What Robs Us of Joy | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about what it is that robs us of joy and peace in the church.

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We talked last week about how we chase so often after religious experience and we turn everything into a subjective reality when it comes to our faith in Christ.

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And that basically, friends, exhausts us. And so we have really no juice left to go about loving one another and doing the things that are clearly good for us, as outlined in the

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New Testament. So today, we're going to have really part two of that conversation and talk about how real joy and rest are found as we love one another because Christ has secured our redemption and our salvation.

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We'll talk about the reality of the fact that we need to rest in order to do. And we hope that makes sense to you.

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If it doesn't, stay tuned. We hope you enjoy the conversation. And over in SR, we're going to talk about a whole host of things, personal experiences, and also the fact that Christ is the gospel.

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A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the

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Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

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To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional reform perspective that is also pastoral.

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We're just adding words, phrases, and tags and triggers and all those things to how we bring you in to the show.

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As always, your hosts around the microphone today are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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It is our pleasure, maybe I could even say it's our joy, to be able to talk with you guys today about stuff that matters to us, certainly as pastors, as Christians, but we trust also matters to you.

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So, John, how are you today? Let the listener in.

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I'll tell the listener what I told Justin. The Lord has granted us an amazing means.

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Justin and I, being a part of two separate bodies, but a part of the Universal Church, at times gather to pray.

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We did that this morning right before the podcast. As he was praying, asking for God for mercy and grace,

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I literally felt my blood pressure lower when I began to think about the gospel and truth and how my sin ever accuses me and keeps me guilty.

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No kidding. And we are set free. At any time, boldly, us brothers can run into the presence of our

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Father and say, Father, we're in need today, because that's what Hebrew says. I'm always more encouraged by the prayers of other saints than I am my own.

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That's right. I think we can say this, John, in 30 seconds, just to encourage the listener.

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We were acknowledging our own struggle in the fight against sin and the fight against the corruption of our flesh.

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We agree with God about His law. We agree with God about our sin and all these things. We are also prone to be discouraged and are prone to look to ourselves, not to Christ.

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This is what robs us of peace and joy in so many ways. We are in the fight with everyone who's listening to the sounds of our voices right now.

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That's right. Amen. Like yesterday, Justin and I talked on the phone.

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We both expressed our discouragement through shepherding. It happens a little beat down. What we're saying today is we're saying them because we understand the frailty of the flesh and how often we are easily distracted from the promise.

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Jesus says to me, come to me and I will give you rest. There are so many barriers we put in the way of that rest that Jesus is knocking down.

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We tend to put them back up and He knocks them down. We put them back up. This is that fight against the flesh and against the

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Spirit. Last week, we were talking about some things we put up in the way that prevents us from resting.

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There is no prevention to God's rest. It's an amazing gift of grace that's been given to us.

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It's His joy for us. Last week, Justin and I thought we'd do a brief review so we could continue this conversation.

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In today's episode, we're going to be talking about what robs us of joy. The first thing is how pietism ruins our good works and how pietism distracts us.

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We talked about how we want to feel that legitimacy of our faith and we want to feel the closeness of God.

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We begin to seek for that religious experience. We get on a quest.

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It could be through worship music. It could be through some nonprofit organization. There are many different ways in which we try and find that legitimacy where we can then experience the real power and the presence of God.

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As crazy as this sounds, that's actually a barrier that's put up between you and Christ. You're trying to experience something that should not be legitimized by your emotion or by your flesh.

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Your flesh will always lie against you. Justin, that's kind of a quick setup. I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about a review last week as well.

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We talked about how we've all bought into the lie that we live from religious experience to religious experience.

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That's what the Christian life really is. It's from triumph to triumph and victory to victory and progress to progress.

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That's difficult for us. What we end up doing, if we're really going to boil it down and reduce it down, we subjectivize religion.

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We make it about us. That could take any number of forms. It could be our obedience.

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It could be our devotion. It could be our affections or feelings about God or the things of God.

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You fill in the blank. Ultimately, what we're talking about, we use words, and we've used these words a ton.

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We use words like pietism. We use words like revivalism because those are historical words.

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Those are theological words. Those are movements through history that are real, that have affected the American church in pointed ways.

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We tried to unpack some of that and what that's meant for the quote -unquote average

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Christian in the church. What that does, John, this is moving us down the field a little bit towards our conversation for today.

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When we subjectivize religion, it ultimately becomes about us. We buy into the lie that it's about me living from experience to experience, rather than me learning, by God's grace, to trust

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Christ through suffering or through, in a pointed way, the battle against the flesh.

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To look away from myself and look to Christ, who is my only hope for atonement, forgiveness, absolution, and righteousness.

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When we buy into the lie, though, that it's about me, it exhausts us.

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It does. We're worn out by religion. That's right. We find no rest.

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We find no peace. We find no joy in a rock -solid, lasting way in the church.

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We find no rest, no peace, no joy, even in Christ. In one sense, we almost misrepresent him to ourselves because he comes across as a very harsh, demanding taskmaster, rather than the one who invites us to him that we might know rest and lay our burdens down.

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When we're exhausted by our religion and we find no rest there, no peace there, or no joy there, this is where we're going.

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We tend to look for that rest, that peace, that joy in other places that might not be bad in and of themselves.

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They're actually good gifts from God, but they're not the greatest thing. They're not the thing that God actually means us to find joy and rest and peace in, in an ultimate sense.

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Justin and I would definitely speak from a, when we say pastoral, we often mean personal as well.

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Yeah, we're strugglers, right? Pilgrims on the way. Yeah, and it's interesting how the

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Father has chosen fumbling, bumbling, sinful men to shepherd their sheep.

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We just happen to be a sheep standing there with a stick, saying, Hey, come this direction.

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That's all we're here for. But we too, we're just an under shepherd. And so much of what we're going to say today is our own experience.

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So please know that we are speaking from a place of wrestling. We're not speaking at, we're speaking with.

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We're speaking in a room full of our brothers and sisters of Christ. Hopefully one day soon, very soon, that'll be in an actual room where we can do a small mini conference.

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Stay tuned for that. I know many of you have volunteered to help us with that. We aren't quite ready, but we're getting there. No, we're not. We're getting there.

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Don't get it twisted. We're church men, and that's kind of where our priority is at the moment.

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When the Lord blesses, we will bless all of you as well. So one of the things that I had to wrestle with recently, as I was preaching through the book of James, is trying to understand what

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James heart of what he's exposing. So it's one thing to point out a problem. You know, like, for instance, if you look at two cars who are smashed into each other, you can look at it and say, that's really bad.

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That's a car accident, which is true. The question you really should probably be asking is, how did it happen and why it did happen?

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Why would we say that? Because let's prevent it in the future. So James is describing an accident.

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He's like, wow. Okay. So this is your current situation. This is where we find you at the moment. And then he helps you walk backwards and say, this is how you got here.

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And that's what we want to do this morning. So we're talking about the disaster of your life.

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You're spiritually frustrated, and there's a next step to it. And so we're going to fully explain the accident to you and how devastating it is.

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And then we're going to walk you back out of it and say, this is how. So we're still kind of gaining closer to this disaster.

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We started the exposure of it last week. And so where you're at right now is you feel this absolute frustration.

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You've been told you should be happy, excited. You've been given spiritual duties that you can't seem to fulfill.

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And you want fulfillment. You're looking for fulfillment. You want to be happy. You want to be excited.

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And you are so spiritually frustrated that part of the natural being of a human is to be happy, to be joy, to be satisfied.

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There's nothing wrong with those. We were designed to eat things and enjoy them, to see God's creation and worship him.

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These are all wonderful things. But the problem is that we take our spiritual frustration, and then we try to satisfy ourselves spiritually with things that are physical.

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As Justin and I were talking about before we recorded, there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying being pleased with food, enjoying creation, relationship, good drink, all of that.

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Recreation, all kinds of good music, all kinds of things. And our bodies and taste buds and our endorphins were all designed to make the body feel pleasure.

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So there's nothing wrong with that. But the struggle is when you try to find spiritual fulfillment and spiritual joy with the physical.

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And that's where things become very complicated. This is why when the Bible speaks about joy, it speaks about it in a way that it can't be touched by the world.

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Because the world will ebb and flow. Health will go up and down. Money will shift and move. But the joy of the

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Lord remains. Well, why is it that the joy of the Lord can remain? Because it's not a physical realm in which it is enjoyed.

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It's a spiritual realm. It's not tethered to circumstance, is what you're saying. There's a way that the

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Scripture speaks about joy. I would throw alongside joy the words rest and peace, because I think those things go together.

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It's hard to really pull them apart biblically. That's why I'm using them all. Justin Perdue The opposite of peace is anxiety, and the opposite of anxiety is peace.

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Why should we not be anxious? Because we have a peace that passes understanding, right?

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Correct. If we have peace, which Christ has accomplished for us, if we have rest, which

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Christ has given us, I would argue, and I know you agree, the joy that Christ says is ours.

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We will know it. That's kind of where we're headed. I want to just double down really quick and make sure we're not misunderstood.

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We don't like to have to nuance everything we say, but we want to be clear. There are all kinds of good things in this world, because God has made this world good.

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He is kind. He is benevolent. He loves to bless His creatures. Lots of things we can enjoy.

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God, especially amongst His people, when we enjoy things in light of the Lord, it's a wonderful thing.

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But what we don't ever want to do is take those good things and make them the great thing. We don't want to get things out of whack in terms of how we view them and seek from temporal things what only the

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Lord Jesus Christ can give us. That's the real distinction that we're trying to make,

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I think. Absolutely. And help us understand that when we pursue and seek after joy and rest and peace, but joy in a pointed way, in things that are temporal, it's not going to end well.

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Oftentimes what that is, is it's a response to the exhaustion I'm feeling with religion, with church.

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Then what it ends up doing is distracting my soul from the thing that actually could give me the joy and rest that I seek.

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That's good. Amen. We're going to now walk down the implications of pietism.

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Pietism feeds the natural bent of the human, which is selfishness. We are naturally bent inward on ourselves.

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That's not something you have to teach a child or teach a human. To be concerned with oneself. Selfishly, sinfully.

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Pietism really feeds into that because we are already naturally self -focused. Pietism adds to that, which is you are always concerned with your spiritual growth.

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Everyone hates sin, so we're always trying to work on sin to keep sin out of our life, which is not a bad thing.

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But what ends up happening is your spiritual progress becomes the priority of your life, and that's it. When you can't find joy, because you're so naturally bent in on yourself, you're going to find that joy somewhere.

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It's this natural pursuit we all wanted. This is why we even justify things, even within Christendom now, like homosexuality, in that I need to have this joy.

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I will compromise my ethics to find it. Temporal fulfillment is how I might even frame it.

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That's right. It doesn't have to be sexual, but we will compromise our ethics, whether it be money, entertainment, relationships, in order to find this satisfaction that we want and so desire.

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What's interesting about this is that it's an amazing ploy by Satan. God has promised that our salvation is secure, and there's nothing that can rip us out of the

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Father's hand. But we are warned that our hearts can be hardened, that our eyes can be distracted, and we can be led into false teaching.

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This is Hebrews. This is also Ephesians 4 and 1 Timothy. There's a warning against the

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Christian that you can have your heart swayed. We were talking this morning, Justin, on this podcast we're going to do soon, about grieving the

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Holy Spirit. The attitude amongst the body of believers. Satan doesn't need you to completely deny

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God or to be a drug dealer or a prostitute. He needs your eyes off of Christ and the joy and rest in Christ and on yourself, because you become the greatest promoter of self at that moment.

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That's a controversial statement. It's very similar to something that Michael Horton argued for in his book, Christless Christianity. That's right. A lot of times people think if Satan ruled the world, it would just be murder and rape and drugs and whatever everywhere.

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He said, in reality, I don't know that that's true because Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. That's right. He is a deceiver.

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What would Satan like more than for people to be comfortable in thinking that they don't need Christ? That's right.

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Anyway, that might be a slight digression. No, it's exactly where I was wanting to go. I'll finish my thought and throw it over to you.

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What is interesting is that Satan is accomplishing his goal. He can't keep us from being rescued, but he can keep us distracted and our gaze on the things of the world trying to find satisfaction in the world.

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What ends up happening is Jesus makes this promise. He says, my joy, not just joy, no one has greater joy than Jesus.

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My joy, John 15, can be in you and it can be full. He wasn't making an eschatological claim.

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This isn't in the future. He meant now. He goes, I say these things to you that your joy might be, my joy might be in you and your joy might be full that you love one another.

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What happens is, Justin, pietism gets us introspectively focusing on ourselves. We can't find joy and satisfaction there, so we have to seek for it elsewhere.

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Then we get entangled with the things of the world that aren't necessarily wrong, money, relationships, entertainment.

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Then we don't have time to do the one thing we've been called to do, which actually will bring us joy.

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I'm going to go ahead and say it this way. Just come on out with it. We are arguing that joy and rest are found in Christ alone as we receive what he gives us.

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But then we experience that joy and that rest in the ways that we love our brothers and sisters and they love us in return.

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We are tasting of the heavenly gift in that way. When we are resting in Christ, looking to Christ alone, we know that Christ has given us everything that we need for righteousness.

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Therefore, we have peace with God now and forever. We are set free now to not navel gaze, to not be concerned with ourselves.

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We can now, in that love and joy and rest and peace and all those things, give our lives away for the good of our brothers and sisters.

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When they're doing the same thing and we're living together in the community of faith called the church, we can experience the joy of Christ in a pointed and real way in this life, this side of the resurrection.

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Anybody who's ever had that kind of fellowship with other brothers and sisters knows what we're talking about.

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This is not a contradiction of what we were saying earlier. We can know joy in the fellowship of the saints in the community of the church when we are operating in a way that God has said is good.

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When we are focused on and when we are looking to Christ, not ourselves, it's amazing how that actually sets us free to love and do.

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I was having a conversation with a brother after church on Sunday, just passed, and we were talking about this very thing.

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It's so critical that we keep this relationship in the right order that we rest in order to love.

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We rest in order to do. This is why we keep hammering on Theocast and from our respective pulpits on Sunday.

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We're going to keep preaching Jesus because he is our rest, he's our peace, he's our righteousness, he's our sanctification, he's our redemption, he's everything.

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He is all that stuff. If we keep preaching Christ, we have a chance by the

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Spirit of God to be set free unto love, unto good works, not in a way that's burdensome, not in a way that's toilsome and laborious, but in a way that's joyful.

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It then compounds on itself because we're all loving and blessing one another in the fellowship of the saints as we all have this perspective.

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Of course, sin still exists. There's no such thing as heaven on earth, literally. But this is what

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God intends, we believe. As we read the Scriptures and survey the New Testament, it's what God intends and has designed his church to be.

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Amen. Again, I tend to reference things that I'm either reading or preaching at the moment.

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I'm preaching through James. James says it this way, James 4 .1. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

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Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

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It's interesting. He's saying the outflow of the passion of your heart is now warring against your spirit, which is causing you to not have joy.

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The whole issue of James, if you back up to chapter 3, he is exposing their love of self and the world.

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He says you're showing partiality in chapter 2. In chapter 3, you're using your tongue as a vicious viper full of poison.

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Yeah, it's set on fire by hell. Right. And then he says things like this. He says, let's see, verse 11 or verse 10.

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So 3 .10. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not so to be. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?

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Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives and grapevine, produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

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So he's exposing that the source of their heart and desire is coming out of their mouth.

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And when you have the flesh, when you are fleshly producing stuff out of your heart, this is what's going to come out of your mouth.

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And then it comes out in your actions. So I talk with people, their marriages are falling apart.

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They're extremely unsatisfied. And when they even contemplate thinking about the church, they have no time.

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Because they've got this practice and that baseball and this entertainment and that movie. It's like their whole lives, they're trying to fill it with happiness.

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And yet all it's causing is a strife and fighting. And I look at that and I say, you are so focused on you and not

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Christ and what Christ has given you. You've built this whole world around yourself, protecting your happiness.

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And you're not happy. I'll go ahead and keep painting this picture. And then

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I might circle back to that rest in order to do things later. But just while we're here, you're spot on,

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John. How many times have we seen this where there are individuals or families in the church? Where there's all kinds of things.

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Literally, it is just insane the amount of stuff that they are going to do.

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And it's good. I mean, these things are not of themselves bad, like we said already. And yet the schedule is just so jam -packed.

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Life is just chaos because we can't possibly squeeze it all in. And we just keep trying to add more.

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And we also, I have noticed amongst individuals like this, many of them, there is a focus for them spiritually on private devotional religion.

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Check box? Well, yeah, check the box or I need to be a serious disciple. And what that means is this.

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I need to be reading this, praying this, having this accountability group here.

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And that's what my spiritual life needs to really consist of. And I just need to grit my teeth and push through this.

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And then the irony, like you've said, the local church and the ordinary means of grace on the

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Lord's Day, the preaching of Christ, the administration of the table, prayer and song in the assembly of the saints, that is at best an inconsistent reality in their life.

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That's right. And it's like the one thing that could give you rest and joy and peace, you're neglecting because you're chasing after all these other things that you think are going to give you what you seek and what you desire.

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And they won't. Now, part of that, this is a vicious cycle because what we started by saying was one of the reasons that we go chase after all that stuff, in addition to the corruption of our flesh, is the fact that we've been so exhausted in our lives by religion and by the church because we've never been given

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Christ, really. That's right. We've never been given rest. So we have bought into that lie and we intuitively think, well,

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I've got to go outside the church and do all these things privately, devotionally, if I'm really going to do this and have the things.

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Not realizing that, man, the thing that could give me the joy, the thing that could give me the rest, in a confessional environment anyway, is being offered to me every

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Lord's Day. But I can't seem to consistently show up because I've got a million things going on. That's right. Well, go back to James 2.

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He says you can't hold the faith of Christ impartiality at the same time. It's like they don't work together.

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Those who find satisfaction in Christ are going to understand that the natural response to that is to lay their life down.

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Listen, I understand that there is no perfect church. We get this complaint all the time about, well, you guys say these things and there's just no good churches in our area.

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Listen, I understand that frustration. A lot of what we're saying, I think, still can be applied, even if you're in a church that's struggling and it's frustrating.

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But if Christ is preached, this can be applicable for you. That's right. Because joy in the

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Lord is to know that all is secure and satisfied in Christ. He has saved me. He has repented me.

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He is sanctifying me. The way I put it this way, if I go back to James, what

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I love about James before he gets on them about their mouth and their actions, he first of all reminds them of who

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Christ is and what is going on. In trials, your faith will be preserved. Even though you give into the desires of your heart and the temptation, all good gifts, including your salvation, are a gift from him.

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And they do not come to you by a father that has a mind that changes based upon your actions. That's verses 10 and following.

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Then he goes through and says, when you need the Spirit to come and do these works called acts of wisdom, you can ask for them and I'll give them to you.

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He just goes on and on and on. He goes, how do you know that you receive these gifts? He goes, do you love the

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Father? It's just this constant train of over and over. He's pushing it along.

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You are secure in Christ. Look to Christ. This is kind of Justin going to the latter part of this podcast where you were before.

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Once he develops a platform and you are safe and secure, the way

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I described it the other day is God builds this mighty ship and says, the ship is

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Christ and you're in it. Now let's go sail and bring other people into it. You can then sacrificially look to help bring your brothers and sisters and encourage them and develop them because you're not trying to build the ship.

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It's built. You're inside of it safe and secure. That's a great analogy.

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You're not trying to build the boat. You're in the boat. Now I can give myself to other tasks, other things.

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We work within it. It's big. I'm going to circle back again to this rest in order to do bit because I think it's very critical when we think about this conversation, a rest in order to love.

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If we are always living where we started, subjective, it's about me,

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I'm chasing something, I'm proving myself, I'm always trying to do in order to rest, and I'm always trying to obey in order to have peace, if that's my perspective, then

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I'm going to be exhausted. And to use the boat analogy, I am exhausting myself in building the boat because I think

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I need to build the boat rather than doing the other things, inviting others in, loving people on deck, and enjoying one another in the fellowship that we have on the boat as we make our way to our destination.

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I'm not doing that. Can I just inject a verse that pictures this? First John 5 .1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the

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Christ has been born of God and everyone who loves the father loves whoever has been born of him. This is what you're talking about.

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We've been born of God. Let's rest in that. He goes, now love others. Yeah. And I think

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I already talked about the subjective side and the pietistic, you know, navel gaze side. I'm always worried about me.

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I'm always doing in order to rest. I'm always obeying in order to have peace. Another way to describe that though, John, is simply by calling it what it is.

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It's a law economy. It is a very legal approach to our relationship with God.

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It's a very legal approach to our religion. We didn't wouldn't want to call it that because it was, Oh no, we're all about the gospel. We're all about grace and all these things.

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And it's like, that could be true for you as you think about certain aspects of your, your faith and how you're justified and the like, but you've bought in again to this notion that you've got to keep doing stuff in order to maintain it or to prove yourself.

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And that law economy rears its head in all kinds of ways in our lives and it robs us of joy.

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We were talking about this before we recorded just acknowledging how people that operate this way, and we're all prone to this, right?

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We all tend to operate this way. This is what produces the pride and the self righteousness and the self justifying stuff that we all do.

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And it harms all the relationships that we have and robs us of peace and joy in those relationships.

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It affects how we relate to one another in the church. It's not this place of freedom.

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It's not this place of peace and rest where we can have joy with one another in Christ. There's always this underlying thing, you know, that I don't know.

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I'm measuring myself or I'm wondering what other people are thinking about me. I'm, I'm kind of on my soapbox judging other people thinking they're judging me or whatever.

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It's just all this craziness because of how we, we do. We don't find the rest in the joy in Christ and we're trying to find it in all kinds of things, whether that's our obedience or we're pursuing it like we've argued to, we seek it outside the church.

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We seek it in things that are good, but not great. And just bears bad fruit. I hope all this is kind of landing for the listener to where you realize that if you're really going to weave the thread through the thing, it's like rest in Christ, trust in Christ.

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And then you will find joy as you give your life away in love and service to your brothers and sisters, because you're not worried about you.

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Christ has you. That's right. Amen. So that's, that's the kind of, we described the disaster and we've kind of described what caused it.

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And I think, how do we, how do we back ourselves out of this? And how do we, you know, move forward?

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I will tell you that for Justin and me, we, there's some

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PTSD coming out of pietism. There was a, there was, there was struggle. Where you wonder, is it, is it possible to live in the

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Christian realm and not be hurt and, and to not struggle with your identity and struggle with your assurance.

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And I can say with full confidence that the only way to endure pain and suffering, and the only way to endure strife and the frailties of this world is through resting in Christ.

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So sometimes when we say things like that, people think give up and just sit there and hum, you know, in a meditative sense and just rest in Christ, rest in Christ, rest in Christ.

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No, that's not what we mean. So what's complicated about, what's complicated about Christianity is that our flesh tends to clutter and bring in requirements that the

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Bible never does. Paul says this in the end of Colossians chapter two, that we have all of these asceticistic asceticisms, the systems that we'd like to place upon ourselves, thinking that it's going to curb the flesh because Justin, our ultimate thought is this sinlessness brings joy.

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So what do we pursue? We pursue to be sinless, but when that's impossible to do, which it is, we then become depressed because, yeah, because now, right.

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So we think if we don't have sin, then we'll be happy and we'll have joy. Actually, Jesus describes this in this way.

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As we confess our sin, 1 John, as we run and receive mercy, Hebrews four, as we look for wisdom,

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James one, we are then given the means to actually have joy, which is to love your brother.

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So in the midst of our struggle against the flesh, spirit against the flesh, flesh and spirit, he isn't calling us to sinlessness for joy.

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That's impossible. He says in the midst of your struggle against the flesh, you're going to constantly be called to lay it down.

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And as you do, I will provide you joy. And it's not introspective. It's not you laying yourself down for you.

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He says, consider other people more significant than yourself because that's where the source of your joy is. Think of it this way.

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You're taking the love that God has showed you unconditional, full of grace and mercy. As James is dealing with this,

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I love this. He's dealing with the church like it by like the end of chapter four. He's like, you guys,

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I was created such a mess, but there's more grace. That's how he describes it as your struggle against this life.

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He says there's always more grace, which means we don't have to try and reach perfection to have the joy of the

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Lord. The joy of the Lord can be ours because God's love for us is static.

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It does not waver. This is first James. This is James one. It does not waver. It's not due to change.

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So if God's affection for us is static, it means we can always use that as it says in second

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Corinthians three, looking at the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, Hebrews 12, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

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First Peter chapter or second Peter one, where it's nine, forgetting that we've been cleansed from our former sins.

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We're always looking to Christ. And then we use that to motivate us to love our brothers and sisters, which is where we find what

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I call a double dose of joy. We get joy of knowing our safety in Christ. And then we get a second set of joy in giving that love and that grace to those who are in need.

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Yeah. Couple thoughts. I think this is maybe going to sound theoretical or ethereal, and I don't mean it too, because this is part of that, like recalling to mind things that are true and then it affects everything in terms of how

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I may have said that. Think on these things. Yeah. Uh, it's a number of places in the scripture, right?

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That we're to recall things, think on these things, whatever. One is we need to continually remind ourselves that we are no longer under the law as a covenant of works.

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Amen. We are no longer under the law in the sense that it would condemn us and be our death sentence. That is a struggle for us because we are so prone to think of the law that way.

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And we're no longer under the law in terms of merit, earning something. We're no longer under the law when it comes to like,

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I need to do well enough to escape punishment. We think in these terms. If we could understand that we are not under the law, but are under grace, right?

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We've been set free. We are not now under the law as a, as a condemnation or as a covenant of works.

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We're now under the law of liberty. I think that helps us in terms of how we think about life.

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And that's a big one. The other comment, and this is something that I don't know, I've been thinking on it some lately.

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This is something that pops into my brain in a pointed way periodically. And I think for good reason, there is a common objection out there that if you want to produce in the church, if you want to see godly sanctified people in the church, then you need to talk about sanctification directly a lot.

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You need to talk about how we live, like force that kind of conversation a lot.

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And I'm not talking about just using the law. Well, I mean, we need to just major on our conduct, you know, and our behavior and our patterns and our disciplines.

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And that's how you produce godly people. I disagree. And I would argue that the reform through history of disagreed, how is it that we are not only sanctified, but how is it that we are propelled and motivated to love and toward godliness?

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It is by contemplating all the time, our justification in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, as we are reminded repeatedly that we do not have what it takes in and of ourselves to be right with God, but then are pointed to Christ over and over and over again.

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It does something to a person's heart, man. You are stirred by that. And it's, it's like,

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I need that reminder constantly. So what do I need for my godliness? I need the preaching of Christ.

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What do I need for my godliness? I need to be reminded of the gospel so that I might then be filled with gratitude and all of these kinds of things that might then propel and motivate me in my living.

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And that's, I don't think that's controversial, but if you start to say that, if you want sanctification to occur, emphasize justification, people lose their minds,

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John. And that's another podcast for another day. But I am convinced that that's even a piece of this conversation. It's related to what we're talking about.

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Amen. Right? That whole guilt, grace, gratitude paradigm. That's right. Right. And that's what we're constantly reminding one another of on the

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Lord's day. And even in conversations like you and I had before we hit record today. The most final comment, brother, before I maybe take it over to SR.

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The most introspective religion dominating the world for the last hundreds of years is the

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Roman Catholic church. And you know what they said about guilt, grace, gratitude. That if your works of obedience don't flow from your justifications as fruit of joy and gratitude, but don't add to your justification, your anathema.

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It's natural for us to want our good works to be a part of our religious experience.

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Adding to our standing. That's right. I will say it in this way too. This is why it's so confusing with a lot of modern day preaching where you show up to church and they're going to give you five ways for you to go work on yourself.

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Yeah. When you read the new Testament, James gives you five ways to how to love your brother. Chapter two, more partiality.

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Chapter three, your tongue. I mean, he just, he gives you points, but they're all focused on how to love.

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Yeah. Focused outward. Not how to work on you. It's like how to work on you. So you love your brother. So like, you know, people ask me all the time, like,

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John, why don't you ever give us application? I said, I do. It's just, you have the kind of application you've been trained to hear. I said, it's just, you haven't got it yet.

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So I can't stop. I said, once you understand how to love God and love your neighbor, and you got that down, come back and talk to me and I'll give you more to do.

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But until then, you know, good luck with that application. No, I agree, man.

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I agree. Well, this has been a good conversation. I hope it's been helpful to all of you out there who have tuned in.

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John and I are going to be recording another podcast here in the next few minutes called Semper Reformanda, SR for short, as it's affectionately known.

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That is an additional podcast we record each week. SR is also a community that is being built.

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I don't know any other way to describe it. It is. It's growing. People who have partnered with Theocast and have locked arms with us financially and in other ways to support this ministry and see this message spread as far and wide as possible.

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And there's a number of things that go along with being a Semper Reformanda member. Not only do you get this extra podcast content, but you get access to an app with a community full of people who are like you wrestling and struggling and learning and growing together and are encouraging one another in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. There's a lot of good conversations and back and forth that occurs over there. It's kind of like Facebook, but not with all the other crazy things.

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So whatever. It's called Gracebook. Oh my gosh. That was bad. My goodness.

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All right. We're good. We're out of here on that note. If you do want to know more about becoming a Semper Reformanda member, go to theocast .org

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our website. There's information over there, all kinds of other things there too. Merch, our free eBooks available, all kinds of things that you could look into.

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You can always buy our resources on Amazon, whatever you want to do. We hope that you find rest in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and remember that he is sufficient to save you and you. So keep trusting him and we'll talk with most of you again next week on the regular podcast.