The Gospel of Sincere Obedience | Theocast

Oh no, John and Justin talking about obedience again. Yeah, we are, and it's an important subject because to be frank,

Justin and I really do want every person who hears this podcast to obey sincerely. The question is, how is that accomplished?

And that's what this episode is about. There is no good news for those who only emphasize obedience. We have to look to a power beyond ourselves.

And we're gonna talk about what that is, stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word, it's called pietism.

You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy? That you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform, instead of thinking about what

Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really, that's pietism. Pietism causes

Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

And we have a little book for you, it's free. We want you to download it, and we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

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

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

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to find their rest in Christ.

That's our prayer for you today. And we're gonna come at it, if you're wondering, well, what bent do these guys have?

You ever wonder about when someone says it's a Christian podcast? Well, we're gonna come at it from a reformed perspective, but don't leave, we're not angry

Calvinists. We are broken sinners who love confessional theology. We're pastors who preach the rest of Christ, resting in Christ, so.

Your host today is Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, father of four, been married for, how many years have you been married?

It will be 12 later this year. 12, there you go. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

I'm also a father of four. I actually have two in college, Justin. Been married 21 years. So I know,

I'm old. I'm not that much older than you though. You're not. To be frank, no.

To be frank. To be frank. Hey, for those of you. Now that the listener knows all of those things about us, John. Yeah, I know.

Yeah. I don't know why. I don't either. That was interesting. Hey, keeping me on my toes, man. I appreciate it.

Sometimes people, we keep getting, we're gonna do this. People keep asking for our, like how, not our,

I guess our story. They wanna know our story. So one of these days, we're gonna give you our story, but not today. A couple of announcements.

Justin, we got a conference coming up, man, and people are already registering, which means it's gonna go quick.

And this episode is probably four or five weeks out from airing, so I don't even know how many seats will be left, but if you'd like to come and hear about the law and the gospel on April the 10th through the 12th at Justin's church in Asheville, North Carolina, we have about 250 seats, well, less than that now.

And when it sells out, we'll be sold out. So you're gonna wanna go there. We're trying to keep the pricing as cheap as possible.

Justin, we're gonna be having, you and I are speaking along with, we got four speakers gonna be there.

Chad Bird, for those of you who don't know, from 1517, and Ken Jones. So pretty excited about that.

And then - Formerly of Whitehorse Inn, now does a lot of stuff with Ligonier. Ken knows. That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Both dear friends of ours. We're so thankful for them. You've done some stuff with Chad in the past.

And the one other thing is, if you are enjoying material, Justin and I have classes that we have provided called

Theocast Academy. You can go and download our app. Just go to our website, and you can have access to all of his sermons and mine and all of our previous episodes, other podcasts that we've done.

A lot of good stuff in there. So, Justin, today is, you know, sometimes we have fun with our titles to grab people's attention.

Today is one of those. Maybe give a little bit of disclaimer and subtitle before we jump into this thing so they don't shut us off from the get -go.

Yeah, for real. The title of the episode is The Gospel of Sincere Obedience, which is a phrase I use a lot in conversation to describe a lot of the well -intentioned but maybe less than helpful emphases that are made in our day.

And we were joking. The Gospel of Sincere Obedience, subtitle, looking unto effort, rather than looking unto

Jesus, looking unto our sincere effort at obedience. Now, if you've already turned us off, it's too late.

But if you're still listening, don't throw anything at, you know, don't throw your phone across the room. Don't throw anything at the radio dial, to use an old -school term.

Public service announcement here. We don't wanna be misunderstood. This is our disclaimer. John and I are local church pastors, and there is nothing that we want more for our people than for them to know rest and peace and communion with God through Jesus Christ, and for them to live holy lives, and to live obedient lives, and for them to be fruitful and effective in loving and caring for one another, and to be effective and fruitful in terms of laboring and striving for the sake of the kingdom of Christ.

Nothing that we want more than that. So, we're gonna talk about obedience.

We're gonna talk about being effective and fruitful. We're gonna talk about living lives of holiness and all those kinds of things, at least indirectly today.

But what we're really gonna do is we're gonna talk about how to get you there. There is a better way than to look unto our effort at transformation.

There's a better way than to preach a gospel effectively. Salvation by sincere obedience is not the way to do this.

And we understand at a human level why people conclude that it is. We're just here to offer a different way,

John. And so, I wanna tee this up historically. Can I jump in? Yeah, go ahead. Not a different way because we're trying to be clever.

We're arguing it's the biblical way. I'll just say that now. Exactly, and there are many saints who have gone before us who have said and seen the same things.

And I wanna tee this up historically because what we're experiencing in our day, even in the serious -minded evangelical church, is not new.

So, let me begin with this. We're gonna rewind the clock a couple of centuries here to the church in Scotland.

So, this is an apt comparison. This is a Reformed church, Westminster standards,

Westminster Confession of Faith, the whole nine. A very prominent minister of that era had this to say about preaching.

He said, keep close in view the great end for which a preacher mounts the pulpit. It's like, okay, that's quite a statement.

Tell us, why does the preacher mount the pulpit? What's the goal? He says, to infuse good dispositions into his hearers, to persuade them to serve

God, and to become better men. And then he says that if this is on the pastor's mind when he's writing his sermons, then his sermons will be esteemed and useful.

Now, one more quote. A man named John Brown of Whitburn, who later became a minister himself, sat under this kind of preaching, where the emphasis was on,

I want to infuse good dispositions into my hearers, persuade people to serve God, and to be better men and women.

Here is what John Brown says that that preaching did to him. He says,

I thought that I was on the way to heaven, for my minister preached up to me obedience to the commands of God.

He explained them and pressed me with great earnestness to obey them. He told me of the evil of sin, and that I must forsake my sins in order to my obtaining pardon, that I, a poor sinner, must not so much as look up for mercy till I have attained such a degree of reformation, like in myself.

I must have this to say to God before I can expect pardon from him. He says, alas, my minister did not tell me, at least he did not inculcate it as the strain or the emphasis of his doctrine, that the soul must be changed by a work of sovereign grace before the life can be reformed, that the tree must be made good before it can bring forth good fruit, that one must be united to Christ by faith before he can perform one duty aright, that the gospel call is to the worst of sinners to come to Christ immediately without any previous qualifications and to cry to him both for mercy, pardon, and sanctification.

Indeed, I learned little from my minister of the use of Christ as to the point of his giving and maintaining spiritual life, little of the necessity of his imputed righteousness, and but very confused notions of the doctrine of faith in Christ and then the life of faith.

And here's the kicker. My leaning to my reformation and good deeds has ruined me.

For though my minister did not expressly bid me to lean to these, yet the strain, the emphasis of his doctrine led me to that way of thinking.

Alas, I have put them in the place of Christ," close quote. Pointed there,

I mean, and one of the thoughts I have about this is that you don't have to be,

I'm just gonna say this now and then we're gonna have a conversation. You don't have to be a false teacher in order to instill and inculcate a tendency or a way of thinking in your people that they lean into their effort at transformation and lean into their pursuit of good works and put those effectively in the place of Jesus.

And that'll ruin a Christian, not meaning that they'll be lost or that Christ won't keep them, but it can make them ineffective.

It causes them to not be as fruitful. And of course it robs of peace and joy and rest and freedom and all those good things.

So you don't have to say things that are just patently false but what is the emphasis of doctrine is a real question. What's the emphasis of a preacher's preaching is a real consideration in this.

And so that's kind of the angle that I'm coming from. And I know, John, you're coming from a similar place and we wanna talk about better ways, not unique to us, to see our people live holy lives and see the saints live lives of obedience and to be effective and fruitful as all get out, but also having peace, rest, joy, hope, comfort in the

Lord Jesus Christ and a sweet communion with the Lord as they do. Not just always living, like looking over their shoulder, not always living wondering if God is like low -key frustrated, you know, because I'm just not trying hard enough,

I'm not doing well enough, all the things. We've talked about this before, but this is a useful conversation to have maybe from a slightly different angle today.

For sure. Yeah, I think the title is, you know, I don't know, I guess clever is what you call it, but the good news of sincere obedience.

Because the gospel is the good news of Jesus's sincere obedience. That's right.

Fulfilling the will of the Father to fulfill all righteousness and take on our shame and our guilt on the cross and pay for our sins.

That's the gospel. But it is interesting how much preaching is, you know, we say there's good news for those who obey.

And Justin and I would agree that obedience is a good thing. It's so good, right?

But it has to be for the right reasons and it needs to come from the right perspective because of the results.

Like it can be soul crushing. It is soul crushing. It is life debilitating.

And Justin, I think a lot, I'll just say this, we didn't have this conversation ahead of time, but I'll say it now. I think a lot of deconstructing comes from people who were from a church or a background that it was the gospel of sincere obedience.

Like the good news was if you obey at a certain level with a sincere heart, then this is the guarantee that you have coming for you.

And that has so wrecked people in their souls, in their consciences, that they're just kind of like, well,

I'm hosed them because I'm not doing well enough. I know it. God knows it. And so maybe if this is

Christianity, then it didn't take with me and it isn't, maybe the problem isn't with God or with the

Christian religion. Maybe the problem is with me and I'm out. Yeah. And what's interesting, you and I have dealt with this now for years and years.

For me, I'm on like my 10 to 15th year walking people through rethinking pietism, but they always say this, but don't you think obedience is important?

But guys, guys, what about obedience? Exactly. Yeah. To which I can't think of a sermon where I don't call the congregation to obey.

I mean, we confess our sins for the ways. So in our church, we began by the call of worship to remind ourselves we're in the presence of a holy

God. And then we sing and praise him for that. Then the very next thing we do is read the law to remind ourselves of how we had failed him.

We remind ourselves of our disobedience. Well, why would we do that? Because we want to be reminded of the mercy that we meet or met with so that when we, with joy and excitement, seek to obey again, we understand that it's a loving father who forgives us of the ways in which we have failed him, not so we can go fail more, but to remind us of why we are motivated to try harder because of his mercy and his grace.

Amen. Brief interjection. Our service is very similar. Call to worship, prayer of invocation. And then we read the law and we will talk about not just the negative component, the prohibition part of the law, but also the positive requirements.

Like, it's not just that you shouldn't steal. It's that you should actually help your neighbor better himself or herself in every area of his or her life.

And then we will acknowledge that we have failed to meet that standard, right? Even as those who have been united to Christ, because we are sinner saints, we have failed to meet the standard and we are humbled and reminded of our need for mercy.

And then we will also talk about, but man, do we not? Do we not want to live like this? And so what do we do with our sin?

Right? We don't hide it. We don't condone it. We certainly don't celebrate it. We acknowledge it.

We confess it. We agree with God about it. We side with him against it. Let's do that now. And it's like, that is the furthest thing.

I don't even mean to sound defensive and you don't either, but it's like, we care a lot about obedience and we are not antinomian, you know, when it comes to these things.

Yeah. So thinking through obedience. Yeah. I think

Justin, one of the things that you and I are trying to get at is that sometimes people look at it as optional.

Well, that's the option you guys chose. I'm choosing another option. And what we're trying to say is, if you follow the logic of the diet of pietism or the diet of emphasizing what one must do only, and you do not feed people

Christ. I mean, I think it's so important, and this is not just a one -off, when Jesus looks at Peter and says, feed my sheep.

Well, you can't feed them law because law isn't what sustains or saves you. Paul says, the way that you come into the faith is the way that you are sustained in the faith.

Therefore, we're not feeding people the law, but that doesn't mean we're ignoring the law. I think,

Justin, and you and I, you know, we're trying to get better at this as we become podcasters and pastors and communicators, that sometimes people feel that they always create either ors, right?

Yeah, sure. Black and white. And the Bible isn't this way. The Bible - Or, you know, false dichotomies and things like that.

Yeah. So the Bible, in my opinion, always establishes the relationship first before it establishes the function of the relationship.

And that's what we're trying to say is that we've reversed it. We are talking about the function of what one must do before they've ever even established the relationship there.

It's almost like, you know, we do this in our own culture, but it's almost like people wanna -

And by relationship, do you mean our relationship to God, John? Yeah, that's what I mean. Exactly, right. I just wanted to clarify that for even listeners out there.

Yeah, I'll give you a great example. I'm preaching through 1 Peter. I'm about to finish it. But Peter begins his letter with who they are in Christ.

Like, it's from the get -go. Chosen before the foundations of the world by his divine power has granted you everything that you could ever possibly need, and your inheritance, which is held by God's power and divine.

And then he constantly keeps referencing back to it, to the hope that we have, to the hope that we have, because the hope is in the divine power that's been given to us at the beginning of our relationship that we didn't inaugurate.

We didn't start the relationship. God started the relationship. So the rest of the book of Peter is an entertainment of how to suffer well for the sake of sharing the gospel.

But he is always pointing back to the motivation being what we have already received.

So therefore, if I'm going to motivate anyone to endure suffering, and Peter talks a lot about suffering.

He talks about circumstantial suffering. He talks about suffering because of political powers.

And then he talks about spiritual suffering, right? The only way you're gonna wanna endure that and not fight back, be violent, be angry, and give up, and be ready to give an answer to the hope that lies within you, is you gotta have to have a hope that's outside of your circumstances.

So I'll say this last thing, Justin, I'll throw it over to you. No, you're good. What ends up happening is we believe that our obedience can dictate and change the circumstances that we live in.

So the better I obey, the better my circumstances will be. And that's just not true. Actually, according with Peter, the more you live a godly life, the more complicated and harder it's gonna be.

So you have to have a motivation beyond circumstantial relief. You have to have a motivation beyond some kind of temporal blessing.

You have to have something beyond this world. And the only thing that's beyond this world is Jesus. So if I don't get

Jesus week in and week out, learning about his love for me, his care for me, his kindness, and the hope that I have beyond the grave, there's no way

I'm gonna be able to endure suffering. And I'm gonna be an anxious person, which we're gonna talk about soon in a coming episode.

But Justin, there is a point where people get to that pursuing obedience just makes people angry.

And that's the experience that I have felt. Like if you only have a diet of do -do -do, you become very exhausted by it and you become angry because you're not living for a person for what he has done for you.

You're living for yourself, for what you can do. And Jesus happens just to be the title that you kind of tag on it.

I have a number of thoughts, but just piggybacking a little bit off of what you said. Yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with this emphasis of everything they need to be doing all the time.

In part, Christians struggle with it because it is very much the way the world operates.

Because all of us, we have to acknowledge that we have a legal frame and a legal bend. And so to motivate people in the world with fear or dread or merit or escape of punishment or to prove oneself, you don't have to be a

Christian to motivate people with that. And they're very effective motivators.

I mean, in terms of life on this earth, I mean, you can get people to toe the line and get in gear and look a certain way and perform a certain way and talk a certain way.

I mean, you can use fear and dread and the threat of punishment and the rewards because you've earned it.

I mean, you can do that, but it's not Christianity. It's not supernatural because, like Walter Marshall, for example, in his wonderful book,

The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, I'm gonna paraphrase him here. I remember reading this years ago and being struck by it.

He said, you know, there are so many people that, well -meaning, I mean, Christians, like well -meaning Christians and preachers who they believe that they are justified by a holiness that is wrought of God.

But then they functionally at least believe that they are sanctified by a holiness that is wrought of themselves.

And that's what we're getting at here is that we think there's something about us, even as Christians who've been brought from death to life and we know

God had to justify us, there's something about the way that we view the scriptures and the way that preachers emphasize things and the ways that we all kind of think and talk where we do operate as though my sanctification is really contingent and is going to be accomplished by a holiness that I work out.

When in reality, it is through our living union with the Lord Jesus Christ and the work of his spirit in and through us as we live life in the church and partake of the means of grace and live in the fellowship of the saints and all that, where the

Lord is just really faithful and good, man. Like he will sanctify us. Or for example, others have made this observation too.

It's not unique to me. When Jesus will say to his disciples, if you love me, you will obey me. All right, you've got two ways you can view that.

You can either view that as a threat, which is the common perspective of what we're trying to highlight today as being less than helpful because the well -intentioned, serious -minded preacher or the well -intentioned, serious -minded

Christian reads that verse and the takeaway is you better get towards the work of obedience.

You better work and strive and sweat and do all the things to prove that you actually belong to Christ.

You better do this or else dot, dot, dot. You know, you're just gonna prove yourself to be a fake.

You don't really love Jesus. You just love your comfort. That's how it's often talked about. So you can either view those words, if you love me, you'll obey me, as a threat like I just described, or you can view them as a promise, right?

That if you love me, you will obey, right?

Which actually, I think, if we take all of the words of Christ and the words of the apostles and how they write, you mentioned this earlier, the apostles always established the relationship between us and God.

He's not a judge anymore. Not our judge anymore. He's our father, you know? Jesus is the one who gave himself for us, who died and who was resurrected and who's now interceding for us to the right hand of God.

We are safe and secure. You know, all these things. This is the relationship. We are loved.

We're adopted. We're known. We're secure. We're safe. And now we talk about how we live. That's the pattern of the

New Testament. And so I would contend that when Jesus says, if you love me, you'll obey me, rather than seeing that as this scary thing that should unsettle everybody and nobody can go to sleep tonight thinking that we have any kind of peace with God, for sure.

Rather, it's like, nah. All of us who, like what is Peter? First Peter, right? It's like, though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you don't now see him, you believe in him, right? Like the saints love Jesus. And those who love

Jesus will obey him. Imperfectly, but really. And the Lord will accomplish that in us. And that kind of emphasis, kind of circling back to where I began with this, the emphasis, that emphasis, excuse me, in preaching, heralding

Christ and heralding these wonderful things that the Lord will do in his people, that is a better way to see holiness accomplished and wrought out in the lives of the saints than to threaten and unsettle them all the time.

Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

Theocast Community. And we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Yeah, so obedience comes from our affection for Christ.

So the more I love Christ, the more I will obey him. And how would our affections for Jesus be stirred,

John? That's the question. It's like, is it through? Now, the law has its uses.

And even for the Christian, it can cause us to be more grateful for Jesus, amen. But is it not through Jesus being heralded and extolled that our affections are stirred for him?

Is it not him being held out to us? Not just the fact that like we have these benefits in him, but like his person, his affection, his love, his grace, his mercy, his power, you know?

Like we hold that out as preachers. We hold that out as Christians to one another. And that is, you're exactly right.

Seeing him, beholding him, having my heart stirred, it's like, my goodness, he is wonderful.

That is absolutely what will win the day and carry the day when it comes to our pursuit of obedience. That's right.

Yeah, for sure. Well, and I think this is what, so we always, people always are afraid of 1 John. And we've done episodes on 1

John, so you can go back and look at that. I've preached through it. Those sermons exist somewhere. Yeah, that's right. 1 John is used as a billy club, but it shouldn't be used as a billy club, right?

It should be used as a love letter to the believer to saying, here's these people who are not true believers.

This is what they are. But he's writing to believers. He's not trying to weed out the unbeliever.

He's trying to say - Smoke out the, he's not trying to smoke out the fakers, right? That's right. So, and I think it's important that,

I mean, the way that John writes, it's like perfect love casts out fear. There's no condemnation for those who are under the love of God.

Keep talking. I'm just going to grab something real quick. And that - Keep talking. What we will be, we're not yet.

Our eyes are focused on that, but everyone who thus hopes, right? Everyone who looks at Jesus and sees how beautiful and wonderful and amazing he is, we look at it and say, well,

I want to be like that. I want to be like him. I mean, there's nothing more precious and gracious than my

Jesus. So why would I not want to be like him to everyone that I meet? Because look at what he's been to me.

That's the difference. It's like, if you herald the law, the law beats you down and it makes you angry or defeated.

Well, when you look at Jesus, he draws you in and he's so wonderful. Yep. Your response is, well,

I want other people to have the experience that I've had. And so I'm going to love them like we love because he first loved us, right?

There's the natural outflow of feeding on Jesus and feeding on the truth of Christ.

And I mean, in all of scripture, not just the gospels, in all of the Old and New Testament, we feed on him and we learn of him.

We learn of his nature and his person and his work and the glory of his power. To think that an almighty

God who holds and sustains the world at the same time holds and sustains my heart. It's unreal. Yeah.

All right, so 1 John, hadn't planned to do this. I just, I want to now because it is, it and James, right?

Which you've preached James, I've preached 1 John. Those two books as much as any other ones are used, like your analogy is perfect, used like billy clubs rather than, yeah, being used the way that they ought to be.

So when I preached 1 John, I think I called it kind of a play off of the hymn, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

I called it A Letter of Comfort and Joy. And that was the series title.

And so then in the first sermon of that series, what I did at the very end was I just kind of did this flyover of,

I tried to, I'd been making the point, like, you know, here's how the letter's often handled and blah, blah, blah. But then

I just went through and read verses where, like, you tell me, I mean, this is a flyover.

These are like citations from every single chapter of 1 John, and you tell me what his emphasis is.

And you tell me, is he unsettling these dear people or is he writing to reassure them and comfort them because they've been abandoned by false professors and because they've been bombarded by false teaching, right?

I think it's the latter. Let me just do, I'm gonna just read a few of these, John, and then I'll be done for me. But just let this avalanche, 1

John avalanche of comfort do that for your souls, dear listener. Here we go.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

He is the propitiation for our sins. I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come.

Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they are all not of us. But you have been anointed by the

Holy One and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God and so we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared.

But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. By this, we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him.

For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything.

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us his spirit. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

We love because he first loved us. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true.

And we are in him who is true, in his son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

So you tell me what the emphasis of that letter is. I mean, that is remarkable, man. Pastoral, gentle, comforting, reassuring.

He is telling them over and over and over again, what you said earlier, John, he is establishing their identity and their relationship to God because they've been through some stuff.

So maybe that's helpful to somebody out there. It encouraged my heart reading, so. Yeah, well, and even in James, we forget,

I mean, how many times he says, my brothers, my brothers, my brothers, my brothers. And I love this one,

James, people forget, James is the one who says, and he gives more grace. Amen.

And he gives more grace. It's interesting how we have been trained to read our

Bibles from a legalistic, pietistic perspective. And Justin, my heart rejoices when

I get to serve my King. I love - Amen. I love talking about Christ. I love doing things that glorify

Him. I love proclaiming Him. I love letting other people's experience His love.

It's all a joy, but I will tell you, I get depleted quickly and I run out of steam because I live in a flesh -bound body, right?

It's just a bag of bones that just I drag around. And so what animates this body to wanna glorify

Him, it has to be something beyond. And this is why we picked the title and we'll reference it now to close it out.

But Hebrews 12, like looking unto Jesus, well, what are we doing before then? We're getting rid of the things that keep us from seeing

Him. Laying aside the weight and the sin that easily blesses us and looking unto Jesus, the one who started our faith and then that one who will end our faith.

And so every day, whether it's, I don't care how you look unto

Him, you wanna look unto Him and remembering the sermon that you heard and reading scripture, a pastor, preach

Jesus. I guarantee you, no matter where you're at, you have disciples who were trained under Jesus.

Their letters are about Jesus. Jesus says the Old Testament is about Him. We should not have a problem finding a way to encourage people in the joy of Christ no matter where we're at because, well, that's the point of it.

So don't get lost in the weeds and the points of obedience. Listen, I'm gonna say this now.

We need to tell our people to obey. It is good for them to obey.

It is honoring and God -glorifying to obey. First John and James talk about that.

But we are here to talk about why and how we obey. We obey because of what

He is for us and what we want others to experience. We're not obeying to gain, to maintain or somehow not lose.

And that's a difference, right? When we emphasize obedience and we do not feed on Christ, our obedience will always be wrong -hearted and wrong -motivated.

So whole point of the podcast is it's not the gospel of sincere obedience, but it's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the duty of every godly minister, therefore, to extol as much as possible the grace of Christ, that being satisfied with that, we would look to nothing else.

John Calvin said that on 1 John 5 .13. Well, hopefully this has been encouraging.

Keep looking unto Christ. Our conclusion is this does not lead you to a life of laziness or a life of licentiousness, but it should lead you to a life of loving your

Savior in all that you do. And if you're not there yet, keep looking unto Him. Find a church that will keep you accountable, uphold you, give you

Christ, encourage you and build each other up and carry each other's burdens because Christian life's pretty hard.

So don't do it on your own. We'll see you next week. Hey, everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you.

And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it. But we also need your support.

And it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people. So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.