From Death to Comfort (Ezekiel 36-37) | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are going to talk about the fact that God is the one who saves sinners.

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And by that we mean He does all of the work of salvation from the very beginning, all the way to the very end.

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In other words, God is the one who will bring us all the way home. And we're going to think about this from the book of Ezekiel, particularly

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Ezekiel chapters 36 and 37, where God speaks about what He will do, and where He talks about things like stones and bones that are very, very dry, and how those things relate to us, and how they demonstrate and depict beautifully

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His powerful work in salvation. So we hope that as you listen to this episode today, you are encouraged and that your souls are comforted as you think about what

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God has done for you in the Lord Jesus Christ. Stay tuned. We're 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 pastoral perspective.

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And if you're not sure what all that means, simply put, we're hoping to clarify the gospel and to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

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Has it sure been lost? Well, there that is. Obscured. Obscured is also a good word.

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Obscured. Yeah, a lot of clutter on top of those things in terms of the gospel and also the mission of the church.

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And the redemptive kingdom of Christ and all those good things. Before we go on too long without introducing ourselves, that would be just inappropriate.

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Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And I am

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. John, it's good to be with you today, man, on a rainy

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Wednesday in both of our worlds, I believe. We're going to talk about the scriptures today, which is good.

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I don't know that I've got a lot in terms of my own emotional bandwidth to bring. And so it's always good to look to the book and talk about what the

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Lord has said, my man. And you're going to tee that up for us in just a minute. But do you have any of your handy -dandy, fun, little flashy announcements that everybody loves?

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We did a T -shirt phrase. I always have to be careful when you say T -shirt contest, right?

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So we picked your phrase and then we're going to put it on a T -shirt. And yeah,

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I think that's coming out soon. So it was fun. You guys had some great ideas. We had tons of suggestions and we picked the top five.

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And out of that, we're putting together a design. And by now it should be out and you could go buy it on our website.

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So how about that? So we're going to do that. It was fun. And then the new podcast

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Kingsman is out. And then I have a podcast. I'm pretty sure it's out by now that we started with my wife.

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And it's really designed for our church, but it might be beneficial for you. It's called Outside Eden. And it's a podcast where my wife and I talk for about 15 to 20 minutes about just life from outside the garden.

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So two fallen sinners who are trying to figure out how to love each other in marriage and then parent other sinners.

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So real conversations. And so you can go to our website and find that and listen to those.

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Sinners everywhere, man. Yeah, sinners everywhere. So, yeah,

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I'm excited about today's topic because one, I just preached it and this happens a lot,

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Justin and I. Well, next week's podcast is going to be related to something that Justin's preaching. And it's just what's on our hearts.

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And they're both kind of related to one another, as the Lord would have it. Yeah. It's as though God's word is one cohesive whole, but anyway.

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It's like we're preachers of Jesus or something. And so they're always going to be connected. Like there's one divine author and things like that.

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I did listen to our episode from Ken Jones today. It's live. And, man, he's so great.

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I love listening to him. It was so encouraging. If you haven't heard that one, you should go listen to it. All right, we're wasting time.

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We're not wasting. We're losing time. So today's episode is going to be from Ezekiel 36 and 37.

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And what's fascinating about the book of Ezekiel. So here's about a 10 second flyby, right? You have

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Ezekiel is preparing to be a priest. God calls him out and says, you're going to be a prophet.

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And so he is then in exile, is in Babylon. And he keeps having these visions between Jerusalem and Babylon.

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And he's been his whole life experience is to be. He's basically an actor.

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He has to go and do all these different acts to try and show Israel their sin. And when you finally get to Ezekiel chapter 36, it's been just a downhill ride.

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It's just bad. And in chapter 35, they get the news. The temple is destroyed.

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The city is collapsed. There's nothing left for Israel. They're divided.

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They're scattered all over the world now. And that's hopelessness, utter hopelessness.

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And that's where you pick up in chapter 36. And what's amazing about chapter 36 is that Jesus, I mean,

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Jesus, it is Jesus, but God has this section that he gives to Ezekiel.

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And he makes it very clear. He says, it's not for your sake, but for my namesake.

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In other words, for the reputation of who I am, because I made a promise called the covenant of grace.

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I made a promise I would do this. And he says it at the beginning and he says it at the end of the section.

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And he keeps saying, not because of what you have done. In other words, everything they had done up to this point, the way he describes it is, it's really, it's very graphic.

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Like if there's children listening to this, I can't really read it. But if you go and read Ezekiel 35 and 37.

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And there are other chapters in Ezekiel that are also quite graphic. Yeah. Hey, I'll just throw this out there. When God talks about metaphorically entering into a marriage relationship with Israel, the ways in which that he identifies her as his own, she puts a ring in her nose.

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Just saying. So for those of you that want to go from a ring on the finger to a ring in the nose, totally biblical. That's what

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God did to his bride. There you have it. You heard it here first. Let's just keep going.

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So what's interesting is that we're not going to read all of Ezekiel 36, but we're going to just look at a section of the scriptures there.

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And when you look at it, it's really broken down into four sections.

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And then we're going to hop over to chapter 37. But here's where I want to start us is that Justin and I were having this conversation beforehand.

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And as I had time to study for this, what became overwhelming to me was how

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God was trying to use in multiple illustrations, how horrendous our situation really was.

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And that at times when people think about their prior state before salvation, we somehow always connect the spiritual world with the physical world.

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And so we assume we're alive intellectually. So therefore I was alive spiritually. I was just confused or lost.

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I was wandering and now I found my way to God. And that's just not how he describes the relationship between us and himself.

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And he uses Israel as an illustration of our situation, right?

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So we know that Paul says, the law came to us, Romans 7, the law came to us to show us sin. He goes,

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I didn't know what coveting was until the law told me what coveting was. And so the law is there. Israel has been under the law and they have failed horribly.

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Not only have they failed, but they failed to the point to where they could go get their sins cleansed temporarily and be in the presence of God and his blessings is now destroyed.

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And by that you mean the temple complex, the sacrificial system. Yes, sacrificial system. So their physical and spiritual situation is at the absolute worst it could possibly be.

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And then God comes to Ezekiel and says, all right, this is what I want you to prophesy to them. So this is Ezekiel 36, and we'll just start in verse 24.

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And Justin, I'm just going to come out of the gates with some clarity here. We get very confused in the new

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Testament at times with the word repent and repentance, right? That one must repent in order to be saved.

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Well, I want you to take very close notice here that God is the one who's doing the repenting here. Sorry. He is repenting us is how

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I would describe this. Listen to Ezekiel 36, 24. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

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So first of all, it's the nation of Israel because of the disobedience have been scattered. They're away.

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So the first act of God is he brings them to himself. Second act, he cleanses us.

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This is Ezekiel 36, 25. I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness and from all your idols,

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I will cleanse you. And this is a metaphor Israel would have understood because in order for them to be in the presence of God, they had to have ceremonial cleansing.

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That's right. To which we understand later on, this is the blood of Christ, which we will learn of.

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And then you go from, he cleanses us to then he awakens us or he implants faith in us.

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Look at verse 36. This is, I'm sorry, 26. This is the big one, right? This is the verse everybody loves.

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And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

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What a picture from God. He is saying the capacity to love and to believe, to have affection towards me.

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What was inside of you was a rock that couldn't do it. Justin, can you get any more dead than a stone?

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No. We've said it before. There's not deader than dead. There's not harder than stone.

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And yeah, the Lord's pretty clear. Right. So what's great about this, 1 John 4 and 9, we love because he first loved us.

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It was his love, John 3, it was his love that caused this action. The I will statements are all driven by his love.

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So God isn't responding to our love or to our repentance or to our cleansing. Sometimes people say unless you make

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Jesus Lord of your life, which means you're turning from making something else Lord and making Jesus Lord, you cannot be saved.

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Well, no, that has to be God. So he repents us. He cleanses us. And then he gives us faith.

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He gives us the capacity to really believe and love. And then lastly, the thing that we often want to take credit for, he empowers us with his spirit.

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This is verse 27. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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So, Justin, even our obedience, which we would say the word monergistic, if you don't know that word, monergism, well, let's just do this.

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Justin, tell them the difference between monergism and synergism. Monergism means there's one worker, mono, one, ergo, work.

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And then synergism means that there's multiple workers. So it's a cooperative effort. In other words, to be a monergist means that we believe that God is the one worker in salvation.

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To be a synergist means that we cooperate with God in our salvation. Laying our cards on the table, our understanding from Ezekiel 36, and of course the entirety of Scripture, is that God is the one who saves sinners.

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And we mean that holistically. He is the worker from beginning to end. He begins it and he brings us all the way home.

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Justin Perdue That's right. And so it's important that when he says, I will put my spirit within you, the driving factor and cause of your change of heart and change of mind and then obedience to the law is always

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God in his working. So when you look at it, every area that was handed to them, which is a covenant of works, the law was handed to them and said, if you obey the law, then you will live.

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They've proven that not one of them could do this. And so when you're introduced, God finally comes in at the moment of their disaster and instead of crossing his arms and saying, see,

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I told you, you couldn't do it. That's when his mercy comes in. This is why I think it's so important. I don't think you should hear this in a judgment term.

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I think you should hear this more in a, hey, just to remind you in the future when you have the tendency to want to think that somehow we entered into this relationship based upon something you did.

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This is Ezekiel 36, 32. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord. Let that be known to you.

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Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. He's saying, remember that my act of mercy is just that.

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It's an act of mercy and love and kindness. You should remember where you were when this comes to you.

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I think that's such a healthy reminder. Justin, what do we do every Sunday at church? We give people the law in its full and heavy weight so that they are confounded.

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I love how that word, it says ashamed and confounded. Remember that.

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Yeah, because you've touched on it. I'll just go ahead and double down. Romans 3 .20,

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through the law comes knowledge of sin. Romans 5 .20 is also the law came in to increase the trespass.

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Now, that's particularly pertaining to the trespass of Adam. We may talk about that more even next week. But then also

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Romans 7 .13, you already mentioned that the commandment was given so that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment be made to be sinful beyond measure.

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Galatians 3 .19, the law was given because of transgressions. The point there is that God's law is given through Moses to show us how utterly unable we are to do what

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God requires. Israel had learned this lesson. Things, as you said, I think well in your summary, your synopsis, everything's really bad to the extent that not only have they been literally driven out of the land that God gave them, the land of Canaan, and they're now under foreign rule and oppression, and the temple has been destroyed, which, as you said, was the place where they could go to find ceremonial cleansing and to be ceremonially clean in God's eyes.

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That's no longer a possibility for them. In other words, everything's lost. It's utterly hopeless, can't get much worse from the perspective of the covenant people of Israel, and then the

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Lord steps in and makes it quite plain how this thing goes and who the one is that does the work of saving.

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I'm listening to you talk, and I'm looking at verses 24 to 28 of Ezekiel 36. Very encouraging.

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Like you said, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. So God is the one who does it.

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He's the one who goes and gets. He's the one who repents, like you said. Whenever we see this language of the land,

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I know we've said this before, but people need to immediately be thinking of New Heavens and New Earth language. This is salvific language.

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He's going to confirm that in the next chapter. I don't want to steal our thunder here. It's salvific in scope.

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I think the observation must be made that, yes, the people return to the land under Ezra and Nehemiah and all that kind of stuff, but it's never the boundaries of the land as prophesied by some of the prophets that will expand.

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That never occurs in an earthly sense. There's a lot of things that are prophesied about Israel returning into the land and what that will be like that do not happen in time and space.

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That's right. And so it's clearly an eschatological, redemptive New Heavens and New Earth scope to this thing.

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But then verse 25, like you said, there's cleansing, and that's where we might even point to justification, that our sins are cleansed by the blood of Christ, that we have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the

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Lamb. That kind of language. And then I'll give you a new heart, and I'm going to put my spirit within you.

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So this regeneration and a new life that we have, and I'm going to put my spirit in you to cause you to walk in my statutes.

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Obedience, that's clear sanctification. Verse 28, you will dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I'll be your

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God. Lest we question whether glorification and final salvation are in view. I think it clearly is.

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He's going to do it all. And it's an encouraging word. I'll just go ahead and say this now, because I think sadly whenever people consider the sovereignty of God and salvation, immediately the conversation always devolves into this argument over fairness and doctrines of election and predestination and reprobation and all this kind of stuff.

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And that's fine. I'm not saying there isn't a time and a place for that conversation. But we first and foremost when it comes to this topic should be greatly encouraged because whenever we see imagery of stones and dead things like bones that are dry and all that kind of stuff, we should see ourselves there and realize that we were unwilling and unable utterly to do anything about our condition and that we're helpless.

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We were weak and we were God's enemies. Nothing's good. There's nothing good at all.

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And God is the one who comes in and says, in one sense, it's okay because I'm the one who's going to do this. I'm the one who promised it long ago, and I'm the one who's going to make good on the promise to save people through the promised offspring of Eve.

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And so let this encourage your soul that you didn't contribute anything.

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There was nothing special about you, and you are not decisively contributing anything today. It is God who keeps you.

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It is God who sanctifies you, and it is God who will bring you home because Christ is your intercessor and your advocate.

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That's right. Now, sometimes there's a confusion here in Ezekiel 36. He's kind of using a metaphor of the heart and stone.

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We're not really dead. It's hard to believe. God's got to soften us up. But once he softens us up, then we meet him kind of halfway through faith.

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There's just no way you can come to that conclusion. But if you want to try to, God goes, okay,

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Ezekiel, I got something else for you. So he transports him into this vision out in the desert. Okay, chapter 37.

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And what he says to him is, he says here, we will just start in verse 3.

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And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? So first of all, I love how he describes them.

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Verse 2, Ezekiel 37. And he led me around among them. And behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley.

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And behold, they were very dry, meaning that there were no cells left that you could possibly say there was life.

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I love for all of eternity, for all of time, it's very, not dry, but very dry, a .k

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.a. these bones is dead. Like these bones aren't fresh dead, they're long dead.

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That's right. It's so good. And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live?

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And I'm just thinking this conversation between Ezekiel and God. And Ezekiel's kind of like, oh, man, is this a trick question?

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Well, yeah, you know. You know the answer. Oh, Lord, you know. That's what he says.

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So then he says to prophesy over the bones and to preach. And it's a picture because he begins to prophesy.

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And it's a picture of the proclamation of the gospel. And it says as he's proclaiming, he says,

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I will cause breath to come into them. And I love this language because it is very much creation language because out of the dust, where did

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God form us? And then after he formed us, what did he do? He said he breathed the life into us.

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This is a second death. Sorry, this is a second creation. This is a second birth. If I may briefly interject, this is why we should rightly say that in describing our condition, we were not sick in need of healing.

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We were not dirty in need of cleansing. We were dead in need of resurrection.

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And that's what God has said that he would do. It's what the Lord has done for his people through history.

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And I think your observations are spot on. Jon Moffitt Yeah. So as you continue to read through it, it says,

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I will lay sinews upon you, and I will cause flesh to come upon you. All of a sudden, so Ezekiel starts to prophesy.

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And as he's prophesying, he watches these bones start to rattle, and they come together. And as they stick together, then the sinews come on, and then the flesh comes on, and then they stand.

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Well, then they're there. And then he's like, call for the four winds to come. I think it's fascinating that he uses this metaphor of wind, and then he calls for the wind, and it comes, and breath comes in, and this massive army stands up.

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And at the end of it, God says, these people I will bring into my land. Now here's where it's going to get important.

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But before we jump into this section with David, I just want to make a couple of observations because this whole section with David and covenant theology is important.

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But I don't want to lose here. So if you go to John 3. I was getting ready to say, come on now.

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Well, we can jump on it together. John 3, Jesus is definitely aware of Ezekiel.

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Ezekiel 36 and 7. That's right. It's very clear in his conversation with Nicodemus. That's right.

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He says to Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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And I know Jesus has in mind this new creation because Paul even says, we're a new creation.

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We're a new creature. We've been recreated. And I mean, when

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Jesus says things like, unless you're born of the water and the spirit, it's Ezekiel 36.

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That's right. Because it's where God says, I'm going to sprinkle clean water on you, and I'm going to put my spirit within you.

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And Jesus is saying those exact words to Nicodemus. Unless you're born this way, then you will not enter the kingdom of God.

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Amen. And then, of course, the four winds language. John, go ahead and give them John 3 .8 if that's where you were going to go. Yeah, that's where I was going.

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Yeah, so he says, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. I don't think don't miss that. Right?

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It's like Jesus is definitely making reference to Ezekiel. Of course he is. It could not be more clear.

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Yeah. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. And, of course, Jesus later mentions

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Numbers 21, alludes to Numbers 21, where he talks about how just as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so must the

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Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever looks upon Him, whoever believes in Him might have eternal life. So it's a beautiful exercise.

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I mean, Jesus does this all the time. He's the one that says that obviously you search the Scriptures thinking that in them you find eternal life.

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It's they that bear witness about me. Moses wrote about me, beginning in the Law and the Prophets and all these kinds of things.

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He explains to his disciples everything that was written concerning himself, like Luke 24 language.

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We're not making this stuff up. I mean, he did this even during his earthly ministry. And with Nicodemus, he does it beautifully with the

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Ezekiel 36 and 7 imagery that he picks up on and also the Numbers 21 imagery to demonstrate that this is the way of salvation.

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This is who does the saving. This is how this will go. In particular, I'm the one that's going to accomplish the work, and then even the application of my work is going to be done by the

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Spirit this way. It's really cool. Justin Perdue It is. So just to make a connection there with the whole

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Valley of Dry Bones, he then goes on to prophesy. This is why Justin and I would hold the fact that he's not talking about the actual land of Israel, but he is talking about the

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Promised Land because when you go and continue to read in chapter 37, he makes these promises.

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If you look with me at verse 24, my servant David shall be king over them.

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Oh, man, we're about to get into that. Justin Perdue David's been dead for several hundred years at this point. But anyway. Justin Perdue Yeah, so are we going to take this literal?

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No, but we're going to take it literally how he meant it. Justin Perdue We're going to take it typologically. Justin Perdue That's right.

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Justin Perdue Davidic covenant, right? David's greater son. Justin Perdue That's right. And they will have one shepherd, which is going back to chapter 34 because he is the great shepherd.

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And they shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. Justin Perdue Somebody else said that about himself, that he's the good shepherd.

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Justin Perdue I wonder who that would have been. And jumping down to verse 26, and I will make a covenant of peace with them, and they shall be an everlasting covenant with them.

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And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and they in my sanctuary. And he goes on to describe the presence of God going to be with them as Christ is king.

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Justin Perdue Amen, brother. I mean, that's straight up Revelation 22 language. David's greater son That's right. That's right. So the reason why we're getting all geeked up about this is that God describes, like,

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I don't know how you get more dead than dead. I don't know how you get more than a stone than a rock. And then it's not that he kind of picked you up and dusted you off and said, okay, let's get you going in the right direction.

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Every area of what is required, so your repentance, your cleansing, so your justification, your sanctification.

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So he calls you to himself. He cleanses you. He then infuses you, but he gives you the spirit so that you can actually believe.

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And then he says, my spirit will empower you to obey. But on top of that, your final destination, which is with the king in the land forever, that's all part of given to you as well, because that's the righteousness of the king given to you, not your obedience.

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So from beginning to end, you go from dry bones to son of the king.

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It's beautiful language that's being used here. And I just want to make this one last connection here,

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Justin, and then we can kind of turn to see how much time we've got here. Not much. I think it's important that the reason why

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Justin and I think that preaching Christ from all of Scripture and the sufficiency of Christ to dead sinners and reminding them of their deadness, because this is exactly what

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Paul does in Colossians 2 and verse 6. Listen to these words. Therefore, as you receive

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Christ Jesus, the Lord, so how did we receive him according to Ezekiel? He repented us.

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He cleansed us. He gave us faith. It was all an act done to us.

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So we received it. The easiest way to say this is we received it by grace alone, through Christ alone, by faith alone.

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He says, therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught at bounding and thanksgiving.

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That means our life is always reflecting back on God doesn't trust us to save ourselves.

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God does not trust us to sanctify ourselves, and God definitely does not trust us to glorify ourselves.

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Otherwise, Paul would have said, well, you've begun this way, but this is how you continue. For sure. Obviously, my head is in the book of Romans because that's where I'm preaching these days.

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So I'm immediately making connections in my own mind pastorally. As we think about how dead we were, how we had hearts of stone, how everything was ruined and everything was lost, and it's just utterly hopeless, yet God comes in and says, this is what

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I will do. I'm going to do it through my servant David, who is your representative. This is

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Jesus, of course. But this is how this works. I'm going to do the work, and I'm going to bring you to myself.

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I'm going to regenerate you. I'm going to justify you. I will sanctify you, and I will glorify you. I'm mindful of Romans 5, 6 and following, that while we were still weak, this means we were unwilling but unable to do anything about our condition.

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We couldn't do anything that would evoke something in God, that he might love us, that he might make a move toward us, that he might save us.

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We couldn't do anything with respect to keeping God's law. So while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, not for godly people, not for people who showed potential, nothing like that, but died for ungodly people.

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God's love is demonstrated through this. Then the guarantee of future hope, right?

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Since therefore we've been justified by the blood of Christ, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

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So this is how we should think, that if this is what was true and this is what God did, how much more so now that we have been justified by the blood of Christ, will

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Christ finally save us in the end? Verse 10 of Romans 5, For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his

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Son, much more now that we're reconciled shall we be saved by his life, meaning the indestructible life of our representative who is

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Jesus, who is our advocate and who is our intercessor. He's our high priest, right? So it should comfort us that this was our condition, this is what

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God did, and that has future ramification for what God will continue doing and what

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God alone will finish. So much for final justification, you know, when it comes to things like this, because God doesn't speak in those terms.

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I mean, God makes it very plain. He'll do it. And the present reality of our reconciliation with the

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Father and our justification in Christ means that we will be finally saved. And that is not just a

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New Testament idea. It is very clearly taught in the Old Testament, in this case from the prophet

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Ezekiel, and it's very encouraging. Yeah, my final thoughts here, and then we'll carry this over into SR for sure, and I'll let you take care of that,

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Justin, but I find it interesting. One of the things that I am trying to bring into Theocast, bring into my church, this is a big theme in Kingsman, is that the pathway to real joy, stability, and power is through weakness.

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It really is. When God describes you, He doesn't even describe you as weak. He describes you as, like, deader than dead.

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And then when He brings you alive, you are in the power and His strength, but you're still coupled, saint and sinner, right?

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So you're still coupled with the flesh, and that flesh part of you has to be suppressed, and the

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Spirit has to always be fed, right? Walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So this is why things like 1

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Timothy 4 .13, people who are empowered by the Spirit, people who have the regenerated heart, they're still weak, though.

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And this is why God in His kindness says things like this from Paul to Timothy, until I come to devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

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Why? Because this, keep close watch on yourselves and on the teaching, persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers.

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The point of it is we need a constant diet of the church gathering around the message of Ezekiel and hearing it and being exhorted in it, because we often forget it, right?

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We know 2 Timothy 4 .1, He's charging them, preach this, preach it, preach it, preach it,

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Timothy, because people will forget it with itchy ears. They're going to go after, hey, this is how you do it.

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This is how you become better. Instead of depend, rest, run to, cling tightly to Christ, right?

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The hope of our eternity. Yeah. Couldn't agree more, brother, and I think there will probably be podcasts coming regarding just the means of grace and the preached word and the gathered church and how this is

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God's design and plan for us. We do need to gather regularly to hear this word proclaimed, because it is through the proclamation of the word that God not only gives life and imparts faith, but it's how

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He sustains and nourishes and strengthens His children. You see that in Ezekiel 37. You see it from the beginning of Romans, where Paul says that he's eager to come and preach the gospel to the saints who are in Rome.

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Yeah, man, I look forward to that conversation whenever the Lord would allow us to have it. For now, you and I are going to go and have another conversation in the

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Semper Reformanda podcast. SR for short, as we like to call it around here. SR, if you're wondering what that is, that is a ministry of sorts, but it's also a second podcast for our members, people who have partnered with Theocast to support us financially.

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It gives you access to a number of things, including this podcast, but you can become a part of a community of people.

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We have an app where those people like to go and hang out and ask questions and encourage one another, sharpen each other, and you don't get a lot of the nonsense that you get on other social media platforms, so I enjoy it myself, and I think you would too.

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If you're curious about what it would be like to be an SR member, you can find the info on theocast .org.

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That's our website. You're intelligent people. We leave that to you, but for now, John and I are going to go and have another conversation that we trust many of you will come and listen to, and if you are, for whatever reason, not going to listen to this conversation, we will talk with you again next week if our