The Prison of Self-Preservation

Before I begin today's episode, I need to make an announcement. Justin Perdue is no longer going to be a part of Theocast. He has decided to step back. And I know that makes a lot of you sad and disappointed, as it does me. JP is one of my dearest friends, and we have been doing Theocast for almost seven years. And I love him and his family and his church, and he has impacted me in so many ways. And I'm a better man.

Today, I love Jesus more today because of my dear friend. And he just feels that this time it's going to be best for him to step away. If you want to go to his social media, as he has explained there, why he has felt the need to step away. At this time, I love him and I look forward to being encouraged by him in the future. So just continue to pray for him and pray for me as we are trying to pastor our churches. This is something we do on the side.

Our main roles is a husband, a father, and a pastor. And then Theocast is something that God has allowed us to do together for the last seven years. So I just wanted to let everybody know going forward, Theocast will just be me. And I'm looking forward to encouraging you with faith in Jesus Christ. and all of Christ for all of life. I've got some great interviews coming up over the next couple of weeks. So I wanted to start this episode for those of you that may not have heard and why.

What you're about to hear is just me and not JP. And that way you weren't asking any questions. So I thank you for your ongoing support and your love. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Please continue to pray for JP.

and me as we continue to preach christ in our churches and let's jump into the episode there are many people in the world that feel alone and they they wrestle with that is it something i've done is there something wrong with me and um not only do we feel alone but our culture celebrates it they they actually want us to prioritize ourselves sometimes we call it

We need to love ourselves. And what this ended up producing is that even more loneliness. Well, I want to review a video with you that I think it might be helpful and then have a conversation about why it is that we find ourselves in isolation. and how the gospel liberates us from that. Stay tuned. Before we jump into the episode, I want to introduce a new segment to you we're going to start doing every week. It's called Look to Christ. And we're going to take a moment just to be encouraged.

as we think about who Christ is for us, and then we'll jump into the episode. So this week, this is our look to Christ. If you're anything like me, there are days when your heart turns inward. You start protecting your time, your comfort. your preferences. You cling to your plans. You tell yourself you deserve to look out for number one. And at first, it feels like freedom.

No one can disappoint me if I don't need anyone. No one can hurt me if I keep my distance. But give it time and that kind of self-protection becomes a prison. Selfishness doesn't lead to freedom. It leads to loneliness. It isolates us in our own fears and assumptions. It slowly convicts us that life would be easier without the weight of other people. But then...

You learn about the gospel. Look at the one who had every right to turn inward, to guard himself, to stay distant. Yet he moved toward us. He stepped into our mess, our pain, our need. He loved us not because we were lovely, but because He is love. He gave Himself fully, freely, and joyfully. And here is the miracle.

When you see his love for you, I mean really see it, something in your heart softens. Fear loses its grip. Self-preservation loses its hold. And the spirit begins to whisper, you're safe. You're wanted and you're known. You don't have to protect yourself anymore. Loved people love. Secure people move toward others. Those who have been embraced by Christ's compassion...

find strength to open their arms to. The joy you're longing for is not found in living for yourself. It's found in giving yourself, not to earn love. but because you already have it in Christ. It's found in community, in the messy, beautiful, spirit-filled act of loving others as he has loved you. So if you feel yourself pulling away, if you sense selfishness,

selfishness creeping in. If isolation feels easier than intimacy, pause and look to Christ. Look to the Savior who came near. Look to the friend who laid down his life for you. Look to the shepherd who carries you, forgives you, and holds you fast. And as you behold his love, ask him to free you from the fear that keeps you alone. Ask him to fill you.

with the courage and joy that only comes from loving others in his name. Because in Christ, you will never run out of love to give. You are drawing from an infinite well. His love for you becomes His love through you. Look to Christ and find joy not in self-preservation, but in self-giving and the kind of joy that only grows stronger.

when it is shared let's jump into the episode And we are back. It's good to be back talking to you about the sufficiency of Christ. We're so thankful that you're here listening to Theocast. I'm John Moffat. I'm the pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. And...

Today we are going to be talking about all of Christ for all of life. We're going to be pulling the clutter off the gospel and we're going to help us understand what does it mean to find sufficiency in Jesus Christ and what is the purpose of our life in Christ.

And I'm excited to do that. And I'm your host. I'm John Moffat. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. If you'd like to learn more about what we do at Theocast, you can go to theocast.org. We've got all kinds of books and articles and merch and videos there.

There is a growing community there that I'm really excited about. We are going to be doing monthly classes where I'm going to be talking about things like Logosful Distinction, Saints and Reality. How to study the Bible from a Christocentric perspective.

things like that. We do live Q&As. And then there's just over 2,500 people in there that are just asking all kinds of questions, pastors, missionaries, lay people from all over the world. It's a great, great community. You can go learn more about that at theocast.org. Today's episode is something that I've really wanted to talk about for a while. There are times I see things on the internet and I'm heartbroken about them.

And I want to think about them. Like, how did we get here? How did we get here at this place of culture? How did we get here when thinking about the law and the gospel? And so there are going to be times where I want to play some clips from you that are either Christians or non-believers.

And I want us to think about them, which is kind of why this tagline exists for Theocast. We're going to be talking about theology, specifically all of Christ. Who is he for us? And then how does it play in all of our areas of life? And I want to show when we ignore Christ and the benefits of Christ and the teachings of Christ for us and our culture embraces it and really ends up embracing the lie of Satan, the results, they're never what he promises.

In the beginning, sin always tastes good. It always feels good. But when it's finally taken root and whatever it is that he has enslaved us with is finally grown out into this full tree. It is nothing but death. So I want to play a clip from this lady. I saw someone commenting on it earlier a couple weeks ago. I just, I'm going to play the clip. I want you to hear it. And it's sad. And then I want to respond to it.

Just thinking about the situation that she finds herself in. I just realized that I'm not anybody's priority in life. I mean, I've known this, but it came like it just like kind of really hit me today. Like, wow, I'm not. There's no one that prioritizes me. in their life and I feel like I prioritize a lot of people but that is just like the nature of being a single girl with friends or a single adult with friends is that I prioritize my friendships because I have to

Cause I don't have anybody else. Right. But like realizing that I'm not anybody's priority is just like such a freaking bummer, such a bummer. And it hurts and it kind of feels like really bad. Like, did I make every wrong choice in life ever to end up in this place where like I'm no one's priority? But then like.

On the flip side of that is like, I am, I have to be my priority and I just have to like live in that more. Like I'm my priority. I am. I feel for her. I mean, when that video first started out. you feel for her when you realize, I mean, nobody wants to be alone. No one wants to feel as if at the end of the day, when they put their head down, no one cares, right? No one cares how their day went, what they've experienced.

How they feel. It's very lonely. And you can feel for her. And she even says, like, this is not what I expected. You can see it in her face. You can hear it in her voice. That there's a loneliness there. What shocks me is how the video ends. You would think like, oh, I need to, you know, prioritize other people in such a way where I create relationships or no, she, she actually.

doubles down on the very thing that caused the problem in the first place, which is prioritizing herself. Now, look, this is what I would say is the product of the American existence of where America is right now. She doesn't have a husband, so therefore her husband isn't prioritizing her. She doesn't have any children, so her children aren't going to eventually prioritize her. I mean, I have four kids.

And there are times where my kids do care about me and they do show affection. And my wife for sure has. And so I've experienced companionship and I've experienced what it's like to have someone think about me and care for me. And she's realizing she doesn't have that experience. She doesn't have those kind of relationships. And what got her there is prioritizing herself.

Like how she feels and what she wants to do and her career and her job. And I don't even know what she does for a living. But at the end of the day, it is to double down on the lie that to be happy. And to be joyful and to be protected, you need to prioritize yourself. And so she's sitting, it looks like in her car, and she's realizing, I'm all alone. And I don't like this.

And now she's going to double down on it. And that's what I want to talk about today is this is what ends up happening, especially in our world where we are convinced. That if we prioritize ourselves, if we protect ourselves, like if I don't enter into relationships, then I can protect myself from being hurt.

And if I prioritize my pleasure, my protection, my money, my time, then I'm going to be happy. And she's a perfect example of millions of people in the United States that have been selfish in... prioritizing themselves because that's the lie that's been told to them and it will make them happy. And I think many times there are going to be people here who are like, I can hear you, John, but I'm married.

I have kids and I feel like her, like, I don't feel like my husband or my wife prioritizes me or my kids. I am filled. I'm full of a house and I have friends and yet I'm lonely. Or I struggle. I don't feel like I'm hurt. I don't feel like I'm loved. I don't feel like I have companionship. So it's not even just, you know, if you're single, I know people who are married and feel this way. This is the problem with humanity is that.

we are naturally bent in on ourselves. Like we want to prioritize ourselves. It's part of our sinful nature. This is why Paul says in Philippians, he says, have this mind in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. And he points the attention away from himself. And he says that we are to lay ourself down.

and that we are to consider others more significant than ourselves. But why would we do that? Like to make yourself lower than, or to make yourself the servant of the doormat, it just feels like people are going to take advantage of you. You're going to lose your time.

And then you're going to end up just being trampled all over. You're going to be carrying their burdens. Why would I want to do that? Like what's, what's the whole point of that? And that's exactly how the world sees it. That I'm only going to participate in. a relationship with you or engage with you unless there's a benefit for me. And if there isn't a benefit for me, then I'm not going to do that. This is the all of life part. Now I want to talk about all of Christ.

Jesus into this conversation. The gospel tells us that we live in a world that is full of sin. We are born this way. We are born bent in on ourselves. We are born naturally prioritizing ourselves. So when you have a culture and you have a... the media and everybody around you telling you that it's a good thing to prioritize yourself, that it's okay not to be married and not to commit yourselves to a kind of a relationship that you can use it however you want to.

and that children are really not a gift of the Lord, but they're really a drain financially, they're a drain on your career, they're a drain on travel and pleasure. This is the messaging that's being told to us. And so what... Satan has brilliantly done in our culture is convince ourselves that if you want to be happy, do not be in committed relationships, do not connect with people, isolate yourself, which has become really easy to do.

We spend so much time on our carbs by ourselves as we're commuting. And then we get home and everything can be delivered to us now from our groceries to our food that we're going to eat that night to our clothing. Then we have plenty of things to watch. I mean, there's, there's so many, you could go weeks without ever being in any kind of interaction with people if you don't want to, because our culture has created a self-sufficient, self-entertaining, self-gratifying world.

And yet we're never fully satisfied. I mean, depression is at its highest level. Anxiety, people wondering, why do I even exist? Why am I even here? And yet we have everything right at our fingertips. We're wealthy. We have access to money. And yet we're not happy. And this is the lie that in this world that you can have joy outside of God.

You can have joy outside of this relationship, this loving, gracious, kind relationship with Jesus Christ. And what Jesus does is he takes everything and flips it upside down. If you find all of your significance and joy and satisfaction in Christ, like you don't, you don't need to find it in pleasure. You don't need to find it in, you know, recognition. You don't need to find it in accolades.

all of that, you find who you are in Christ. This is what 2 Peter 1 says, that everything for life and godliness has been granted to us in Jesus. Like the person of Christ becomes the ultimate, final, and full satisfaction in life. When you have that... then you actually get the joy of relationships. This is what's fascinating. Like the way in which the New Testament talks about relationships with each other in the church, relationships in marriage and relationships with parents.

is beautiful when it's flowing from a sense of I'm giving myself away because of what's been given to me, right? We end up having a hard time loving people and finding joy in loving people. Because we don't focus in and understand God's love for us, right? 1 John says, we love because he first loved us, right? Let's just rework that verse, change it up a little bit, same meaning. When we look at God's love for us, when we understand and feel loved, when we know what it means to be loved by God.

The natural response is to want to share that love through companionship with someone else. When you do not understand that, we become introspective and we move in on ourselves. I mean, this is exactly what this poor lady is saying. She doesn't know the love of God for her. And so she's got to protect herself and make herself the priority. And therefore it's love of self and love of self. And she's going to make sure that if anybody gets into her life.

that prevents her from loving herself or that gets in the way of what she's wanting to do, then they get pushed away. And it's not exactly what she's saying, but at the end of the day, I'm going to prioritize me. If no one else is going to prioritize me, I'm going to prioritize me. And I, you know, that sounds logical at times. Like, why not? If no one else is going to care about me, I'm just not going to sit here and take a beating. I'm going to prioritize myself. Well, this...

The loneliness she feels now, it's just going to come back because at the end of the day, we weren't designed to live alone and we were never designed to be apart from our God. We were always designed in the original creation, Adam and Eve, when they were created. God, through the means of the angel of the Lord, walking with him in the garden. There's this design for us to be in fellowship and interact with our God and our King. And that's the joy of the original creation.

And what has Satan done? He separated them in the garden and he continues to find any way possible to separate us from our God and King. This is why the center of the book, the center of our Bibles. is this message of what's called the gospel. And the gospel is not just a concept or doctrines clumped together. It is good news about a man, a human.

the word who became flesh, the God who became among us, who became one of us, so that we would be rescued from this separation that we have from our God. that we would then be united with him once again. And he did it through the greatest act of love ever. It was not that he comes down and tells us, you need to be better, try harder. The law was given to us.

Paul says this. He says, the law was given so that you would look at it and say, everything that's required of me to be in this relationship with God, I can't do it. Like every time I try to pick up the law and do it, just even one law, let's just pick an easy one, like love God. Well, the requirement is to love God perfectly. Like I cannot love anything else above him.

And the moment that I do, I failed. And it's not just like, we'll try to do it every day. The requirement of the law is that you do it every day without fail. And it's supposed to beat you down. It's a good thing. Like the law is good, but it beats you down because it continues to show you in and of yourself, you can't do it, right? So the gospel is the good news that there is one who perfectly loves God. Not only loves God, but has never sinned, has never...

fell to temptation. This man, Jesus Christ, is the replacement for you. And he did all of this not out of, you know, you've ever had somebody who does something nice for you or sacrificial for you? And then you can see they don't want to do it. They're very angry or they're begrudging. You know, like, this is putting me out. Like, I'm going to do this for you, but I'm not happy about it. Man, this is...

When the Bible describes Jesus's affection towards us, and when he laid his life down, it says he did it out of love. Like it was the joy. It was a joy for him. And we know how gruesome it was and how painful it was because the story of the crucifixion is extremely powerful. And yet he was underneath a ton of...

like stress and pain. I mean, I can't even imagine it for your mind to even be wrapped around it. That's almost like impossible, but yet it says he does it out of joy. Why? Because it was, it was a joy out of the obedience of the father for you. He obeys the father. And then it says, That the father loves you, so he gave a son for you. Like, this is a love that we just don't, we don't understand. Because in our world, we live in like this transactional world, right? Where...

You give a little, I give a little, and then we build a relationship. And eventually that relationship becomes strong enough where we will use the word love. It's affectionate, right? Like I love you because of this relationship that we have. This is a relationship I have with my wife.

We spent time together and over time we built trust and that trust eventually led to affection. And then that affection is now what led to our union, this marriage that we have. And we think this is how we should act with God. Like it's transactional. You know, we get to know him and then, you know, I trust him. He trusts me. And then, you know, he tells me I love him. I love, you know, I love him back. But anytime that we start wavering in the relationship.

We probably start wondering, well, maybe God's way weird. I mean, like, I wouldn't love me. I would wonder what's going on with me, what's wrong with me if I started doing this. But this is where the good news of the gospel is different. When it says God loves us, God does not love us the way in which humans love each other. How do we know this? Well, because he says, first of all, I loved you before you were even born.

Like before the foundations of the world, I loved you. And then he even says in Romans, he says, while you were my enemy, when you became, when you were born and you started to rebel against me, it wasn't when you said, oh man, I've rebelled against God. And now I'm going to turn from my evil ways. The Bible says that it was while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us when we were yet his enemy. So in our midst of rebellion and in our moments where we are.

sinning against him, that's when he declared his love upon us. It wasn't transactional. That's what we would call unconditional love. There wasn't a condition he was waiting for you to meet other than you are a living sinner. You've met the conditions. How do I know that God loves me? You're a living human being who is a sinner. Requirements met. Right? That's what he's saying. And this is important because if there's a condition that God's love is upon you, then you're not going to understand.

I mean, you're never going to, you're always going to wonder like, have I gone outside the condition? If I'm alive and I'm a sinner, that means I've met the requirement. Number two, the Bible says that God's love for you. is not only unconditional, but it's not transactional, right? So, and I know it may sound like the same thing, but it really isn't. It's not as if there's a reaction, because sometimes we think, oh, because I have faith in God, he loves me.

No, the way in which it worked is you were a sinner dead in your trespasses and sins. He made you alive. He set his love upon you before you could love him. He loved you first, right? So he isn't transacting with you. He says, I love you. I'm going to sacrifice what is necessary to bring you to life, spiritually speaking. And then I'm going to set my love upon you permanently, which means that God's love never ends. There's not like a, there's like a, well, you know.

you have sinned so many times and now we're at a point where, you know, there's no more love left. That's why Romans 8 is so powerful. Like when Romans 8 tells us, Who can separate us from the love of God? What can separate us from the love of God? There is nothing. Why? Because there isn't like a pool that this is how much it has. What's interesting is when God's love is described.

It's described in such a way that it's without end. There is no way to measure it. And then when the thing that could cause our love to potentially... remove, like affect God. He said, yeah, but I take that, the sin, and I remove it as far as the East is from the West. Like I don't, I remember it no more. I cast it in the deepest parts of the sea. You're not going to find it anymore.

Well, when you understand that kind of love, and not only does he think of you in this way, but he begins to bless your life this way. Like, when I mean by bless your life, what I mean is... From the moment your eyes are open to the love of God, like he opened your heart, he opened your mind, you're like, wow, God loves me, right? From that moment forward, you aren't then...

trying to keep that affection. You're not trying to maintain it. This is why it's so important when he tells them the Galatians in Galatians chapter three, verse one, he says something to the effect of, You foolish Galatians who bewitched you, you begun by the spirit. Are you now, you're now going to perfect by the flesh? Are you now thinking your works in your body, these fleshly acts, are going to be what I use?

to make you perfect? He calls it witchcraft. He's like, that's crazy. That's sorcery. That's not from God. He's like, the way in which you were saved is the way in which you are going to live the rest of your life. But Paul says, Walk by faith. Faith in what? Not in yourself. You're not the object. Walk in your ability to obey? No. He says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, right? So he set aside our sin and the weight. Why? Because...

Jesus is better. His way is better. And he's the one who's loving us. So we, by faith, believe, that's what does Hebrews say? It's impossible to please him without faith, right? So when you have this understanding of love, that it's going to take care of who I was, I was a sinner, damned for eternity, who I will be, perfect.

I'm not in charge of that. He's in charge of that. And the new body that I'm going to receive, where he's going to wipe away my tears, all of that. He is the author and finisher of my faith. When I realized that. Do you know what he tells me, what he wants from me? He says, child, I want you to trust in that love. Enjoy that love. Rest in that love. Come to me and rest. And then I want you to give others that love because it will lead them to me.

And when we continually over and over and over renew our minds, you know, Peter says, be sober-minded, be vigilant. Why? Because Satan wants you to think about yourself and your flesh. And yet God said, no, think about me. Set your mind on things above, right? Look unto me. Why? Because you are cleansed, you are covered, and you are cared for.

Right? It's not like God has put you up on the shelf. It's like, oh yeah, here's another one that I rescued. You know, he's not just out there. He's like, well, I got these human beings I got to rescue. He says, I love you. And Jesus says it this way, which we need to do a whole podcast on this one.

Jesus says, I hope you understand. I want you to see. He literally pray. He says, Father, help them understand that you love them like you love me. So it's not like, oh, yeah, you know, I love my creation. I've created things in the past. I've built things and I have affection for them. Like I spent a lot of time on that. It's not what he says. He says the affection that the father shows to the son is the affection that he shows to you. Why would we deserve?

we've never done anything that benefited God. Literally, Hebrews says, it's impossible to please God unless you do it with faith. And faith means, I trust that Jesus is... going to cover all my sin and my shame and my righteousness, and I'm not going to trust anything in myself. That's faith. And so God says, you can't please me unless you do it through faith. And therefore, I have nothing to offer.

This is the kind of love that it produces. Then when you listen to the word of God, instead of listening to the wisdom of man, first of all, the wisdom of man would never come up with this kind of love, right? They mock at it. That's why Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. There's good news about God's unconditional love for sinners, grace and mercy upon us that we didn't deserve it. I'm not ashamed of it, but the world will mock it because it doesn't understand it.

The world is being controlled and manipulated by lies that Satan, he convinces us that selfishness is good, right? Well, we're finally liberated by... by this gospel of love, the natural outpour is then in a world that is full of hatred and selfishness, the natural response of a believer is to then share that love. It's wonderful.

It's wonderful. And in many ways, God has encouraged us. If we can, and it's so his sovereign will, we should share that love in marriage. That we gather ourselves together. And we share this affection. I mean, Paul even talks about how this marriage, this intimacy between a man and a woman is very similar to the intimacy between Christ and his church. Like, it's a reflection.

The sacrifice that we show each other, like the man lays his life down for the woman and he cares for her as Christ cares for the church. And the woman responds in the same way, right? You have two people. who are overcome by the sacrificial love, the unconditional love, this non-transactional love of God, and then they get into a relationship with each other. I mean, that's a mercy and a grace and a wonder. And Paul calls it beautiful.

And then we are able to bring children into the world and then show them that same love as they wrestle with their bodies and their bodies are selfish. We get the joy of raising them, as it says, in the knowledge of God, right? What knowledge? Well, we always think of that passage. It raised him in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Some passages say the knowledge and instruction of the Lord. It always sounds like, you know, the finger that's pointing down at you, like you better obey.

Well, if your understanding of God is that he's this powerful, loving, all-sovereign God who has given himself to me and he lives inside me and he loves me in this way, I want my kids to know that. Because the world is going to say, be selfish, be self-focused, and love yourself, and you'll be happy. And the world around us is proving this isn't true. This woman is proving it's not true.

When you do this, it isolates you and it causes anxiety and depression. And we end up medicating ourselves or we end up putting our life towards things that doesn't matter. Our life has purpose no matter where we're at when we're in Christ. Because every single person that we love, we have the potential, as Peter says, be ready to give an answer of the hope that lies within you, right? And what is that hope? That hope is that the God who...

loves me and the God who saves me will one day bring me home and I will live with him in this new heavens, in this new earth, and I will never experience sin again. And I will never experience separation. And I will never need to repent of my sin again. I mean, this is the hope that I have, right? So I think it makes a whole lot more sense that...

As two sinners who love Jesus, they come together and they express that love in marriage. But I'm going to say it this way. Let's not just think that the ultimate for our life is marriage. God actually prioritizes even more than marriage. is our relationship to each other, our relationship in the church. What is interesting is that at times we might be married, we might not be.

I have people in my church that their spouses have died, there's divorced, some people have never been married, and yet they can still have a life of meaning and purpose and love and communion. She says, no one prioritizes me. And that in the church, everybody's prioritized equally. I'm not more important than anybody else at my church. I'm just part of the body. And Paul says in Ephesians, when the body functions as it should.

I love what it says. It doesn't say it builds itself up into this massive holy powerhouse, or it becomes extremely effective in, you know, whatever. Paul's conclusion is this. When the church... functions as God has gifted it to. When everyone understands who they are in Christ and how Christ loves them and how he's gifted them and that they are going to lay their life down as Christ has laid down their life for them.

Paul says in Ephesians 4 that they are built up in love. Ultimately, what she's describing is nobody loves me. I mean, she's saying nobody's prioritizing me, but what she means is nobody loves me. I mean, that's a hard place to be. And she says, well, I'm just going to love myself then. And no one at the end of the day will be fully, we as humans, we're not designed to be this way.

This is not how God designed us. He designed us to be in communion with each other, Adam and Eve, and with him, right? And they were to take this relationship and spread Eden all over the world. That's the original... what we call the Edenic mandate, the human mandate is to flourish, to continue to create this relationship and procreate and spread Eden.

All over the world, it was a wonderful gift that Satan convinced us to give up on. So going back to the church, I know Satan knows this because... Those of you that are listening to this most likely have had a bad experience in church. Some of you may not even be in church. And so you hear this and you're like, John, I don't, I don't, I mean, I like this whole stuff that you're talking about as far as like love and stuff, but.

I mean, going to the church? I don't know about that. And then he wins, right? Think about it. If God's gift to you is the church to... Comfort you and guide. I mean, literally, he says, consider how to build one another up. Share, carry each other's burdens. Pray for one another. Give to each other, right? Confront each other. Speak psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another. I mean, these are beautiful, wonderful gifts.

Like the gospel is always supposed to come to us from outside. The famous phrase is just right behind the extra nose, outside ourselves. We always want to do things by ourselves. And the Bible says that... The gift of the gospel, this good news message, is actually spoken to us and given to us outside of ourselves from someone else. That's why he's like, in Hebrews, he's like, prioritize the church. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves as such as you are doing.

Why? Because we know we need that constant rotation over and over and over. The hearing of God's love for you, the gospel of grace over and over. That's why Paul, when the church of Corinth got all kind of whacked out, like, I want to come to you and preach to you the gospel. So if you're sitting here and you're convinced yourself or you've been lied to by Satan through all of his means. And right now, I mean, it's, it's incredible. Even I'll just say this now. I'm going to.

probably do a whole episode on this, but even in love, when you look at songs and movies and social media, they're in love with someone because of how that person makes them feel. This is why you have people engaging in relationships outside of marriage because, well, there's no commitment. I get to satisfy myself.

I get to feel connected to somebody and yet I don't have to commit to it because if it doesn't work out, if they don't keep me happy, then I'm just going to move on to the next person. And so we never really experience what it's like to be in a committed relationship. And this is why at our church, you know, we take membership very serious. We don't want you to just kind of go here, go there. You're never going to experience.

That joy of confessing a sin and carrying a burden and weeping with somebody and rejoicing with them and watching them grow and celebrating their baptism and eating communion with them week in and week out. That's the design that God has as we're in wartime. We are literally trying to rescue people out of the kingdom of darkness. They're being convinced to just medicate themselves to death with selfishness. And the gospel comes in and says,

You will be liberated from yourself. Yourself is the problem, right? We have three great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. I'm going to end with this. I remember when I was preaching John 15. John 15 just like...

rocked my world. It was one of the hardest times in my life. I was really wrestling with ministry. Do I really want to be a pastor? And the church was just tiny. And man, we just, I was working three jobs. And I remember reading John 15. And thinking to myself, I'm going to take Jesus at his words because if this doesn't really work, I don't know if I'm going to have the energy to keep going in this world and being a pastor.

And Jesus is talking about abiding in himself and talking about the wonder of who he is. And it's this phrase. He says, my joy will be in you. and your joy will be full if you do this. And I was like, that is a fascinating promise. So it's not just joy in general. He says, my joy. which is that I thought about that. I'm like, can there be anybody who has more perfect joy than Jesus? No, I mean, he's sinless. He's God. So I'm like, man, if I want anybody's joy, I want his joy.

Because it's not based upon sin or temporary satisfaction. It's based upon pure holiness, right? Pure holiness. So I'm like, I want that joy. And then he says, not just some of it, like a taste of it, but you can have all of it. Like it's complete. It's full. And so if you keep reading, it says, this is the hard part to believe, but this is the part that I became convinced of and why I wanted to do this episode. He says this, he says, lay your life down.

for one another as I have given my life for you. It goes back to, if you want my joy, see what I've done for you. See what I've done for you in the cross. Right? No greater joy than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus gave himself for us. And we have been liberated. We no longer...

have to worry or wonder. Everything in our life has been taken care of. He will never leave us nor separate us. We don't need to spend all of our time and energy trying to keep his love or prove it to him or try to get like, hey, I need God to know that I love. That's all, it's all been taken care of. We are now liberated to go love others and then teach them and tell them and show them, I love you because of what Christ has done for me.

And what is interesting about love and the way in which Jesus is describing, he says, lay your life down, which means it's not transactional. I can love someone and they never love me in return, which is very much what happens with also the four of my children. As they were growing up and their little toddlers, they...

They couldn't love me in return, right? They didn't have the capacity to do that. So in some ways, we understand what it's like to sacrificially love them. And this is what Jesus is saying, is that... When you understand my love for you, you will want to love others by sacrificing yourself for them. So to this lady, I don't think she'll ever see this, but if you're here and you're like, yeah, I don't.

I don't really want to trust that loving someone else, laying my life down will make me happy or give me joy or give me significance or allow someone to love me in return. You need to go look at the gospel. Start there. Don't go with the command. Oh, I'm going to go love some other people so I can be happy. Nope. You missed it. You start with the gospel.

How does God love me? What has he done for me? What is he doing for me right now? And that moment when you've been liberated and your heart has been set free, you can then turn and say, I want to love others. I want others to experience what I've experienced. So hopefully this was helpful for you and you were encouraged. If you were, share the episode. It helps us out. It doesn't cost you anything, but helps us out if you like.

this video and you hit subscribe or leave a comment down below or a question if you haven't joined our community we'd love you to come over there we have these couple conversations all the time so welcome back to theocast we're we're excited we've got Two great interviews coming up the next two weeks. Two books that I highly recommend that you read. And I just pray that God encourages you. And hopefully, Lord willing, we'll see you next week. Christ. Oh