Saints Who Still Sin | Theocast
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There are many believers who think that the longer they are Christians, the less they will sin. More than that, the battle against sin will get easier. But, if we’re honest, we all know sin remains--and that the battle rages on. Christians are, at the same time, saints and sinners. Today’s episode is a conversation amongst four pastors about how understanding the saint/sinner reality informs pastoral ministry, fosters real sanctification, and produces honesty an
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- Hi, this is John. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about the struggle that everyone has.
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- I know I'm a Christian. Christ, by the power of the Spirit, lives within me, and yet I keep sinning.
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- The struggle between the flesh and the Spirit. You may have heard it this way, saint and sinner at the same time.
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- We want to speak into this because it's the reality of everyone, and yet at times we feel like the sinner wins, and the saint is helpless and hopeless.
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- We want to speak into that. Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word.
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- It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?
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- That you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform, instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you.
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- It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what
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- Christ has done, but what they're doing. We have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it.
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- We're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism. Reform theology, really.
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- How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?
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- You can download it at our website. 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 Reformed, confessional, and pastoral perspective. Those perspectives.
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- That's right. We each week try to clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.
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- That's what we're here for today. Your host, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.
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- I'm Jon Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. This is week two for you, but this is second episode in one day.
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- We just finished one, and now we're on to the second one. Because we are actually together in Smyrna, Tennessee, which is just south of Nashville, Tennessee.
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- We mentioned this last week, so we won't go into details of it. We just finished the GRN conference, and we had a panel discussion after Patrick Crandall's amazing lecture on saint and sinner simultaneously.
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- It was passionate. It was encouraging. Don't really want to tell you much about it, because I really want you to go listen to it.
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- But you can do so on the GRN website, or eventually, it's not there yet, or you can go to the community app.
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- It should be there as well. Yeah. It was a great conversation. It was. Very important for our peace before the
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- Lord. Really important for our lives in the local church, for our sanctification, living honestly and openly together, all of those things and more.
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- If you didn't listen last week, this is a panel discussion with Charles Townsend, who's the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Spencer, right?
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- Spencer, Indiana. Spencer, Indiana. And then Patrick Crandall, who is the pastor of Covenant Grace Columbia.
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- Boy, Patrick Crandall, that was weird. We're tired, John. Patrick Crandall, which
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- I'll have to just say this because it was funny. Somebody said that everybody from his church are Crandallites. It sounds too much like Campbellites for my money.
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- It was so funny. And then Justin and I. So this was a panel discussion. It's a very theocasty conversation.
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- It is. It is. It's a little echoey. We're in a pretty large building. But I think the content will be great, encouraging you.
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- If you're watching this on YouTube, there will be no video for this. We apologize. But I think you're going to enjoy the discussion.
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- And we will be back with you next week with a regular episode. Yep. Thank you. All right, folks.
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- Let's go ahead and find our seats as we get ready to grill everybody up here on this wonderful, just fantastic address on Center State.
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- So, again, thank you, Patrick, for that word. It's fantastic. We were just talking about this up there.
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- I was so engrossed in the message that, towards the end, I remembered I was supposed to come up with questions.
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- But really, I only have two 2 .5 questions because I know all of us men have a lot to talk about here.
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- So, first of all, first question I want to ask, specifically because of Grace Reform Network, all of you have seen the criteria and whatnot.
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- We make Romans 7 a significant issue for membership and a right understanding of Romans 7 and this idea of a center saint reality.
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- So, gentlemen, just speak on the fact of why we felt that was so important that we would add that to the criteria for being a member of this organization.
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- Anyway, that's what I thought. We'll do that.
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- Part of the reason that we made Romans 7 an issue is that it is, like it has been in other eras of the church's history, it's becoming increasingly in vogue these days to see
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- Romans 7 as written by Paul in an unregenerate state. And we wanted to drive a stake in the ground in the historical
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- Reformed and Augustinian position that Paul is writing as a regenerate man in Romans 7.
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- So that's maybe the formal reason. But then, in terms of materially, there are so many.
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- I think, effectively, that's what we're going to be talking about now because truer words have never been written than what is contained in Romans 7, 14 and following about the normative experience of the
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- Christian. This has so much to do with pastoral posture, which, brother, you,
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- I think, gently and also in good and punchy ways made that clear. We'll talk more about that,
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- I know. This has a lot to do with the culture of a local church and the compassion that centers should have for one another and the watchfulness that we have over one another that is not heavy -handed, but it is born out of love and an understanding of our common predicament.
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- Like, brother, sister, I get it. Like, I'm with you, right? And at the end of the day, we all still sin.
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- It's like we were talking about yesterday, Heidelberg Catechism question 60. It's not just that I've broken all of God's commands and never kept one.
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- I'm still inclined toward all evil, right? And so what do you got for me?
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- If we can't deal with that, then what are we doing? I could say more, but I want you brothers to jump in.
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- Yeah, no, this is important because when you hold the distinctions, one side of the distinction creates rest, that's the saint side, and then the other creates dependence, that's the sinner side, right?
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- So when we look to who we are in Christ, we can relax and rest because all righteousness is there, and then when we look to the frailty of our flesh, that creates dependence.
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- And I love your idea of a true mature Christian is one who is in greater dependence, right?
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- So when you remove one side of that, you do end up either with antinomianism or despair, right?
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- There is no need for dependence, do whatever you want, or you're in despair because you can't seem to find rest, right?
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- So the duality of the nature... What's interesting is that sometimes people don't catch this.
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- Paul describes this in Corinthians as a new kind of creature. That's what he says. It's like there was the original perfect Adam and Eve, then there's the fallen nature of all of humanity, and then there's this whole new subcategory of creatures who have
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- God inside them. They're templed in God. So this is new for us. And then he goes on to teach how a fallen creature who is embodied with spirit now looks and lives, which is another reason why it's connected to Romans 7.
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- Right. There's no way that we can have peace before God if we don't have this understanding. I don't think that's hyperbolic to say.
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- It's important that we understand that, like Luther said, the dead man...
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- Obviously, our old nature has been put to death, but the dead man floats, and we drag the corpse of the old man around with us all the time.
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- We all know that's true. We feel that burden. It's really important that we understand that the sanctifying work of the
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- Holy Spirit does not make the flesh holy. And I think that gets collapsed a lot of times in how
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- Christians with the best of intentions talk about sanctification. The old man is not sanctified.
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- The only thing we're ever told to do with that is put it off and live like who we are now. Right. It's our inner man that's being sanctified and transformed and conformed to the image of Christ.
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- And clarity on this is so critical for our peace and our assurance and our rest, which is then going to result in bearing fruit for the
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- Lord. Right? And this is just to continue this on, because you've already mentioned this phrase, and just want to go back to that line that hurt so bad but was so good as far as we treat the ones wounded in war as traitors.
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- Yeah. And specifically pastorally, instead of being shepherds, we become butchers.
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- So how should this impact our, to use Justin's phrase, our pastoral posture, especially when you're dealing with people that are in the midst of grievous sin?
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- Because we're all in the midst of sin at all times. But what I'm talking about is when it really comes to the surface, there's a lot of unrepentant situations.
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- We're just dealing with the congregation as a whole. Go ahead, whomever. Well, things that we've been talking a lot about as a church lately is just the nature of sin, how it works, how it functions.
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- And it works, it's duplicitous. It works on lies and manipulation.
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- And one of the best things, sin thrives in the dark, right? And so one of the ways that this happens is if you don't pastor, shepherd, or even if you're not a pastor, if you don't relate to people in this reality and your expectation is this kind of over -realized, eschatological, prosperity, spirituality sort of thing, is that now there's this expectation, like, okay, we don't sin.
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- I'm not a Christian, so I don't sin. So that means when I do sin, I can't actually bring that out because then people aren't going to think
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- I'm a Christian. I'm not a saint, so I've got to bury this. And how are we helped with sin? It's not by doing that.
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- We confess our sins. Like when they are exposed to the light, their lies are laid bare.
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- When we confess to one another, we're able to preach Christ to one another. That's how we find grace and help in our sin.
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- And so there's this very insidious shift, right? If we can be convinced that we are not sinners, then we have to play at this because it's not true.
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- We're going to still sin, but now we have to play the game, right? We have to portray ourselves as not sinners, which keeps us from the help we need to actually deal with sin.
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- It actually hinders real sanctification. Absolutely. So it's hilarious that when you talk the ways that we do sometimes, the charge of antinomianism is brought up.
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- Because in reality, it's like, no, we are after real heart -level, like deep recesses of my soul sanctification.
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- Where in the church, we understand where our righteousness comes from, that it's alien to us, like you were talking about today.
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- And that frees us to stare our sin in the face, confess it, weep over it, grieve over it, and lock arms with the saints so that we might be sanctified.
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- And we've all seen this. I mean, we could give testimonies in our own local churches of just astonishing confession of real deep sin and how the
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- Lord has been so gracious to people. And it's because of this freedom and this peace that exists in the church when these things are maintained.
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- These doctrines are guarded, and the pastors lead in it, and the saints get it too.
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- And we live like this. Yeah, I can remember when we started emphasizing this very early on in our church, there was a concern about, well, man, if you do this, people are just going to get around each other and air their dirty laundry.
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- What you're telling me is you don't want to hear about other people's problems. Because dirty laundry just means sin.
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- Let's just not be – that's what you're talking about. I got enough to deal with. I don't deal with your issues. So when we get together, a men's group, a women's group, you know, let's just keep it simple.
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- Yeah, lie to them. Right. Where when you give people the opportunity to come carrying burdens and saying, apparently
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- I have a problem because I can't offload this. What does James say? Confess your sins to one another.
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- What does Romans 15 .1 say? Those of you who are strong have an obligation to deal with the failings of the weak.
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- What does Galatians 6 say? Those of you who are spiritual should go to those who are trapped in sin and restore them with a spirit of gentleness and meekness.
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- The church is surrounded, abound, those who are depending on Christ and those who are struggling in the flesh, and there's a symbiotic relationship that happens there.
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- But churches don't allow people to be sinners. You have to create a place where someone can open up and say,
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- I am trapped. Please help me. Please come and give me something.
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- This is why he says every day consider how to encourage one another, how to build one another up.
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- Why? Because the hound of sin is at your door wanting to claw you to death.
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- And so the moment you allow someone to open up the darkest part of their heart and you can see it on their face, they're trying to think, do
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- I give them 10 % or the whole thing? I don't know how much they're going to— I know every one of you guys have had this moment where they're like, all right, pastor,
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- I'm about to shock you. That's not even possible. Instead of recoiling in horror, when they're sitting in the chair and won't even make eye contact because there's so much shame, and the expectation is when
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- I say this to my pastor, he's going to push back. And instead you lean in.
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- Amen. Right? That bears fruit. I mean, even just a pastoral posture, how does this inform you as a preacher?
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- So I've said this before, I mean, maybe on Theocast, but I'll say it here because I haven't said it this weekend,
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- I don't believe, or this week, that what I presume as a preacher is that my people love the
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- Lord and want to honor Him and want to obey Him and are grieved at the thought of offending
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- Him. And yet they battle mightily against the corruption of their flesh and they are weak and they lament their weakness.
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- And so I preach accordingly, but we also pastor accordingly, which means that the things that should characterize pastoral ministry, it's like you do need to shoot wolves sometimes, but that means legitimate wolves, right?
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- But our pastoral posture is one of patience and gentleness. And we trust that that will bear fruit over the long haul.
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- And this doctrine drives that posture. Wolves are proclaiming another gospel.
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- They're not just sinning. Sheep are going to sin. That's what we've been warned about. Like you're going to be bit by them, right?
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- Did you have something to add? I was just going to say, God gave us another tool for wolves. It's called discipline. Too many people trying to do church discipline from the pulpit.
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- The preaching of the gospel to the church is not for church discipline. He gave us another means of grace for those who falsely profess.
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- People preach not this way because they're afraid of false professors, that sort of thing. So all the preaching is not care for these people who love
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- Jesus and you're patching up their wounds so they can go back out into this conflict. What you're doing is you're trying to smoke out.
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- There's one or two false people in there. You're not letting the tares and the wheat grow up together, that's what
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- Christ said. But he gave us something for that. It's discipline. Don't do church discipline from the pulpit. That's not what it's for.
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- Yeah, the only kind of discipline you're doing from the pulpit, it's formative, right? But what we're talking about here is like the formal process of church discipline.
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- And in our context, I know we have three levels of church censure, admonishment, suspension from the table, excommunication.
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- We don't need to get into the nuts and bolts. But this is relevant, what we're talking about right now. How should our posture be with respect to even church discipline?
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- We should be patient. We ought not be hasty, generally speaking. Now, heinous sin, we can always make exceptions that prove the rule.
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- It's not what we're going to do right now. In a general sense, you're patient, you're gentle, you're clear, you do things in the light so that everybody understands what's going on.
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- And then, even when it comes to the point of excommunication, we should be plain that what we are saying right now is not making a pronouncement that these people certainly are not
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- Christians, but that we are saying that you are living in obstinate, hard -hearted, stubborn, unrepentant sin that is dangerous for your soul.
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- And so the loving thing to do, the tool that the Lord has given us that is actually restorative in nature, that is a piece of how he keeps his people, is we are going to put you out that you might be brought back to the fold.
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- Right? Instead of saying, immediately somebody is in a chapter 5 situation from 16 to 8, like you said, backslid, whatever term you want to use,
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- I feel in my own past and in other contexts, we're too quick to say they were never of us, which to me is almost that butchering kind of situation.
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- Right, you don't know. But instead of walking with them like you talked about so well, it's easier to just kick them out, to make it easier for everybody else instead of walking with the wounded.
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- Yeah. Before moving on, this is why 5 .5 in our confession is extreme.
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- If you haven't memorized this, you need to. Do you understand that in Scripture and in the confession, it doesn't put a timeline on that, like how long a
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- Christian could wander? I want you to stop and think about that for a moment. There is no timeline on that, which means that people can wander for a very long time.
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- Do you know it was almost a year before David got confronted? It wasn't like, boom, boom, boom, oh,
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- I've got to repent. It was a long time. And then it took a really gnarly illustration for him to wake up. You are the man.
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- This is you. So this, as a pastor and a shepherd, it's incumbent upon us to realize that this is a process that takes time, that you are depending on the
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- Spirit to do His side. We do our side. We administrate. We're gracious. We do the means that He's given us, and then we wait and pray and are ready to welcome back, right?
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- Because they're not the traitor. What's interesting, I think, in this situation is that there are a lot of people who would agree with the saint -centered reality.
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- And so they'll say, yeah, to the saint side, we need to preach the gospel, but to the sinner side, we're going to come after them with the law.
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- Well, the hard part about that is Paul says, did you not know that the kindness of God was meant to lead you to repentance?
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- I think it's fascinating in the great high priest in Hebrews, he doesn't point to the law as to why with boldness they run into the throne room of God.
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- What does he point to? They're standing as child. He's your father.
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- Because of his affection with boldness, you don't run boldly to the law, do you?
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- Because the law is there to prove your failure. But you run towards a father that you know is waiting for you with what?
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- In a time of need, come to me with grace and mercy. So the preaching of the gospel is for the saint side and the sinner side.
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- Because when you don't provide grace and mercy to a sinner, they don't want to repent. I am speaking from example here.
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- We hide, we cover, we pretend. We put coats of paint on it, right?
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- But what seeps through is the rottenness. And so when someone tells me preaching grace will only allow people to remain in their sin,
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- I can't justify that with all of these other passages that say the opposite of this, that it's emphasizing that grace is what leads us home.
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- It's not what keeps us away from repentance. It actually draws us in. And then, of course,
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- Paul gets accused of being an antinomian and says, well, then let's just send all the more so we can see more grace. He's like, no, you may it never be.
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- May it never be. Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.
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- So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the
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- Theocast community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there.
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- And you can share it and ask questions. You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on how sometimes there are people in the reform world who would agree
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- Saint center, but somehow they think you got to preach one way to the Saint side and another way to the center side.
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- Yeah. One of the things I think is important. So we talk about like the three uses of the law. And one of the things to remember is that we're not, we're not preaching the law three different ways.
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- These are three ways the spirit uses the law. Right. And so, so Saint centers need the law and the gospel.
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- They don't need a blended and they don't need one or the other. They need both because the spirit uses the preaching of the law in those three ways.
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- And he applies it to the hearts of the people who hear it and does the work that he's supposed to do with it.
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- Right? So those who need to be convicted and driven to Christ, he does that through that. When the third use, those who need guidance on what it looks like to live as a
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- Saint, he does that in them. Our call is to preach the law faithfully and lawfully.
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- Use it for what, use it the way it's meant to be used and we can never do it apart from the gospel and we can never preach it as the gospel, right?
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- Law and gospel must go together. The gospel is not needed unless the law is preached faithfully and the law without the gospel is utter despair.
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- Right? And so Saint centers need law, gospel, faithfully proclaimed, and it does all that's needed for this.
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- That's the answer is to preach law and gospel and the uses of the law. And I think sometimes, we kind of said this yesterday, we'll say it again.
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- I think sometimes the confusion, even amongst a thoughtful group like this, might be that, the first use of the law is for the non -believer and the third use is for the
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- Christian. It's like, well, that latter part is true. The third use is only for the believer, but that first use is actually helpful for us week over week because we're reminded yet again, like Sunday after Sunday, like,
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- Hey fam, don't get it twisted. Like you're not keeping the law for merit. Like you can't do this. You couldn't do it before.
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- You can't do it now, you know? And so you're always being driven to Christ to cast yourself wholly upon him
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- Lord's day after Lord's day. That's also helpful because it reminds us always where our peace comes from and where our righteousness is found.
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- Right? Yeah, absolutely. And to answer your question, I know I'm awful at this.
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- These microphones, uh, why coming from my own recovering pietism or whatever, um, is thinking that somehow you can get people to grace through a guilt trip and guilt and shame are appropriate in some responses, but trying to pile guilt, almost like Jesus telling the
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- Pharisees, you tying up heavy burdens on people. You don't lift a finger to help bear that kind of situation.
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- Um, and you said it so well, it's like kicking a dead horse. If you kick it long enough, it'll become alive.
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- Um, and it's just the vanity of our own rationale. Um, and thank
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- God for recovering from that. Uh, but with that, we've kind of all talked about this a little bit, but you had mentioned just Roman seven or the, the, this reality of similar use to set peccator in the
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- Christian life. So you, you have a congregant or yourself. I'm sure we've all felt this.
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- I've been struggling with this same sin year after year after year.
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- How you talked about the battle, you talked about the fight. How do we find comfort in this reality?
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- How do we preach comfort? How do we tell our brothers and sisters comfort? It's kind of a softball, but no,
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- I just, when someone wants to tip their tip, dip their toe in the water and see if it's safe to confess the one, they're always like, man,
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- I just, I just keep struggling with pride. I just, yeah, that's how they're going to test you.
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- Like, all right, we'll see how they handle this one. So, which if we really want to be punchy and how sometimes sin is handled, like longstanding, habitual sin, like the idea that habitual sin means you're not a
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- Christian. It's like, well, I guess none of us are that right. Cause sin's habitual guys. I mean, you generally speaking, you have proclivities, you have bins in your frame, but you're going to battle from now until you die or Christ returns.
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- That's not to discourage. That's to be honest. It will be grace in it. The spirit of God will sanctify, but the fight is real.
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- Right. And so then like with that whole pride thing, it's like you're looking at a guy, somebody in sort of the self -righteous type.
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- It's like, man, I've been struggling with pride for 25 years, you know? And it's like, uh, I want to say to that man, brother, you sure you're a
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- Christian because, um, you, you talk to everybody else as though they should be better by now.
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- And you've been struggling with the same thing for 25 years. I don't know if you're saved, man. You know, if we want to be punchy, we could go that direction.
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- I mean, how many of you have been a believer for a while and you believed the lie that over time this will go away?
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- Anybody? Like you should be better. That's right. Or we, we think even, well, sanctification means that the fight will get easier.
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- Yeah, that's what I mean. Not true. No, it's not just, I don't even mean that like, I just won't do it anymore.
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- But even just that the fight will get easier. Not necessarily true. It might be just as hard or harder in 10 years than it is at this current moment.
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- Might. That's right. Yeah. And that, uh, I can tell you the relief to my soul.
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- Right. When I came to the realization that it's normal to wake up every day and grind and fight and claw.
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- Like, no, that's, that's why you got to depend on Christ. Cause that's what the flesh is going to have to do with. It was like, oh, oh, oh, so this is like normal.
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- Oh, okay, good. Cause I thought it was just me. I thought everybody else had it under control. And I was the only one like out of control.
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- Like what happened? Because yeah, I think it's important to realize like we're promising to vacation.
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- It's going to happen. It's going to culminate in glorification. It is. He does not promise us. He's going to do it in a particular way that we want him to do it.
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- Like making everything easier for us, which is the way we would like it to go. Right. Right. And you know, there are just my own
- 28:06
- Christian life. There are things that have gotten easier. There has been grace like that has, you know, helped me to pursue
- 28:14
- Christ when I would have chased and praise God. There are other things that are just as hard as there were 10 years, 15 years ago,
- 28:22
- God in his wisdom is saying to find me the way that. Is best for me and most glorifies him.
- 28:30
- It's not the way I would design it because I don't have his wisdom. Right. I don't know everything he knows. I trust him.
- 28:36
- Yeah. I trust him and how he is sanctifying me. It's good because of who he is.
- 28:42
- Can we make a few random comments at the end of this? If we're wanting to keep the schedules to 45, right? Yeah. I just have one more thought on that and I'll throw it over.
- 28:49
- Yeah. We might get bleed oversleep because what happens is sometimes we have what's called these, these declarative overachievement moments where it's like,
- 28:57
- I was once a drug addict. Now I'm not. What you are fooled by is that you think that this particular sin was the pinnacle moment.
- 29:07
- You're just moved on to another struggle. The struggle never. So the sin may change, but the struggle remains.
- 29:14
- That's why there's dependence. And that's why St. Center matters. So there praise God. We might overcome certain sins, but the moment you think you should lower your guard, take heed.
- 29:24
- That's the fight we're talking about. Every day you wake up, not knowing what sin you'll fight that day, but you will fight sin that day every day.
- 29:32
- And the sin changes over time, but there's always a guard of don't make provision for my flesh because it will give in.
- 29:38
- And people will say things like, I can't remember the exact phrase, but everybody is one day away.
- 29:45
- One day away from disaster. It could be one day away from falling back off the wagon, whatever the case.
- 29:50
- I would argue the reality is we're one moment away. When we get so arrogant to think, because we've all been there, that pinnacle is where I killed that sermon.
- 29:59
- I really did well on counseling or this paper is great, whatever. Man, that's the time to watch out.
- 30:05
- So in thinking about the dear people that would gather in our churches, I think if we get this wrong, what often ends up happening, because we absorb again, best of intentions, the teaching many people have sat under and our natural constitutions, tender consciences, especially people will absorb this.
- 30:24
- Yeah, you should be better by now. And they like Luther staring themselves in the face, looking in the mirror.
- 30:30
- And it's like, well, I'm not better. And so then there's one of two conclusions that many tender hearted, sincere saints draw.
- 30:41
- One, this whole thing's a sham or two Christianity's real, but it didn't take with me.
- 30:50
- Right. Yeah. And that that's not the result we're trying to produce.
- 30:56
- Right. Just had a conversation at lunch with some folks from my church talking about an individual that coming from an oppressive background, a pietistic background, whatever, went to a place where it was like, forget it.
- 31:10
- I'm going to burn the whole thing down to the ground. I can never be good enough, but I can be the best center there is.
- 31:18
- And that is, that is a danger when we misunderstand and misapply this. That's what happening with a lot of people who are deconstructing.
- 31:24
- That's right. He, you said something that I would like to say something about, because I think it's a very, very insightful observation that there is such a thing as this kind of, you called it a spiritual prosperity gospel.
- 31:39
- Yeah. We've called it similar things, even in our own local church, because we all can recognize prosperity theology when it's material.
- 31:46
- Like, and we can nail that and just say, yeah, that's terrible. And here's all the reasons why this is wrong. But I think we buy into, you know, like even, you know,
- 31:56
- Horton has the phrase of easy listening legalism. I think there's an easy listening prosperity theology that is spiritual, not temporal.
- 32:04
- And it's a theology of glory, really. I mean, we have bought into this lie that if we are sincere enough and devoted enough and disciplined enough and do all the things the right way and meditate the right way and apply it the right way, then we will become so dadgum spiritually strong that we will, to use your phrase, we'll just kind of hover and float six inches above the fray.
- 32:27
- And it's like, yeah, sin's real. The battle's real. That's all true. We're sinner saints, but I'm going to be impervious to trial and temptation because I'm going to be so spiritually strong.
- 32:36
- And that is not, not what the Lord would have us believe. Right? And that is, that's a tactic of the evil one to deceive and delude.
- 32:45
- If I spend enough quiet time. Sure. If I get up with that cup of coffee and yeah, yeah, exactly.
- 32:52
- Yeah. All right. One, one in it. Yeah, I think so. All right. Great, great quote from Chad Bird when he was on our pod one time.
- 32:58
- Yeah. He said, this is just the honesty that this produces. You guys, guys, let's be real. He said, so often our virtue is just an absence of temptation.
- 33:07
- And it's like, that's exactly right. And then I'm reminded, I'm mindful of Derek Thomas said that when
- 33:12
- Christians sin, we do not fall from grace, but into it. That's another good word.
- 33:19
- Well, thank you. We've got a break. Obviously the schedule's on your lanyard. You can look at that.
- 33:25
- One last reminder so that our dear friend will be able to pack up and move on to the next location.
- 33:31
- Uh, those books are available. Uh, he's going to be more than happy to be there to answer any questions. Please avail yourself of that.
- 33:37
- We'll have 20, 30, three 15 guys is when we're going to show that we've got 25 minutes. We do need to start promptly at three 15 and we'll go to four o 'clock with Q and a.
- 33:46
- Awesome. See you soon. Hey everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you.
- 33:51
- And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it, but we also need your support and it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people.
- 34:01
- So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.