me, the dead giveaway is they can't, they're asking me where they can serve. Yeah. And I'm like, you clearly don't know.

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Maybe this is our, maybe this is our, our cynicism, cynicism, a little bit of that.

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We all have it, but it's true. You get a little jaded. You do get a little jaded. You can, which is why this is important.

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I'll say this, man. I do think that if we want to talk in a good, a good comment, and then I want to pick back up on something you said,

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John, I do think I'm sure you get this, Chris. I know that he does. I know that we do in our context, when many evangelicals show up their reaction, the thing that struck them most about the service, the whole thing was that guys, this was almost exclusively about Jesus today.

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Thank you. And, and honestly, when people come from, and I know the context they're coming from, maybe they've come from a more of a

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Calvinistic evangelical context where I came from or whatever. And their reaction is, man, this was

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Jesus today. Yeah. I'm like, well, I, we might get some stuff wrong, but I I'm happy to receive that at the back door.

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Now, I think the subjectivizing of religion, which hails from pietism and revivalism, right?

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Both of those theological streams of thought, movements, methodologies, whatever, those both represent and often come together in America, right?

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Let's, let's be frank. I mean, evangelicalism is a pietistic and revivalistic movement. Yeah. Those both together, it's a terrible concoction of the subjectivizing of religion where it becomes about our own personal experience and our own personal experience of the divine, our own, our conversion moment, transformation of life thereafter, our own personal fervor, discipline, you fill in the blanks.

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Right. And that's what most evangelicals have. That's all they've ever known. Right. And so then, yeah, when they come into a confessional context and you're talking about a reformed theology, piety, and practice, once you get over that initial high of like, man, this was

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Christ for me, then what else is there? If I'm so used to something that is subjective and it's about my experience of it, then

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I think this is part of the challenge of being a confessional pastor is to help people think well about this.

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And there's a narcissism, there's a detox of narcissism that needs to happen.

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And that's we're all narcissists. Can I just say sometimes it's not their fault. That's how they've been trained.

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Exactly. And so we've got, I always say if they're willing to walk with us, I'm going to be there for them. And the church, we encourage the leadership to minister to them.

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It can't rest on the pastor. They've had enough of that. But yeah, I think also though there has to be realistic expectations that, you know, and when we're talking about third use, you know, when

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Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, you know, there has to be in primary emphases and in primary importance, a realization and coming into the church that I, you know, what did

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Peter say? I'll wash your feet. No, no. Um, you know, you guys have been through this. It's such an important passage.

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You know, Peter, Peter had the hardest time submitting. You have no place in my kingdom if I don't wash your feet. So, so Jesus is putting out his hand to wash feet every

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Sunday. And when you say, when you say, you know, I'm kind of like my feet are clean and now

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I don't want to go out and wash the feet of those next to me. Whoa. Okay. Wait a minute. The application of that was after he had been washed was to go out and love your neighbor.

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And, and so there's a sacrificial mindset that has to follow after you come down the high.

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But every week, it's not a high every week you're coming to be washed from the filthiness of your own sin.

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That's what you need every Sunday. And that's what your neighbor needs. And that's why you got to go.

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But see, if you're narcissistic and you've been trained, like you said, John, evangelicalism, it's just, it's all about me.

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What do I get? What do I want? Um, what's going to make me happy? You know, what's in it for me today? You're never going to think sacrificially, but I always tell people,

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I'll let you go. But I always tell people, listen, if you have this gift of love and you have this great gift of being a good church member, and God's given you the gift of community,

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God's given you the gift of like doing those things. When you run off, what did you just do to your gift?

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This is, you'll never be happy wherever you go. You'll never be happy wherever you go, because there has to be first a coming back.

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Like we've been talking about on this, the show, putting our own feet in the feet of Jesus. Yeah. Well, in the

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John 13 reference is beautiful, man. I mean, everything you said about, I couldn't agree more. Everything you said about Peter and how does that chapter end?

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It's, it's Christ telling them that the world's going to know you by how you love each other. Yeah.

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Right. Yeah. Love. Yeah. And that's the world will know you're my disciple. That's significant t -shirts.

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Something though that, so I agree with you on the narcissism bit for many evangelicals, but there's also a stream of serious minded evangelicalism where the emphasis is often this.

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I come to church and I participate in church to glorify God. To which we would say, amen.

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Right now. But the question then is how are you going to do that? That's right. And that you touched on this already.

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We come to corporate worship even when we say that God is glorified in our worship of him.

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That's a true thing. I would ask how is that the case? Because many evangelicals think they might not ever say it this way because it sounds arrogant, but deep down we're kind of conditioned to think this way, that if we come with the right posture, with the right motivation, with the right amount of seriousness, and I've prepared myself for this,

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I'm going to come and I'm going to worship God so that he's glorified. I mean, translate that. That's basically,

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I'm coming to give something to God. Yeah. When in reality, I know we all agree when we come to corporate worship or it's a service.

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I don't know if people have ever thought about that. Why is it called the divine service? We come actually to receive from the ministry of Christ and that glorifies

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God tremendously because we come in, no confidence in the flesh, no confidence in ourselves, casting ourselves completely upon the mercy of God in Christ.

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He's all we've got. I mean, that is our song. You go, there it is. What was it, John? I don't know, something.

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What was the Baptist line? There's a lot. Come on now. There it is. All right. See, I'm not practicing.

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It's all like one word though. It's all one word. It's like, come on. So Chris, I think it's all of this.

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I think there's a lot of recalibration that has to happen. And also the word experience, to say that corporate worship is an experience is not a wrong or bad thing to say.

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Man, you experienced Christ. There is an experience. Exactly. And this is what the means of grace are about.

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This is why you can't go to church online. This is why you can't replicate this stuff, right? Because the spirit of God shows up.

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God has promised to be with us in unique ways. And he ministers to us through the word and the table and prayer and song.

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And it's in the context of the gathered church. There's a reason why when we're together, it's unique. Yeah. Special.

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Yeah. I think this is to any pastor who's listening, my encouragement to you is that it is our responsibility to train these pastor, to train these evangelicals as they're coming in, that this is new.

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I mean, you are literally pulling them out of a country and putting them into a new culture. And so like in our context, every

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Sunday I stand up, I explain what a call to worship is. Yeah, that's good. I think

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I'm in a more like, I look at my church and think they know all this, but that's really a good reminder. Yeah. So really.

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Yeah. I explained to them why we do a prayer of confession. James five says, confess your sins to one another. Right. I explained to them why we preach the word.

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So, and the reason of that is, is that we do have a lot of evangelicals that come in there. And I talk to people on their way out and they're like, pastor, thank you for taking the time to walk me through what we do.

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So my encouragement to all of you who are like, why aren't they getting it? Well, maybe you need to take the time to teach. Well, and we do something similar, similar in our context.

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We, we have a man, one of, so there's an elder that's preaching the word. And then there's an elder that leads the service in our context.

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I mean, this is, you know, for us in our polities, this is a wisdom call, right? But that elder that's leading the service for us, he's shepherding the congregation through the elements so that there there's, because there's an intentionality to the order of service in the liturgy and how it's planned.

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Right. Yeah. And there's a lot of work and effort that goes into that. And so then that elder is going to lead us through this to help us better understand why we're doing what we're doing and helping us to connect theologically, spiritually, what in the world's going on.

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Right. Yeah. Right. That would be my one encouragement to the reform churches. Well, but, but you are probably right,

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Chris, that, that many of your people are catechized this way. Uh, my assumption there, but not the new, my assumption about our people in service leading or preaching is that they are intelligent, but that they're uneducated.

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That's right. They're, they're uninformed. Sure. Don't speak down to them. And like you said, patience is key. Brief word on that.

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I mean, this is not what we're talking about. I think we all overestimate grossly what can be done in the short term. And we underestimate grossly what can be done with, with, and through gentleness in the long term, gentleness and patience as a pastor.

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Maybe we all strive for that. We clearly have more to talk about.

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Yeah. I mean, we, let's keep going. Chris said he's got, Chris said he's got a little bit of time. Let's do a few more minutes. What else do we want to talk about?

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How about, how about five more minutes? Okay. And five probably means 15, but anyway.

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All right. Cause I'm yeah, go for it. I don't know. What do you guys want to hit? I want to talk about. Oh yeah.

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Let's do it. I mean, you wrote, you wrote on this. Can we talk to you? I mean, we have to do a whole episode. I think we can interview you on that.

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We're going to interview. We're a mission of the church. We've been talking about worship a little bit, but okay. There's a mission of the church cause

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I'm super passionate about that. Yeah. Okay. Let's do it. All right. So this is something I've been doing a lot of thinking about and contemplating on specifically when

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Jesus says to his disciples, he says, um, blank this. So like fill in the blank, fill in the blank, right?

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Seek ye first the right. What, what does he say? Right. He says the kingdom of God, right?

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What I think is interesting is that I asked this, uh, I kind of gave it away already, but, uh, Jesus does this miracle.

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They're pressing in on him and he says, Oh no, no, you got to have to let me go because I have to be about the work of my father. I have to proclaim his good news.

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Do you know what he says next? The good news of the kingdom. That's right. What is so disheartening about the mission of the church, the mission of the church becomes cultural transformation.

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The mission of the church becomes big. Like let's just get very broad, right? Uh, it becomes,

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I mean, there's so many things that when you look at, there's a lot of good churches out there. And I'm going to say this now that it's a brilliant tactic of, of, of the, the great deceiver is that there's these people who have good hearts and they really are followers of Christ and they really want to do what's right, but they have all of their focus and attention going towards something that is temporal and not what

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God had said. Right? So when we think about seeking first the kingdom of God, because I think the church has lost its sight of what we're doing.

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We don't even know how to answer that. Like what does that even mean? And it's, if you understand when

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Christ describes his kingdom, the nature of his kingdom of what's happening, churches are the outposts, right?

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They're the embassies. So we gather to be fed and to be cared for and to be loved and to be building up one another so that we can take the light of the kingdom into the kingdom of darkness.

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That is its mission. Building up at saints. Now I'll tell you right now, most evangelical churches, they have flipped it.

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No, no, no. Let's bring the kingdom of darkness in so that we can convert them. That's not the purpose of the church.

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Purpose of the church is to equip, build up, care for, care for each other's burdens, proclaim

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Christ so that I always say this to husbands who are struggling with their wives. I said, you know what

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Christ says to you as his disciples, the world will know that you're my disciple by the love you have for one another.

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Do you know that means your wife, how you love your wife is a reflection to the world that you're a part of his kingdom.

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Yeah. I mean, we're trying to go out first things first. You mentioned sort of transformational ideals.

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You know, we're trying to go out and transform culture. Show me where, where we have seen that work and what have been the fruits.

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And we go back to the Netherlands, we can go to certain pockets of the us, you know, Iowa and Michigan and see how that's going.

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For those who claim that mission, you know, I think this is the perennial problem that Jesus dealt with in Luke 17, you know, the

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Pharisees come to him and say, when will the kingdom of God come?

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You know, he says, isn't this interesting though?

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It's so important. The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed.

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Are you guys, is everyone listening to this? You cannot point to and say, it's there, it's there, it's here.

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Some great thing, institution to say, there's that. Now you can look at the church and see as the

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Westminster says that the church is the visible kingdom. That's right. Right. But, but the point is he's not talking there.

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He's talking about the culture won't point out. Right. He's talking about the mentality and of those in the church who want to see it happen in the culture.

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Right. And he says, and they will say to you, look there or look here.

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So here's the kingdom here. It is over here. Do not go out or follow them. But it's this statement that always got me first 22 of Luke 17.

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And he said to the disciples, the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the son of man and will not see it.

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He says, in the context of the kingdom, there's going to come a time where you guys will so desperately want the coming of the kingdom to see

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Jesus and his power, because things are so dark. You're going to live for that.

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You're going to be confused about that. You're not going to see it. Where is the kingdom? What did he say among you?

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He says, look here, he says there, no, for the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. It's, it's, it's, it's in you.

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Yeah. It's right. And so, you know, when this, this is John three, you know, um, we testify what we've known and what we've seen.

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We've seen the kingdom of God. We've seen it in those who believe the gospel. That's where we've seen the power of the kingdom of God.

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That's not exciting. But it is to me when I think about it, like, all right, good night.

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So Christ, Christ drops in and ascends to us. Right. And he starts building his disciples.

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And what's interesting is that he says, guess what guys, your sojourners, your aliens, this is not your home.

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And what are we doing? Our major, our major job is to create the factors, the kingdom of darkness.

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We're going in and we're sniping them out. And how are we doing it? We're doing it with a message because when he comes back, then his kingdom is going to be brought.

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But right now there isn't this global, massive transformation where the whole world would go, wow, this is Jesus kingdom.

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They're going to ignore it. So if we lose sight of the very thing that Jesus is saying, stop looking for the visible transformation, it's a spiritual transformation, right?

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Jesus, John 18, other places before pilot. And he's pretty clear. My kingdom's not of this world.

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Yeah. That doesn't sound like Christian nationalism to me. You know, it doesn't sound like a lot of the stuff we, theonomy.

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I can go on, but do you want to say something real quick? Oh, I always want to say something. You're always three pastors, man.

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I got something after you. Okay. Just a few thoughts here, guys. Right. So his kingdom is not others of this world.

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I would go and say something that's going to sound maybe offensive to some, what is the mission of the church? Like if we're going to define it narrowly, but appropriately, it's the right preaching of the word of God and the right administration of the sacraments for the salvation of God's elect.

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That's right. Right. And yeah, we're, what are we doing? I mean, obviously Ephesians four kind of stuff.

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I mean, the, the, the corporate gathering is for the sake of the building up of the body. And then we are equipped to do the work of ministry.

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It, we come to receive and to rest so that we might then go love and do. And so that we might go and love neighbor and do all these things.

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And I, I trust we're going to be inviting people in to taste and see that the Lord is good and to taste and see, and that Christ is a savior, right?

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I mean, this is what we're doing. And then I think that confessional theology gets this right, that we're not activists and crusaders.

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Nope. We're pilgrims. We're sojourners. We're exiles in this land. We've been promised a homeland.

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Yeah. We're not there yet. So I preached today. Yeah, that's right. And Hebrews 11, 13 to 16. We were amen.

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And from the back, those verses are as dear to me. Right. So, right. But it's good that we remember this perspective because as pastors, this matters, right?

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Yeah. We've got, we've got sojourners and pilgrims and exiles in the church and we've been promised a homeland, but we're not there yet.

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And between here and there, we face thousands of spiritual dangers. There's trial and temptation on every side.

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And what do we need? We need nourishment and sustenance and protection. That's what the ministry of the church is for.

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I'm preaching through Joshua. And we're bringing people into that. I'm preaching through Joshua right now. And that is the great commission in the old

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Testament. You know what that commission was? Go wipe them out. Yeah.

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Conquer. Take up your sword. And conquer the land. And go chop off heads in Joshua 10, put the king's necks on,

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I'm going to put my feet on their necks right now. Purifying the nation. It's over. And then he hangs them. So, you know, by Joshua 10, the whole

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Southern, you know, conquest of Canaan is done. If you look at that and then you take it to the new covenant, the mission of the new covenant is not go out and destroy.

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I've come to save, seeking to save that which is lost. It's the great reverse.

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It's the shocking news of history that the great plan of Abraham to the nations, that all the nations of the earth, sand of the seashore, that in the old covenant, this is what we all deserved to be wiped out.

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You were alienated from God. You were without hope and without God in the world, but in the cross, he reversed everything and said to the nations, go out and Peter, put down the sword, put it down.

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You're not chopping off ears. I want you to save. And so that great commission, we can study

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Joshua and see that. And you already see glimmerings of it with Rahab and the Gibeonites coming in. And the point is, is that we have to remember what the mission is, right?

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In this regard, we're fulfilling and we're looking at the nations coming in under Christ. They're going under his feet.

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The judgment will happen soon enough. Theonomists want to bring in that judgment now. We want to say,

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I don't want to really, I mean, we want the purification, we want righteousness, but you know what?

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Am I asking God to bring down fire from heaven on my enemies right now? Or am I wanting to say,

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Lord, save them? Amen. Well, and even just a brief typological observation before you go with Joshua.

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I mean, you're preaching through it right now. I'm not, but I still feel safe in saying this. I mean, understood redemptive historically, typologically, right?

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I mean, even in that conquest, I mean, God is demonstrating that he will conquer all of his people's enemies, right?

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And he will give to his people a land, right? Yeah. And in the Eschaton, in the new heavens, new earth, all enemies will be purged off the land.

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But we're not there yet. Just for the dear listener out there, if you don't know this already, anytime you hear

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Canaan, think new heavens and new earth. So I just want to read this. We're talking about the purpose of the church.

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So this is Paul training Timothy to how to train his church. He says this in second Timothy chapter two, verse one, you then my children be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ.

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And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust the faithful men who will be able to teach others also share in suffering as good soldiers of Christ Jesus.

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I just want to point out here. The purpose of the church is to have a battle mentality. We are in a war to proclaim the kingdom of light to the kingdom of darkness.

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And the warriors of the kingdom of darkness don't want that to happen. So Paul then says this, no share in suffering as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.

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No soldier entangles in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

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My goodness. When I hear preaching and evangelical churches, the mission of the lost. And it's all about entanglement.

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How do we miss that verse? I don't know. I mean, it's almost like that first can't really say what it says. Cause it's so clear.

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Are you serious? No, I didn't just say that we don't entangle ourselves. Like we've said this before.

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And John, you've made this observation. I know many times. And I agree. What's sad is where Paul writes in these terms, but when you collapse the law and the gospel and you pound people with law all the time, you got people in a war and they don't even know for sure that they're on the right side.

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It's like, you're going to ask them to go out and be soldiers for Christ when they don't even know if Christ is their savior, because you've caused them to doubt whether or not they could ever be his.

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Yeah. The purpose of the church is to cause that doubt. Well, we're saying, no, the purpose of the church is to ensure the soldier, you're safe, you're good.

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Now go in love. So, you know, the popular writer said, go out and slay dragons. Maybe we need to say, go out and save dragons.

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I mean, at the end of the day, I should want the most wicked, notorious center to come to the feet of Christ, not to be crushed, but to be forgiven.

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And then I'm really tested about what I think of myself. I'm really tested about what I believe about my own sin and what

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I need as the chief of sinners. That's all I have to you. Yeah. One more and then you'll let you wrap it up.

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I've been comforted lately reading some Charles Spurgeon. I've come to, I think, a greater appreciation of him, even of late.

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He said something to this effect that, you know, I love to be near a sinner's savior.

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And he says, and Christ is that. He is a sinner's savior. And he did, like we said, he came to seek and to save the lost.

34:53

Amen. Amen. Well, all right. We hope that you enjoyed that conversation. Part three of three with Chris Gordon.

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Again, grateful for him and thankful for his time. Before we pivot and transition over to Semper Reformanda, which

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I'll explain more in just a minute. John, give the people what they're here for. They love your announcements, man. For sure.

35:10

Give them a few. Yeah. If you're new and you kind of like Theocast, we have some fun merch. We haven't talked about it in a while, but we have some

35:15

Trust Christ and Calm Down hats and mugs and shirts and no hats for that. But we have Theocast hats. Sometimes you see

35:21

Justin wearing them. He's wearing one right now. He's got a Theocast shirt on. But if you want to get some of that, you can. The other thing that's big and I want to announce is a lot of times people ask us, where is there a good church in our area?

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And we're starting to collect those. So you go to our website and we're collecting where good churches are located.

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Collecting data. Data on them. That's right. So if you're in a great confessional reform church, there's a form you can fill out.

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If you're looking for one, that church database is continuing to grow. We try our best to put in churches that are like -minded with Theocast, but obviously we're not able to vet every number one of them.

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So if you find one that's not necessarily aligned with us, please let us know. But that resource is there. The faster it grows, the more people will help.

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Just wanted to point that out. We haven't really talked about it in a while. So Theocast Church Finder, go utilize it, and hopefully you'll be able to find a good confessional reform church in your area.

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So now, as promised, John and I are going to go and record a second podcast that we do each week called

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Semper Reformanda. Semper Reformanda is the name of, effectively, another ministry. The podcast we're about to record is a part of it, and this is for the people that have partnered with Theocast and partner with us each month financially and are seeking to help us spread this message of rest in Christ and of His sufficiency as far and wide as possible.

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There's a number of things that come along with your partnership with us. This podcast is one of those, but you also get access to an app.

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It's a growing community of people that are processing the same things you are. We get in there. It's like Facebook, but without all the terrible.

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You get to ask questions and engage with people that are hopefully going to be pointing you to Christ and helpful resources.

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We would commend this community to you. We're encouraged by how the Lord's growing it. I know I'm encouraged by you all who are a part of it.

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If you want more information about Semper Reformanda, you can find all that over at the website Theocast .org. You are bright and intelligent people and know how to work a website.

37:11

We'll leave that to you. John and I are going to go have another conversation as we continue to think on this stuff about transitioning out of emotionalism into a more confessional context.