What Robs Us of Rest? | Theocast

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As you've read the title, there are times when you find yourself resting in Christ and then it's gone.

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What happened? Or you might be wondering, well, what can rob me from my rest in Christ? This is what today's podcast is about.

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There are pitfalls that we can find ourselves either trapped in so we can't get to rest, or once we're in rest,

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Satan will use them to trip us up and cause anxiety and pain and suffering in ways that remove the very hope that we have, which is the sufficiency of Christ.

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Justin and I want to walk through three different areas in life that cause us to lose our rest in Christ.

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We pray this is encouraging to you. Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word.

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It's called pietism. You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?

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That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you.

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It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what

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Christ has done, but what they're doing. We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

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Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

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Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest. What does that look like? You can download it on our website.

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Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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That's what we're going to do today. For those of you that are struggling or those who want to be reminded and refreshed, stick around.

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We are here to talk about the Christian life, and we want to do so from all of Scripture. Your host today is none other than Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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I am John Moffitt, the pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, it's been a few weeks.

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We took a break for various reasons, and it's good to be back. Quick announcement for you.

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We have a growing community called Theocast Community. We have over 1 ,500 people now, and there's lots of community going on in there.

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There's encouragement. There's all of our educational material. I think there's 28 classes that we have available in there, all of our old podcasts, and Justin and I's sermons.

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There's a lot, so go avail yourself of all the amazing resources. You can go to our website to learn about that.

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Justin, we made it. We're a minute and 20 in. Let's get into the topic because it's a good one.

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Justin Perdue It is a good one. It's been a few weeks. We're getting back in the saddle here. It might not seem that way to you listening just because we record pretty well in advance, but John and I are a little out of rhythm recording.

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As always, we get on the phone before we record and we talk. Some of those conversations are personal.

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Some of them inherently involve pastoral ministry and theological things, things going on in our own churches or things going on broadly in the

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Reformed world or in evangelicalism or whatever from our vantage point, and we process those things together.

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Today, we went here, there, and everywhere, as we often do. One of the things that came up in our conversation because of what

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John is preaching in 1 Peter and what I'm preaching through in Exodus, we discussed what it is.

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We've been senior pastors of local churches now. Me going on 10 years, John, and you going on eight, right?

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Well, going on nine for me, going on seven for you, something like that. It's been a minute that we've been in the seats.

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We've been in pastoral ministry longer. We're getting older. We've seen a few things.

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We talk all the time here on Theocast about the sufficiency of Jesus Christ and the love of God for us and how

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Jesus is enough and how we really can have rest and peace and how we're safe before God because of Christ and because God has loved us from before the foundation of the world.

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We're going to talk about all that more in this show, I know, but yet there are things that we have seen in our congregations or with people we know, and there are things we've seen in our own lives, frankly, that rob us of rest.

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We want to talk about that today. What are some things? This won't be exhaustive. Obviously, there are a number of things that could be said, and we're going to keep this to roughly half an hour, but what are some of the things that rob the saints of rest and peace and joy?

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We're going to get into that today. I don't know if any of this will surprise the listener. I hope it doesn't, but I'm looking forward to this conversation.

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Justin, if you don't mind, we didn't talk about this ahead of time, but I might just give a 30 -second definition of what we mean by rest so that people understand.

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We're talking about the position of the soul as it relates to God. We have the most famous phrase from Jesus, all you who are heavy laden and burdened by what?

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The obligations of the law and the failure of the human to uphold them. He says, if you come to me, and what he means by that is if you see me as sufficient to save you and to cover you with righteousness and to present you as holy on the day of resurrection, if you come to me in that way,

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I'll give you rest from the burden of removing your guilt and shame and proving yourself to be righteous.

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When we say rest, we're talking about the position of our faith and a position of our soul in that we don't cleanse ourselves up before salvation or after.

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We do not present ourselves as righteous in our own work, but with the righteousness of Christ, the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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Now, we're going to get into this, but that doesn't mean we don't repent of sin. We actually do.

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Once we come to Christ, we do repent. Justin Perdue Or that we don't confess sin or that we don't acknowledge sin.

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Jon Moffitt But when it comes to our standing before Christ, he who began a good work and you will complete it, that's where we're resting. We're resting that Christ is sufficient and powerful enough to fulfill all he has promised.

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When he says, I lose none, we take him at his word. That's what we're resting in, not lazy, do -nothing

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Christianity. That's not what we're talking about. Justin Perdue Resting in Christ does not mean coast.

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It doesn't mean just put it on cruise control, just kick your feet up and don't do anything. That is the furthest thing from what we mean.

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What we do mean is what you just said and how Jesus Christ really has done everything necessary and that we have as much righteousness and as much peace with God today as we will ever have.

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We don't need to work for that, but there are all kinds of things in Christ and via our union with him that we will do and pursue and flee from.

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We're going to get into some of those things today. Let's get at this. I know in my own mind, and we talked about this a little bit, we've got three major sections here in our minds.

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Let's roll with number one and we're going to get at it right out of the gate. The first thing that we want to talk about that robs us of rest is engaging in sin, indulging the cravings, desires, thoughts, fears of the flesh, and toying with those things.

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We've seen it in our own lives and we've seen it many times over in our own local churches.

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Contrary to popular opinion, we're an antinomian podcast, but we think that sin is bad, that sin is objectively wrong, that sin is something we should flee from, that we should pray regularly for the

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Lord's protection, and that he'd protect us from the evil one, that he would lead us not into temptation, that we would be wise, and that we would not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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These are the ways that we should live and talk in the local church. Let's get into this a little bit.

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I'm going through 1 Peter. If you want to go and look up the sermon, we'll put it in the notes for you.

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It's called For the Sake of Prayer. Peter is coming toward the end of his letter in the first one.

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In the first chapter, he leads the sinner to rest. I don't mean the sinner, the unrepentant sinner,

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I mean the believer. He leads the believer to find rest in the sovereignty of God in salvation.

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From that, he then warns the believer of what life will look like going forward. One of them is suffering, but he says this.

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He says in chapter 4, since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourself with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God.

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As those who find their rest in Christ, it's not as if we're not in a fight. This is what we're trying to get at.

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The world absolutely wants to intoxicate our brain and pull us back off of Christ and put us on sinking sand in any way it can, whether it's through lust or trusting in self.

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It could be through the indulgence of sexual sins, or it could be through the indulgence of self -righteousness.

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He goes on and warns us about the things that we should be aware of.

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I'll just point this out. In verse 10, he says, the end of all things is at hand, therefore be self -controlled and sober -minded.

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Three times throughout the letter, he tells them to be sober -minded. Why? What's the opposite of sober -minded?

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It's intoxication. Throughout all of Scripture, there's this constant warning.

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Romans 12 is probably the most popular passage that talks about the renewal of the mind.

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Do not be worldly, but renew your mind. The renewal of the mind is in the sufficiency of Christ.

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He says, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher. It's not the reading of the law necessarily what we should be doing, but it's where our hearts find the sufficiency and power.

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I have found not only in my own life, but also in the life of the believer that when we do not take the warning passages of Scripture to say, hey, yes, it is true that Christ is sufficient, but your heart and mind needs to remain there.

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The world and the devil and its powers. This is why I'll just quote one more passage,

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Justin, and I'll throw it over to you. But Ephesians 4, it says, stand in the strength of the Lord. Why? Because he's added intact.

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How do we stand in the strength of the Lord? We put on Christ our armor. So, if we're not willing to fight sin and be weary of it tripping us up, it absolutely can rob us of our rest.

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Not our salvation, but how we enjoy our salvation.

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What does David say? Restoring to me the joy of my salvation. Why? He indulged in sin. So, for me, the paradigm as I'm preaching through Exodus is

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I'm struck, and I know many people are who read the book, how throughout there are a number of times where the people of Israel, obviously, they're grumbling over there.

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Once they're delivered from bondage in Egypt, even, they were groaning and under oppression in Egypt, of course, but then even once they're liberated from slavery and from bondage, they grumble in the wilderness at a number of different points.

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They will say, effectively, it would be so much better to just go back to Egypt. This is not good.

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Let's go back to what we had before. It was better, more comfortable. There's something about us as human beings where we have this propensity to return to bondage.

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Slavery feels more comfortable to us or something. It feels safer. We're not

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I've alluded to some of this. I'll unpack it a little bit more. Some of the times we go back into bondage through engaging in sin.

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We're engaging in familiar sins because our flesh finds some kind of comfort in them.

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There's comfort food. We all understand that category. For me, it's like a late -night bowl of cereal or whatever.

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We all have comfort. A lot of us have these familiar sins, these patterns.

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In our inner man, none of us want to sin. We delight in God's law. We love the Lord. We don't want to dishonor

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Him. We're grieved at the thought of offending Him. That's all true. Then the flesh finds comfort in these familiar sins.

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I'll just go ahead and say this now. Maybe this is another podcast for another day. Because we are saints and sinners, we're justified and sinners at the same time.

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From the flesh well up all kinds of things that I actually don't think we can help. We can have conversations about how we process them and how we respond to these things that well up.

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The fact that cravings and passions and desires well up, or that envy and jealousy and covetousness well up, or that fears just well up, or even the ways that I unknowingly have created narratives and live according to them and how

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I relate to other people. These things happen clearly, and they come from the flesh.

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They come sometimes upon us as if from nowhere. What ends up happening,

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John, is that we live from those things rather than living in this new identity that the

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Lord has given us, rather than living in our union with the Lord Jesus Christ that is vital and mystical, or rather than living even from the new heart that the

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Lord has given us. We live from the flesh. One of the things that I'll say here too before we move on is that even though we don't want to sin as believers, one of the things that I think

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I'll say this for myself, and maybe this will resonate with one or two people out there. One of the things that we don't think about as often as we should or we don't see as often as we should is that sin is slavery.

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This is how the evil one works. The gratification of the flesh, the satisfaction that there seems to be held out right in front of us, what we often don't think about on the one hand is the conviction that's going to come after, or what we don't think about is how this is a yoke.

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This is something that ensnares us, traps us, catches us, and just sinks its claws into us.

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It is a kind of slavery. We don't think in those terms as often as we should, or perhaps we would fight against it and flee from it more diligently.

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I'm just speaking for myself. Truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

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That's what Jesus said. You were called to freedom, brothers, only don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

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I tell guys all the time it's healthy and wise to play out the ramifications of sin.

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Here's the temptation I have. I really want to indulge. I quote this voice to myself all the time. Walk by the

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Spirit and you will not feel the lust of the flesh. To walk by the Spirit means to believe in the gospel and then know the truth of what

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Christ has told me. You stop and you play it out. You're like, okay, there's a temporary satisfaction, but the ramifications of this is the guilt and shame of my soul, whoever it is that I might disappoint, and putting myself back into a bondage.

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The church has always had people who dabble in sin. This is why Galatians 6 .1 exists because they dabble to the point where they get caught.

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Those who are caught in sin, we who are spiritual are supposed to go to them. We end up replacing the hope we have in Christ with the hope of the gratification of the flesh.

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The reason why Justin and I wanted to point this out is that from our own experience, one, we have felt the joy of the

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Lord robbed from us when we believe the lie of Satan. This is why we stand in the strength of the Lord and put on Christ as a congregation.

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We also have seen our congregants who have fallen prey to this. It would be foolish and to say that this isn't a legit warning in Scripture all throughout

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Scripture that sin all it does is steal from us. Justin Perdue And what we think is that to be able to do what

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I want to do is freedom. To be able to engage in sin is freedom.

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It's like brother, sister, slavery. It's bondage. I think the question that we should all ask ourselves periodically is what are the ways that I'm prone to head back into bondage and rob myself of rest by playing with sin or toying with sin in my mind or engaging in it?

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I think that's a good thing. If you're in a good local church where it's safe, that's a good thing to talk to other believers.

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Get to know each other on this level where you engage in conversation about these things that are going on in your mind and heart.

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You should know this about me. These are ways that I'm prone to head back into slavery.

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I fight against it, but please walk with me in this and help me. Confess sin.

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One of the best things you can ever do is to pull sin into the light. Confess it, obviously to the

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Lord, but confess it to other brothers and sisters in the church and pray together, weep together. Keep showing up week over week on Sunday to have

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Christ held out to you. This is how we walk the walk and we fight the fire.

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Justin Perdue This is why we confess our sins weekly as a congregation. If you find yourself restless in the soul and you're like, man,

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I just can't seem to find peace, there's nothing wrong with stopping and saying, am

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I dabbling in sin if I let my heart wander? You may not be, but it's also healthy to say you may.

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You may have. I know I have, Justin. There are times I've sat in the office and I'm like, man, I'm not right.

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I'm like, Lord, am I dabbling? At times he has convicted my heart.

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I'm like, man, I have. I've been trusting in this or I've let my mind wander over there and I can see why my heart is heavy.

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I've allowed sin to seep back in. It's a healthy thing to live in that way because we always want to walk by faith, trusting in Christ.

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Justin, I'll say it this way and we can transition to the next point. The moment you indulge in sin, you went from trusting

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Christ to trusting the flesh for satisfaction. That's what we've done. You've shifted your trust. Justin Perdue And believing the lie of the evil one.

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That's right. The second thing we want to talk about, and we might not spend as much time here, but it needs to be said.

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I'm going to put it this way. The second thing that I have seen, and John, I know you agree, that robs the saints of rest is that many of us have very extreme consciences on the one hand.

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Then on the other hand, maybe we come from fundamentalism or have fundamentalism bent to us.

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We make almost everything a primary issue of doctrine, or we make almost everything a matter of fidelity to Christ.

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Don't hear what I'm not saying. There are more than two speeds in the transmission when it comes to doing theological triage.

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There are more speeds than just essential and irrelevant. There's a lot in between. There are things that really do matter, but they're not ultimate.

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There are things that we need to agree on to have a church together. Mainly what I'm saying there is how we administer the sacraments and how we govern the church.

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We need to agree on those things. There are some legit things to talk about here, but what I'm talking about more are things that would even fall probably below that category of church governance and the sacraments.

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We drive stakes in the ground everywhere, and everything is an issue of thus saith the

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Lord. It's all black and white. I'm going to use this word.

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We become so dogmatic about every conceivable issue that we struggle to rest and calm down.

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I think what often ends up happening is we end up breaking fellowship with other well -intentioned saints.

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We sometimes end up leaving gospel preaching churches where there's tons of good going on because of this particular issue or this particular matter over here or this slippery slope over here.

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Again, I'm not saying that these things are irrelevant or that they don't matter, but whenever we elevate things that are not ultimate into being ultimate or things that are not primary to the level of being primary, it tends to rob us of peace and rest and fellowship and all kinds of good things.

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Before I throw it over to you, I think here are some examples. This is not an exhaustive list.

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Parenting style or how we arrange our households. Husband and wife, who's working outside the home, whatever, those kinds of things, how we arrange our households.

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Gender roles, how we educate our kids, homeschool, private school, public school, things like that.

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How we think about financial stewardship or vocation or personal practices of discipline or social causes, political causes.

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I could go on and on. All kinds of things like this become such issues of dogma for many of us that we end up erecting all of these barriers to rest and meaningful fellowship.

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Justin Perdue Well, and then at times we can use them to rob other people of their rest.

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We can be robbed of it or we can rob others of it. Very good observation. For sure. And I have felt that.

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If you don't hold this position, I question your salvation. And I've heard people even say this.

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We've had conversations about this on this podcast, about your voting patterns as an evidence of your Christian faith.

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Justin Perdue Yeah. Or if you don't hold this view, I question your salvation. Maybe that's one. Or similarly, a comparable statement.

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If you think that, then you are heterodox. You are outside the bounds of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, which is a strong word.

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We use the word heresy and false doctrine. We use those words a lot.

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And I think we need to understand the weight of such words. Justin Perdue This podcast is more about getting robbed versus robbing other people.

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So if you are more of a tender conscience, and you're hearing all these dogmatic YouTube speakers and podcasters and blog articles and books and whatever else you want to put out there, and you're realizing that you're falling short from homeschooling correct and voting correct, and you're not wearing a doily on your head.

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You're just going down the list of, I'll never truly be acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, and I'm going to be constantly insane because I haven't lived up to all these expectations.

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This is what Justin's getting at. We have to be careful. The sufficiency of Christ and the rest in Christ comes from what he has done.

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And then where there is clear, direct sin quoted in scripture, we need to be conscious of that.

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These are, in my opinion, Justin, almost everything you named is a Christian freedom area. A Christian is free to really choose different ways of how they might go about handling that.

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There isn't a clear, direct way. Now, listen, a husband and wife, that's how a marriage is to be done.

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We're not talking about roles in the home. It's male and female. Let's be clear here.

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Justin Perdue Right. Without spending too much time here, what you said about issues of freedom or liberty, a lot of times what happens is there's disagreement really at a most fundamental level over what is a matter of law and what is a matter of wisdom, or what is a matter of law and what is a matter of liberty and freedom.

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I think what we need to remember is that everybody in the church, we need to assume well of our brothers and sisters.

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We need to trust that every believer, every saint of God wants to obey him and wants to live according to his word.

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But we might disagree on what is law and what is wisdom. Operate charitably in those ways, and I think we would do far better.

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Keep the main things the main things. I think a sign of maturity often is a willingness to celebrate the good and eat the meat and talk honestly about things you disagree with.

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But then, what's the priority here? What matters most for me or for me and my family? I know for me, and as for me in my house, what matters most is that we get

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Christ for us every Sunday, and there are other things that we could overlook. That's a wisdom call that people have to make, and that's not the point.

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The church has been holding this position for years. The Lenebapses Confession even talks about this, that there are points where Scripture will not be able to speak into certain areas, and the church says it's not sufficient and it must use wisdom.

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Yeah, 1 .6 in the Confession. That might be a whole podcast for another day on the sufficiency of Scripture and what that is and what that's not, because a lot of times this becomes a charged conversation where either the

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Scripture is sufficient for everything or you're a liberal. That's bad. I think people in our camp,

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John, can be very quick to call somebody a biblicist. It's like, well, let's be thoughtful about that too.

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We need to be charitable in those conversations but acknowledge that the Scriptures are sufficient for the purposes for which

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God gave them and that there are any number of things, including in 1 .6 in our Confession, they're governing the church.

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You need to appeal to the light of nature and Christian wisdom, to which we would say, well, how much more so is that the case when it comes to things like medical care or nutrition or civil government?

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That's right. We need to have those categories, and that doesn't mean that the Bible is insufficient or that we are now living according to the ways of the world.

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That's not the idea. It's just that we have a proper understanding. God willing, we have a proper understanding of the sufficiency of His Word and then the light of nature and how these things go together.

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Let's pivot to our third category, which I know we want to hammer this one. The episode may end up being more like 35 minutes than 30.

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Mike Tyson said everybody's got to plan until they get hit. We've got to plan until we hit record.

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Here we go. This last one I know hits near and dear for us. So something that I have seen over and over and you have seen over and over, and my goodness, is one of the reasons

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Theocaste even exists in the first place. Even as believers, as we relate to the

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Lord, we revert back to relating to Him as slaves, not as beloved children.

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And that's the way I'm going to put it. So right here in the crosshairs are pietism, certainly, this kind of transactional nature of our relationship with the

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Lord, like how it quickly falls back into that category. We're talking about the legal frame that we all have, how we operate so often in categories of fear and shame and guilt, even with our

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Heavenly Father who has forgiven us of all those things and Christ has taken all those things from us. So we relate to God as our judge, not our

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Father. We're driven by fear and dread, and we're driven in some way.

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We live in some way according to the old way of the written code, where in some degree I've got to do the law in order to be all right with God.

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This just happens. I'll talk about this maybe more in a minute. We might go into the whole

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Luke 15 thing. Underneath a lot of this, too, is we question whether or not the

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Lord really loves us. We question, is the Lord really with us? In Exodus 17 .7,

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verbatim, when the people grumbled against the Lord, they said, is the Lord among us or not? Is He with us or not?

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We question that. Or we'll say, all right, He saved me, but does He really delight in saving me?

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I think a lot of times we tend to think that His mercy has backed them into a corner, or like His love has forced

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His hand. Like, yeah, He's saving me, but He's just doing that almost because He has to, and kind of holding

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His nose and putting up with me. He's kind of low key frustrated with me. I think we operate in these ways with Him.

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If we think for one moment that that doesn't affect our peace and rest, that's crazy.

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But if we think for one moment that that doesn't affect how we pray to Him, how often we're going to come into His presence, the posture with which we're going to come into His presence, how we're going to live a life that I actually feel safe with Him, and I'm going to talk to Him, and I'm going to live before Him and cast myself into the arms of my

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Savior on the regular. It's a hard thing to do, John, when you're always ruled by performance and hyper introspection, and am

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I doing enough? I've talked for a minute. I'll give it back to you in just one second. Is the

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Lord with me? We suspect that He's not. Does He see? Does He know? Does He care? Our suspicion is that He doesn't.

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Is the Lord with us? Is He in this? I mean, how can we know? It's got to be in things that we can see and measure.

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Will He really save me? In the end, will I finally be saved? How can I know? I've got to do enough.

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Does the Lord really delight in me? Does He really take joy in saving me?

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How can I know? I've got to be good enough. This is what we do. That's right.

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What's interesting, I've been doing more and more just reading of the Old Testament. You're in Exodus, so this will resonate with you.

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It is interesting how much Israel will project on God the theology they received from Egypt in that God is transactional.

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He's angry. He must be appeased. It's easier to appease these other gods because they're not as scary as Yahweh.

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We're going to go back to these ones. They're not holy like Yahweh. That's right. We know what we're going to get, and so I'd rather take a lesser power and know what

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I'm going to get. Then God has to come in and correct their theology. I mean, how many

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Psalms are written about the love and mercy and kindness of God? Israel has to constantly be reminded of it because they don't believe it.

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They've never experienced, one, human love that way, but number two, they've never experienced a deity's love and affection in that way.

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I think it's interesting that John is writing this conversation with Nicodemus and Jesus, and the conversation doesn't go like this.

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God got so fed up with humanity, He finally had to send His Son to correct it all.

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It's not what He says. He says, Oh, the Father loves so much that He sacrificed

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His Son. Then Jesus says, Do you want to know what the example of supreme love is?

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There is no greater love. You cannot out love in this way that someone laid down his life, and that's what

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I've done. When we think about our relationship with the king, it is not based upon a criminal who's like,

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Well, I've got to do my time, and then I can be set free again. Hopefully, I won't mess up while in prison so that I can get out on good behavior.

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This is how we live. We live in a constant state of prison with God. He's like, Dear child, I love you.

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You've been set free. There is nothing that will ever separate you from... So first of all,

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I gave the ultimate sacrifice, which is my Son, and there's nothing that will separate you from my love going forward.

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Justin, when we don't take God at His word, we're calling Him a liar. It's not that it's one verse that is obscure.

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How many verses can we quote talking about the sufficiency of God's love for sinners? While we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. How many verses do we need to quote? We love because He first loved us.

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So pietism robs us and puts us back into this transactional prison where hopefully we'll get through the probation and God will finally love us because we deserve it.

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Justin Perdue Right. I'll try to be super quick here. I'm going to give two or three popcorn examples of what you're talking about.

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Again, my head and heart are in Exodus right now. Moses accuses the Lord at the end of Exodus chapter five.

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This is after he and Aaron went before Pharaoh the first time, the whole bricks without straw stuff. The Israelite foremen basically are like,

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Moses, may the Lord judge you because you've basically ruined us all. Moses then turns to God and says,

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Lord, why do you continue to do evil to these people? Then he says, effectively, ever since I came here and started saying what you asked me to say, things have gotten worse and not better, and you've not done a blessed thing to help.

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You've not helped your people at all, is what Moses says to the Lord. How does the Lord respond? The shocking thing is that the

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Lord doesn't strike him dead. Second of all, He doesn't rebuke him. He just preaches the gospel to him.

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He says, basically, I'm about to do something. I'm going to save these people.

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I'm going to deliver these people. I'm going to give them a land that's going to be their possession forever. This is what I'm going to do.

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Then later on at the Red Sea, the Egyptian army is descending upon Israel. They're hemmed in.

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They've got water behind them. It's a terrifying circumstance, no doubt. They're afraid, as we all would be.

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They cry out to Moses and even grumble in one sense against Moses in that moment.

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How does Moses respond in that moment?

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He says, don't be afraid. He says, you don't need to do anything. The Lord's going to fight for you.

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You just need to be silent. It's going to be okay. The Lord's going to handle it. That's the response.

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Last one is Israel over and over is grumbling in the wilderness. This is where they get out of Egypt and the

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Lord is leading them in this circuitous way toward the Promised Land. They come to the waters of Mara that are bitter.

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They can't drink them. They throw the tree in the water and the water becomes sweet. Then, of course, they don't have food.

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That's the whole manna and quail thing there in Exodus 16. Then, of course, they're going to grumble again at Massah and Meribah and all that kind of stuff.

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That's the water from the rock incident. In the midst of all of this, it's remarkable in Exodus 16, the

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Lord is very clear with Moses. I've heard the grumbling of the people. Here's what I'm going to do.

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Then, a few verses later, Moses and Aaron call the congregation. They call the whole congregation.

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They say, come near to the Lord because he's heard your grumbling. You're like, uh -oh, that's bad.

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Come near to him because he's heard your grumbling. Immediately, the glory of the Lord manifests. His presence is in the cloud.

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He's heard the grumbling of the people. Then comes the shocking thing. In the morning,

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I'm going to feed them with bread from heaven. In the evening, they're going to have their fill of meat. Then, they're going to know that I'm the

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Lord. I've heard their grumbling. You're thinking, he is going to drop the hammer.

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What does he say? I'm going to feed you with meat and I'm going to feed you with bread.

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You're going to be satisfied and you're going to know who I am because I'm your healer and I take care of you.

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It's like he is so gracious and merciful and patient with his people. You see it over and over and over again in the

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Scriptures. His response to us is never what we think it's going to be. Dear believer, let that affect your heart and how you go to him and how you cast yourself on him and how you feel safe in his presence.

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I think there are a lot of people who think that it's wrong to feel safe before a holy

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God. We are not saying be irreverent. We are saying because God loves you and because Christ is enough and he has accomplished your salvation, you're safe.

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You can go to your heavenly Father knowing that that's true. You're adopted, loved, and known. Justin Perdue Amen.

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Well, we kind of ran out of time, but I'll mention this and Justin, I'll let you comment too if you want. I think it's important when

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Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son. It's not the story of the prodigal. It's the story of the prodigal son.

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He was always the son. That's the point of the story. That never removed. That never went away.

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I think it's important for us to understand that's how the Father sees us at times when we wander. We're still his child.

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We're not the prodigal. We're the prodigal son. We're the prodigal child who has wandered. What does

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Hebrews say? He disciplines those whom he loves. He draws us back to himself, not because he's angry, but because he loves us.

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Justin Perdue Amen. I'm going to reserve my comments on Luke 15 in general for a future episode.

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Look at me exercising self -control and restraint. Good times.

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There you go. Well, thank you for listening. If this was encouraging, please share it with somebody or help in the community and dialogue about the episode.

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We're so thankful for you and for you joining us every single week. If you want to help support

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Theocast, you can do so by going to our website. We also have shirts and hats and hoodies and cups. A lot of fun stuff there, too.

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That's it, Justin. I'm not sure when this episode is airing, but by the time it does,

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I'm pretty sure we have announced that we have a Theocast conference coming out. Go to the website for that.

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That'll be on the website by then. Justin Perdue This episode should air August the 7th in the year of our

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Lord. Jon Moffitt For sure, that'll be up on the website. Go register. Come visit Asheville, North Carolina. Justin Perdue and his church and us,

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Chad Bird and Ken Jones, talk about law gospel distinction. See you next week.