Episode 91 - Grace Doesn't Wait for Change

[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: That's right. It's us again. We're back. This is the unveiling with Ajay, Mark, and Tim. What happened to Ajay, Mark? [00:00:29] Speaker C: I don't know. He didn't show. You know, he is very far away from us right now. Not in spirit, but in physical. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he had an invite. We didn't exclude him. So I don't want to hear him say, oh, you guys wouldn't let me in. [00:00:48] Speaker C: And if you're out there now, Ajay, feel free to break in anytime you can get an Internet connection. I went to visit his family in India, and, like, everywhere he goes, bring the gospel with him. And God tends to give him a lot of opportunity to share in India the precious message of God's grace. So, Tim, why don't you get us set here and ready to go on this week's topic? [00:01:12] Speaker B: Okay. The topic is grace doesn't wait for change. That's kind of the overall topic. And I'll tell you that I got. We got this from author's page on Facebook. Timothy Wilder, author, does a daily blog post on grace. And this was a particularly good post, Mark. I, I, I saw you even liked it at one point. Yeah. [00:01:42] Speaker C: And I'll just say a shameless plug for you, Tim. This is your blog post, so, so everybody go check it out. It's another great resource for getting the gospel into your brain, into every cell of your body. [00:01:56] Speaker B: Thank you, Mark. I wasn't going to commercialize myself here, but that's okay. I'll take it. All right, so let's talk about the topic itself and how many people have felt this way. And I know I've felt it. I've probably professed it at one point or another. It's like, I can't come to God. This would be when I was much younger. I can't come to God because I know what a terrible person I am, what terrible things I've done. I need to kind of get myself cleaned up and straightened out before God will accept me. It's like, it's like cleaning the house before the maid shows up, man. You know? [00:02:31] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:02:33] Speaker B: So, but we, I think many people have felt this to some degree or another in their lives. [00:02:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a very, very relatable point to a huge amount of People that are believers and to a huge amount of unbelievers. And I think it's a big hindrance to people coming to Christ. And one of the things to get down to the core of this is I would put it this way. There's nothing you can do good enough to have even the smallest part in earning your sanctification, earning, earning your salvation, or earning greater blessing from God. And there's nothing you can do too bad to not come to Christ exactly as you are right now. It doesn't matter how bad the things were you did in your life, how many of them there are. There's nothing. And what I love about that is when it comes to God, it's not about you, it's not about me. It's about what Christ did on the cross. It's about God's beyond fathomability. If that's a word of understanding, the love he has for us, we can't really understand it in this world. We can only trust in it and rely on it because there's nothing else to compare it to. It's just mind blowing. And it's really an insult to him, to his gospel on the cross when we try to add even the smallest little thing to it. In fact, in Galatians, the Apostle Paul says that when you try to add to this perfect gospel, you're really subtracting and you're perverting that perfect gospel. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Well, let's, let's take for example, some of the heroes of the faith. Man, some of these people did some horrible things and they didn't get cleaned up before God approached them. Grace. Grace. Met them where they were. I mean, look at Paul. Paul was out actively, you know, hurting Christians because he was, he was honeymuckety muck in the Jewish faith back then. He was Saul of Saul. And he knew all these. I mean, he was a high priest, not a high priest. What was he, Mark? My brain is. [00:04:46] Speaker C: He's a Pharisee. He's a Pharisee. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Thank you. And he had done all the studying. He knew the laws, he followed the laws, he did them. And then so he started persecuting Christians who weren't following the laws, actively hurting people. And God met him on a road he didn't wait for, for Paul to clean up and get right. He came and said, here, you're, I'm cleaning you up and I'm making you right, and I'm going to come meet you where you're at. And I think one of the first lines that you and I both agree on in this post here that kind of struck us was the guy. Grace does not wait for change. It is the very thing that makes change possible. [00:05:31] Speaker C: Yeah, that's awesome, Tim. And I'm reminded now that we're talking about the Apostle Paul and his background of coming to Christ. If there's ever been a man who could think they've done the unpardonable sin, that they just have too much bad stuff to just come to Christ before trying to clean up their life, it would be the Apostle Paul. He was the number one enemy of this gospel, in fact, the enemy of Christ. Because Christ tells him, why are you persecuting me? When he was persecuting Christ's people, he was imprisoning them, confiscating all their property and killing them, having them executed. In fact, when Christ reached out to him, he was in the midst of doing that exact thing. He was going with letters in his hand from the High Jewish Council to go to Damascus and imprison and persecute Christians. Not only had he done all these bad things, he was in the midst of doing this horrific thing when Christ reached to him. And you know, he shares with us that he felt very bad about that. In fact, he called himself the chief of the chief of sinners. But he didn't lament too long on that because he said, but by God's grace, I am what I am. And he says, and you know what? I worked harder than the rest of them. Yet not I, but his grace in me. It's that grace that is our fuel. It is the grace that powers our life. It's our human, physical and spiritual and mental response to the mind blowing love of Christ that was shown to us not after we'd cleaned ourself up, but as we were in the midst of doing the worst thing we ever did. And Paul's the prime example of that. Thank you, Jesus for that incredible grace. [00:07:29] Speaker B: And it's Romans 5:8, I believe, that says, but God demonstrates his love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And in our worst, he died for us at our worst. So he's not surprised by anything anyone can do. He knows what humanity is, man. We're just, you know, a big ball of oopsy daisy. [00:07:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it just shows our utter helplessness. And I recently came up with a term. I'm a songwriter, I want to write something with this. But when we come to Christ, we come completely empty handed. We have nothing. We are utterly, utterly helpless without his grace and love for us. And him reaching down to us. And, Tim, I know you like to talk about. One of the greatest scriptural evidences of this is the thief on the cross that hung there next to Christ. And could there be anybody who had less to bring as he called out to Christ and believed who he was and said, remember me when you enter your kingdom? He had nothing. He couldn't go out and do good works. He couldn't even get his checkbook out and sign 10% of his earnings that week over because he had spikes through his hand. He was suffocating and bleeding to death. All he had was the cry of his heart, remember me, Lord. And that day, Jesus said, you will be with me. So if you're out there now and you feel loaded down by the things you've done in your life, that somehow you've done the impartable sin or there's too much, forget it. You're underestimating the love of God and the power of the cross and of Christ's resurrection. He loves you and he wants you come. Just come. That's what he would say to you today. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Hey, I liked when George Beverly says. George Beverly Shea said it, too, in the song. [00:09:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Come as you are, just as I am without one plea. [00:09:38] Speaker C: You mentioned something about Romans 8, the scripture about. Can you repeat that one more time, Tim? [00:09:44] Speaker B: Romans 5, Romans 5, 8 was, Christ shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. [00:09:55] Speaker C: And there's another great sister scripture to that, which is Ephesians 2, I believe, that says because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. I love that. That one especially, too, goes along with the other one as a sister scripture. And it even says even when in the midst of that worst sin you've ever done, absolutely dead in Christ, that's when you were made alive. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I don't think we're ever not in that position until we are saved and made alive. You know, we're always lost in our sin. We're slaves to it. Yeah, but Ephesians 2 is a great place for that kind of stuff because it also says, for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. It's a gift. You can't buy it, you can't earn it, you can't go steal it. It's a gift. [00:11:07] Speaker C: I love how he doubles down there. He's saying it's by grace you have been saved. And even this very grace and the faith you have, the. That's a gift too. It wasn't like God extended the grace and then you had the moral strength to say, oh Lord, I received that gift. No, he gave it to you. He gave that very faith to you. You have nothing to do other than just live a life enjoying him. Because I love this little, I guess you'd call it a saying that Christ did not come to give us another world religion. Do we really need one more of those? No, he came to give us himself and he's done everything for us so that we can enter in with confidence, so that we can live our lives not worried about whether we're doing it well enough. Not feeling guilt and condemnation and self inflicted shame. Not running on that hamster or gerbil wheel trying to earn, earn, earn, but getting nowhere. Cause it leads nowhere. It's kind of counterintuitive a little bit. And so many people call it, there's so many words for it from the critics of the gospel that say, oh, it's easy grace or it's easy believism. There's a bunch of them, they try to say cheap grace. Yeah, cheap grace. And the point is, no, it's free to us, but it wasn't cheap. It was very costly for Christ to give everything he had for us just receive the gift. [00:12:44] Speaker B: You mentioned that God didn't come to bring us another world religion. So what is the goal of all of this? It is to put us back into the relationship that humanity had with God in the Garden of Eden. We hung out with God, we talked to God, we had that personal relationship with God in the garden until, until sin came in and we broke it and got thrown out. So what God is trying to do is give us the opportunity to get back into all that at one mint with him or atonement with him? You know, it's. It's not a religion, it's a relationship. [00:13:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that at one meant. I've never heard that. For atonement at one meant. That's. That's really nice. So about a year ago, Ajay, he sent me a prayer, I guess you'd call it, and he asked if I could try to write a song off it. I'm a worship leader and my joy and passion throughout my life has been writing songs. And so I started writing a song and I call this song Pauline. Not because it's about an old girlfriend I had named Pauline. But there's a theological term for anything that the Apostle Paul wrote that's of Paul, that they use the term Pauline, meaning of Paul. And so I tried to write. I started off writing this song off of a prayer, but then it became this. I wanted to reflect Paul's heart in all his writings. And so the last verse is my favorite verse. And it goes, like, very similar to what you just said. It's. It's. While at my worst, he gave his best from highest heights into my depths, now and forever. He's my righteousness, no condemnation in his eyes. And if the only one who can won't for not a single moment need I. That's the freedom we have in Christ. If the only one worthy and that has the right to judge us is the one that justified us while we were at our worst. He came from the highest of heights in the perfect heavenly realms into the very depths of humanity. And he chose not to condemn us, but to justify us. How can we live lives condemning ourselves or listening to others condemning us? We are free. We are free indeed. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Amen. Absolutely. And it's once we accept this grace, that's when the actual transformation happens. We've been saying we can't do it up front. We can't come to God and say, hey, we've dusted ourselves off and we propped ourselves up and we're feeling good about ourselves. We can't. We. We don't have any of that in us. So it is the actual. The grace itself that enters us. The Holy Spirit then replaces our sin nature with his. Nature replaces, you know, we become a new creature. We're not the old sinner anymore. We are somebody now that is led by the power of the Spirit. And the grace literally transforms us from the inside out. It's not something I can do and shove inside. [00:16:04] Speaker C: Yeah, great point. And as we have this little conversation, Tim, I know that there are untold numbers out there that when they hear this, are gonna say, yes, but. Yes, but. One of my little favorite catchphrases is with the Gospel, there are no ands, ifs, or buts. It's all Christ, all Him. We can't add anything. All there are I say is becausees, sinces, in view of everything comes out of that. And that's why I love that in Romans it says that we've died to the law with Christ so that we might be married to him, that we might produce fruit unto God. One of the things I love about Paul is when he's sharing the gospel in theology or doctrine. He's very mathematical and logical a lot of times, and they'll be like. His sentences will be like a mathematical equation. And one of them is in Romans 6:14. He says that we. What is it? The power of death is sin. I'm sorry? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. So if you do your backwards equation, if you take the law out, sin loses its power and death loses its sting. So it's so mathematical. When Paul says that we've died with Christ to the law, so that we might belong to another or married to another, meaning Christ, so that we might produce fruit unto God. So many people that don't understand the gospel, they start with produce fruit to God so that you might be married to another, so that you die to the law. No, it's. It's the other way around. Paul says first, the first part of that equation is we die. We put our faith in Christ. And so when he was crucified, we have died to the law with him. Once we die to the law, he's forgiven us our sin and given us his righteousness. And now we belong to him. We are married to him. So that you might produce God. If you do that backwards, you. You're going to short circuit the whole gospel and you're going to take the power out of the gospel. It's so perfectly logical. [00:18:34] Speaker B: You'll make the gospel of no effect because you're trying to do it by works. And that's exactly what he's warning us about, you know, And Paul literally. [00:18:42] Speaker C: Sorry, go ahead. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Paul literally. Go ahead. [00:18:46] Speaker C: He literally. What you're talking about is from Galatians 3. He literally says that not only have you been alienated from Christ when you do that, and grace is of little effect to you. He says you've fallen away from grace. And that's such a literal thing. When you add the law and you try to do it, you're moving away from grace toward the law. And he frowns upon that greatly, to say the least, doesn't he? [00:19:16] Speaker B: Well, isn't he the one that was saying who bewitched you, that you would start by faith and grace and then end up trying to do it by work? [00:19:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Foolish Galatians. He says, who has bewitched you and the people that did bewitch them with this false gospel and trying to get them to be circumcised? He says, why don't you go the whole way and just emasculate yourself? It's like dude, in your face. You know, that's a slam drop. They call that a mic drop now. [00:19:44] Speaker B: Right, well, right, exactly. And then, you know, he hasn't. He doesn't mince words with some of these people in some of these letters. And that's the biggest one right there that stands out to me. But, you know, when it comes down to what Paul wants to preach and teach, it comes down to five words. Jesus Christ and him crucified. He said, if, you know, if I knew nothing else, as long as I knew Jesus Christ and him crucified. [00:20:07] Speaker C: So, and that is from First Corinthians, chapter two. And I love that chapter, and I think it bears repeating. I think we've talked on it a bit before, but the Apostle Paul, when he went to preach the gospel to the Corinthians, he said that while he was with them, he didn't come with human wisdom or eloquence. He didn't come with strong and persuasive arguments. He said, in fact, I came with fear and trembling. He said, but my preaching was with a demonstration of the Spirit's power. Now, if you go back to the beginning of the paragraph we're talking about here, Paul says that when he came to them, he had determined, he had resolved to know nothing but. And my favorite translation was to forget everything else but Jesus Christ and him crucified. So though he himself didn't come with human wisdom or eloquence or strong or persuasive arguments, in fact, he came in fear and trembling. He said, my message and my preaching were with a demonstration of the power. So look, immediately you might think, oh, boy, Paul, man, he's so spiritual, man. When he preached, he was able to demonstrate the power of the Spirit. Tongues of flame and thousands coming to Christ. But no, no, he says, my message and my preaching of that message were with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, and that is Jesus Christ and him crucified. He forgot everything else but that. And that's where the power was, because that's where God designed and planned the power. His power to reside is in that Gospel. And in Romans 1, Paul says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation for everyone. That's where it is. You know, And God does use people's gifts. You know what he gives us all gifts. He gives some people. And Paul wasn't saying, hey, you know what? I don't have any wisdom. He wasn't saying, I can't be eloquent. He's saying, I'm not relying on those things. So God does use our gifts, and we offer them back and say, hey, Lord, energize those gifts so that we can bring this pure gospel. And that's what our prayer is for the three of us on here, too. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Well, it gives me. [00:22:33] Speaker C: But we're not relying on our own, on self. We're relying on the message. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Well, it gives me hope when Paul says that, because I don't have a lot, a ton of wisdom of my own, and I definitely don't come with, you know, fancy, well, spoken words. I'm a writer, man, not a speaker. Okay? So, I mean, I. If I can, if you give me time to craft a sentence and break something down, I'll do it. Well. But coming off the cuff, trying to speak, some days, you guys know it. You can hear it when I talk. I. Sometimes my tongue gets in front of my eye teeth, and I can't see what I'm saying. And it's just, you know, me tripping over my tongue every two minutes. But it gives me hope that even though I do that, my message is still coming out because it's still coming from God, not me. [00:23:17] Speaker C: And I love what Paul says in Romans. Where is it? It's in Romans. I don't have it with me right now, but you guys can use your digital concordances to look this up. It says that Christ is our wisdom, our holiness and redemption. So whatever wisdom we have, it's Him. It's him in us, Jesus Christ in Him, crucified. That is the wisdom of God, the mystery. It's the mystery they say that Scripture says was hidden throughout all past ages. That was before the beginning of the world. This gospel of grace, grace that becomes our fuel. As Paul said, it was his grace in him working. That is the air we breathe. It's our sustenance, our nutrition. It keeps us alive. It's what the human being was meant to live on, was the love of God, the closeness and union with Christ. That's the gospel. And we have no part in it other than to just turn the faith toward him that he gave us as a gift in the first place and just trust it. So there's a doctrine that Lutheran Calvin, I think, came up with, and it talks about the depravity of man, our inability to do anything as far as gaining acceptance or earning our salvation or sanctification in a vertical way with God. Of course, on the horizontal, with people, we can do good and bad and have the ability to bless them or not or gain their Acceptance. But as far as our relationship with God, all Jesus all the time, forget everything else but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Those five words, that's life right there. [00:25:01] Speaker B: That is the entire entirety of the gospel. [00:25:04] Speaker C: If you put it in a crucible, put heat under it and boil it all down. All other words go bye bye. And we're left with Jesus Christ and him crucified fight, which is a mystery that we will try to fathom by the leading of his Spirit in Scripture and through other Christians, through music, in every possible way. He's given us to grab a hold of that, to know him better. [00:25:29] Speaker B: And I keep saying, you know, as we started this whole thing out, it wasn't, we can change ourselves to fix things. And I think there's a great verse, two verses in Titus. We don't say Titus enough, do we? I just feel like we should say, I love Titus. [00:25:42] Speaker C: That's a great book Scriptures in there. [00:25:45] Speaker B: Titus 2, 11 and 12. This is the. What I use for the basis of that argument that we can't do it. But once we have the Spirit in us, he does it for us, right? So for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It searches us to say, excuse me. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live so self controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age. So again, the teaching, we don't clean ourselves up. Once we accept that grace with that gift, the Spirit does it. [00:26:24] Speaker C: Tim, as you were speaking there about Titus, which, and I said, one of my favorite scriptures is from Titus. It's Titus, chapter three, verse four. And, and just to give a little background on this book of Titus, since you brought up the fact that we don't speak about Titus enough, nothing personal, Titus, all right. But Titus was a young pastor who Paul had put in charge of a church that he had planted. And this was called one of Paul's pastoral letters. And that he's writing this letter to a pastor. In fact, I would say to all pastors that will ever come to teach them not necessarily how to preach, but what to preach. And that's why I love the background on this. And this is for all you pastors out there that might be. Oh, so many pastors have so much pressure on them as we all do to add works. Their congregations want them to add religion and that holier than thou. I hate to use that term, it's not a great term, but they feel pressure. It's their job. They have a family to support And a lot of times they start to. And I've seen this happen from churches I've worked in as a worship leader. When they start to preach this gospel, that's all Christ and nothing of our own. They get flack and pressure from their elders, from the congregation. But here's the Apostle Paul talking to you, Pastor, and we pray for you, Lord. We pray that you would empower them and that their congregations would be good soil as they sow the seeds of your gospel to them, Lord. But here's what the Apostle Paul says to Titus, this young pastor. He says, when the kindness and love of God, our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and. And renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs, having the hope of eternal life. And I love this, the way he summarizes what he just said. And this is coming from the Apostle Paul, probably one of the most trustworthy people in history. And. But he takes the time to say, hey, this is a trustworthy saying. You can put all your trust in it, all your belief in it, all your hope. He says, I want you to stress these things so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to what is doing good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. So he's telling all these pastors out there that may have great intentions, they want to see their congregations living lives that are exhibiting the fruits of the Holy Spirit, being good husbands, good fathers, good workers in the marketplace. Fill in the blank. They have good intentions. They want to see good for their congregation. But Paul says this. You know what? If you want to see your congregations, those who have trusted in God, devoting themselves to doing what is good, he says, here's what you do. You stress these things. And when he says stress these things, it bears looking back at that paragraph. What does he say to stress? He says to stress the kindness and love of God, who is our Savior. He says he saved us and stress this. It's not because of righteous things we've done. It's because of his mercy. And he says, you know what? We have been saved by the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. It's his job. It's not our job to clean up ourselves, to wash ourselves up so that then we can be saved. He says, no, it's the job of the Holy Spirit. And it says, when we put our faith in Christ well even before that, he sent His Spirit to draw us. But when we put our faith in Christ, he pours his Spirit out on us generously and it says, so now this has all happened. You've been justified by his grace. And as Tim and I and Ajay always like to define, grace means undeserved, unmerited, unearned favor of God. It's by that you've been justified. And now you've become, you've not only gone from being a slave of the law and a slave of sin, you've gone to being a child of God and much more, the eldest child of God who inherits everything. It says that we've become heirs having the hope of eternal life. So that's the problem. And Tim, we've talked about this many times. In fact, I think episode 80 was the how of things. It's about the how. Yeah, pastors out there with good intentions, they want the same thing that the apostle Paul wants. But the apostle Paul is giving you the how here. It's not by a 10 part series on how to be a better father, giving you strategies and do this, don't do that. It's not a five part series on how to be a good husband. No, no, no, get your eyes off yourself. And that's really just the law. Do this, don't do that. Put them on Christ, rely on his kindness and love, on his grace, on his spirit. You know, it's, it's just that how, it always comes down to the how. I think most people that are believers agree on what the finished product they want is. It's how to get there. [00:32:06] Speaker B: Well, Mark, I think I feel bad for some of these pastors because once they've learned grace, they feel like they, they're preaching the same thing over and over every week. They don't have many differences to preach because grace is grace. It is what it is. It's a relationship. It's, you know, our relationship with God. And they're, they're striving. Some of these guys have to stand in front of a congregation, the same congregation, week in, week out and give a 20, 45, maybe even 90 minute homily or preaching or teaching. And I think there's, some of them are scared to run out of things to say if they don't have things to talk about. How you can help yourself, how you can be better, how you can change. But those are the guys that are missing the mark, man. Pardon me, I didn't mean you. [00:32:57] Speaker C: Thanks, Tim, for That qualification there. So that is so true. And the problem is, a lot of those people in the congregation have lived lives for decades and decades and decades in a mixture of the Christian. Well, I call it the Christian religion. It's not meant to be a religion, but mankind has made it that from the very beginning. I mean, from the first church, Paul had to confirm and defend the gospel over and over again. He even had to oppose the Apostle Peter on this issue. And he said, but I'm going to do it because I want the truth of the gospel to be preserved for you throughout the generations. And, yeah, I do feel for pastors because a lot of the people out there, they've been stuck in this. Their feet stuck in cement of this perversion. Paul would call it a mixture of law and grace. And you can't mix those two. Paul said, you know what? If he had even just a little bit of law, then grace is no longer grace. A little bit of grace and it means law is no longer law. They are oil and water. They are polar magnets of negative and positive. You cannot bring them together. You can try, but you're going to do great damage. But they have that pressure of those people out there and that type of Christianity. That religion is what makes people judgmental. It's what makes them holier than thou. It makes them criticize the way their pastor's doing it. It makes people. People out there look at the worship team. And we talked about this earlier, Tim on the side, before we went on the air today, that I read something on Facebook yesterday about a worship leader criticizing churches where the ministry. If the sound system is too good, if the sound engineer is too good, if there's a little too much lighting, if the band is too good, if the music is too excellent, they judge them and say, oh, you know, you're not worshiping Christ. You know, they're just looking at the exterior and judging somebody's heart. And yet if they see a team up there, that's just terrible. The people can't sing, the musicians can't play, the sound system's terrible. The sound engineer doesn't know what he's doing. Somehow that's more spiritual, you know, but it's two polar opposites. It's judging somebody by how great they look on the outside, saying they must not be a true Christian because they're just too good at this. It looks too good. And then the other way they say is, oh, if it's so humble and so bad, then it must really be spiritual. And I think they do that with pastors, too. This is our flavor of Christianity. And if he tries to get outside and preach that dangerous grace. But the whole thing is that they don't understand is when you. When you criticize grace, you're criticizing the gospel. You're criticizing Christ himself. You were criticizing Jesus Christ and him crucified and saying, you know what? That's not enough. It's not sufficient. I need to do X, Y and Z to add to that. [00:36:15] Speaker B: Mm. Yep. Well, Mark, I don't want to be the guy that makes us wrap it up, but let's wrap it up for today. [00:36:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm running out of breath too, Tim, so. [00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:36:28] Speaker C: We probably should summarize. [00:36:29] Speaker B: I'm sitting here inside going, preach it, brother, preach it. But I'm thinking to myself also, you know, maybe we should move it along here. [00:36:36] Speaker C: Sure. We'll leave something else to be said for the next podcast. No. [00:36:39] Speaker B: Right. We can't take it all. Auntie's gonna come back someday. [00:36:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:36:43] Speaker B: So. [00:36:45] Speaker C: And it's all meaningless without him here anyway. Right. He's praying for us, I'm sure. [00:36:51] Speaker B: I think God can still use just the two of us. Come on. [00:36:54] Speaker C: Okay. See, people? He could do with Paul. He can do it with me and Tim, and he can do it with you. [00:37:00] Speaker B: Amen. Well, Mark, you got any last thought before we decide to shut it down? [00:37:07] Speaker C: I would just say this. As Paul said, those five words, Jesus Christ and him crucified. That's the message. That's the message we preach, that carries the power of God. A demonstration of the power of the Spirit. All believers out there that are listening now, especially pastors, laser focused on that Jesus Christ and him crucified. All we can do is turn the faith, the very faith he gave us as a gift toward him, turn our eyes to Christ. Christ, and be married to him. And you know what? You will produce fruit when you do that, not so much when you try to do it or add to it. [00:37:49] Speaker B: Amen. I'm going to try and wrap up that entire post in one sentence, and that is, grace doesn't wait for change, it produces it. We can change ourselves for grace, for God, for, you know, the salvation and sanctification that come. We can't fix ourselves. We can't clean ourselves up, nothing. We just have to accept that it's going to make those changes inside us. Well, thanks for coming along for the ride again, everybody. We look forward to coming back again next week, and we will talk to you the next time. [00:38:25] Speaker A: Thanks for listening today. We hope you were encouraged and uplifted. If so, we encourage you to subscribe and share our podcast podcast with your friends and family. You can listen and subscribe on most popular podcast apps. Well, that's it for us today. As always, God bless and we will talk to you the next time.