Experiencing God | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about one of the ways that we tend to struggle as Christians.

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We look around at our lives, whether that's how we're doing spiritually, or we look around at our lives circumstantially, and we question whether or not

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God really is graciously inclined toward us. Because at times, we just do not see a lot of evidence of the grace of God.

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And the antidote to what ails us is to actually not look at our lives as the evidence of God's grace for us, but to look at Christ's life as the evidence of God's graciousness toward us as His people.

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So that's the conversation that we're going to be having today. We're going to look at the confessions, and we're going to consider the scriptures as we think about how

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God loves us and how He feels about us as His people. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support

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Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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

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

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, who's pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, which is just south of Nashville, as he likes to say.

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And I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. John, good to be around the mic with you today, brother.

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Get to talk a little bit more doctrine and theology and the Christian life and Jesus with you.

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That's right. We were both kind of ho -hum getting on this morning. Just pastoral. Some heavy stuff going on in our life, yeah.

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Pastoral duties getting a little heavy at times, and we started shifting the conversation towards what we're going to talk about today.

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And both of us were like, let's go, let's go, let's turn on the mic. We got this. Well, now that you've built it up in the minds of the listener, hopefully we will not fail to deliver.

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Let's be frank, Justin. We talk about what we enjoy, and it just so happens to be what other people want to hear.

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True. That may change one day, but we don't really talk about what we want other people to hear. It's kind of like, we like this, so let's talk about it.

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And we also think about it as pastors, because we know our own hearts and struggles, and we know the struggles of our people.

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And we assume that other Christians in other places are like us, and they're like the people that we pastor.

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And so I think it comes from that area, too. I know you don't disagree. All right, we're going to give away stuff, because we love our listeners, and we like to give away good things.

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So tell us, John. The giveaways have been good. Yeah, you all have enjoyed those giveaways, are excited about it.

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Today, we're going to reach back into history, like back to somebody who is not alive.

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But man, do they have an influence on Justin and I, and on modern evangelicalism, and on modern

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Reformed theology. We're super thankful for this particular individual. So we are going to be giving away

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Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen. And we will put, yeah, we will put a link to that in our show notes if you'd like to purchase one.

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But for today, we're giving one away to one of our members. And today, we used the

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Wheel of Names. So by God's sovereignty and the divine choice, or I guess the choice of the

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Wheel of Names as we ran it this morning, we were discussing on how to say Rick's name.

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So it's Rick either Kesswetter, or as in English, it'd be Rick Kesswetter, or Kieswetter.

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Something along those lines, or Kieswetter or something. Or Kesswetter. It's such a unique name that whoever this is probably knows who we're talking to.

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Yeah, I mean, bro, if we've butchered your name, forgive us. And at some point, John, if we keep talking about the Wheel of Names and God's sovereignty and whatnot, we're just going to have to do a podcast on like primary, secondary, and tertiary agency or something.

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That's right. Yes. We absolutely should and can. And the decree of God. Well, that's important in an episode we want to do coming up, just even on, you know, getting angry with the absence of God and pain.

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We can talk about the concurrence of God and things like that. If you would like this book, we're giving one away right now.

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If you're listening to this and it's Wednesday, you should listen every Wednesday when it comes out, because that's when we give the book away.

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Go to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. There'll be some instructions on how to get Machen's book. Just follow his instructions.

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And then we will pick somebody on Thursday and tell you about it. That's it. That's it.

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That's how that works. That's how that works. So, Justin, let's get into this. We don't have a lot of time, so let's not waste it.

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What are we talking about today? Yeah. So, in looking around at people in my own church and thinking about my own life, and John, I know you agree because we were talking before we recorded this.

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I think a lot of people, and by that I mean a lot of Christians, really wrestle with God's posture toward them, and particularly,

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I think people really question at times whether God is really graciously inclined toward them.

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What I mean is people look at their own lives and the transformation of their life, or sometimes a lack thereof, and question whether God has been gracious to them and is continuing to give them grace.

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And people look at their own circumstances, and their lives are hard. And they question again, is

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God really gracious toward me? I understand that His mercies are new every morning. I realize that He's given me life, and He's provided for my needs, and He doesn't have to do that.

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But when it comes to how I relate to Him, is

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He really graciously inclined toward me? And I don't want to bury the lead here. I think one of the reasons that we struggle so much with that question, and we're haunted so much by it, is because we have our gaze fixed in the wrong place when we try to look for God's grace in our lives.

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And we're going to unpack this statement, but I would stake my ministry on this, that the evidence, like definite article, of God's grace toward us is not our lives, but it's

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Christ's life. And by that I mean, it's not our lives in terms of the transformation of them.

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Now, we agree with the confessions and the presentation of Scripture that we can be encouraged as we look to the transformation of our life and the fruit of our salvation.

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We can have our assurance bolstered by those things, amen, and thank God for the times when that occurs in our lives.

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And at the same time, that encouragement that we receive from looking at the transformation of our life is going to ebb and flow.

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Alongside that, if we look to our circumstances of our lives to see the grace of God, sometimes it's going to be obvious to us, man,

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God was so gracious to me in this situation, or in this way, or in giving me this, He's been gracious to me.

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But there are going to be times, let's just be real, when we're going to look around and we're going to think, man, my life is just hard, and it's a disappointment to me, and I don't like this, and I really hate that, and I feel like I'm just ground down to powder right now, and I really don't know that God is being all that gracious to me.

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Like, God, where is your grace in my circumstances? And we don't see it, and so then we question, and we struggle, and we doubt, and we wrestle.

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And so, ultimately, what we want to do is fix our gaze back on the place that we can always see in an unchanging way the grace of God toward us, which is namely the life of Christ, His obedience for us, and then also

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His death for us as the evidence of God's grace toward us in our worst moment, like in our worst day.

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We can look to Christ and know, yes, God is gracious toward me. That's right.

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Because we're emotional beings, our experience of the Christian life, for most

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Christians that I've met, Justin, is not consistent. It's not a flat line, and it's also not a vertical line, right?

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It's not gradually slanted upward. Many people's experience, if I were going to be open as much as I can be on this podcast, my experience yesterday,

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I was underneath so much pressure, and even really discouragement, I ended up getting a migraine from it because of just the pressure, and the experience, and my body, and stress, and my own sin, and the sins of those around me.

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And I even began to doubt, as crazy as this sounds, I started even doubting the effectiveness of my church, and the ministry, and theocracy.

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You begin to - You question everything. I know. And it's because of our - there's so much that's intertwined into a human being, and there's so much that's related to it.

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Your fatigue, your diet, what your knowledge is, what your experience is. Justin, you and I both know a lot of theology, and even at times, our emotional drain can overpower our knowledge of what we know to be true of God.

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We know this to be true of God, but the emotional experiences we're having at the moment can be so much more powerful than the actual knowledge we have in our hearts and minds.

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Totally, man. Right? Totally. So, when we're thinking about God, and the nature of God, and we separate the experience we're feeling, so my circumstances, my emotions, the spiritual nature, spiritual high or spiritual low,

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I've met people who are walking on water one day, and who are drowning in it the next.

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Totally, yeah. The up and down, both of us have experienced that. I will tell you, when we get finished with a podcast on Wednesdays, often

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I feel like I'm walking on water, because I've heard my brother exalt me into Christ. But when

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I am alone in the darkness of my sin, in the closet, I feel like I'm drowning at the moment.

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So, this experience, first of all, Justin and I want to acknowledge that it's real, that those of you who feel the emotional highs and lows, it's almost overwhelming at times.

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And I think some of it is, it's hard to get out of it, because we don't understand two things, the nature of God, and believe it or not, systematic theology.

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We often, you know, this is part of our conversation we had on the struggle of the church, when we referenced revivalism, and revivalism really introduced the downplay of the importance of theology and doctrine, and we would even say historical theology, and there has been theological debates throughout the years, and even in the

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Reformed world, as it relates to the nature of God. Like, for instance, does God have emotional experiences or feelings towards us, right?

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So your understanding of the nature of God in systematic theology, meaning that when we look at all of the

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Scripture, how does the Bible describe to us the very nature of God, can and will influence your experience of God, which, you know, there was a book you had referenced,

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Justin, written years ago by Henry, or what's his first name, Blackeby, I can't think of his first name. I can't remember either.

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I want to say it's Henry, anyways, called Experiencing God, and the book, I remember reading it years ago when

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I was a youth pastor, we read it as a church when I was at a Baptist church in Utah, and I remember reading some of that, thinking to myself that at times

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God feels more fickle than we humans do. Like, how do I know when He's angry with me? How do

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I know when He loves me? Like, how can I know that for sure based upon the swing moods that I have?

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Does God have swing moods? Is one day is He mad at me? Is the next day, is He happy with me?

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How do I know this to be true? So let me read from the 1689

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London Baptist Confession. So this is chapter two on God and the Holy Trinity, the first part of paragraph one.

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And just remember, for the listener out there who may not be as familiar with the confessions and even confessional theology, really all the confessions are is an exercise in systematic theology where the framers of the confessions are taking everything that the

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Bible says about a particular topic and trying to write that down in a succinct way and in a way that's clear.

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So this is chapter two, paragraph one of the 1689 London Baptist Confession. And the

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Westminster Confession would read almost identical to this. Quote, The Lord, our God, is one, the only living and true

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God. He is self -existent and infinite in being and perfection. His essence cannot be understood by anyone but Him.

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He is a perfectly pure spirit. And then this, He is invisible and has no body, parts or changeable emotions.

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And that piece in particular is what we're highlighting today. The fact that God's emotions,

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He is an emotional being. He has emotions, but His emotions and passions, like, well, let me just let me make a distinction with those things.

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God is emotional and He has emotions and feelings about stuff. But He is not ruled by passions like we are.

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He is not controlled by His emotions in ways that we are. And His emotions do not just vacillate all over the place like ours do.

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And I think one of the things that is a real hang up for us in this whole conversation that we're having in how we think about God and how

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He then feels about us and when we really question God's posture toward us, is

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He gracious? Does He love me? Is He merciful? Is He really benevolent and kind toward me?

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Or does that change? What we do a lot of times, John, is we use a big word and explain it.

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We anthropomorphize God. And what that word means is we talk about God and speak about God in human terms to the extent that we think

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He is altogether like us, which the Lord says about Himself in the Psalms that He is not.

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Like, you thought I was altogether like you. And you're exactly right. Numbers 23, like,

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God is not like a man that He would change His mind, right? And we tend, though, to think that God is like us in how

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He operates emotionally. And while God is emotional, His emotions do not function like ours.

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They don't vacillate and ebb and flow by the moment and by the hour. And His emotional nature toward us and the way that He feels toward us and His posture toward us is unchanging.

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In particular, it's unchanging in His eternal purposes that He has for us in His Son.

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That's really good. Now, I know there are people who are saying, well, it says that God changed

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His mind and He repented. And we're not going to get into that other than to say, this is why systematic theology and historic theology is so important, because when we look at all of what

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Scripture has to say, you can't look at one verse and isolate it. That's called biblicism. You isolate a passage and just translate it or interpret it not in light of, one, the context, but two, also all of Scripture.

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We have to look at how God describes His nature, how He does not change, and that His nature does not change, and then read those passages in light of that verse.

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And what we walk away with is that God is working in time, and He is working with humans in time.

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And He's working through means. That's right. And to explain what

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He's accomplishing and why it's being accomplished, these words that Moses wrote down, and particularly when it talks about God's repenting or changing

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His mind about Israel, you have to understand the nature of that story in light of all of Scripture.

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This is why this is important. You don't want the emotional God that can swing based upon circumstance.

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See, our emotions are all situated, or I'm sorry, are influenced by circumstance.

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Completely are, yeah. Right. So when things are going well, naturally our emotions are high.

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When things are going bad, our emotions are low. And that is natural due to the human nature.

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Like, that's how we function. And that's our frame. Yeah, right. Now, there are people who have chemical imbalances, and there can be the exception where someone's flatlined or always happy or always angry.

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Of course, there's always the exception. The point of it is to understand that the nature of God doesn't function like the nature of man.

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Let me read to you Bavinck from his Reform Dogmatics. Give us some

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Herman Bavinck, man. Come on, man. Some Herman Bavinck. He says, those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to his essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all his attributes.

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And then later on, he says this—so we talk about his independence and simplicity, his omniscience, omnipotent, any of that.

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It says, this robs God of his divine nature and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.

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So the problem when it comes to us thinking that God vacillates back and forth between whether he's happy with us or whether he's angry with us—let me put it in a more practical sense,

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Justin—God's mercy can be more or less given to us based upon how he's feeling at the moment.

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And what the Bible tells us is that God's feelings do not vacillate. They do not go up and down.

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Therefore, his mercy is constant, the way that the psalmist describes it. It's new every morning, which means it cannot be depleted.

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That's right. It cannot be depleted, it cannot be changed, and it is ever sufficient.

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So God's affection and feelings—if you want to say he has feelings—but God's relationship to you cannot change because his nature cannot change.

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So if he has covenanted, if he has promised endless mercy that covers all sin, no matter what you do or you don't do—and

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I know that sounds scary to say, John, don't say those kind of things, people will live however they want. Listen, true, regenerate sinners who have the

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Spirit living within them hate their sin. They don't want their sin. So I can say it with full confidence that all the sin that remains, that you still struggle with—and when

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I mean remain is that our nature that still fights against the flesh, Galatians 5, 17—God's mercy does not change because his nature does not change.

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Therefore, his promises are sure because they are not based upon our actions, but they are based upon Christ's actions, which are complete, stamped in history, and recorded in the

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Bible for us. And Christ for us never changes because he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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And the witness of the Scriptures, John, from beginning to end, is that God is purposeful and that he always accomplishes every single purpose that he has.

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And he's very clear about his purposes for those of us whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world, those of us whom he has predestined for adoption as his children through Christ.

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He is always for us and is working for our salvation and has accomplished it.

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I'm going to read a little bit from Ephesians chapter 2 that I think highlights what we're talking about really well in terms of the nature of God and what he's like and what that means for us.

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So this is Ephesians 2, 4 and following. So many will know that Ephesians 2, 1 to 3 is where Paul describes our situation before, like what we were naturally, that we were dead in our trespasses and sins, that we were following the course of the world, that we were enslaved to Satan, and that we were enslaved to our desires and passions and were by nature children of wrath.

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But then these words, but God being rich in mercy. All right. So that phrase is huge.

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God is rich in mercy. This is who our Lord is, right?

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Like he is a merciful God, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast faithfulness.

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So steadfast love and faithfulness. But God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us.

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So there we again have his love for us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace, you have been saved. And he's raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

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So in those verses, we've got mercy, we've got love, we've got grace, we've got kindness of God toward us.

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And what we have to say is God does not have to work himself up and convince himself to be merciful to us or to love us or to be kind or to be gracious.

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This is who he is. And so he is the fountain, right? That is just so full that he overflows with these things toward his own.

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And like God, I think what we have to realize is that the Lord saves us completely by his grace through the work of Christ, not our works.

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And we are unworthy. We are unworthy of salvation and of being with the

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Lord forever in a redeemed heaven and a redeemed earth. But it is not as though God will hold that over our heads for all of eternity because that's not how he is.

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He will delight to show us kindness and he will delight to show us grace forever in Christ.

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And it's a mind -blowing thought, John, that we will struggle as long as we're breathing, right, to obey and to honor

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God with our lives, even though we want to, because we're weak. And we will often be way more mindful of our failures than we will anything that we've done that is faithful.

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And it's our salvation, as we know, is all of Christ and none of us. And then God will look to us at the end of history and he will say, well done.

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Enter into my joy forever. And if that doesn't describe to us his nature, how gracious, how merciful, how kind, how patient, how rich and deep is his love,

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I don't know what does. And this is how he is toward us always. Yeah, Romans 5, 8,

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I think, is important for us to understand. It says, but God shows his love for us and while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. So the initial action towards us is not a reaction to us, right?

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So when we were Ephesians, when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, he made the action towards us.

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He made us alive. So let's put this back towards the impassibility of God.

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The God's emotions does not change. God's nature does not change. God did not look at us.

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Some would say, look down the corridor of time or saw in due time that we would choose him. But the exact opposite,

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Paul makes it clear both in Ephesians and in Romans that God's actions towards us are proactive.

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They are not reactive, meaning they are according to his nature. So according to the nature of God, he chose as we as sinners, he chose to give us mercy.

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He chose to love us. So it's, we often fall in love with our spouses or with friends because of the reciprocants that we receive to each other, right?

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I'm receiving something from you and therefore I'm giving it back. I'm attracted to this relationship in some way.

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There's very few relationships that are unconditional. Parents can tend to have love for their children unconditionally because of the natural bond that's there.

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But outside of that, there is no such thing as a unconditional relationship. But God is the one who says there was no condition that drew me to you other than I chose to.

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And that is important to think about because if God set his love upon you, proved his love as Christ said by Jesus laying down his life for his sheep, the ones to whom the father chose to love, the ones whom the fathers chose to redeem.

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If God has chosen to put his affection upon you, your obedience or lack thereof will not vacillate

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God's affection, nor his love, nor his mercy, nor his blessings towards you.

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It's really hard for us to hear. But the reason why Justin and I have to do this podcast is that we do not have this foundation.

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Then when your emotions and your body and your flesh start yelling at you that God is not happy with you, these truths need to be the foundation.

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This is why often I encourage people to read the confessions and read the scripture that goes along with the confession because it grounds us in the nature of who

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God is. This is why the confessions exist, because they are there to remind us of who the nature of God is and who the nature of man is.

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And we're going to get into this a little bit more in our Simple Riffle Mondo podcast. But Justin, I think that we can say when you said earlier,

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I base my ministry on this. I stake my ministry on this. We will say that the only reason

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I can stand on Sunday mornings with utter confidence, without fear, without trembling, knowing that what

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I am saying should be heard is because God's word has said he is a

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God that does not change. He is a God that sets affection on sinners. How do I know I'm one of those sinners that God has set his affection on me?

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Well, it's very clear according to scripture that if you have faith in that God and in that message of God's gospel and you believe that and you love

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God, then you can say God loves me. We love God. Why?

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John tells us. Because he first loved us. Amen, brother. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free e -book available for you called

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

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

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slash primer. Just turning this back in a pastoral direction, we're a couple of pastors here around and we want to speak in pastoral ways even on this podcast.

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Unless you're a member of one of our respective churches, we're not formally your pastor. We hope to encourage you in Christ and in the love of God for you.

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As you look around at your life and you assess things and how things are going, there are going to be plenty of times by God's grace where you look to your life and you see that your life is changing and that you're not who you used to be and you're not like you used to be and there's been real growth and real maturation.

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In those times, friends, be encouraged. Praise the Lord. Thank Him for what

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He's done in you by the work of His Spirit. Then there are going to be times when you're going to look at your life and how it's going and you are not going to see much of anything that would encourage you because you're going to be very aware of your battle against sin and the ways that you've given in and the things that you're fighting against and you seem to be losing often.

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There are going to be times where you're going to look at your circumstances and you're going to be thankful and full of gratitude and joy and you're going to be really aware of God's kindness to you.

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Lord, I don't deserve this and you've given me this really good thing. I really didn't think this was going to turn out and it turned out super well.

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I never would have planned this for myself and God, you've ordained these circumstances and it's been so clearly good for me.

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Thank you. In those moments, friend, thank the Lord and praise Him for His obvious grace in your life.

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But then there are going to be times where you're going to look at your circumstances and you are either thinking,

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I'm living here between rage and tears. I either want to tear my house apart because I'm so frustrated or I just want to bawl my eyes out because everything is falling apart around me.

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And my life is hard and I just don't see any hope anywhere. You're going to have days like that.

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My encouragement to you in those really hard times when you don't see a lot of fruit in your life and you're not encouraged by how things are going in your walk with Christ or when you look around at your circumstances and you really see nothing good.

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Remember this, that at the end of the day, your life and your circumstances are not the primary evidence of God's grace to you.

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It is Christ and Christ's life for you that is the evidence of God's grace to you. And quite literally,

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Christ is the grace of God for us. And God loves us so much in this way.

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God loved the world that He sent His only Son to live and to die so that anyone who believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life.

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We are so secure in what God has done for us and in the love of God for us that Christ would literally have to be ripped out of heaven and put back in the grave for us to not be secure, for us to not be loved, for God's grace to not be all over us.

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Obviously, that's impossible because Christ reigns and so He's enough. He's enough for forgiveness and absolution and sanctification and righteousness and redemption.

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And we look to Christ and we see visibly the grace of God toward us, even when our lives are falling apart.

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Just to add to that some passages that we can think about that grounds us in that.

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2 Peter, we've mentioned this over and over again, but if you're looking at the evidence of your life and you aren't seeing the fruit of the

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Spirit and you're beginning to wonder, what's wrong with me? Maybe I'm not a Christian. Peter says, if these are not true of you and increasing, you have forgotten that you have been cleansed from your former sins.

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What does he point you to? Objective realities. He points you to something that is outside of yourself.

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You didn't cleanse yourself. You didn't save yourself. You didn't die on the cross. You didn't even put

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Jesus' blood on you. God put Jesus' blood on you. God gifted you with regeneration.

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God baptized you. You look to your baptism. You look to the reality that as you went under the water and were cleansed, so did

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Christ's blood cover you. I would also point you to 1 Corinthians when Paul is dealing with people who are trapped in their sins and disobedient.

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He says, I don't want to make nothing known among you except for Christ and him crucified. I want to recenter you because you have forgotten where you have come from.

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Or even Hebrews 12, where it says, looking unto Jesus. What are we doing? Set aside the weight and the sin that easily besets us.

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And how are we doing that? Looking unto Jesus. The author and what?

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Finisher. The one who starts it and the one who ends it. So this is why a gospel

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Christocentric theology, especially a church that emphasizes it, is so important.

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Yes, obedience we should be doing and pursuing holiness. But when that vacillates, your affection or God's affection,

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God's security, God's promises do not waver because we can look at these type of passages and say that according to his nature, he has made his decision.

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His decision is final. It's so final. The son sat down and said, it is finished.

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There's nothing left to do. I have completed the work. Now trust that I will finish what

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I have begun. And while you wait, there is work for you to do. This is what the

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Christian life should feel like, right? This is what we should hear. And Justin, this is why you and I say that taking communion, confessing our sins, and hearing the gospel of a week is mandatory.

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Otherwise, Christians will become anemic and they will become emotional wrecks. Totally, man.

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We need to be reminded all the time of several things that you just mentioned.

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The book of Hebrews chapter 10, you referenced how Christ, after making a once and for all sacrifice, he sat down at the right hand of God.

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And two verses after that statement, the writer of the Hebrews says, having perfected for all time, those who are being sanctified, we need to be reminded of that reality.

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And we need to be reminded of that reality every week, that there is more grace in Christ than there is sin in us.

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And if we're not reminded of those realities, we're going to be despairing regularly and we're going to be discouraged.

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And we need to be reminded that one of the reasons that we still sin in the providence of God is that God is continuing to teach us through our struggle.

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He's not trying to cause us to doubt. He's not trying to cause us to question everything in terms of His grace and love and mercy to us.

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He's actually working to teach us how dependent we are and how much we need

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Him and how much we need Christ. The fact that I still sin, John, keeps me from ever thinking that I could do this thing.

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My sin is not meant, should I be encouraged when I sin? Well, of course not.

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But my sin ought to drive me all the more to Jesus, who is my righteousness and my forgiveness and my absolution.

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And thereby, I have love and gratitude cultivated in my heart toward God, who has saved a wretch like me.

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But we've got to be reminded of that every week because we don't think that way.

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As Christians, when we sin, it bothers us because we've been united to Christ, and so now we're actually grieved at the thought of offending

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Him. And so my natural response when I sin is to think, man,

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I have blown it and Christ is disappointed. Does He love me as much?

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Part of what happens on the Lord's Day is to be reminded, no, my goodness, like you said earlier, God's love and grace and mercy is proactive.

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It's not reactive. This is who God is for me. This is who Christ is for me.

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And I need to be reminded of those things that I will struggle and I will be weak. And I'm going to blow it sometimes.

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And even there, Christ for me is God's grace and the evidence of God's grace for me.

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But I'm not often going to draw those conclusions on my own, brother. I need help from the saints, from my pastors.

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I need to come to the table and cast myself upon Christ. Yeah, well, brother,

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I want to make one other, I know we're coming down to our end here. I want to make one other point, and I'll give you a chance to comment on it.

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Justin and I are very passionate about theology, and we will say specifically here when it comes to this conversation, covenant theology, not just what we call biblical covenants, but the actual system of covenant theology.

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And here is why. When you understand the flow of Scripture, a redemptive historic understanding of Scripture, this very nature of God is seen.

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And it is built, the whole theology of the redemptive nature of a redemptive historic theology is grounded in the nature of God.

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So we learn in Hebrews that, I'm sorry, I apologize, Ephesians, that the

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Trinity comes together and the Father makes a covenant with the Son, right, the pactum, and they make this, what's known as the pactum salutis, they make this promise as covenant between the two of them, right, that they are going to save sinners according to their will, not according to our will, according to His will.

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So then you read the Bible in this way, and you start in Genesis 3 .15, where you have the fall of man and the initial promise of God.

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And there's two things that happen here, and this is what ends up, we talk about law gospel, and we mix them all the time.

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This is what happens when you do it in the Old Testament, too. You mix the law and the gospel. God gives the law for man to obey, and if he obeys it, he promises blessings.

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But God's gospel is not connected to God's law. They are separate.

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God's gospel, the promise of a covenant that He made with the

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Son, the covenant of grace, this promise that He is going to save sinners is never dependent upon the law.

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The promise is always dependent upon God's nature, and His nature cannot change.

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So it's not going to change. Go ahead. So in eternity past, the Godhead, but more pointedly, the

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Father and the Son make a covenant called the covenant of redemption, where God's people will be saved on the basis of the works of the

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Son, in particular, His fulfillment of righteousness and then His suffering and the shedding of His blood for our redemption and for the forgiveness of our sins.

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And then, yes, immediately, we want to see the nature of God. Read the first three chapters of the Bible. I mean,

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Genesis is foundational in a number of ways, and one of the ways it's foundational is it shows us so much of how redemption is going to go.

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Because yes, God does make a covenant with Adam and Eve, particularly with Adam in Genesis chapter 2, where He says, you know, here's what you're to do, here's what you're not to do, and promises blessings, and He gives sanctions if you break it.

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Well, it's broken. So no longer can man be right with God on the basis of his works.

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That's done. It's over, you know, once original sin happens. But then immediately upon man's sin,

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John, to your point, what does God do? He promises a Redeemer. So it's like, okay, yeah, clearly it's not based upon us.

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It's not based upon what we deserve or what we can achieve. It's based upon God's promise of grace and His promise in particular of the

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Redeemer, the Son who takes on flesh, namely Jesus, who will come and accomplish our salvation, and it is given to us through the covenant of grace.

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It's a remarkable thing. So even in those first three chapters of the

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Bible, we see so much about the nature of God and the nature of our salvation thereby. And it's the nature of God that determines the nature of salvation.

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I trust that's clear, and maybe that's heady, but it makes sense in my mind that because God is this way,

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He's merciful and He's gracious, and He's a covenant maker and a covenant keeper, and He's uber faithful.

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This is how we're going to be saved, by His mercy and His grace and His faithfulness, not our work or our merits or our faithfulness.

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That's right. So let me just say one thing. We did an entire five -part series on this. You can go to YouTube or our website, and you can get that for free.

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We'd encourage you to do that. The reason I want to add this to what Justin just said, the story of the

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Bible, specifically in the Old Testament, is you can get confused. God shows that by the law, you cannot please

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Him, and you can see His anger. You can see His wrath. You can see His displeasure.

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He says this to Israel, but that is not the relationship we have to God as Father and as a covenant -keeping

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God. God's affection towards us when it comes to our adoption is sealed, and that's why it's important to understand law, gospel, distinction, understanding the covenant of works, a covenant of grace, and this flow of redemption.

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If you want to know more about that, go to our website and check it out. Justin, tell us about what we're about to do next.

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We are really excited, as you can hear in my voice right now. We're excited to be able to record another podcast, because why record one when you can record two, amen?

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We are about to record our Semper Reformanda podcast, which is for people who have partnered with Theocast and partnered with our ministry to see this message of the sufficiency of Christ and the rest that is ours in Him spread as far and wide as possible.

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We're about to go have that conversation with our friends, with our team, with our family who have joined the

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Reformation along with us. If you are wondering what Semper Reformanda is or if you want more information about how you can partner with Theocast, you can find all of that information at our recently revamped website.

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Theocast .org is the URL for that. I trust it's going to be user -friendly and intuitive, because that's what we spent money to build that thing for.

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You can find the information that you want there. Consider becoming a partner with Theocast and joining

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Semper Reformanda, joining the Reformation. Not only will you be a part of this other conversation weekly, there are other things that will come to you as a result of being a part of that ministry.

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Justin Perdue Can we just add real quick that we are starting a network, so you'll be able to meet with local people in your town and discuss this podcast.

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So, if that's something you're interested in— Justin Perdue We'll have virtual meetings to do it. You'll be able to talk with other Christians who are wrestling with the same stuff and are seeing the same things and are having similar experiences to you.

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If that sounds encouraging to you, join Semper Reformanda. Again, Theocast .org, you'll find that information.

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We're about to go over there and have a conversation. We'll talk with many of you over there, and then we'll talk with everyone. Again, we trust next week.