Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hi and welcome to the unveiling. I'm Tim, one of the hosts. Along with Ajay and Mark, we are three guys discussing the one true gospel. We hope you're encouraged by this episode. Let's dive right in.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back, everybody. We are so excited you're joining us this week. And as we dive deeply into our favorite subject, and that is the glorious message of God's grace, Jesus Christ, and him crucified, we are in a no religion zone here. We are not about the law, about do this, don't do that, no performance, behavioral modification.
We are about completely focusing and turning our eyes and our hearts and our minds on the Lord Jesus Christ himself and his perfect finished work on the cross and his resurrection and the fact that he now is in the heavenly realms, intervening, intervening and interceding in our lives. And we just long to know him more. So I'm back again this week with my brother here. Don't say I didn't warn you.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Last week, I told you he was coming back and here he is in the flesh, in the voice in this case.
But yeah, Mark, I. I suppose that means I have to.
I have to kind of eat some words from last week. I was told by a little bird that perhaps you took a minor offense at some of the things I may
[00:01:32] Speaker B: have said last week.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: So I'm sorry, brother. It was all in good fun.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: That's all right. And I'm going to make it even because we're going to take it out on Ajay for being gone today, so.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Well, there you go. But that just means I can never, ever not be here for a record.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: That's right. Or you're really good.
No, I know. It was all. And we always rib each other when we have to miss, but.
But believe me, none of the three of us ever want to miss or like to miss, but sometimes life gets a little busy. And we just moved into a new house a week ago, and I think most of our listeners know the chaos that that can put you in. But I am happy to be back. And I'll just say to Ajay, Ajay is traveling to India not only to visit his family, but also to carry and share the glorious gospel about which we are going to talk today. So, Tim, you ready to dive in?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: I am always ready, Mark. I may not be able to paddle too well in the deep end with you, but let's try.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Alrighty. So today we're going to do what we do from time to time, especially since Ajay is out of town, out of out of nation this week we could call it.
We're going to do what we call. We used to call it a free for all and now we call it the crucible. It's just a free form laid back discussion of the one true gospel, of the things that God is teaching us right now in our times of devotion or just in our times of thinking about him and focusing on him. So we'll see where the spirit of God leads us today.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Hey, Mark, just before we start, I want to tell you that intro you
[00:03:05] Speaker B: did,
[00:03:07] Speaker A: I was ready to go. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back again next week. Because you did such a good job of explaining so much in so short a time, I thought that was amazing. So thank you.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Well, thanks for that, Tim. But considering that we are going to spend the rest of our lives diving deeply into the glorious gospel, which is an ocean, we're never going to one day say, oh, I got it all, you know, so there's plenty of room for our conversation today. So the other thing beside the free for all we call it is the crucible. What we do is a crucible is like, if you remember from your high school chemistry class, it's like usually a porcelain dish over a Bunsen burner where they heat some something up in it. And what you're trying to do is refine that something, get rid of the dross they used to call it, or everything that's not of that pure substance. And that's what our lifelong endeavor is, is to get rid of the impurities to refine our gospel until it matches God. You know, the scripture calls the gospel the gospel of God, not meaning it's a gospel about God, but it belongs to him and his graves. I believe one of his greatest desires is to continually reveal that gospel to us.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Amen.
I would like to add to that. It's of God. Doesn't mean he's the, you know, it's not about him being the author. It's not about him being he's the subject. The entire Bible is a love from him. And it explains his, that who he is, as in he is love, he is grace, he is life, he is, you know, these so many attributes, so sure.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: And that gospel, lest we forget, is not an antidote. It's not a backup plan. It wasn't that, oh, I'm going to give them all these laws and they're going to do them so good. And oh man, they screwed up. Now I'm going to have to send my son to die. No scripture tells us over and over again that the gospel was before the beginning of creation, before the beginning of time.
It was always going to be Jesus. That's what God's plan was from before he even created anything. And it tells us that the law is actually the servant to the gospel. The reason that law was given was to make people conscious of their sin, to make sin utterly sinful, Paul called it.
To make us not be able to sweep it under the rug and see that we're all in desperate need of a Savior.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a mirror. You know, if you're looking at it and you see yourself, you see that you aren't clean, you don't. You are not blameless, you are not sinless, you. It shows you all the issues. But what, what we have to keep saying about it though, is the law couldn't make us clean, the law couldn't save us. The law wasn't the power to change who, who and how we were. The law was just a mirror to show us what we needed.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Right. Amen. That is such truth. And I think a lot of people miss that inside and outside the church, Tim, you know, and it's such a key aspect of it.
And you said something, we were talking right before we went on the air here. I said something to the effect that the gospels almost seems too good to be true because there's nothing else in all of creation that compares to it that we can somehow relate to it. And what did you say then, Tim?
[00:06:37] Speaker A: I said it's not, it doesn't sound too good to be true. It is too good to be true. I mean, I felt overwhelmingly that it was too good to be true when I was first introduced to it. And I, the poor pastor who was the person who was responsible for teaching it, I argued with him mercilessly, you know, over, oh no, you have to do, you have to work, you have to earn, you have to, you know, all these things.
I don't know how the man, I don't know how a man didn't pluck his hair, his head bald, but he put up with me.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Well, and you know what? That's exactly the kind of gospel we need.
Because when it all comes down to it, if there's one thing scripture tells us is we're helpless. We can only come empty handed. Our best deeds in our life are considered as filthy rags. Because when we really think about it, a lot of times when we do good stuff, we're not doing it completely out of love. It might be mixed motives, we might do it out of Guilt because we feel like, oh, we need to do this to be good people. So, you know, even our best righteousness, us at our best moment is not good enough. Because God's standard is perfection. You need to keep every little point of the law and not do anything to break one little point, point of the law your entire life, from birth to death. That's the standard. And scripture also says under the law in the Old Testament that the guilt goes on to the third generation. So not only do you have to fulfill that law perfectly and not ever break it from birth to death, but your dad, your grandpa and your great grandpa had to. In other words, God has left us no way out because it was only meant to lead us to our blessed and beautiful Savior.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Well, that's one of the first things that people ask me when I start teaching Christianity. Oh, you know, I live a good life. I'm a good person. I give to help people, I give to the poor. I do this, I do that. And I said, yes, you're good. I know a lot of non Christians who are good. But good ain't perfect. And God's standard for entry into everlasting life in his presence is perfection. And we can't do that. I. All right, maybe, maybe someone out there can, but it ain't me.
And Mark, I'm going to say it in your behalf. It ain't you either. That's right.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: I probably do it less, less well than you do.
But we're not going to race a competition, you know.
Not that it's a competition.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I know plenty of great people who are for people who are great people. But if you're not safe, man, there's no getting there.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: I want to tell you a little bit of a side story here, Tim. Years ago, I used to work as a music. As a musical director.
I used to work as a musical director at a big mega church outside of Chicago.
And once a month we used to put these giant concerts on that had drama teams and two dance teams and video full band vocal theme. They were just like extravaganzas, all focused on Christmas.
And we used to have these creative planning meetings and I brought this idea up that kind of got shot down. That what you just said reminded me of at the time that year the Summer Olympics were going on and I had the idea of doing like a big skit about. I called the Sin Olympics, where there were different.
What's the word? Different. What did I use in the Olympic activities? Sports. Yeah, different sports and competitions. And each one would be a Different sin. And there'd be like three or four different kind of people trying not to sin in that situation.
And like one would be like a self righteous Christian, one would be a Pharisee, another would be an atheist. So you'd have like these different people across different world views coming to a different sin event. That's what the word was I was looking for. And whoever could sin lest by the end won the gold medal. And so it was just pointing out was going to point people to Christ because nobody can do that of their own. So anyway, the Sin Olympics, you heard it here first.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: No matter who won the gold, they weren't getting into heaven, man. That's not enough.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: So Tim, one thing you and I and Ajay have in common is. Well, first of all, we all met at a church in Illinois. Oh boy. Let's see, must have been about 15 to 20 years ago somewhere in there. Maybe 14. Yeah, I think 12 years ago actually is when the church launched. And the pastor there is where I personally first heard the one true gospel, the pure gospel. That scripture teaches that the Apostle Paul, who was the predominant preacher of that gospel, who had direct revelation of the gospel from Christ himself, he was the last person on earth to see the resurrected Christ who directly gave him that gospel. He's the predominant preacher. And so we all heard this gospel from the same church for the first time. And one of the things that all three of us had been believers for many, many years, most of us were in churches that yes, they preached Christ and that we are saved by faith alone in Christ.
But once you came to him then, now it's in your court. You need to get busy. As Tim likes to say, tighten your belt, pull up your bootstraps and start working hard to sanctify yourself.
And wrong, wrong, wrong, as Tim and I like to call it. Either a hamster wheel or a gerbil wheel, you start running fast on that thing, trying to clean up your own life, you get nowhere except guilt, sin and self condemnation. And sometimes not always self condemnation, sometimes from other people too. Right Tim?
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
I'm.
That whole run till you die thing, you know, because then you can never be sure.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: And when you think about it, just about every other world religion is works.
You have to work to gain acceptance from God. But you never know.
You know, they, they say most of the other world religions that you won't know until you die, but then it's too late to do anything about it. So you need to really try hard. So really every other world religion is that Works thing. And you know what? The Christian religion is a works thing too. But Christ didn't come to give us one more world religion. He came to give us himself. And that's what true Christianity is. That's what the true gospel is.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: It's the difference between the little sea church and the big sea church. And you know, if we talk about the church biblically, what he's talking about is people. He's not talking about buildings. He's not talking about the fivefold ministry per se as it is formalized. We all have our roles to play, don't get me wrong. And we're all going to go do things, but it's not about the church trying to change my behavior or give me 10 things to do so that I can be a better fill in the blank. It's all about, you know, it's all about the relationship. So we can. We don't have to put ourselves into that little C. Christian position.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Yep. So the first time I went to that church with my wife, I heard this one true gospel, the pure gospel that Paul preached, which to summarize would be, we are saved and sanctified by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.
When I first heard that message that there's nothing for me to do to add to that. In fact, if I try to add to it, I'm really subtracting and moving further away from Christ.
When I heard that, I'm like, what? My mind was blown. I'm like, this has got to be too good to be true.
But.
And we have to also leave room here that nobody comes to Christ unless the Spirit first draws them. So I'm very thankful that I did have the spirit of God as a believer. But we have to be teachable. And, you know, I know there are people out there when they hear us on the unveiling, diving into this gospel and trying to flesh out the ramifications of every area of our life that come from this unbelievable gift.
There are people out there that are getting their toes stepped on because they've only known one way, a lot of them from birth to where they're at right now. You've got to be teachable. You have to be open. My response, thankfully, to that gospel, wasn't to shut down, get out of that church. And I can't take credit for it. Once again, no one comes to Christ unless the Father first draws him.
I'm like, you know what? I've got to find out if this is true. Because my brain was just going to explode as I Just briefly thought of the ramifications and how it flew in the face of everything I had heard preached. So I spent the next right on my desktop. I had a folder entitled Grace Study.
And I just spent years diving deeply. And right now in that document are over 300 scriptures that beyond a doubt convinced me this is the one true gospel, that we come to Christ empty handed. And after we come to him, we still depend on him completely. We don't start trying to work along with Him. So, you know, there's a lot of preachers who try to soften that and they'll say, oh, no, no, we don't do any work, but we need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit.
But you know what the definition of cooperate is? Even though it's a softer word to work alongside, so it's still work. Cooperating with the Holy Spirit is still work other than if you're cooperating in your heart and in your mind in that attitude.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: It's interesting how you and I came at the same conclusions in the same place place from completely different sides, right? Y.
I think I mentioned earlier about my pastor who I fought with every. Every time he'd tell me that grace, what grace was.
So I'm fighting against him because, hey, I'm. I was brought up in the performative church, okay, you had to perform, you had to do. You had to take 10 steps, you had to do whatever. And I just couldn't let that go because I always felt, well, if I'm not doing anything, how am I earning all this? You know? And to hear Pastor, our last pastor, the one we had together, say, God's not against effort, he's against earning. You know, that was. I wish I'd heard that 20 years ago because that was mind blowing to me.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's no effort or earning involved in our relationship with God. Christ took all the effort upon himself and then, you know, beside dying for us to remove our sin, he perfectly fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law in us. Our effort now is on a horizontal level, as we've talked about. It's what effort we put in is to bless other people, to serve them, to love them as a fruit of the Spirit in us, and as a natural response to being blown away by the love of God shown to us on the cross.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: It came up again this week in my blog. I think that we were talking about love, joy, peace, long suffering, all those
[00:18:15] Speaker B: fruits of the Spirit.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: And I was. I'm reading through the list again. I keep telling myself, man, I can't get past the first one. There are people in this world I cannot love just because I cannot abide them. But God tells me to love everyone, even them, right? So what's a guy to do? He's got to let the Spirit, you know, Jesus work through him with that love for them or run away.
I'm trying to do it with the Jesus first.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: You know, one of the things we've learned from Ajay is he's really good at coming up with litmus tests to figure out, you know, if we're truly in the Gospel. One of his litmus tests is if you go into a church and they're talking about what you have to do instead of what Christ has done for us, that's a litmus test that they are not preaching the pure gospel, and you should probably not walk by, but run.
And that's something for the Spirit to lead, because there are good things that could come out of that, and God might use you in that church to bring them into a pure understanding of the gospel. Another litmus test is if you are walking around in your life as a believer with guilt and shame and condemnation, and you're on that hamster wheel, then you have not come into the freedom of the children of God.
Galatians 5:1. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Do not be burned again by a yoke of slavery. And if you read the context of chapter four and chapter five, he's not talking about slavery to sin. He's talking about slavery to works, to the dead, works of the law, of earning, of performance and behavior.
And if you're feeling guilt and shame, then you're still on that gerbil wheel. Now, things are never cut and dry in most people's lives. We're human beings. It's a mixture, maybe as we mature and grow in the Gospel now we're 90%, 90% trusting in Christ, but at times still feeling guilty about this or that. And that's part of what we talked about, that refinement as we go of burning off those things, and only really one. Well, many ways to do it, but the prime way is to be in scripture.
Read what scripture has to tell us about what that gospel is.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: That's the biggest litmus test right there. It doesn't matter what you're doing. If you can't find a way to say it, you know, scripturally, you're probably not doing it right. You're probably getting it wrong. Right?
[00:20:42] Speaker B: So.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: But there's lots of things that aren't in the Bible. You Know, should I buy this house? Shouldn't I buy this house? But what you're trying to do is you're trying to let God take control in your life.
And I don't agree with people who say, I pray about absolutely every. I don't put a piece of clothing on without conferring with God.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I'm like, no, that's crazy.
Most, not all. But when we think of the gospel, it's about our relationship vertically with God.
But that obviously also greatly affects everything on the horizontal level as we interact with other people in our human relationships. But on the horizontal level, that's always fruit. It's the fruit of that, of that vertical relationship, the spirit of God in us displaying his truths and his blessings and his gifts that we share with others.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah. I don't have goodness in me, Mark.
And when I try to add things because I think they need to get done, you know, if I go out and go, well, I'm going to help this person because I think God would like me to, and I'll earn favor or something. It's not, it's not useful. It's not as you. I mean, God can still use that, but it's not useful, you know, if he puts me in a position, what we used to call God appointments in Russia. We'd show up at a place out of the blue and something was there that would happen. It wasn't of us. It was God putting us in the right place at the right time and then giving us the right reactant, right reactions to make something good.
If it was coming from me, though, it wasn't good.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Not to quibble, and I see what you're saying, and I agree completely. But on a horizontal level, there are things you do that are good that may not have been actually prompted by the same spirit. You might, you know, you might help your neighbor with something. It's not that you do nothing good on a horizontal level to other human beings. It's that that doesn't buy you salvation, sanctification, or greater blessings in your relationship vertically with God. So what comes from him? He gives you his righteousness. And this is another whole level, you know, that you can't compare that to human goodness because human goodness is filthy rags. But that doesn't mean I can't see somebody in need or help somebody or just be friendly, you know, of my own accord, because there are plenty of unbelievers out there that on a human level are good people. They're great, you know, but. But it's not a contest in that is it?
[00:23:24] Speaker A: No, it isn't. And I could point to some people where I would say, you know, these are better people than some of the Christians I know, and they're. They're out there trying to change the world and impact it for good. And that's great. I'm. I'm appreciative of their efforts. But when it comes down to final judgment, God says there's only one way. Jesus is the way. The truth and life. No one comes to the Father but by Him.
And if you don't have Jesus, you're not getting into heaven because you can't live a perfect life. Which, again, I think I said at the beginning, is the standard. You have to be perfect.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: It's better to be. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: No, that's fine. I was just saying. Just trying to wrap it up myself here for a second. But it's about. It's not about being good. It's about your relationship with God.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: I just coined a new. You know, we always have these Ajay isms and tymnism that we want to print T shirts and merchandise. I just came up with one. It's better to be a jerk believer than it is to be the best unbeliever in the world. Not of ourselves. It's. The difference is, it's not about that, because God is so far above us that the differences in us and how good we're doing it are relatively minuscule when you think about it. You know, and like you said, the standard, if you're going to try to earn it yourself, is perfection. And none of us can do that. And I don't think any unbeliever would say I'm perfect. You know, hopefully some of us act like it.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: Huh?
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Well, you said something earlier about you have to be teachable for this message to get through you. And I. I have to agree with that completely. In fact, one of the things I did because I was so blown away early on by the first pastor, before we came together at the church there, I went to. I was going in and out of Russia as a missionary. We've talked about that in the past. But Russia is really big on, you know, you have to be somebody. You have to have documentation to prove who, what, when, where, how and why. So one of the things I decided to do was go to get my degree, and I ultimately got my degree in theology and biblical studies. I'm sorry, biblical studies and church management.
But I got it at a place called the sure Foundation Institute, and they were teaching a mostly grace based message without actually calling it a grace based message. Like us, we refer it just as the gospel. And I think they did too. But some of that teaching started getting in me and I had to find a pastor, which I ended up with. Poor, poor previous pastor.
So, so that I could argue this out with somebody because I was taking my courses distance learning and I couldn't argue with my professors.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: So, you know, as we continue to develop what we're talking about here, one of my favorite authors is a guy named A.W. tozer. He was a pastor in Chicagoland back and I think like throughout the 20th century, you know, from like 30s and 40s. And he wrote a lot of books and he wrote a book called the Pursuit of God that changed my life. It's a book for the heart. It's a book of worship.
But also he was a brilliant dude and I wanted to read a quote by him. Kind of going along with the teachability and the fact that we never stop having the gospel refined. God is continuing to discover himself to us.
The word of God is living and active the gospel. That's because it presents the gospel which is living and active and we're never going to know everything. He wrote this. A.W. tozer famously described the Christian life as the soul's paradox of love.
Having found God, yet still pursuing him, he argued that the true knowledge of God is not mere intellectual information, but a lifelong intimate and experiential pursuit. Tozer taught that because God is infinite, knowing him involves a perpetual increasing desire to know him better, which brings ultimate satisfaction, action. I love that and I love the word pursuit in that.
Because if, if there's anything that the unveiling is about, it's about pursuing a deeper knowledge of that gospel and as Paul called it, the riches of our glorious inheritance of his glorious inheritance in us who believe what is more of a valuable and noble pursuit for a human being than that. And that pursuit is Christ himself.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Amen.
That is fabulous.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: One of the things if you ever do a study on all the prayers of the apostle Paul, in just about every one, his prayer is that the Spirit of God, sometimes he calls it the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, would reveal to us that we might know God better. He was so concerned with the people and his churches he planted that they would know God better. That's because that's what God wants. That's why he sent Christ and why Scripture tells us that unless we die to the law and belong to another, some translations say, and are married to another, we can't produce the Fruit of God. And I love that.
Being belonging to another, being married to another, that close connection, you know, as Ajay likes to call it, our union with Christ.
Jesus said, if I go to the Father, he and I will come and we will make our home in you. He does that through His Holy Spirit.
And that is astounding. It's almost. It's. You're going to spend the. We're going to spend the rest of our lives trying to wrap our heads around that and what a treasure it is.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Amen. Didn't you and Ajay start kind of talking about that a couple episodes back, about the prayers of Paul or something?
[00:29:31] Speaker B: I've mentioned it before because that's one thing that really jumped out at me in the last year or so was just how concerned Paul was that we would know God better and the closer we get to him in knowledge. And that's what Tozer's talking about. Here we are all already in an intimate union with Christ, and yet we still want more of Him. We desire more because the deeper we get with him, the more the riches of his glorious inheritance unfold in our lives. One of the things I love is in. It's either first or Second Corinthians. You can do a concordance search on that. But he says that God. He says, what no eye has seen, what no mind can see, what no ear is heard, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.
These are the things that the Spirit is revealing.
And Paul goes on to say, God has given us that spirit so that we may understand everything that he's freely given to us.
Isn't that just beautiful?
[00:30:35] Speaker A: I just love that.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: And so that's our pursuit through His Spirit to come into understanding. And why do you think it is not. God wants us to understand so we're smarter?
No, it's so that we can receive all those things that no eye is seen, that no ear has heard. The gospel is the greatest. There's nothing more valuable to ever come across the face of this planet in space and time.
Sorry, Tim. I'm getting excited and monopolizing the conversation.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Quit banging the desk, Mark. Quit banging the desk.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: I'm going to climb down off of my desk, back into my chair. Chair now. Sorry.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Oh, there you go. There you go. Well, I'm. I guess I'm a little concerned. I think we're running up against our time frame here.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we can just close it up now if you want to give a few words of summary, Tim.
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Well, I'm just. I'm going to Talk to the people that maybe haven't hit that point where they've understood that they need a savior, they need to be saved, because they think they're good. They're pretty good.
I want to reiterate that this is not the standard to which God holds us, but he did give us a way to fulfill the standard that he requires. And that is he sent his son Jesus to be a sacrifice, to fulfill the law, to cover our sins with his blood. And I would invite you, please, please accept that. And, you know, hopefully someday you can tell me in heaven that you did it because of us for some reason.
I hope that's true. I really do. The other thing I will say is if you're, if you are a Christian and you're having troubles with the message of, of the gospel like we have had early on, of understanding and accepting that there's nothing you and I can do, please don't fight.
Don't fight it like I did.
Be more like Mark. Be more inquisitive. Ask questions. That's a favorite line of mine from, oh, a television show. I can't think of what it's called now with the coach that goes over to England to play soccer.
But anyway, he says it's not that people are mean, it's just that they don't ask questions. They make assumptions about things and if they would learn to ask questions, they'd learn more. And I guess I, I was like that. I, I was raised in the poor, performance driven church. I assumed that's the way it was supposed to be. And I fought, fought, fought, fought. Thankfully, the Lord did not give up on me, Mark. And I got through it. And I'm here and you're here. And you know, we, we may have come different ways, but the, but the path may be different, but the goal is the same.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Amen.
Yeah. You know, at the end of his life, Martin Luther said that wherever the true gospel is preached, there will be conflict. But every generation must take up that fight. And let me ask you this, Tim. When you think about scripture and the great Reformation and the church today, where does most of the conflict come from over this one true gospel of all, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who are the greatest attackers of the Apostle Paul, of the great reformers?
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Oh, the legalistic people. The lawyer. Well, I mean, Jesus was attacked by the Sadducees and, and the Pharisees. These people.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Religious people.
Yeah. And we've talked a lot about the attacks on this gospel. Their lines about, you know, grace is a License to sin. And you're condoning sin and you're belittling good works when you preach Christ and him crucified alone, which is nonsense. That's not the fruit of relying on Christ.
When they say grace is a license to sin, the cross is the greatest display of grace ever. Your, for all intents of purpose is saying Christ leads to sin. Can you trust Christ too much?
I don't think so. I don't think so. And I would just encourage our listeners to. I mean, no one comes to Christ in the first place unless the Spirit draws them, unless the Father sends that Spirit. And I would ask you, consider today, are you listening to the unveiling today? Because God is drawing you to his one true gospel, to freedom in Christ, to relying on him and him alone. Just consider that and try to have a teachable spirit, weigh the things we say and get in scripture and pray and say, lord, reveal to me your precious gospel. And then once we're in it, man, life becomes an adventure. Since that day when I stepped in and heard that gospel preached at that church we went to, Tim, the excitement of my life has just gone through the roof because the riches of that inheritance we have in Christ continue to unfold and you just get more joy. Not that life is. We still have our hardships, but now we have an intimate knowledge of Christ as we go through that stuff. So.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Well, Mark, as we reach the end here, I got to ask you one last question before we go though. We did the show without Ajay. How do you feel about it?
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Well, who, who, who was I mentioning?
[00:35:50] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: We always meet, we always, you know, Ajay is the scripture master and he's the, he's a deep thinker. So we always, we always miss him when he's not here. And we're thankful for our relation, our three way relationship here, the dynamic that the Lord has given to us. That's I think blessed us each individually. I think we've learned from each other. And you know what? Iron sharpens iron. Like they say we butt heads occasionally because we are butt heads occasionally. Right?
[00:36:20] Speaker A: We still live in flesh, Mark.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Hey, I came up with another Markism. We butt heads occasionally because we are butt heads occasionally. You like that one?
[00:36:29] Speaker A: I'm not sure how well to sell, but there you go.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah, not in the church lobby after the service anyway.
All right, people, we want to thank you so much for being here today.
We just say, continue to refine your knowledge of the gospel through prayer, through other believers, and especially through the word of God.
Seek out the riches of the gospel that are yours in Christ. And we will talk to you again next week. God bless you all.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Thanks for listening today. We hope you were encouraged and uplifted. If so, we encourage you to subscribe and share our podcast with your friends and family.
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Well, that's it for us today. As always, God bless and we will talk to you the next time.
Days.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: Lord, I will delight in you all the days of my life.
