Resting in Jesus Christ | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I have one ambition, and that is to convince you that Christ is sufficient.

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And we're going to talk about the law, and we're going to talk about the power of the gospel. And our hope and our prayer is, at the end, you will truly rest in Christ and trust his promises.

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Stay tuned. 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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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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

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Christian life from a Reformed, pastoral, and covenantal perspective. If you're wondering what's going to happen today on the episode,

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I'll tell you this. We're going to clarify the gospel, and we're going to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom. So stay tuned for that.

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Your hosts are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm John Moffitt.

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I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And today is going to be unique and not unique at the same time.

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Justin, explain what I mean by that. Well, hello to you, John. Happy to explain, man.

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Not unique in that we're going to talk about resting in Jesus Christ today, which is something that we talk about more or less week over week over week.

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We might come at it from different angles. We might start from a different place, but we are always having conversations viewed through the lens of Christ for us, and everything that He is for us, and how

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He is our only hope and stay, and He is our comfort and our peace. Unique in that we are only going to talk about resting in Christ today.

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We want to pointedly discuss it. And even though we talk about these things on a regular basis, every now and then

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John and I want to just stop, take a moment. I want to say something funny, like, you know, be still, quote

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Psalm 4610 out of context. No, but just take a moment to have this conversation directly and pointedly, because we need it for our own souls, because we're human beings, we're pastors, we're preachers of God's Word.

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We have our own frailties. We're prone to lose sight of Christ for us, because everything around us often preaches a different word.

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And we think that if it's profitable to us, it's probably going to be profitable to you. And so this is an episode that we hope,

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I think it's fine for us to say this, that you can come back to, regardless of what season of life you're in, and find some balm and comfort and encouragement.

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Last thing I'll say is that even though we talk about resting in Christ a lot, don't tune this episode out.

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Because we're living, breathing human beings, like I just described, that's going to mean that John and I might articulate things differently in this season of our lives than we did a year or two ago.

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There are going to be certain things that are going to be more fresh in our minds and hearts because of things we've experienced, because of things we're learning, things that the

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Lord's teaching us, things that we're preaching. And so we trust that this will be a different presentation of resting in Christ than we've ever done before, though we will be communicating the same great truths.

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With all of that by way of introduction, John, I'm going to throw it over to you to get us off and running. And John and I don't have a script here, we're just going to dialogue, the two of us as brothers in Christ, fellow pastors, and see where this leads.

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So recently my wife and I and our family moved into a new house, and in the meantime I picked up a bug on the day we were supposed to move.

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And so we're, I don't know, on the latter part of the day, and it's 8 o 'clock,

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I'm setting up the kids' beds, and I am mentally and physically and emotionally exhausted, and all

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I could think about was, and this sounds funny, is the cold sheets of my bed that wasn't even put together yet.

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That's all I could think about was that moment, and there's a, I don't know how you feel about, like when

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I travel, there's something about your own bed, right? Oh, yeah. And so I kept thinking about how -

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I think most people feel that way. I kept thinking about that moment where I was going to feel safe, and I was going to feel relaxed, and I was just going to be able to let go and just like, okay, the labor is done.

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And this life is a labor. We are called to labor, we are fighting against the flesh, we're waging war against principalities, and it's exhausting.

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And what I love about Christ and His wonderful message to us through all of Scripture is that He knows we need that, and so He says, come to Me.

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And I will be that moment of your exhaustion and your frailty, you're sick, you're beat up.

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He goes, I'm going to be that refreshment where you can let go of everything and relax and know

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I have you. You're safe. I'm going to restore you, I'm going to replenish you, I'm going to feed you,

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I'm going to strengthen you. And that's the way God describes Himself, right? Christ says that I am the place where you are going to be cared for.

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Come to Me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. And sometimes, Justin, in the past, we have maybe misinterpreted this.

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If you come from a very performance -based background and legalistic background, that rest sounds like giving up, and it's not.

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Rest is rejuvenation. Rest is healing. Rest is where we find strength, is where God restores us.

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And so the restful part of Christ is the good news of the gospel. So we come to Jesus because He relieves us of our sins.

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We come to Jesus because He reminds us of where our righteousness is. We come to Jesus because He reminds us of a steadfast love.

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Psalm 63, when David says, your steadfast love is better than life.

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Oh, it's so good, right? That's David saying, I rest in you. I will worship you because your love for me is more important than life itself.

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Because in you, I have taken refuge. That's right. So part of that for me, I remember that physical part of it, and I had a flash for a moment going, oh,

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Sunday. So this was Friday. I'm like, oh, Sunday's coming, and I will rest. I will be able to relax because I'm going to be around the saints, and the saints are going to hold me.

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They're going to sing to me. They're going to speak truth to me. The word of God's going to be proclaimed to me. I'm going to be reminded of His love.

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He's going to restore me. And this is really what we're hoping this podcast is for you, that this is not a let go and let

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God. This isn't a quitting moment. It is a quitting moment on your righteousness. Well, yeah, it is you giving up and trying to earn anything.

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That's right. But the joy of Christ is that in the midst of turmoil, in a sinful body, in a sinful world, we can have hope, and we can be rejuvenated, and we find ourselves safe, resting in the sufficiency and union of Christ, which we'll explain what that is for the rest of the podcast.

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So as an introduction, that's really where we're wanting to go today. Yeah. I may talk for a few minutes,

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John, and I'm pretty hard to derail, so you can interject as much as you want. I got my piece in. You're good.

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Go. Okay. So we do talk a lot on here about the sufficiency of Christ, meaning that He is enough to save us.

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So when we say that Christ is enough, we don't mean anything sappy or sentimental by that. This is not a Jerry Maguire, like, you know,

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He completes us kind of thing. This is an objective fact that He is enough.

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He is sufficient. He is able and mighty to save even us, miserable offenders as we are, weak as we are, as prone to wonder as we are.

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He's got this. So if you hear us say, Christ is enough, He's sufficient, that's what we mean. I'm going to start, though, this may sound counterintuitive,

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I'm trying to do some diagnostics here in what I'm about to say, because I think a lot of people, when they tune into a podcast like this, and they're wanting to hear about resting in Jesus, nobody disagrees with any of the wonderful things that we're going to say about Christ, yet might turn the podcast off and not fully understand why it is that they doubt the way they do, not fully understand why they struggle as they do to have assurance and have peace.

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And what I'm about to say is not going to give every answer to that, but I hope it's clarifying and can diagnose a little bit of our problem that we often have in the church.

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And then, obviously, what John and I are hoping to do is offer a solution and pull us over onto something that is the solid rock.

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I want to begin by talking about the law, John. I know that sounds insane. We're talking about resting, we're talking about comfort, we're talking about peace, and it's like, bro, you're going to bring out the law?

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It's like, yes, I am. Because here's where we must begin. We need to understand the law and its purpose after the fall.

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If we don't understand the purpose of the law after the fall, we're going to be prone to make all kinds of mistakes, right?

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So the law, John, this is not a trick question. After the fall, was the law given to justify us?

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I'm going to say no. Yes, you're tracking with me. We're of one mind here. The law after the fall was not given to justify.

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It was given actually to condemn and to show us how corrupt we are, and therefore to show us the hell that quite literally is open wide to swallow us.

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And so what I mean is, it's given, the law is, after the fall, in its first and greatest use, the law is given to bring us to the end of ourselves when it comes to righteousness, right?

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So the only appropriate response to that condemnation of the law is what? It's to run to Jesus Christ in faith.

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It's to take refuge in Christ. Now, I would say that one of our problems,

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John, in the evangelical church, and I use that term loosely and broadly, right, in the

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West, is that we are so prone to go back to the law for righteousness in some degree, in some form or fashion, at some level.

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And I would say that it's evidence of our blindness that we would ever seek any part of our salvation in the very thing that condemns us.

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And I would say this, too. If we agree with God and the standard of His law, which is what? It's perfection.

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It's perpetual, personal, perfect obedience. If we agree with God and the standard of His law, then all we do by going to the law for even the smallest piece of our standing before Him, all we do is just heap law upon law upon law upon law on our conscience.

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And here's where I want to go with this. No wonder we lack assurance, and no wonder we struggle.

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Like, you were referencing Matthew 11, when Jesus says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest.

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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

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We struggle with that, because deep down we wrestle with so many things, because the ways that we have been taught the

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Christian faith, the law and the gospel have been so collapsed that Jesus often is presented as though He's like the master of the bait and switch.

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Like, He's gentle, He's compassionate on the front end, He's outward facing toward unbelievers, come to me, come to me for rest.

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But then once you're in Him, once you've trusted Him, it's like, all right, now I'm going to give you more to do. Now I'm really going to put you to work, because now you've got to prove that you're legit.

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And it cripples you. Which is the opposite of what He says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. No, brother, I'm not trying to be disrespectful or irreverent, but it's as though we think

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He says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll put you on probation, and I'll give you more to do.

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By the way, there's an episode on that, go listen to it, Christian, you're not on probation. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm severe and exacting in heart, and you'll find anxiety for your souls.

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That's how we talk, for my yoke is hard and my burden is heavy. This collapsing of law and gospel, too, no wonder we struggle to see the law as good.

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How could we ever? We still carry the law around like a yoke to bear, and we're deep down, we're afraid that the law and God Himself is going to come back around in the end and condemn us.

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So what's the antidote? I think we preach the law in all of its holiness.

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We preach the thunder of the law to make it very plain that we cannot do this for righteousness. And then we preach

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Christ. And in preaching Christ, what do we say? We preach, obviously, the fact that He made satisfaction for all of our sins.

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He took our sins upon Himself and satisfied the wrath and justice of God for those sins, and He's never going to give us our sin back.

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We preach His perfect life as our righteousness. It's as though we've been as perfectly obedient as He was obedient as our representative.

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We preach the fact that He set us free from sin and the curse of the law and the wrath of God and the tyranny of death and the torment of hell.

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We preach that He is our life, our eternal life. We are guaranteed bodily resurrection and life with God forever because of Christ, and He's all of that for everyone who believes on His name.

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And in the gospel, this is kind of my last thought here. In the gospel, Jesus says to terrified sinners, and we're terrified rightly because we're terrified by the condemnation of the law and the wrath of God.

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He says, come to me and have no fear of wrath. If you believe in me,

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I'm your refuge, and you're hidden in me so that no wrath can ever touch you.

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And in the gospel, He says to guilty sinners, right, because we're really guilty, John. We're lawbreakers, man.

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We're unrighteous. So He says to guilty sinners, come to me and have no fear of condemnation. If you believe in me,

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I'm your representative. You are righteous in me so that no condemnation can ever touch you.

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And I said this recently in the pulpit here in Asheville. We can pray what

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I'm about to pray. You want to hear a sinner's prayer, here's a good one. Something like this. Lord Jesus, I'm a wretch.

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I'm weak. I fail often. I love you, and I know you love me.

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Give me faith to trust you and give me grace that I might live unto you. That's how we live. That's how we pray.

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And we can pray that way to Him because He is gentle and lowly in heart and because He is the comfort, the only comfort for sinners.

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That's right, man. That verse, we love because He loves us. He first loves us, you know.

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So one of the things, you know, Paul tells Timothy, preach all of scripture, all of it.

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And we're always like, pound the desk, yes. And people who love to call it antinomianism, they're like, yeah, preach all of scripture because I'm like, listen, no, no.

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Preach all of scripture because God's promises are plain and they're true. This is the writer of Hebrew who is applying all of scripture in Hebrews 10, 22, when he says, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance, resting, right, a full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from evil consciences and our bodies washed with pure water, meaning that your conscience can be set free.

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He says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for He who promised is faithful.

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The reason we can rest is not because we've accomplished something.

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It's because Jesus fulfilled all that He promised, right? So when we say we can trust

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Jesus, He's saying, have full confidence in that because He's faithful to finish this.

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And then He says this, and let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. Why? Because He is faithful, not neglecting to meet.

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Why? Because we need to be reminded He is faithful. I love when John writes this. John says, I write this, his gospel,

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I write this, that you might believe that He is the Christ.

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Why would he want us to believe that He is the Christ? Because Christ is for sinners, right?

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He's the Messiah. He's the chosen sacrifice. He is the righteousness on our behalf.

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So all of Scripture, the culmination of it is, God is a faithful, loving God who did not pour out

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His wrath on us, but poured it out on His Son. And those who put their faith in Him, those who rest in Him, have the assurance that God will not fail them and that He is trustworthy.

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And that guilty conscience that Justin and I both woke up with this morning, we run to the

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Scriptures, or we run to each other, or we run to our bodies and say, please remind me of why

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I should not feel guilty today. Please remind me of why I should obey my God. Please remind me because of Christ.

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Because of Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. 1 John 5, 13, very similar to what he writes in his gospel,

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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.

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Right? And Calvin, of course, I've said this before, I'll say it again, when he writes his commentary on that verse, he says, notice how, though, disciples are confirmed in the faith.

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It's by having the office and the power of Christ explained. And then he says, it's the duty of any godly minister, therefore, to extol, that's quite a word, to extol as much as possible the grace of Christ so that being satisfied in Him, in that sense, we might look to nothing else.

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And you mentioned Hebrews 10, everything that you wrote about full assurance of faith and all these things and the faithfulness of God.

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Earlier in that chapter, there's a lot of ink spilled about the law and what the law requires and how

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Jesus came to do the will of God, right? And how He made a sacrifice once and for all time and made satisfaction for sins.

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He sits down at the right hand of God, and then we're told by a single offering,

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He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. It's like, man, what a comfort verses like this are for us, right?

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Because again, I think we're all prone to look at ourselves. We're all prone to look again, like I said earlier, to the law and to measure ourselves up against that standard.

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And if we're not meeting the test, we've been told enough in our lives that we should question our legitimacy. So I would ask all of us these questions.

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Are there times when we're afraid to go to Jesus in our time of need?

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Are there times when we're afraid to go to Him when we've sinned? That's right. Like, not after we're over it, okay?

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And it's kind of out of our minds for whatever reason that is. But when we've sinned, are we afraid to go to Him?

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Are there times when we question whether He would continue to advocate for wretches like we are?

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And are there times when we question whether He could still love us, given how much we struggle with sin?

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And I think the answer for all of us on that question is, yeah, we struggle with that stuff.

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And it comes back to the collapsing of the law and the gospel and looking to our performance for some piece of our peace and standing before God, right?

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And we can't do that. We have to look to Christ alone. And we need to be reminded. I've been encouraged in thinking about this recently, that, you know,

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Paul says at the end of Romans 3, he asks this question, you know, he's been pounding the desk for justification by faith apart from works, okay?

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And so, obviously, the question is raised, well, Paul, do we overthrow the law then by this faith?

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And he answers, by no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Well, what's he talking about there?

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Most people, John, I think read that verse. I'm talking serious -minded evangelicals here. Read that verse, and they say, well, yeah, we're justified by faith apart from works.

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We're justified by faith in Christ, grounded in the grace of God alone, and then we're empowered by the

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Spirit to keep the law. And so, therefore, we uphold the law. Well, what does that produce,

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John? But that produces self -examination. That produces a lot of introspection. That produces a lot of us just constantly looking inward to assess how well we're doing with law -keeping.

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It's as though, you know, in other messaging, right, we're justified by grace through faith in Christ alone.

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We're finally saved through that faith and that grace and our law -keeping. Not helpful.

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So we continue to assess ourselves. All right, so what do we do here? I am encouraged, I think what the

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Apostle Paul is saying entirely, he's spilling ink on justification in these early chapters of Romans. When he says we uphold the law, he is talking about the fact that Christ fulfilled its penalty and fulfilled its requirements.

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Is there more respect? You want to talk about upholding the law. May this encourage our hearts. Is there greater respect that could ever be shown to the law than this?

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That when God determined to save a people from the curse of the law, it was God the Son himself who endured its curse and fulfilled its requirements.

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That's right. That is upholding the law and establishing the law. It's like overthrow the law, what in the world are you talking about?

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That's right. That is to exalt and establish the law that God the Son himself would take on and endure its curse and fulfill its requirement.

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And if that's true, if he did that, we really have nothing to fear.

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That's right. What could we be afraid of? Like I said earlier, there is no condemnation because he did it, he took it.

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He said, if you believe in my name, condemnation will never touch you. There is no wrath for us anymore.

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We're not destined, this is 1 Thessalonians, we're not destined for wrath but to obtain salvation through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because he's dealt with the wrath. It's like you believe in my name, that wrath's never going to touch you, dear one.

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Amen. And it's because we're not overthrowing the law. We're not antinomian in saying these things.

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In everything I'm saying right now, I trust that it's very clear that we have great respect for the law because we say that it is rightly, because it's holy and just and good, and we're not, it's our death sentence.

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And then, of course, in Christ we live in accord with it, but we do that without fear and without condemnation and without dread.

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Another conversation for another day. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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

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

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slash primer. Well, I think this is important,

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Justin, because what you're saying robs people of rest, because they hear what we're saying, and they're like, yeah, guys, but...

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And then what we're trying to say is anything that has an asterisk to it, we want you to remove that asterisk.

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Just listen, you're referencing Romans. Let's just use Romans for a second here, because what Paul says here rocked my world about 15 years ago.

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I can remember the first time I heard someone preach this, and it destroyed all of the reasons why

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I couldn't rest in Christ. This is Romans 1, and Paul says, I am eager to preach the gospel to you,

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Christians, who are in Rome, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it, not the law, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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Jew first and also to the Greek. Dear saint, Paul is saying, I want to continue to preach to you your salvation in the gospel, and the gospel is not the law, right?

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We keep talking about law, gospel, distinction. Dear saint, the gospel is God's power, and so wrap your brain around that for a moment.

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It is the promise that Jesus is sufficient. All of God's power is wrapped up in a message, and that message is

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Christ is sufficient to pay for your sins, Christ is sufficient to provide for you righteousness,

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Christ is sufficient to sanctify you, Christ is sufficient—I mean, he goes on to say this in chapter 8, right? Christ is sufficient to glorify you.

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He will preserve you. You need to hear this. I'm eager for you to hear this. I can't wait for you to come preach this to you.

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There's nothing that will separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, nothing. The whole book is to say, this is

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God's power. Not you, not your power. God's power is in Jesus, and I cannot wait to come and preach this to you so that you might hear it.

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Amen to all of that. And Paul's argumentation is brilliant because after where he says that the gospel is the power of God, he says that in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, and by that he doesn't mean the attribute of God, that God is righteous.

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He's talking about a righteousness that God gives to sinners, and he says it's entirely of faith.

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It is beginning and ending in faith, from faith unto faith. And so God gives righteousness to sinners, they receive it by faith, and this is the only kind of righteousness that fallen human beings could ever have before the

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Lord, and that's what he begins to then prove in Romans 1, 18 and following. Let me tell you why this is the only kind of righteousness you could ever have, because all men,

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Jew and Gentile alike, are under sin. You know, God rewards those who do good, but nobody does good.

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God rewards those who seek Him, but nobody does that either, you know, and so all the law does is shut our mouths, right?

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All the law does is shut our mouths, because by works of the law no flesh will ever be justified.

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And then he gives us the good news, and I want to emphasize that point. We say this a lot, but we need to hear it again.

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The gospel is news. It's historical, it's outside of us, Jesus actually did it.

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It is finished. It is something that he alone did. We don't do it, we don't live it,

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Jesus did it, Jesus lived it, we receive it, right? We're not told,

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I'm thinking back to our time in California with some dear friends, we're not told to live the gospel, we're told to believe it, receive it, and preach it, because we can't ever do it.

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And so there's nothing potential about the news of the gospel.

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It's done, right? The law is all about potential, because it tells us to do this and you'll live.

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The gospel is not potential, it's finished, and it says receive it, believe it, trust it, rest in it.

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Proclaim it, that's right. Yeah. That's right. And so if we can get these things more deeply ingrained in our hearts and minds, we will know comfort and we'll know peace in ways that we haven't known in the past.

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And Jesus, in thinking about the holiness of the law, right, and Charles Spurgeon says this, and he says it, this is a paraphrase, but it's brilliant.

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He says, any man who thinks that he can ascend to God up the side of Sinai makes it plain that he has never seen that trembling mountain at all.

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That's right. Right? Because think about Sinai, right? I mean, think about the spectacle that was Sinai when God gave the law to his people.

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This is Exodus 19, 20, and all that surrounding area. There's thunder and there's smoke and there's fire and there's lightning and the mountain's shaking.

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And it's like, oh, by the way, don't even come near this mountain or touch it because you'll die. And yet we think that somehow we're going to earn a piece of our standing before God by doing what the law says.

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That's right. And we can't. And when we understand that, and we understand the thunder of the law, and when we understand what

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God requires for righteousness, we're brought to the end of ourselves, which is a good place to be because then we're told of the

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Savior who really did everything that's necessary. Amen. He either did or he didn't, John. He either fulfilled its penalty and fulfilled its requirement with respect to the law or he didn't.

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That's right. And if he did it, then where else do we have to go? That's right. We look to him alone and we take him at his word that he says to us, you've been burdened and heavy laden with the commands of the law, with the yoke of the law, but come to me and I'll give you rest.

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Amen. Amen. Because I've done it for you. Amen. You know, adding to what you're saying, you see, the law can, the law can please

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God and it can bring righteousness because Jesus proved that he, Jesus, God was,

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God was well pleased with his son because his son obeyed the law. So you can obey the law and you can please him if you're perfect.

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So the writer of Hebrews says something that is so restful for us. Listen to this. He says, without faith, it isn't because they want to go back to the law, right?

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In Hebrews. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. For whoever draws, would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

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So dear saint, we all have this desire to please our God. We want to.

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And he says, you want to please me? Believe what I've said. Believe me.

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Put your faith in Christ who was sufficient. The whole book of Hebrews, Jesus is sufficient.

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If you believe that, you'll please me, bro. That is so restful for me. Matthew chapter three.

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I was reading this the other day, just personally, right? So we know Matthew three around verse 15 or so.

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This is where Jesus comes to be baptized by John the Baptist. And John the Baptist is just like brother, you should be baptizing me.

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And Jesus says, no, it's appropriate that we would do this in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled. That's significant.

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But it's there, right at Jesus' baptism, where he's doing this, that all righteousness might be fulfilled, that obviously the spirit descends like a dove and there's a voice from heaven.

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This is my beloved son in whom I am, to your point, well pleased. So if the father is well pleased in the son and we believe in the son and we're united to the son, we're represented by the son, guess what?

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He's well pleased with us in Jesus. That's the news, right? And so another thought for me that's going to sound insane,

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I know we've got to wind this thing down in the next few minutes, but I'm going to go in anyway. Like you're thinking, Justin, you started by talking about the law, that was whack enough.

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Now you're going to talk about the judgment seat as a piece of my comfort. Yes, I am. Yes, you are. Yeah, I am.

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Come on. So we preach the thunder of the law. We preach the holy requirements of the law so that we're brought to the end of ourselves so that we might look to Christ.

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We've covered that. But we preach the judgment seat, John. I think we need to consider this more.

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The one who is the judge, it's not the father, by the way, it's God the son, because all judgment has been given to the son.

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Great comfort that the one who's going to be our judge is the one who died for us and the one who kept the law for us. I mean, amen, praise the

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Lord for that. But the one who is the judge, how is he described in the scriptures? I mean, his eyes are like a flame of fire.

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He's so holy that the brightness of his presence, this is Ezekiel 1, right? It's like gleaming metal all around, like fire enclosed, like a rainbow that appears in the sky on a day of rain.

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And he's the one from whom angels hide their faces. He's the one of whom angels cry, holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord of hosts. And he's the one before whom the mountains melt, the earth heaths, and the valleys are split in two. All right, it's like this is the judge.

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So here's where I go. Calvin says this, John Calvin, that any talk of justification has to begin at the judgment seat.

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Like, what kind of righteousness will stand in that judgment? In the court of divine justice, not human justice, divine justice?

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When it's like, all right, here we go. It's a person who never, right, has walked in the way of sinners or sat in the seat of scoffers, has never taken part in the counsel of the wicked, who meditates on God's law day and night, right?

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In whose spirit there's no deceit, who perfectly loves neighbor all the time, has never done wrong to anyone, has loved the

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Lord as God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength every moment. Let such a one come forward. Ain't nobody coming, bro.

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Nobody's done that, right? So we talk like this because it's like, okay, nobody's coming. The mass of humanity is assembled and no one can come forward because if you would mark iniquities, oh

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Lord, who would stand? No one. And so then we have to ask in that moment, this is where final justification is a crock.

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You want to tell me that in that moment, in any way whatsoever, that you're going to be like, hey, here are some of my works?

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No. No way. It's completely based, obviously, it has to be based only on the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.

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Amen. You know, and that's a comfort to me. So it's like, how is the law comforting? Because I couldn't ever do it.

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That's right. And Jesus says he did it and he fulfilled what it requires and he died under it so that everything the law could ever demand of me,

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I've been given. That's comforting. And then how's the judgment seat of comfort? Because it's very obvious that if I was the most virtuous person alive on the planet amongst 8 billion today, when

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I stand before him and I'm asked to come and say on what basis effectively would

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I be declared just, I've got nothing. That's right. So I've got to look to Christ.

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That's right. And this is a comfort. In a way that may sound insane to the listener at first, the more you investigate these things, the more of a comfort the law and the judgment seat are because they force us and drive us to Jesus who is the friend of sinners.

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That's right. I mean, this is, so let's continue. We're at the judgment seat. And the disciples say, well, then who can be saved?

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Who can be saved? And at the judgment seat of Christ, when you're standing there and God says, this is what

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I demand of you. He goes, only my power can do this.

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I have taken your sins and I have thrown them in the deepest part of the sea never to be seen before.

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Come here, son. I'm going to clothe you with what you cannot earn, which is my son's righteousness, robes of righteousness.

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I'm going to adopt you. And then I'm going to put my inheritance on your finger and you are mine.

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And only by my power for what is impossible with man is possible with God.

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Church worldwide, family worldwide. You can rest in that.

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Let that cleanse you. Let that refresh you and let that invigorate you to go tell others with love and passion and compassion about a king who through his power will remove their sin, love them and give them everything they could ever imagine.

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Yeah, that's what rest produce. I really hope that was encouraging to you because I'm over here hooting and hollering and crying and slobbering while Justin's over here preaching the gospel, brother.

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Amen. Amen. The Lord is good. I think you've got to be the one to take us out, John. You're right.

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I will take us out. Well, we specifically wanted to record this episode that you would be able to use that as a means of refreshment, but also to share it with friends and family and anyone else that might need to be encouraged.

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So we pray that the Lord would bless that and do that. Justin and I do a second podcast every week called

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Simple Reformanda. It's for those who monthly support us through donation. And we have an app and an education department called

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TheocastU. If you want to learn more about that, it's coming and we're working on it. But if you want to learn more about that, you can go to theocast .org.

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We're going to talk a little bit more about this, more specifically on how it is we can continue to advance such a great message of rest.

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We're going to do that with our members, so you can go over and join us there. Thank you for listening. If this was helpful for you, the greatest way you can help us is to share it on social medias, to go leave us a review on iTunes.

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Those are just simple ways that the world would end up hearing a needed message of the power of God.

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Thank you guys for listening. And Lord willing, we'll see you in the presence of our King. If not, then we'll be back here next week to give you more of Christ in all of Scripture.