Does God Really Love Me? | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I want to comfort you who struggle with this question.

Is God really good and does He really love me? We so often make our interactions with God transactional, and we want to prove to you from Scripture that you did not enter this relationship with God by something you have done that was positive, and you do not remain in God's good favor and His blessings and His kindness because of your obedience.

And let us prove that to you from Scripture. We hope you enjoy. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed pastoral confessional perspective. Today...

And professional. And professional. Four tries at an intro. A little inside baseball. We're professionals here at Theocast.

If you want to know the heart behind what we're trying to do, we desperately want to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.

Your hosts today are Pastor Justin Perdue of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And today, Justin, we are back in our perspective states.

It was fun to record together. That's the last podcast you guys heard. It's been a couple of weeks for us since we've been together, but...

It's true. It's been a minute. Lots happened. Yeah. You know, I did see someone's criticizing us,

Justin, for saying pod. Being back on the pod together. I know. You know? I feel like people will create and find any way to criticize that they can't.

That's right. There are plenty of things I'm sure that we've done that are legitimately worthy of criticism.

You know, sometimes... But I don't know that that is one of them. You know, some people like to run to, you know, like to create problems in their life.

I don't like to run. Some people just have the gift of encouragement, John. And so the other day, I decided to go on Twitter just to torture myself, you know, wear a hairy shirt and whip myself.

And I got done like 30 seconds in, and I was like, wow, that was torturous. That was painful. People like to say all kinds of interesting things.

All right. Hey, guess what? We've got some fun stuff coming your way and can't make all the announcements right now.

But a couple of things just to remind you of that if you're new to Theogosh, you may not know about. We have a church finder and it is rapidly growing with sound, godly, gospel preaching, wonderful churches.

There's, I think, over 75 churches in there, and I've already heard people found churches in their own cities.

And so it's been encouraging. If you didn't know about that, go to our website and you can see that there's a church finder there. We have a categories page.

If you want to know all the different categories we recommend of topics we have covered, go to the recommendation categories page.

We also have a recommended book page. And if you want to read through that and you just want to know what are some of our top favorites every week on Wednesday morning, when the episode comes out, we also send out a book recommendation.

You go to our website, scroll down the bottom, it says sign up for book recommendation. You can do that. So just some stuff that we're trying to help the wonderful community that is in God's kingdom globally.

And it's been encouraging. We've been contacted recently too from people all over the world.

I particularly had a pastor reach out to me this morning from the Philippines. And so, yeah.

Anyways, that's it, Justin. Some other stuff coming. I'm going to save that for our supporters later.

I'll tell you about some of the new stuff coming. I don't want to waste any more time. I want to get into the subject because I want all the minutes we can get because man, frankly,

I love this topic and I love clarifying it. So Justin, tell us what it is we're talking about today.

Justin Perdue We're going to talk today about the goodness of God. I don't know exactly what the episode title is going to be. We haven't figured that out yet.

This is one of those where we've been talking about everything under the sun. I was on vacation. We've both been very busy.

And I'm back in the saddle this week, which anybody knows that when you take vacation, you come back to work. It's like, hold on.

Justin Perdue Can I say before we get into the subject, I'm going to take it back over. What we were talking about was GRN. If you haven't registered for that, you should.

We're doing a GRN meeting. There's a pre -conference, October 3rd and 4th.

Justin and I are going to be speaking on all kinds of different subjects like law, gospel distinction, covenantalism, confessionalism.

And each evening, we're going to have a time of worship and preaching. So if you would like to, registration is $20, suggested donation is going to be just outside of Nashville.

Go to gracereformnetwork .org. All right. Done. So we were talking a lot about that and other things.

Talking about our churches, talking about our personal lives. And we have not done any kind of mapping out for this episode. We threw this topic out as a possibility, and here we are.

We're off and running. The goodness of God. And in particular, the angle that we want to come at this with,

I don't suspect that's proper grammar, but the angle we've got today is that forever,

I mean, ever since sin entered the world and God even immediately upon the fall of man promises a

Redeemer, we know that shame, guilt, fear, all of those things as sin enters the world, those things enter the world too.

And so we tend to question whether God is good, whether God is gentle, whether God is really for us, whether God really loves us or whether or not

He's just displeased, dissatisfied, ashamed of us, and is really eager to just judge us in His righteousness and holiness and drop the hammer.

And our lives are often hard, our circumstances are difficult, we pray for things, and we don't get the answers to our prayers that we would like to get.

There's all this stuff that goes on in our lives, and we question God's goodness. And at the end of the day,

I think we're just afraid, as I already alluded to. I think we're afraid that it will not end well for us because we sin far more than we want to.

We're often discouraged by a lack of affection for God, a lack of desire for the things of God.

We want to see more growth, more fruit, and we are disappointed in ourselves. And deep down, we suspect that God may very well be disappointed in us too.

And so, contrary to the witness of the scriptures, we tend to fall back into fear.

We tend to operate from a position of dread with respect to God, and we tend to question

His character and His goodness and His inclination toward us. We're going to talk about all of that.

We don't have the episode mapped out. We're just going to have a conversation as two brothers in Christ, two pastors, and popcorn this around a little bit.

And we trust that some encouraging things, at least, will come out of our mouths as we interact over the subject matter.

So John, wherever you're wanting to start us off, man, the goodness of God to wretched sinners like us, people that He has loved from before the foundations of the world, not because of anything in us, but because He loves us.

That's right. The greatest hope we have is

God's love towards us. If we do not have this hope, then we have nothing. We have every reason to be afraid and to live a life of depression.

And unfortunately, because that's true, that is under attack constantly.

I was just preaching in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. We're going to do a whole episode on this, but I'm not going to get into it today.

But where he says the weapons of our warfare are not of flesh, but of divine power. He says to attack every word that is against the knowledge of Christ, which means that Satan comes and he brings lies about God to us and our hearts believe them.

This is why in Scripture, the writers of the New Testament are always giving us views about God and the relationship to God and why it's important to fight back against these lies.

So I'll give you an example here. This is Paul writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 1.

We know this passage and we quote it often, but I'm going to quote the whole context for you because I think it'd be important.

He says, for God gave us a spirit, not of fear.

Why would he have to say that? Because it's an actual problem. Again, look at the garden.

Adam and Eve are afraid. As soon as they sin, they are afraid of God and his presence produces not comfort, but dread in them.

Ephesians gives the indication that we are the enemy of God and that we're under his wrath by nature.

That's why he says we've been transferred from the domain of darkness into his kingdom.

Well, if you're in his kingdom, which means you belong to his family, you are the brother of Jesus, right? You're the adopted child.

So he says, dear child, God has not given us the spirit of fear. So if you have fear, this is what's great,

Justin. If you are afraid of God, it's not of God. That's of something else. And we know that all lies are connected to Satan.

He's the father of all lies. This is Jesus. So he's saying God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self -control.

Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our

Lord. Now, there are times where people, man, Justin, they'll come after us. They'll come after Reformed theology, and they make us, you know, they say, you guys are careless.

You're making God out to sound like he's a teddy bear only, that he is okay with sin. We are not saying any of those things.

But it is very clear that if Paul is also concerned about Timothy feeling ashamed of the truth, the testimony.

Testimony means the declaration of who God is, right? The person and work of who he is.

He says, don't be ashamed of that. And so that would mean that there is a potential of it.

And this is where at times I'm realizing that people's joy and lack of assurance, and I would say even energy to do the work of God for his kingdom is often tampered because the view of God is altered or changed or it's manipulated.

And the goal of this episode is to liberate us from that and allow the truth of Scripture to be that which gives us our confidence.

One other passage, and I'll throw it over to you, Justin. Jesus, in talking to his disciples, is deconstructing their view of God.

Matthew 7, when he's helping them understand how they can communicate with their father, he's like, okay, guys, let's get this straight.

You who are evil give good gifts to your children. What do you think is going to happen with your father who was good?

We just have this view that, well, I haven't done well, and I don't deserve for him to answer my prayer.

I don't really know if I want to ask him for grace and mercy or for help and wisdom. And Jesus is saying, you do not have a proper understanding of your relationship to your father.

I'll just steal your quote, but we often treat God like we treat ourselves.

As far as our view, we treat God less than we would treat our own selves.

We tend to think that God is not as merciful as we are. And we tend to think that he is not as compassionate as we are.

He's not as gentle. He's not as understanding. All of those things. You and I continue to pick up on your analogy, and then

I may go back to 2 Timothy 1 and dovetail that with Romans 8. You know, the parenting analogy that you have picked up on that Jesus speaks of at multiple points in the

Gospels, where he does say that you are wicked and you know how to give good things to your children.

How much more so? An argument from the lesser to the greater. How much more so is God who is without sin, who is not wicked, but who is good?

How much more so will he give good things to his children when they ask for them? So he's trying to encourage us in prayer.

He's trying to encourage us to approach the Father in prayer because of the Father's disposition toward us.

Because like you said, we are often so afraid and ashamed to go to God in prayer because we have this innate sense of needing to clean ourselves up first.

I need to get some things in order. You know, I need to come to the Father looking reasonably presentable before I can really ask him for something.

Because if I come to him as a miserable wretch and the wreck that I am in my own mind and heart,

I know what's going on in there. If I come to him in this condition, surely then he's not going to be inclined to answer my request.

We've got it so wrong in so many ways because we're thinking about ourselves and our own merit and our own worthiness. Of course, we're not worthy, but Christ is worthy.

We have been declared just because Christ is just and the Father sees us in Christ and he loves us.

And he set that love on us in Christ Jesus before the world began. And so we can approach him with confidence and boldness without fear.

But yes, he's a good father and he loves his children and he delights in giving his children good things.

And so we should go to him and ask him. And just, dear listener out there, as you hear me speaking these words,

I speak better than I live. And I think John would say the same thing. We preach better sermons than we can live.

We record better podcasts than we live. Even the apostles and the men who wrote

Scripture, read some of the writings of the apostles, and it's very plain that they're just like us.

Read the entire witness of the Scriptures. The people of God are just like us. They always have been, and we all struggle in very similar ways.

Back to what we're considering, we need to be reassured over and over again that God is loving and kind and gentle and that he wants us to come to him.

That he's not rolling his eyes, metaphorically speaking, like, oh my gosh, here comes this miserable sinner again.

He has failed again. She has botched it again. And I've got to keep putting up with this.

Like that is not his posture toward us. It's good to be reminded of that because I tend to, as I just said,

I'm talking better than I live because I tend to operate based on my own merit, my worthiness.

I tend to be afraid. I tend to be ashamed. I tend to not want to and not be inclined to run to God in my moment of need.

I feel the need to do something myself first, and I have to be perpetually reminded from the

Scriptures, go to the Lord. He loves you. He's good. So you mentioned 2 Timothy 1. I'll be brief on this, and you can take us in another direction,

John. 2 Timothy 1, we have not been given a spirit of fear.

God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self -control. That's 2 Timothy 1. 7. Well, Romans 8.

15, there are similar words written, and this is in the context of our being adopted as children.

So this fits beautifully with some of the things we've already been considering. We've been adopted as God's children.

We have become heirs of God in Christ because everything that's Christ's is now ours.

Christ is the heir of an eternal kingdom, and we are heirs with him.

Through our union with him, we will inherit that same kingdom and will reign with Christ. So it's in that context of our adoption that Paul writes these words.

He says, you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry,

Abba, Father. Come on. You read it, and it'll preach itself.

God was our judge, but he's not our judge anymore. He's now our father.

I just want to repeat that. God, for the Christian who has trusted Christ, been adopted by God, God is no longer our judge.

He's our father, and that changes everything. That is a life -altering reality.

Similar language in Galatians chapter 4 about this.

Let me just read it. I want to make sure I see Galatians 4, 4, and 5. I'm turning. I'm turning.

I'm losing the Bible drill, even as we speak. But when the fullness of time had come,

God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

This is our new identity. This is our new status. We talk about that a lot on Theocast. Our new status is one of being justified.

Our new identity is one of being in Christ. We have a new name, like we've been adopted.

We've been given God's name now. He's set that on us, and he loves us. We need to be reminded continually of these things so that we might remember that God is our

Father, that he loves us, that he wants to bless us, that he delights to give us good things. He doesn't want to do us harm.

He has our eternal good always in view, and so that should encourage us in prayer, and it should encourage us in our thoughts of our

King. Justin Perdue That's right. You know, at times it can be confusing when we think of our relationship with our children and try and make correlation to God.

For instance, my children can never be disowned by me as far as naturally because they're of me.

Now, I can disown them where I don't want to acknowledge their existence anymore, and that could be based upon performance because they're not performing to a level that I'm in agreement with, and people have done this.

They've disowned their own children, but what's so powerful about our relationship with God is that at no moment, at any moment in our experience with the

Father, is it transactional. What's even so different about our relationship with God is that God puts a

Spirit within us to cause us to walk in his ways, which I can't do to my children. I can't cause them through some supernatural power, but I just want to go to Ephesians.

I've been thinking about this lately and preaching through it. You know, he's describing our former self, and he describes it in such a way that he's like, look, you once walked according to the prince of the power of the air.

You walked according to the ways of Satan. And then he says, among whom we all once lived by the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath.

He's saying you weren't in a good standing with God, so there was no transaction. You were dead, and you deserve to be dead.

And that's how God saw you. And not only that, you deserved wrath, but God, verse four, but God being rich in mercy.

Now, here's where the motivating acts happens, right? You ready for this?

God gives mercy, and he gives a lot of it because of the great love with which he loved even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

And then he goes on to say, what does he say in verse nine? Not a result of works. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them. The relationship that we have with our Father is that we bring nothing into the relationship, nothing but our sin and our failures and our constant lack of faith.

And what does God bring into the relationship? Mercy and grace upon grace. Amen, and that whole grace, the grace paradigm is critical in that entire passage in Ephesians two, and there's all kinds of other places in scripture we could go.

What is grace the exact opposite of? What is its opposite merit, right?

And so you talked about, use that word transaction or transactional. Yeah, the antithesis of transaction and merit is grace.

And so what we have to understand, of course, because God is just and he's holy, everything he does is right.

There has been a transaction. There have been works done, but that transaction was made and those works were done by Christ that has earned salvation for all those who would ever trust in him.

And so as we come to the Father through the Son by faith in Christ, it is completely based upon grace, not our merit.

It's faith, not our works, right? And it's grounded in God's eternal love for us that was set upon us, not because we deserved it, but because God loved us.

And that is so foundational, and we need to keep saying these things.

And if you're cool with it, I'm going to pivot to Luke 15.

I don't know if you have any other thoughts on grace right now. I don't want to derail your train. Yeah, one other thought, and it's a little bit upside down for people.

You know, Justin, because we love our children, and Hebrews even alludes to this, we who are evil fathers will discipline our children.

Yeah, it's Hebrews 12. So Hebrews 12 .6, it says, For the Lord disciplines the ones he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

Now, I find great comfort in that because sin enslaves me. It kills me.

It destroys my experience of hope and joy. It enslaves others.

It hurts others. And because God loves me, because he loves me, he will do things in such a way that when

I think of discipline, I think him reaching out and pulling me back towards himself, saying, son, you have wandered, and so I'm going to have to do something that you're, you know,

I'm going to pull you back into me. And we often think of the chastisement of God as he's angry.

He's an angry father. He's not angry. He says love, it's the same love that he gave you when he showed mercy upon you and didn't show wrath.

And when he pulls you back to himself, in other words, I love how this is said, he repents you.

That's out of love. He repents you back to himself, not of anger, but out of love.

It's all of his motivations towards us are always love. And that's just really hard for human beings.

We don't treat each other this way. This is why it's an unusual supernatural relationship that we have with God that is unhuman.

And we try to humanize God. And that's the danger of this relationship. You can never humanize him.

In that way. Now, I'm even with our relationship with Jesus is that a natural because he in being a human loves us because he's

God. Right. And so even that relationship is unique in that it's not like any other relationship because those relationships are based upon sin.

In other words, that was the only other thought I wanted to just go ahead and add to what you're saying before I go to Luke 15 in the second

London confession, the confession that we subscribe to chapter five, paragraph five, chapter 17, paragraph one, chapter five is on providence.

Chapter 17 is on the perseverance of the saints. So 5 .5, 17 .1,

read those paragraphs sometime. If you have opportunity, they will encourage your soul to no end on this topic, like even thinking about Hebrews 12 and God being a loving father and he disciplines those he loves.

So we, again, fallible parents, we sometimes discipline our kids out of frustration.

But deep down, good fathers and mothers at the human level understand that there are things that we have to teach our children.

There are things that we need to train them in. There are things that we need to help them see. There are things we need to make them aware of if it's going to go well for them even in this life.

How much more so then does our heavenly father need to discipline, correct, guide, chastise us for our eternal benefit and to keep us from sin and the things that would wreck our souls?

And so in 5 .5 in the confession, it acknowledges that God in his providence allows and even ordains that his children would go through these seasons of sin, difficulty, that they would experience hardship and trials of various kinds, oftentimes the result of our own doing, but that God would be working in and through all of that to produce good things.

He would humble us. He would show us the depth of our need of Christ. He would teach us the wreckage that sin produces so that the next time we're presented with a similar situation, we might not go down the same path.

The confession goes on and on about the various good things that the Lord does even in and through the sin of his people.

17 .1 makes it very plain that there is no way that God's elect will be lost, but that there are seasons of time where all kinds of things may befall us and that we might be shaken by any number of storms and floods and beaten practically to death, yet we will never finally be moved from the rock and foundation of our faith, which is

Christ for us. Christ Jesus is the rock on whom we stand, and we know this because God is going to keep us in Christ by faith unto salvation.

We take comfort in all those realities that even as the Lord disciplines us and chastises us, he has good and holy purposes in view.

He's not mean. He's not angry. He's not sadistic. He takes no pleasure in our suffering.

He doesn't delight in the perishing of the wicked. How much less so does he delight in the suffering of his children? I'll add this in here.

Romans 8 .28. We often use that if someone loses a loved one or loses a child.

Well, if you read that and you understand it in context, I actually think he's talking to a struggling believer.

He's like, listen, even your own sin that you constantly struggle with, all things I will work for good.

You go back to Joseph. What does he say to his brothers? You meant this for evil, but God meant it for good.

That's insane to think that God will take my sin -filled, lack of faith, fearful life and he goes,

John, it's in my power, in my strength, I will make this good. And you're like, all right, well,

I'm going to trust you. I'll just do one more day. Yeah, and 17 .3, I left out.

So this is also in the chapter on sanctification. So they may fall into grievous sin and continue in them for a time due to the temptation of Satan and the world and the strength of corruption remaining in them.

And even our own neglect of the means of our preservation. In so doing, we're going to incur all kinds of things and we're going to hurt other people.

We're going to scandalize ourselves. I mean, all of this stuff can happen. Nevertheless, we will be kept.

We will be preserved through faith in Christ Jesus to the end. This is what we can take heart in, right? So maybe in thinking about the goodness of God and the fact that God is a father who not only delights to give good gifts to his children,

God is of God who finds joy in saving sinful people.

This is a mind blow for me. I mean, at least for me, to really see it, to wrap my mind and heart around it, and to understand, and it's like,

Lord, write this on my heart, that your nature as a redeemer, the Lord has always been a redeemer, that you delight in saving people who don't deserve.

And so Luke 15 is a very famous chapter. It contains one of the most famous parables that Jesus ever told.

And I'm just going to go in front loaded. I know sometimes people, maybe in a punchy shock jockey way, make a big deal about Jesus kicking it with sinners, and they almost talk about it in a way where it sort of celebrates sinfulness in a way.

I'm going to acknowledge that that can be done, and that that has been done. That it's almost like we want to celebrate sin because those are the people that Jesus wants to be around, are people who are sinners.

So that's not the angle I'm coming with right now, but the context matters. Luke 15, and I'm not going to read much of the chapter at all.

But the setting it up, Luke 15, now the tax collectors and sinners, so that's bad people.

It's not likable, folks. It's not a great crowd. On a cultural level, we don't understand. These are the people that you would not want your kids hanging out with.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him. So there was something about Jesus that the self -righteous and those who trusted in themselves, they hated him, didn't want to be near him, wanted to kill him.

The people who were sinful and knew that they were, were drawn to him. Interesting. Verse 2, and the

Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. They're upset by the fact that he receives people such as this and even eats with them, breaks bread with them.

So he told them this parable. So he starts to tell parables. First one he tells is about, you know, there's 100 sheep and 99 are fine, but the one is off, bad things, not good, lost.

And the shepherd leaves the 99, goes and pursues the one, finds it with great joy, lays it on his shoulders, brings it back.

And when he gets back, he says, calls together his friends and his neighbors, says to them, rejoice with me for I have found my sheep that was lost.

Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

And so now that, that 99 righteous persons who need no repentance, that's a hypothetical category, right?

I mean, we know that no such fallen person exists, but the point being that there is joy in heaven over what?

Over a lost, wretched, miserable offender being found and being rescued by Christ.

That's what produces joy in heaven. Next parable, just similar idea. There's a woman who has 10 coins.

She loses one. She turns the house inside out and upside down to find the coin. When she finds the coin, she calls her friends together and says, let's celebrate because I found my coin.

Let's have a party. And he concludes again, just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

And then the prodigal son, right? We know it well. What's the point there? Same thing.

There's the son that's lost and is living in debauchery and has forsaken his father and his family and all those things.

And he comes to himself and he's like, you know, even the hired workers, the slaves in my father's house, the servants, they're doing better than I am.

I'm going to go back and tell dad I'm happy to work for him. And so he goes and the father sees him coming.

We know it. The father sees him coming, runs to him, embraces him. The son goes in on his stick.

You know, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. This is all true of us before the father, by the way.

But then the father doesn't even let him finish the whole like, hey, can I work for you? He just says, bring the best robe in the house, put it on him, put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and let's kill the fattened calf.

Let's celebrate because my son was dead and he's alive. He's lost and he's found now, right? And this is the posture of the

Lord. He is more of a redeemer. He is more loving, more compassionate, more gracious, more merciful than I conceive him to be pretty much any moment of my life.

And I need to remember that this is who he is. And when you think about this, John, and when we extol these things about him, does it not evoke love and affection, gratitude, joy?

I am motivated to obey. I want to do good. You know, I want to be a righteous man.

It's like, look what he's done for me. And it's just so much better than this fear and dread that's peddled around all the place.

I've talked a long time. No, I love the story of the prodigal son because it's the latter part of the story that gets at what we're getting at.

It's true. That son goes, hey, this is not right. The older son.

The older son. This is not, and then what does he point to? Transactions. Yep, what he's done.

I have done. And the father's like, but I love you both and I've blessed you both. Like, you don't understand.

And that's the part that I wanted to talk about today in that the older son often is what is presented to us as this is what

God is really like. And we kind of buckle, right? We buckle at the idea that God can be so lavish.

All right, I got to read you one more. I know. Because it's connected to this. I know the word scandalous is used maybe too much, but it is.

It is scandalous. It is. Well, this is why Paul says, I don't even know how many times, four times, don't be ashamed of the gospel.

Yes. This is, and he says it in reverse. And Titus doesn't say it ashamed. He says it positive.

He says, for we, Titus 3, 3, for we ourselves were once foolish. Sounds like the prodigal.

Disobedient. Sounds like a prodigal. Let us stray slave to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy and hated by others and hating one another.

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the

Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior. So that being justified by grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Now, this is the verse I couldn't wait to get to. This is trustworthy. This is trustworthy.

Paul's like, listen, you can trust what I'm saying. Why would he say that? Because people are struggling, Justin. They're struggling to believe it.

This saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things. So that what? So that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

What is he saying? Good works come from what? The insistent on the trustworthiness of the statement.

Yeah, good works come from the heralding of Christ. They come from the gospel. They come from regeneration.

They come from God. God works these things in and through us. And the end of the verse, these things. So he says, this saying is trustworthy.

All that beautiful presentation of the gospel, like you just said. And I want you to insist on these things. These things you're going to insist on is the gospel and Christ for us and regeneration.

And like we have been made alive together with Christ by God almighty, by grace, not merit, by faith and not works, the whole thing.

You insist on that. So that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

Far from promoting lawlessness and antinomianism. He says, these things are excellent and profitable for people.

Holy smokes, man. I mean, what a passage that is. Don't tell me to not point to the goodness of God. He says,

I must insist on it. I got to go on and say one more thing. He says, but there's a negative side of this.

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law.

The law. They are unprofitable and worthless. Oh my goodness. And boy, do we quarrel about the law,

Justin. You talk about Christian Twitter. That's all that stuff is, man. It is an absolute food fight over the law and quarreling over all this stuff, controversies.

And so no wonder God's people are suffering because they're not hearing and insisting on a trustworthy thing called the goodness of God's love.

So we're here to pound the table and say, let's insist on it. Yes. And like,

Father, we believe, help our unbelief. May we trust that you are this way. And I promise all of us,

I mean, if we thought more about the goodness and the love and the grace and the mercy of God, if we thought more about the excellencies of Christ and the fact that He is such a sufficient and mighty

Savior, how could we ever be lost? We thought more about that than we did all this other nonsense we fill our heads with and listening to the lies of the enemy and the accusations of our consciences.

We would be far better off and we would not sin more. I know we say that all the time, but it is just worth repeating.

I mean, I'll make a logical application here. I think people are trapped in sin and fighting.

I mean, got to keep reading the passage. As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice, have nothing to do more to do with him.

Why? Because it says this, knowing that such a portion is warped and sinful and he is self -condemned.

The point of it being is this, that we don't need to be discussing unprofitable information.

And it's those things that lead our hearts to, I think, pride and arrogance. It leads us to arguments.

It stirs up strife. It stirs up strife and division in the church. So what I want to conclude with this,

I know we're running out of time and I'm panicked about it. I wish our podcast could be longer. You will not waste your time discussing, uplifting, and contemplating the goodness of God.

In you, it will produce hope and joy and good works. Because that's what Paul said it would do.

Hope, joy, and good works. What else would we want in this life, Justin? Then hope, joy, and good works. And it'll give us peace for our souls.

I'll say one last thing. This is where I was going and I lost my mind. I have been listening and we've been fighting against pietism and brow -beating preaching.

You cannot produce affection and love and obedience by the law. That's his point.

Affection and obedience is produced by insisting on a trustworthy statement, which is the goodness of God in the gospel.

So we keep preaching it and we keep pounding the desk for it. Keep reminding ourselves that in spite of the enemy's lies and in spite of our ingrained fear because we're fallen, that God loves us.

He really does. And that he's really good. And that he really does delight to give us good things.

And that he delights to save us. And that it will be his joy. I mean, think about Luke 12, 32,

I believe, where Jesus says, Fear not, little flock, it is your father's joy to give you the kingdom.

Think about the doxology in Jude where through Christ we will be presented before the presence of God with great joy.

It's the delight of God and the delight of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we would be saved from sin on account of Christ alone and that he would present us pure and blameless.

Those are the things that put wind in your sails and steel in your spine. I think I can keep going now because this is the promise of a faithful God.

I often doubt that that's true because my faith is weak and I often live out of fear.

But Lord, again, help our unbelief. May we trust these promises today. May we live in this today.

If you're a part of a local church, make it your aim to speak these words to the brothers and sisters you live life with all the time, to John's point, because it will produce good in you and in the congregation you're a part of.

This is my final phrase and I'll take us out. Ephesians 1 says that he saved us from our sin.

Hebrews 4 tells us that when we're struggling with our sin, we can have confidence.

The same Father who loved us and saved us is the same Father we can confess our failures to. What does he say?

A child with boldness, confidence, without fear, without being afraid.

Come in here and I'll give you mercy and grace. That's the relationship you have with God. We'll talk about that a little bit more.

We've got a lot more episodes to come. I have a couple more thoughts about this. Justin and I do a second podcast called

Semper Firmanda. Now there's going to be some changes coming and good ones. We've already made some this year. We've added a couple podcasts.

We're on American Gospel TV now. You can go there and watch us. We've also started an education series.

Right now, Justin and I are teaching covenant theology. I just did a lecture in my series on spiritual leadership on law, gospel, and distinction.

That'll be coming out. I'm teaching on the covenant of grace established tonight. All of that is available as part of a program called

Semper Firmanda. There's going to be updating that. We're going to make it better here in the next month, so stay tuned for that.

If you'd like to support what we're doing, you're so encouraged by what we're trying to do, and you want more people to hear what we're doing, then please support us.

You can go to theocast .org to learn all about that. There's multiple ways of supporting us, whether it's financial or being a part of our community.

We want to get this word out so more people find rest and we can keep clarifying the gospel and the light of the kingdom pushes back into the kingdom of darkness.