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 (Music Playing)

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Speaker 1
 That's why we've got to know God's word. And my theology really, truly does matter.

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Speaker 1
 Why I love to preach God's word and why I try to do it so passionately, because it's not just facts or things that don't really matter to the day-to-day of our lives. They literally matter in everything we do, every environment. We live every relationship that we are in.

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Speaker 2
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm. How's it going, Chris? Good. It's a little hot out.

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Speaker 1
 No. But-- This is perfect. Yeah. We get the extremes of Iowa weather, right? Yep.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah.

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Speaker 1
 Well-- You've got to remember, a few months ago, we were probably complaining about how cold it is on us.

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Speaker 2
 I'm always complaining about how cold it is.

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Speaker 2
 The air was too cold today in here.

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Speaker 1
 I would prefer the cold, but you prefer the hot. So yeah.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah.

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Speaker 2
 It's a good middle ground. You get both.

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Speaker 1
 Not according to my wife.

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Speaker 2
 All right. So you started this week by talking about the fact that the Bible calls the leaders of God's people shepherds.

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Speaker 2
 Some of these are good, and many of them are bad at this job.

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Speaker 2
 And church hurt is really a huge topic on our culture today, and has led to many leaving the church altogether.

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Speaker 2
 And this may be a hard question to answer without specific examples. But in general, how should church members think about this topic? If someone is hurt by their church, what is a healthy way to deal with the issue?

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Speaker 1
 Yeah. This is, I think, an important issue and also a hard topic.

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Speaker 1
 And I would first say that church hurt is real.

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Speaker 1
 And I would say that there are two primary reasons for it. And one is that there are churches, and not just the leaders, but certainly is often the leaders, but also people in the church who do mistreat people. Yeah. There's no way around that. And many of us,

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Speaker 1
 even those maybe who would say, wouldn't call it church hurt, have been hurt by the church. For sure.

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Speaker 1
 Now, on the other side, I would also say that some of the reason, or at least sometimes people experience church hurt,

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Speaker 1
 or what they call church hurt, because the church leaders are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing.

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Speaker 1
 And they are teaching the word and or confronting people about their sin,

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Speaker 1
 trying to help them.

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Speaker 1
 I mean, I've had this happen to me on many occasions, is where you actually are trying to help people. And oftentimes it'll be in a marriage situation, and then it just doesn't go well or doesn't accomplish what they want. Or you have to actually speak to them about their issue that they need to address. And they only want to hear about what their spouse needs to do. I mean, they just all these kinds of situations. And so it's oftentimes where people say church hurt, and it's always like, yeah, of course, the church is in the wrong.

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Speaker 1
 And I'd say quite often it is actually the people's response to faithful shepherding, or to other even brothers and sisters in the church trying to help them where they experience church hurt. And sometimes it's both. Like, so it's just, it gets complicated and all of that. So I would say that though, to really get to your question,

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Speaker 1
 one thing that we are called to do is that when people offend us or they hurt us, or we would say they sin against us, we are called to actually to speak with them about that. Jesus lays out a very clear process in Matthew 18 for how we were supposed to do this. And again, my experiences is oftentimes people, they just, they don't actually follow what is laid out. Now, obviously that can be hard. It can be difficult. I'm not diminishing that at all. But instead of actually having the conversations maybe that need to be had, they don't. So in following the things, the process that Jesus,

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Speaker 1
 and Paul talks about this too, they just lay out in scriptures, how do we handle things when we've been wronged or we believe that we have been wrong?

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Speaker 1
 And so, first of all, maybe I just step back and say, I think the first thing that we do is we actually look internally and we say, okay, is there something that I have done or a way that I'm looking at this that is contributing to causing the hurt that I feel?

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Speaker 1
 And then, it's always easy to look at outside.

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Speaker 1
 And then if once we've done that, and then what's the process that the Bible is called? And let's walk through that, which is first of all, going to those who have wronged you.

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Speaker 1
 The Bible will say one on one.

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Speaker 1
 If that doesn't work, then you bring two or three others along and you walk through that process.

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Speaker 1
 And again, I am not suggesting that any of this is easy.

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Speaker 3
 Right.

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Speaker 1
 And I'm not suggesting that it always works and that the people that have sinned or hurt you or you believe hurt you are going to be receptive to what you have to say.

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Speaker 1
 And so, you may need, in those cases, to have godly counsel about how to approach that and how to go through that and then maybe people to help you to walk through that.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah, so you're kind of maybe assuming that in a situation like that where somebody ends up leaving the church over something they've been hurt over, that they haven't followed that Matthew 18 line, right? So how can we as the local church make that approachable? Right? Does that make sense? Sure. Because I think there's probably many roadblocks in the way, especially if it's from a member to someone in a pastoral position. There are just roadblocks to doing that. So how can we make that accessible?

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Speaker 1
 Yeah. I mean,

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Speaker 1
 being quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry, that's James. I think that listen part is really important. Like let's listen to people that doesn't, I mean, we're necessarily going to agree with them, but what are they saying? And trying to have this openness where, okay, we're willing to listen to what you have to say and to working through this. And this a little bit goes along with what I talked about on Sunday about walking away.

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Speaker 1
 You need to learn to walk toward people on both, and I'm talking about both end of the spectrum here, those who have been hurt and those who have potentially hurt. How do we move towards one another to seek what the Bible calls reconciliation?

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Speaker 1
 And to pursue peace. And peace doesn't mean the absence of conflict, it just means a resolute, like we're going to pursue the resolution of that conflict. So I do want to add something else here that I should have mentioned earlier.

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Speaker 1
 It's just to encourage people that Jesus is not the church and the church isn't Jesus.

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Speaker 1
 And so in other words, a lot of, you know, we talk about people walking away from the faith or leaving the church or whatever, and we just have to be really clear that the church is made up of fallible people who are going to, if you're going to really be invested in a local church, which the Bible would call every single believer to be invested, you're going to at some point be offended, be hurt, because we're talking about fallible human beings.

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Speaker 1
 We're in relation, relationships are always, any relationship is going to be messy to some degree.

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Speaker 1
 And so learning to say like, I've been hurt, but that's by people,

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Speaker 1
 it's human, fellow human beings, that's not Christ.

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Speaker 1
 And, you know, that's why the Bible calls him the chief shepherd and the pastors were under shepherds. The chief shepherd's infallible, always loving, he will never hurt us.

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Speaker 1
 Chapter shepherds very likely will to some degree at some point. And so learning to,

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Speaker 1
 I think people make the mistake of they equate the church with Christ and that's not true and can be harmful to us. And also not elevating the church to the position of Christ. So the other thing is too, it's like if people put church on a pedestal and leaders on a pedestal and then when they inevitably fall short, it just crushes people.

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Speaker 1
 So.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah, for sure. Now, I've seen a lot of it over the years, people getting offended and it turns into eventually a total rejection of at least like Orthodox faith. It'll turn into some sort of theism or whatever, but the anything organized is automatically thrown out. And so then it just ends up creating division where there doesn't need to be any. So.

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Speaker 1
 Right. Well, and I will say that doesn't mean there's never a time to leave the church. A church. A church. And that's maybe another podcast or another discussion.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah, there's a lot of wisdom.

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Speaker 1
 There certainly are times to do that. Now, I would say in general,

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Speaker 1
 the reasons that people use the bar ought to be really high to leave a church.

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Speaker 1
 And that's not actually the case. And when we live in a day, it's not because we've got our feelings heard about some rather minor issue. I realize people, I've said minor issue, people leave church when I say it's a minor issue. But there are doctrinal matters that are clear like we need to leave. And then there are preference issues and then there's conviction issues and all of those kind of things. And so we have to use that kind of gospel triage that we talked about back in the Roman series to help us with that as well.

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Speaker 2
 Right. Okay. One of the things you said was we hide because we don't think we can be completely known and completely accepted at the same time. And, you know, experientially, this is true for many, if not all of us, when it comes to human relationships, we've had things like that happen.

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Speaker 2
 You had taken this from verse 14 where Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me."

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Speaker 2
 Now, this passage here is clearly talking about the closeness of Christ's relationship with his people, but is there anything for us, you know, to be learned about our relationships within the church?

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Speaker 1
 Well, I do think that there is quite a bit here to talk about in terms of the church culture that we would really love to pursue. And I think we actually are striving to pursue it and seeing that to some degree become accomplished. We want to be a place where people can be accepted right where they are.

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Speaker 1
 Now,

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Speaker 1
 caveat, and I know you've got a smile on your face right now, what was your thinking? You looked right at me.

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Speaker 1
 It doesn't mean, and I do want everybody to listen, it doesn't mean we accept sin or sinful behavior.

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Speaker 1
 But what I mean is we're a place where people can confess their sin and not be turned away from but rather move toward in a way that can help them to experience healing.

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Speaker 1
 So it's not where we just accept, "It doesn't matter how you're living, what you're doing,

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Speaker 1
 everybody." It's all welcome open arms, and we're just going to love everybody and all of that.

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Speaker 1
 We also got to avoid the opposite error where people are not free to actually be able to share what they're struggling with, what has happened to them, what they've done,

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Speaker 1
 all of the above, and we're not going to say, "Okay, we're going to move towards you and to help you." And we go back to John 8 with a woman called an adultery. And Jesus did not accept her sin, but He did accept her, and He spoke very clearly about there's no condemnation, not leaving your life of sin.

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Speaker 1
 And so my point in all of this is in order for people to experience being completely known and completely accepted, we've got to be a kind of place that has a culture that enables that to happen in a greater way.

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Speaker 1
 And so what do we do when people share their deepest, darkest secrets, struggles?

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Speaker 1
 Are we going to move towards them?

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Speaker 1
 This takes work and effort, and it's hard, and it can be messy.

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Speaker 1
 But as long as we have a culture where we're not willing to move towards that, then people are not going to open up. They're not going to, and they're probably not going to truly find healing and freedom from things because freedom actually happens, transformation happens in a relationship of grace.

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Speaker 1
 Grace is what transforms people. And where this ties into Jesus being the Good Shepherd, our relationship with other people have a direct impact on people experiencing Jesus as a Good Shepherd.

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Speaker 1
 So Jesus is not physically present with us here. We have a spirit for sure.

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Speaker 1
 But if you don't have the actual experience of a physical human being actually seeking to know you and you're sharing things and they're accepting you, like moving towards you with that, it's really going to be hard for you to experience Jesus as your Good Shepherd without any human experience of that.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
 I'm thinking through that a little bit. I've heard you say things like that before, and that's how we experience these promises from Jesus is through the church and through local, like the people around us. And yeah, I think that's fair.

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Speaker 1
 Well, so yeah, it's not that the Holy Spirit can overcome our lack of human experience with humans. I'm not saying that whatsoever.

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Speaker 1
 But when we're saved, we're actually called into the church and the church is the body of Christ. Okay? Like the physical body of Christ, that's we are.

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Speaker 1
 So we have a role to play in people experiencing Jesus as the Good Shepherd. That's kind of my overarching point. And Jesus as the Good Shepherd completely knows us and completely accepts us. And so as we can experience that more with other believers, it helps us to know, and I mean know in a relational and experiential way, His shepherding of us.

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Speaker 1
 And so you go back to your prior point, why do some people reject the faith or lead the church and all this kind of thing?

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Speaker 1
 I think it's tied to what we're talking about here.

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Speaker 2
 So yeah, I mean that takes two different things, right? It takes us both being accepting of others when they tell us their sins, but it also takes us being open with our sins, right? So how do we get there?

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Speaker 2
 What are the steps?

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Speaker 1
 Haltingly and messily. I don't know if that's a word. I'm sure I'll hear about it if it's not.

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Speaker 1
 But yeah, this is again,

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Speaker 1
 let's go to church membership for a second here. This is why it's important for us to join a church and commit ourselves to a church, which means that we'll be at least here at Harmony committing to shepherding relationships where we're going to come under the care of others. And our leaders here, and whether that be elders,

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Speaker 1
 pastors, deacons,

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Speaker 1
 so many of the ladies who serve in leadership and community group leaders, I mean, and we are by far not perfect in all this. We really are striving to grow in how do we move towards people and care for them and to accept them where they are and then seek to guide and to shepherd them to where God would have them to be.

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Speaker 1
 And so some of it is trusting, you know, at the end of the day, this comes back to trusting Jesus. Am I going to trust him to care for me through the care of other people?

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Speaker 1
 And there are a lot of stumbling blocks in that way, both because again, the church leaders are not perfect and they're not going to get it right all the time.

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Speaker 1
 And the stumbling blocks is my prior experience and just my own inherent,

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Speaker 1
 like we could talk about Shammy Guild again or my, and her, I want to, I don't, here's just to be frank, a lot of people don't want to come under shepherding because they don't want accountability.

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Speaker 1
 And if I go back to the sheep metaphor again,

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Speaker 1
 and, or, you know, 1 Peter 5, Peter says the devil's a roaring lion, you know, probably about looking at who to devour.

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Speaker 1
 And the lion or the wolf doesn't go after the sheep in the middle of the flock.

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Speaker 1
 It's around the shepherd goes after the one that's wondering off and is on his own.

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Speaker 1
 And tragically I see that all the time.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah. Well, I mean, that's just as I'm thinking, like, you know, there's just a million examples that could be talked about. And, and I, I think, you know, even as people listen, I'm sure there's going to be different questions that come up. So I'll give my spiel early this time, ask at furtherpodcast.com. Chris would be happy to take any of them.

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Speaker 1
 No, I would. I, I, as I say all this, I mean, you know, my, my heart also grieves for people who have a really hard time with what I'm saying, because they have had very difficult experiences and they have been, they've been heard, they've been mistreated and it's real.

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Speaker 1
 And yeah, it's sad.

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Speaker 2
 And I don't want to come off like from us just saying, you know, I know people get hurt, but you still need to trust leadership. And like there is really a lot of damage that has happened to that. And so like, we need to take that seriously and not just gloss over that. But you know, at the end of the day, the solution to that is going to be find, find solid leaders that will lead you well. Right. So yeah, anyway.

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Speaker 2
 Okay.

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Speaker 2
 So when talking about why Jesus wants us, you said that, that He sees us as immensely valuable,

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Speaker 2
 despite our deficiencies.

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Speaker 2
 I guess given the sheep analogy and that we have literally nothing to offer Him, why does God see us as valuable?

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Speaker 1
 Yeah, it's a great question, isn't it?

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Speaker 1
 Kudos to you, friend.

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Speaker 1
 I think the answer, I think the answer is that we are made in His image.

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Speaker 1
 And so He,

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Speaker 1
 we're not God, we're not God-like in the sense of like, we have characteristics of deity.

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Speaker 1
 Okay.

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Speaker 1
 So in some sense, God has put a part of Himself within human beings.

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Speaker 1
 And so at the end of the day, I really just think it's like He decided that He is going to consider us valuable. And that is expressed by making us in His image like Him and to represent Him. And we've been made as the psalmist as a little lower than the heavenly beings.

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Speaker 1
 And He's crowned us with glory and honor.

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Speaker 1
 And I think that the glory and honor is that we are like, we are made in His image that puts us above the psalmist and we see this in Genesis 1, that we have a unique value above the animals, above the plants, above all the rest of creation. God values all of creation.

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Speaker 1
 But it's very clear from Scripture that He values human life significantly above all of that. And in some ways we even values it above the heavenly being like angels,

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Speaker 1
 right? Because He didn't, in Hebrews talks about this, He didn't die for the angels.

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Speaker 1
 And Peter was this amazing passage where Peter's in chapter 1, he's talking about the gospel and he goes, "These are things that angels long to look into.

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Speaker 1
 It's like things concerning our salvation." They're like, "Hey, we'd like to know more about that." And in some ways we have a greater capacity or will maybe to understand salvation. And it certainly is more pertinent to us. The angels fell, the angels are unredeemable.

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Speaker 1
 Humanity fell, that's not the same. And so I don't know that we can fully understand the answer to your question, get the question or your question, but we can sit back and marvel and be grateful that that is the case.

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Speaker 2
 Well, I think grateful is key here because I think partly what sparks this question for me is like, I think we take it for granted so easily, especially in kind of the evangelical culture that it's just, you know, God sees us as valuable and we just assume it without really recognizing that our value comes because He made us.

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Speaker 2
 We're valued through Him, not in anything inherent in us. And so, yeah.

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Speaker 1
 Yeah. So we're valued as creatures,

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Speaker 1
 which means that our value doesn't come from us, it comes from Him. That's really important because in, I think even evangelical cultures, and let's just talk about culture in general, evangelical culture, this idea is like, oh yeah, I'm valuable. I'm valuable. Like inherently in and of yourself. And that's not the case at all. And that's why a lot of evangelical culture kind of parrots therapeutic culture, our therapeutic, you know, Western kind of culture. And instead of no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not actually still this commercial.

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Speaker 1
 It's one of the WNBA, two of the WNBA players. We might edit this out later, but it just like, I was like, there it is, you know, self, the literary said this, the commercial is self-expression is the greatest form of self-love.

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Speaker 1
 And I was like, there it is.

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Speaker 1
 And our evangelical culture has imbibed some, at least some of that. A lot of hubris there. Right.

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Speaker 1
 And not recognizing that our, again, we're creatures, we're created beings. And that necessarily means that our value and worth comes from our maker. Yeah. From Him.

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Speaker 2
 Yeah.

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Speaker 1
 I don't know, I don't know that you plan to go there, but I think it's the best I can do and then answer that question.

[00:29:44:16 - 00:29:56:06]
Speaker 2
 I think it's just something to think on. I think that there's a lot of deep truth there that has implication to how we live.

[00:29:59:10 - 00:30:02:11]
Speaker 2
 So you kind of skipped around a little bit in John 10 this week.

[00:30:04:01 - 00:30:05:21]
Speaker 2
 Your sermon ended at verse 29.

[00:30:07:21 - 00:30:10:17]
Speaker 2
 I have a question a little further down. I was hoping nobody would notice this.

[00:30:13:22 - 00:30:21:22]
Speaker 2
 At this point, so Jesus has yet again made another claim of divinity and the Pharisees are yet again getting ready to stone Him for blasphemy.

[00:30:23:10 - 00:30:48:18]
Speaker 2
 In verse 34, Jesus answered them by saying, "Is it not written in your law? I said, you are gods. If He called them gods to whom the word of God came and scripture cannot be broken, do you say of Him whom the Father consecrated and sent it into the world, you are blaspheming because I said, I am the Son of God?" And so they're fighting back against His claim to divinity again.

[00:30:50:10 - 00:31:02:09]
Speaker 2
 What is He talking about? When Jesus says, He references Psalm 86, I believe, and He's speaking about how people in the Old Testament were called gods.

[00:31:03:14 - 00:31:04:12]
Speaker 2
 What's He referring to there?

[00:31:04:12 - 00:31:31:12]
Speaker 1
 Well, this is a good opportunity for us to do some serious Bible study. So first of all, when we read a quote like that, we should say, like, where does that come from? And then go back to the context in which it was originally written. And so Psalm 82 and verse 6 specifically, but if you read that psalmist, it's relatively short,

[00:31:34:04 - 00:31:38:10]
Speaker 1
 Jesus is talking of Jesus. I guess ultimately it is Jesus.

[00:31:39:13 - 00:31:55:05]
Speaker 1
 The psalmist is actually talking about human judges. So the gods are humans, okay? And is actually saying God's going to hold human judges to account because they are not practicing justice and righteousness.

[00:31:57:22 - 00:32:05:17]
Speaker 1
 So that's kind of the context. But the point is that the Old Testament calls humans gods.

[00:32:07:06 - 00:32:21:07]
Speaker 1
 And so it's basically saying if the Bible calls human judges God, how much more appropriate is it to call the actual son of God a God?

[00:32:22:17 - 00:32:28:16]
Speaker 1
 And this is another one of those times where Jesus is messing with them a little bit, I think.

[00:32:30:21 - 00:32:41:00]
Speaker 1
 But I think it's certainly an appropriate point. The other thing we should see about this is that Jesus goes on to say, and there,

[00:32:42:07 - 00:32:58:06]
Speaker 1
 the Word of God or Scripture cannot be broken. There's actually a very important statement about Scripture because it's saying that everything in Scripture is truth, it's true and cannot be broken, which means it's completely authoritative,

[00:32:59:17 - 00:33:22:10]
Speaker 1
 which is our, it's, as has been said, our authority for all matters of faith and practice and is inerrant in everything and inerrant completely inspired all of those things that we talk about in terms of Scripture. So did I answer your question? Yeah, thanks.

[00:33:22:10 - 00:33:41:17]
Speaker 2
 It's good. No, it's, yeah, it's good to see you do some exegesis here. Yeah, and to your Scripture point, nobody holds a higher, holds Scripture higher than Jesus does. Right. And we see that repeatedly, so it's glad you pointed that out.

[00:33:42:20 - 00:33:58:06]
Speaker 2
 Okay, last one. So you broke down Jesus' role as a shepherd into three Ps. You had propitiatory, personal, and protecting. Which of these do you think is the hardest for people in general to accept and why?

[00:33:58:06 - 00:34:01:22]
Speaker 1
 Well, you tell me and I'll tell you, what do you think?

[00:34:01:22 - 00:34:05:02]
Speaker 2
 I'm guessing you're going to be personal.

[00:34:08:08 - 00:34:12:18]
Speaker 1
 Yeah, but I didn't ask you what you thought I was going to say. I asked you what you think.

[00:34:13:21 - 00:34:19:16]
Speaker 2
 You're correct, but... Yeah. Yeah, I think at least in, you know,

[00:34:21:21 - 00:34:37:02]
Speaker 2
 in what we believe mentally, it's easier to accept like the substitutionary atonement with propitiatory and it's easy, I think, to accept that, you know, God is the ultimate one that holds our salvation.

[00:34:37:02 - 00:34:41:15]
Speaker 1
 Maybe easier for you than for some. That's possible. Yeah, but...

[00:34:41:15 - 00:34:55:18]
Speaker 2
 But yeah, the personal one, I mean, to actually take what Jesus says His role is and apply that to our daily lives is hard, right? It's hard to believe that and to bring that into practice.

[00:34:55:18 - 00:35:13:13]
Speaker 1
 Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, the propitiatory, it's a big word that, again, we don't normally use, but that's when we think of Jesus being the good shepherd and that is the primary point in the text. He's a good shepherd because He lays down His life. He died on the cross for our sins,

[00:35:15:01 - 00:35:16:20]
Speaker 1
 you know, justification, all of that.

[00:35:18:08 - 00:35:24:21]
Speaker 1
 And the protecting thing, we love, right? Okay. I can't lose my salvation.

[00:35:26:08 - 00:35:53:04]
Speaker 1
 It's more than that, as I tried to explain, but we tend to think of it in terms and that's a great, wonderful, comforting truth. The personal thing part can be comforting and in a sense, again, I say mentally it is, but when you get down to the reality of experiencing that, it's a very uncomfortable place, I think, for many people to go.

[00:35:55:11 - 00:36:13:22]
Speaker 1
 It's not only because of the things I was talking about on Sunday. Something I didn't talk about is it can be uncomfortable because then that means He might get in my business, right? If He's propitiatory and protecting, I'm saved and He's going to keep me safe. Okay, great. Now, and this is a real problem that I, again,

[00:36:15:00 - 00:36:28:23]
Speaker 1
 nobody that listens to this on the regular basis will be surprised I'm going to say this is a real problem in the church is that we're happy to have Jesus save us and keep us safe and then we have a tendency to like a kind of hands off after that.

[00:36:31:16 - 00:36:39:12]
Speaker 1
 That's not a good shepherd and that's not what it means to follow a sheep. Now this is a thing I didn't really emphasize,

[00:36:40:12 - 00:36:45:17]
Speaker 1
 but the sheep, Jesus said the sheep know me. I know them and they know me.

[00:36:47:02 - 00:36:54:16]
Speaker 1
 Now we may not think that we know Him, but all of His true sheep do know Him to a degree

[00:36:55:22 - 00:37:41:18]
Speaker 1
 and probably better than we actually think. Maybe we think that we do, but if we don't know Him and we don't want Him to know us, then we got to ask the question, am I really a sheep? Something that Jesus emphasized over and over in John 10, we saw it, "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. They won't follow a stranger. They hear," and He just says it over and over and over again. And so there is a personal nature of this relationship between the shepherd and the sheep so that if that's not what we want, that's what we turn away from and we're not interested in that, then we really need to ask ourselves some hard questions as to is

[00:37:42:22 - 00:37:54:01]
Speaker 1
 Jesus really our good shepherd? Because it's not that He's just a propitatory shepherd and a protecting shepherd. He might be a personal shepherd. That's not the text, so the message.

[00:37:55:13 - 00:37:56:05]
Speaker 1
 He's all of them.

[00:37:58:08 - 00:38:04:20]
Speaker 1
 Yeah, for sure. And I think He's all of them or He's none of them, if I can go as far as to say that.

[00:38:06:02 - 00:38:20:09]
Speaker 2
 There. Yeah. No, that's good. But I think just when I thought about John 10, and I think that's why your sermon was helpful for me when I've thought about John 10 in the past, it's always been about protecting.

[00:38:22:23 - 00:39:11:17]
Speaker 2
 That's one of my go-tos for the perseverance of the saints, right? Sure. You brought that up. Sure. And that also assumes propitatory, which in case you're still wondering what that word means, we keep throwing it around. So propitatory is essentially turning away God's wrath. So through Christ's sacrifice, He substitutes Himself in our place, and then now the wrath doesn't abide on us anymore. It was on Him. And so, quick side note, but that's where I would have gone with this passage. I think I probably naturally would have just skipped that middle part and not really catching that what does it actually mean for Christ to know us and for us to know Him.

[00:39:11:17 - 00:39:12:10]
Speaker 3
 Yeah.

[00:39:12:10 - 00:39:12:22]
Speaker 2
 So.

[00:39:12:22 - 00:39:33:15]
Speaker 1
 Well, I'll leave everybody with this, playing off of that. One of the things I've been convicted of lately in this passage really, I think, speaks to this is of loving the truth about Jesus more than actually loving Him.

[00:39:35:20 - 00:39:39:20]
Speaker 1
 And so loving, oh yeah, He's a propitatory shepherd. And I even love that term.

[00:39:41:07 - 00:39:42:11]
Speaker 1
 Not you do too, I know.

[00:39:43:15 - 00:40:00:01]
Speaker 1
 He's a protecting shepherd. I love the perseverance of the saints, but it's a love for the doctrine and love for the doctrine without a greater love for the, can I say doctor, just how I love to alliterate,

[00:40:01:06 - 00:40:07:11]
Speaker 1
 the shepherd is missing the point and is also dangerous.

[00:40:09:20 - 00:40:11:13]
Speaker 1
 That's what the Pharisees,

[00:40:13:02 - 00:40:23:01]
Speaker 1
 they had their doctrine nailed down, at least their Bible nailed down. Not their doctrine, but they knew the Bible,

[00:40:24:01 - 00:40:28:00]
Speaker 1
 but they didn't love the word of God standing in front of them.

[00:40:30:02 - 00:40:33:03]
Speaker 1
 We believe, help our unbelief.

[00:40:35:18 - 00:40:41:02]
Speaker 2
 All right. Well, I'll say it again. If you have any questions or anything you want to ask Chris in general,

[00:40:42:07 - 00:40:43:22]
Speaker 2
 ask at furtherpodcast.com.

[00:40:45:11 - 00:40:47:07]
Speaker 2
 And thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.