[00:02:47:23 - 00:02:51:03]
Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm, Clay Baker.

[00:02:51:03 - 00:02:52:01]
Clay
 How's it going?

[00:02:52:01 - 00:02:52:14]
Brenton
 Welcome.

[00:02:52:14 - 00:02:55:18]
Clay
 Yeah, great, Brenton. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:55:18 - 00:03:14:04]
Brenton
 So you preached on John 19. Good section of that. And yeah, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. But I wanted to start with what is happening in the life of the executive pastor of Harmony right now?

[00:03:16:04 - 00:03:49:18]
Clay
 Well, as our listeners probably know, the Fort Madison campus is moving locations. And so they'll be moving into their new building, the former Richardson Elementary building, coming up very soon. So they're looking at a soft launch on Palm Sunday and a grand opening on Easter Sunday. So they've certainly been busy with that. And as someone that's most involved with leading the staff and helping Chris and leading the church, that means I'm involved with that too, to some degree.

[00:03:50:18 - 00:04:06:14]
Clay
 And then we're also coming up on our one-year midpoint for our two-year all-in transformational journey. So Chris will be sharing more about that in the days ahead. But we've got some events and even a sermon series somewhat related to that. So that's what I've been working on.

[00:04:06:14 - 00:04:11:20]
Brenton
 Good. Busy times here. There's a lot going on, but a lot of really good stuff too.

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Clay
 Yeah, it's amazing. And again, my role is primarily being a pastor or leader of the staff team. And I just can't say enough great things about our staff. We have an amazing team. It's a privilege to work with you guys. You included, Brenton. Even you. Especially you. That's good.

[00:04:31:18 - 00:04:46:03]
Brenton
 All right, well, let's jump into this John passage. So just kind of as an introduction to this, you structured your sermon around the three titles given to Jesus from John here,

[00:04:48:02 - 00:04:51:01]
Brenton
 those being man, son of God, and king.

[00:04:52:17 - 00:04:59:11]
Brenton
 Why do you think that John highlighted those specific titles in that moment?

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Clay
 Well, probably in one sense, it's because he's recording what happened. He wants to be a faithful witness to what happened. We also know that John, or we believe, John wrote later than the other gospel writers. And so he maybe was giving a perspective, certainly his own personal perspective, but maybe touching on some things that some of the other gospel writers didn't emphasize. But I just thought it was very interesting that these titles,

[00:05:33:23 - 00:05:40:22]
Clay
 all three of them in this, not even the whole chapter, but part of one chapter, they were all used. But they're all used by Jesus' opponents.

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Clay
 So John has irony, uses irony throughout his gospel.

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Clay
 And that's certainly the case here where his opponents are calling him man, son of God, and king. And so I think this could have been just another example of John using irony to try to make his point that, yeah, these guys don't believe it. They're being sarcastic. They're being disrespectful, whatever. But they're calling him true things. And you readers who have the spirit to enlighten you, you should see in this like, yeah, Jesus really is the man. Jesus really is the son of God. Jesus really is the king.

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Brenton
 Yeah, I think there's always-- I think we especially maybe see this with John. But there's so much to learn about the way that their literary style, what that has to do with what they're trying to communicate to their audience, too.

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Brenton
 So you had mentioned specifically his irony here, the use of irony.

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Brenton
 How does recognizing these literary styles,

[00:06:53:03 - 00:07:04:16]
Brenton
 really digging into how they're writing things, what does that give us now in modern day as far as how we're interpreting their message?

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Clay
 Yeah, I think it's helpful to understand the author's perspective. I think you need to start with the author's original context. So no matter what part of scripture you're reading, you need to start with the original context in which it was written. So who was this author? When did he live? Who was he writing it to? Or who was he likely writing it to?

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Clay
 And you need to start there before you move to how it applies to us today.

[00:07:32:15 - 00:08:25:19]
Clay
 Sometimes we jump straight from text to self-application, and we can really miss-- we can misapply it then, because we miss maybe the main point of what the author is trying to do, what he was trying to do with his original author. And then if you can glean that from sources, sometimes it's just a matter of paying very close attention to the text itself. And that's actually where we should start, is just the Bible itself and trying to glean the author's intent from that. But if you've got some study aids, like a good study Bible or a commentary, those can also be very informative. And all of that shapes your interpretation of what the main point of the passage is. And then once you understand what the main point is, then you can do the work of trying to apply it to today and trying to bridge that gap between his time and place to our time and place.

[00:08:25:19 - 00:08:26:11]
Speaker 4
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 I think it can be easy as we read scripture to just kind of treat it as historical record. And that's what it is, and that's what we pull out of it. But the Bible isn't a textbook, right? There's so much personality even shown in the way that it's written, that those things are important. It's one thing that makes hermeneutics hard, right? Like to be able to interpret scripture, you need a lot of background information.

[00:08:55:20 - 00:08:56:02]
Clay
 Yeah.

[00:08:57:16 - 00:09:25:11]
Clay
 This is where, again, to illustrate both how you can start with the text, but also a commentary or other study aid is helpful. So if you were trying to understand John's audience, or why is John writing? Well, we start with the text. What did John say himself? This is one of the few amazing examples in scripture where the author tells you exactly what his purpose is. In John chapter 20, verses 30 and 31,

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Clay
 in verse 31, he says, "These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." And so we see expressly written in his gospel, the purpose is that we may believe that Jesus, that's really his human name, his given name at birth, Jesus is the Christ, that's the Messianic title, the Son of God, that's also Messianic, but given his, described in his godly nature, and that by believing you may have life in his name. So what that does for us when we believe. So there's like this evangelistic purpose

[00:10:10:07 - 00:10:15:08]
Clay
 that he's writing with. Also something I was edified to learn in my studies,

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Clay
 a commentator that I referenced, D.A. Carson, just a brilliant man.

[00:10:23:04 - 00:10:42:05]
Clay
 But he's written a really good commentary on John. He believes that, and he's not alone, but it's not the only interpretation either, but he believes John was specifically writing to evangelize Jewish people. So John was ethnically Jewish, Jesus was ethnically Jewish.

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Clay
 There would have been a lot of Jews though in John's days that did not believe in Jesus, that did not believe he was the Christ, the Son of God.

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Clay
 So Carson, and he describes why, but Carson believes that John was specifically writing to convince Jewish believers, or Jewish people of the true identity of Jesus Christ.

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Clay
 So then if you're persuaded by that and he gives some of his reasons, then you can read a passage and John, you go, "Okay, you know John's trying to evangelize because he said that he is." And if Carson's correct, he might even be trying to evangelize Jewish people specifically. And you just take that, you just keep that in mind as you read, and that helps you understand why he might've written something the way he did.

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Brenton
 Yeah, that's good. Okay.

[00:11:37:02 - 00:11:41:01]
Brenton
 You drew a connection between John 19 and Genesis 3

[00:11:42:09 - 00:11:44:05]
Brenton
 with the phrase, "Behold the man."

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Brenton
 That shows up in both of these passages. And you tied that to Jesus as the better Adam, which is something we see throughout scripture, especially in Hebrews, it's something that's talked about. But so this is the concept of federal headship. Can you just kind of walk us through what that means? What does that doctrine state?

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Clay
 Yeah, sure. So the idea of Adam being ours in humanity is man and woman. The idea of Adam being our head or our representative

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Clay
 is derived primarily from Romans 5.12. That's the key verse in this conversation.

[00:12:30:15 - 00:13:04:20]
Clay
 Romans 5.12 says, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man," and the context makes it clear he's talking about Adam, "but just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned." Okay, so now if we know the Genesis story, we know that Adam is the one man who sinned and thereafter death came to him and Eve and all humans

[00:13:06:08 - 00:13:14:10]
Clay
 after his sin. And it wasn't necessarily gonna be that way, but they got removed from the garden and were under the curse of death thereafter.

[00:13:15:11 - 00:13:37:17]
Clay
 But then the curious part that we have to grapple with is the last part of that verse, "and so death spread to all men because all sinned." And it's theologians, Christians, attempts to understand how did all men, that's talking about all men of all time,

[00:13:39:03 - 00:13:41:18]
Clay
 mankind, you know, when it says men, it's men and women,

[00:13:42:20 - 00:13:45:12]
Clay
 how did we all sin in Adam's sin?

[00:13:47:11 - 00:14:00:08]
Clay
 Because, you know, I, Clay Baker, I'm not the subject of Genesis chapter three, you know, I didn't take the fruit and eat of it.

[00:14:01:12 - 00:14:02:10]
Clay
 I wasn't born yet.

[00:14:02:10 - 00:14:03:09]
 (Laughs)

[00:14:03:09 - 00:14:09:09]
Clay
 So what do you mean, Paul? And you say that even I sinned through Adam's sin.

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Clay
 So one way to understand that is the federal headship explanation, which you've mentioned, Brenton, which is that Adam is our covenant representative. So that view would hold that when God created Adam and blessed him and gave him work to do, like the creation mandate, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, et cetera,

[00:14:36:23 - 00:14:42:16]
Clay
 and then told Adam that he could eat of any fruit of the garden except the fruit from the one tree,

[00:14:43:23 - 00:14:46:11]
Clay
 that they're entering into a covenant relationship there.

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Clay
 And as long as Adam is obedient to the covenant, he's gonna be blessed with life and all the blessings from God.

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Clay
 And as our covenant representative, he represents all of humanity.

[00:15:04:05 - 00:15:06:07]
Clay
 And so that would be what,

[00:15:07:17 - 00:16:32:22]
Clay
 that would be the explanation for Romans 12, how did we all sin in Adam's sin? Well, he as our covenant head or the one who entered into this covenant with God on our behalf of all mankind, he sinned and therefore we all sinned. That's the federal headship explanation. There's also an alternative view called natural headship. And that is in some ways easier to understand because it's just biological, physical. And that is that because Adam is the first man and is factually the ancestor of all of us, that therefore we were all literally, but through genetics present in Adam. So under that view, Adam sinned and we all sin too because our genetic material comes from him. So like I said just a little bit ago, I wasn't there. You know, I didn't take the apple, but that view would say, well, actually, Clay, you did because you were in a part of Adam. I think, so that's just, those are some of the theological terms. There's probably other views. I think one of the things practically that we should keep in mind is that we all do sin and we all know that we sin. And so this, like Romans 5, 12 and these theories of headship, they explain

[00:16:33:23 - 00:16:43:01]
Clay
 like why we were conceived as sinners, why we were born sinners, like with this sinful disposition and this kind of taint or pollution of sin.

[00:16:44:13 - 00:16:50:06]
Clay
 And there's different ways to understand that, explain that and that's somewhat theoretical,

[00:16:51:08 - 00:17:14:08]
Clay
 but practically, observationally, we can all know and experience that, that yes, we all sin and it doesn't take very long for us to get confirmation of that. Even, I mean, we can look back at our toddler years and go like, yeah, I told my parents no. It's like the first word I learned, it's the first word my kids learned. So yeah, we're sinners and we can see that. Yeah, for sure.

[00:17:14:08 - 00:18:04:04]
Brenton
 Yeah, I guess just to sum it up, if you go down a little further in chapter five in Romans, verse 19 says, "For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners." So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. And so you get kind of two sides to that. Why is it important for us to accept both sides of Paul's argument in Romans here? Like both the concept of original sin and the concept of Christ's headship in the atonement. Cause I think it's easy a lot of times for people to accept Christ's headship, cause that's the good side of it, right? That's where we gain our righteousness. But a lot of times the original sin part of this can be hard for people to accept.

[00:18:06:09 - 00:18:08:17]
Clay
 Yeah, I think, and when people are surveyed,

[00:18:10:18 - 00:18:15:22]
Clay
 most people would say that all humans are naturally good.

[00:18:16:23 - 00:18:17:01]
Clay
 Right.

[00:18:18:05 - 00:18:28:08]
Clay
 You know, maybe that comes from a sense of optimism, maybe it comes from a sense of pride. I don't know, thinking that yourself, you're pretty good. Maybe it's because babies are so cute and we just see them as innocent.

[00:18:29:09 - 00:18:34:11]
Clay
 And it does take a little theological work and submitting to scripture to say otherwise.

[00:18:36:13 - 00:18:46:01]
Clay
 But yeah, I think it's important to know that all of humanity has been under the curse of death because of and through our sin,

[00:18:47:17 - 00:18:49:22]
Clay
 including Adam's sin, starting with Adam's sin.

[00:18:51:06 - 00:18:55:09]
Clay
 It's important to know that because that's how we know that we need a savior.

[00:18:56:23 - 00:19:05:19]
Clay
 I've said before, and many have said, that you can't receive and appreciate the good news unless you first understand the bad news.

[00:19:06:19 - 00:19:12:01]
Clay
 And the bad news is that you are a sinner deserving of death, even eternal death,

[00:19:13:02 - 00:19:21:21]
Clay
 because God is eternal and he's infinitely holy and just and righteous and any sin against him is just, it's unfathomable, the magnitude of it.

[00:19:24:04 - 00:19:34:02]
Clay
 But then, and I love how Paul does give the other side of it. So by one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. So just as Adam represented me,

[00:19:35:07 - 00:19:46:01]
Clay
 and I would have done the same thing, I'm not just blaming Adam here, but just as Adam represented me and because of his sin and my sin in him, I'm under a death curse.

[00:19:47:10 - 00:19:48:17]
Clay
 So too, Jesus,

[00:19:49:18 - 00:20:00:10]
Clay
 if you are part of his new covenant by faith, he represents us and we are imputed with his righteousness. So just as I'm imputed with Adam's sin,

[00:20:01:20 - 00:20:03:15]
Clay
 I'm imputed with Christ's righteousness.

[00:20:05:01 - 00:20:19:08]
Clay
 And that's more than sufficient to cover all my sin and then some because Christ is God and he's just that holy. And just as Adam didn't, just as I don't live the life I should and Adam didn't live the life he should,

[00:20:20:23 - 00:20:33:08]
Clay
 that so much more Christ lived a righteous life and we get the blessings of that through faith in him. So both sides of the coin are very important. You gotta know the bad news to appreciate the good news and it just makes the good news that much sweeter.

[00:20:35:07 - 00:20:50:10]
Brenton
 Yep. Okay, you said the most fundamental reason Jesus became man was not just to relate to us or model life for us, but to die for us. Why do you think this distinction is so important?

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Clay
 Yeah, this really gets to, boy, we're getting theological here, but this really gets to your theory of the atonement.

[00:20:59:23 - 00:21:05:10]
Clay
 Why did Jesus die and what's the significance of that? What's the significance of Jesus?

[00:21:06:23 - 00:21:15:22]
Clay
 And one popular, especially in more liberal circles, but one popular explanation is the moral example theory

[00:21:17:00 - 00:21:50:22]
Clay
 where that's really the significance of Jesus in his life. And there's a lot of preaching that's this way. A lot of churches give you a gospel story and I talked earlier about jumping straight to present day application. That's kind of how that goes. Well, Jesus was humble, so we should be humble. Jesus was meek, we should be meek. You just draw that straight line comparison to however he acted, that's how we should be. And you miss in there the crucial step of his death and resurrection.

[00:21:52:18 - 00:22:00:18]
Clay
 So I think a better and more biblical understanding of the atonement is called the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement.

[00:22:02:19 - 00:22:15:01]
Clay
 Penal because it has to do with punishment and substitutionary because it has to do with Jesus being our substitute. But under that theory, which I think is pretty well explained in Romans chapter three,

[00:22:16:23 - 00:22:17:18]
Clay
 and that's where I said,

[00:22:19:08 - 00:22:46:11]
Clay
 I quoted elsewhere in Hebrews about Jesus being the propitiation for our sins and explain what propitiation means. But basically, Jesus died so that he could satisfy God's wrath for sin. And if you understand sin and how bad it is, you understand that God rightly is gonna be wrathful against it and it demands a punishment. That's what justice requires and God is just. And so Jesus satisfies God's just requirement

[00:22:47:12 - 00:22:54:11]
Clay
 by dying in our place, so penal substitutionary. So yeah, does that answer your question?

[00:22:54:11 - 00:22:55:18]
Brenton
 Yeah, I think so.

[00:22:57:05 - 00:23:07:03]
Brenton
 So I guess a follow up to that, why do you think that so many people are resistant to this idea?

[00:23:08:11 - 00:23:31:02]
Brenton
 For the most part, they're willing to accept him as a good teacher and even we'll see that from unbelievers that a lot of times can be a pushback against us as Christians to say, well, Jesus wouldn't do that or there's a lot of different political examples we could talk about that Jesus as a moral teacher is thrown back on us.

[00:23:32:10 - 00:23:38:06]
Brenton
 Why is that easier to accept than him as a perpetuation?

[00:23:39:10 - 00:23:45:22]
Clay
 I think part of it could be our own pride. Like we just really don't think we're bad enough to deserve the kind of death that Jesus suffered.

[00:23:47:14 - 00:23:54:14]
Clay
 So we wanna think of ourselves and not just unbelievers, but believers too, we're tempted in this way. We wanna think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

[00:23:55:17 - 00:24:14:10]
Clay
 And so we just think, well, surely we're not that bad that God would put us to death or that we would deserve that and I think part of it, so that's kind of like bringing us up, I think part of it too. And another temptation is to bring God down and think, well, he's surely like he wouldn't do that.

[00:24:15:10 - 00:24:28:08]
Clay
 He surely he's not so holy and righteous that he can't stand to be in the presence of any sin, right? I mean, that that's really that big of a deal.

[00:24:30:14 - 00:24:34:22]
Clay
 And so we kind of get our notion of ourselves wrong. We get our notion of God wrong.

[00:24:36:10 - 00:24:43:07]
Clay
 And people will even go so far as to say that the penal substitutionary theory of atonement is like child abuse.

[00:24:45:19 - 00:25:10:04]
Clay
 And that just misses, well, one misses the need and misses scripture, but it also misses the point that in another point that I made with quoting Carson, but Jesus wasn't a martyr, he wasn't a victim. He was a willing participant in all of this. He's got himself, he totally, willingly, gladly submitted to his father's plan because he loves us and he wants,

[00:25:11:05 - 00:25:30:08]
Clay
 he loves us and he wants to demonstrate that love for us and dying for us. He also, he is love and he is all these wonderful, amazing things and merciful and gracious and good. And he most demonstrates that for us and therefore is most glorified by us and in us when we can see

[00:25:31:20 - 00:25:34:21]
Clay
 his sacrifice on the cross, when we can see him

[00:25:37:03 - 00:25:45:13]
Clay
 coming down to earth, becoming man, submitting himself to death, even death on a cross and horrific torture leading up to that and including that.

[00:25:47:22 - 00:25:50:22]
Clay
 When we see that he did all that for us and we didn't deserve any of it,

[00:25:52:08 - 00:26:04:17]
Clay
 that's when we see his mercy, his grace, his love, his compassion in its fullest form and we just respond and worship and know him in a way that we otherwise wouldn't.

[00:26:06:08 - 00:26:06:14]
Speaker 4
 Sure.

[00:26:10:04 - 00:26:29:04]
Brenton
 So there's been a lot of cultural use of the phrase Christ is King recently and we probably don't need to get into the whole controversy here, but often it's used in a political sense and maybe a little more irony here.

[00:26:30:08 - 00:26:43:13]
Clay
 You're gonna have to explain, I confess to our listeners, I'm not familiar with this. I do pay attention to the news, but maybe not the right sources, but in my observations, I wish a few more of our leaders and our people would be saying Christ is King.

[00:26:45:02 - 00:26:45:07]
 (Laughs)

[00:26:45:07 - 00:26:49:08]
Clay
 So explain to me first and maybe some of our listeners what it is you're referring to.

[00:26:49:08 - 00:27:07:04]
Brenton
 Yeah, I mean, I think that some of it's been a pushback against the degradation of kind of this American Christianity, where our culture has moved even a name away from America being a Christian nation.

[00:27:08:15 - 00:28:20:22]
Brenton
 So that's part of it, but then it's kind of gotten tied up in the controversy around Israel right now and even as far to say as like we've had politicians come out and say that that is used as anti-Semitic rhetoric now to say that Christ is King. And so, there's always a mess around everything in our nation, but I think that in many ways, like people have used it as not necessarily a way to say that Christ is not necessarily wrong as kind of a poke at the more anti-Christian group in America. And so I guess all that to say, my question is really like, okay, we can say Christ is King, right? And we see here in John that like people are using it sarcastically, what does it actually mean to recognize Christ as King and to live under his reign? Like what responsibility comes with that claim of Christ as King?

[00:28:22:01 - 00:28:32:14]
Clay
 Yeah, well, practically it means submitting yourself to him as King. And how do you do that? Well, he is the word, he's the word become flesh.

[00:28:33:19 - 00:28:36:02]
Clay
 And we have his word,

[00:28:37:06 - 00:28:39:19]
Clay
 the written word, which is the very word of God.

[00:28:41:05 - 00:28:54:16]
Clay
 And so that's how we know him and that's how we know his will for us. And so what it looks like to really mean Christ as King and live like it is to know his word, study his word,

[00:28:55:17 - 00:29:03:12]
Clay
 apply his word to yourself in your own life and conform yourself to the word. And so, yeah, that's interesting.

[00:29:04:22 - 00:29:08:12]
Clay
 You're saying that that's kind of getting thrown around. Yeah, that's just like a slogan,

[00:29:09:13 - 00:29:14:07]
Clay
 like Christ as King, but they're really making some other point, a political point or something.

[00:29:16:20 - 00:29:25:10]
Clay
 That kind of reminds me of the phrase, talk is cheap. So it's really easy to say Christ as King or tweet that.

[00:29:26:16 - 00:29:31:11]
Clay
 What's the verb form for X now? It's post. Post, that's kind of boring. Yeah.

[00:29:32:21 - 00:29:35:14]
Clay
 Generic. Try to stay away from it. That's good.

[00:29:36:23 - 00:29:40:20]
Clay
 So it's easy to post Christ as King. It's easy to wear that on a T-shirt.

[00:29:42:05 - 00:29:55:02]
Clay
 I have noticed it seems like politicians, if they're trying to signal something, they'll wear a nice obvious cross necklace and nothing against cross necklaces.

[00:29:56:18 - 00:30:03:13]
Clay
 But oh man, sometimes maybe I'm just getting cynical, Brenton, but I just think, oh, come on. Are you really, like,

[00:30:04:20 - 00:30:12:15]
Clay
 is he really the Lord of your life? Is he really in your heart? Or are you just kind of wearing that as a badge, trying to signal something there?

[00:30:13:17 - 00:30:22:03]
Clay
 So yeah, that's all easy to do, but it's much harder to follow Christ in the, as Paul Tripp would say, the 10,000 little moments of life.

[00:30:24:04 - 00:30:28:14]
Clay
 When you're angry, are you gonna be patient with your child?

[00:30:30:22 - 00:30:35:01]
Clay
 When you're selfish, are you gonna be selfless with your wife?

[00:30:38:10 - 00:30:45:06]
Clay
 When you're proud, are you going to serve your coworker rather than seek your own glory?

[00:30:46:18 - 00:30:51:22]
Clay
 You know, that's a lot harder to do. That requires the spirit, and that's really what making Christ your King looks like.

[00:30:54:00 - 00:31:05:03]
Brenton
 All right, we'll end with this. You ended your sermon by talking about how easy it is to feel like life is a grind or to wonder, like, what's the point?

[00:31:06:04 - 00:31:14:10]
Brenton
 How does the reality that we serve a reigning King actually anchor someone in moments like that?

[00:31:16:15 - 00:31:22:12]
Clay
 Yeah, I think it's inspiring. You know, we all love a good story, you know, a good movie, a good book.

[00:31:24:16 - 00:31:34:03]
Clay
 I'm reading the Lord of the Rings books with my kids right now, particularly the older two boys, the younger two kids, they go read with mom stuff that's a little more their level.

[00:31:35:22 - 00:31:44:22]
Clay
 So, well, sometimes with the older kids, it's a little bit of a chore to get to the Lord of the Rings, but a lot of descriptions of the scenery and the geography. A lot of walking. A lot of walking, they walk all over the place.

[00:31:45:23 - 00:31:51:07]
Clay
 But what a good story, like, you read about Aragorn and it's like, man, I wanna follow a guy like that.

[00:31:52:17 - 00:32:02:21]
Clay
 Well, why does that ring true for us? It's because God's put that in our heart. You know, we want to follow a good leader and no leader is perfect except one.

[00:32:03:23 - 00:32:07:17]
Clay
 It's just really exciting to me, Bretton, to think like,

[00:32:09:09 - 00:32:18:22]
Clay
 just so this life feels real to us, right? Like you're not having like an out of body, out of mind experience right now. Not right now. No.

[00:32:18:22 - 00:32:20:05]
 (Both Laughing)

[00:32:21:08 - 00:32:30:09]
Clay
 This life feels real to us. And heaven or whatever comes next seems kind of abstract.

[00:32:32:16 - 00:32:36:19]
Clay
 But it's exciting for me to think about Jesus returning

[00:32:38:10 - 00:32:45:07]
Clay
 and how that will feel just as real. And I would say even realer, if that's a word or if that's a thing,

[00:32:46:23 - 00:32:48:15]
Clay
 than how it feels right now.

[00:32:48:15 - 00:32:49:07]
Speaker 4
 Hmm.

[00:32:50:12 - 00:33:00:22]
Clay
 And as discouraged as I might get by some of our leaders and some of their decisions and some of the way they talk or handle themselves,

[00:33:03:22 - 00:33:09:00]
Clay
 I will be so much more gratified and satisfied and delighted

[00:33:10:02 - 00:33:14:11]
Clay
 to follow my real King Jesus.

[00:33:15:20 - 00:33:17:12]
Clay
 Now I do that now and try

[00:33:19:09 - 00:33:47:14]
Clay
 but he is up in heaven and he's in my heart and he's in yours through his spirit. So I don't wanna forget that or discount that. Like he really is present and he really is ruling and reigning. I just like, I look forward to the consummation of all that when he'll be here and we'll be with him. And just like we have a president now or a governor or whatever, like we're gonna have King Jesus in the flesh.

[00:33:49:04 - 00:33:50:16]
Clay
 Ruling over the new creation.

[00:33:52:02 - 00:33:57:03]
Clay
 Now what will that look like in the nitty gritty? I don't exactly know.

[00:33:58:15 - 00:34:05:02]
Clay
 Chris has said he's looking forward to dunking a basketball. Maybe we'll be shooting hoops and I can dunk. I don't know.

[00:34:06:19 - 00:34:20:07]
Clay
 But I, whatever it is, I think it's gonna be really fulfilling and I think it's gonna be really satisfying. And if I can read Lord of the Rings and think, oh, wouldn't that be cool to live in Middle Earth and really do something that matters for Aragorn?

[00:34:21:21 - 00:34:33:03]
Clay
 I'm gonna have that feeling times infinity living in King Jesus's realm and doing good works for him. And it's just really gonna feel like it matters.

[00:34:34:06 - 00:34:50:05]
Clay
 And then, so as not to get too far ahead of myself, like just knowing and remembering that those things actually do apply to today. And this is where, because we live in a sinful world and I'm sinful and we have the devil who is still roaming around and looking for people to devour,

[00:34:51:15 - 00:35:07:17]
Clay
 it's just easy to forget. And it's just easy to think that your life doesn't have significance or you fail to see it. Jesus talked in the parable of the soils, there's the weeds, the weeds of life that come up and choke out that good gospel fruit.

[00:35:09:01 - 00:35:20:02]
Clay
 Just really easy for us to succumb to. So we gotta fight against that. We gotta be in his word, we gotta be in prayer, we gotta be reminding ourselves of these good truths. And then when we do that, we can see how

[00:35:22:08 - 00:35:48:05]
Clay
 as much as we can look forward to the awesomeness of what's to come, like it starts today, eternal life starts now. King Jesus is ruling and reigning now. He does have good works for me to do. He's given me an important mission to accomplish and through the power of his spirit, it's not impossible. And we can delight in that. And people's eternal destinies can change through our gospel work for our King.

[00:35:49:16 - 00:35:50:00]
Brenton
 Love it.

[00:35:51:05 - 00:35:54:05]
Brenton
 All right, we'll wrap there. Thanks, Clay. Yeah, it's been fun.

[00:35:54:05 - 00:35:54:13]
Speaker 4
 Appreciate your work.

[00:35:54:13 - 00:35:56:21]
Brenton
 Thanks for coming in and chatting.

[00:35:57:22 - 00:36:04:15]
Brenton
 If you guys have any questions, feel free to let us know. Ask it for the podcast.com and talk to you next week.

[00:36:04:15 - 00:36:07:10]
 (Upbeat Music)