Further

Episode 146: Easter Continued…

Harmony Bible Church

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0:00 | 37:14

In this episode of Further, Brenton Grimm and Chris Carr unpack the significance of the resurrection in John 20, with a particular focus on why the bodily resurrection of Jesus truly matters. They challenge common assumptions about eternity, reframing it not as an escape from the physical world, but as the restoration of it. The conversation then turns to the idea of peace, exploring the depth of biblical shalom and exposing the ways we often settle for a shallow or self-made version instead. Along the way, they address the reality of anxiety and how being rooted in the gospel reshapes how we experience it. Ultimately, the episode calls listeners to see both peace and mission rightly—not as things to manufacture or carry alone, but as realities grounded in what Christ has already accomplished.

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 (Music Playing)

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

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Chris
 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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Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm, Chris Carr. Welcome. How you doing? Pretty good. How about you? Yeah, I'm doing all right.

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Brenton
 Yeah, we came-- you mentioned at the beginning your service, but we came out of a big weekend.

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Brenton
 So good to be on the other end of it, I suppose.

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Chris
 Yeah,

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Chris
 I mean, it's great. It's quite a weekend, very busy. For sure. Takes me a while to recover from Easter, longer and longer, every year, it seems like. But in some ways, that's because we have more going on. In some ways, it's just because I'm a year older.

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Brenton
 I also think I saw that one of your sons got engaged. Is that true?

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Chris
 Yeah, we've got a wedding here coming up in just about six weeks. Wow, that's a past. Well, yeah, he got engaged back at New Year's. He's not much one for promoting or announcing or whatever.

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Brenton
 So I'm just late to the game here.

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Chris
 Yeah, well, we were just thrilled that he didn't show up married one day. So at least that's what his mom says. So yeah, it's exciting. We'll be heading to Virginia here in a little bit. Yeah, awesome. Yeah.

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Brenton
 All right, well, we'll hop into content from this week. So we kind of have this broken into three categories. But the first is about the resurrection.

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Brenton
 You know, you made the case that Jesus' physical resurrection really matters and not just a spiritual resurrection, but a bodily resurrection. Why do you think that so many people today are more comfortable with this kind of idea of a spiritual resurrection rather than a physical one?

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Chris
 Yeah, I think there are two primary reasons. The first would be just in our scientific age, it just seems unintelligible, you know,

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Chris
 to believe that somebody like,

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Chris
 like a miracle actually took place like that. So if you can't, you know, actually prove it, like scientifically, and obviously we can't today, although there's again, lots of eyewitness accounts and lots of evidence for it. And so that's part of it. But I think the other part is this spiritual resurrection, I have the ability to make that be whatever I want it to be. It can be whatever it means to me.

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Chris
 It gives us a lot more wiggle room. And I can interpret that for myself, which we obviously love to do, it leaves us kind of in this autonomy that we so treasure.

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Chris
 And so I'd say that those are the two primary reasons. Yeah.

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Brenton
 And you said that the bodily resurrection guarantees our future bodily resurrection. You brought up 1 Corinthians 15, which that's kind of Paul's whole argument there. How should that truth shape the way we think about eternity? Like not necessarily just an escape from our physical life right now,

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Brenton
 which honestly is how we talk about it a lot, right? But more of a restoration of what is now.

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Chris
 Well, I think you've hit on the key word there is restoration. And many of us have somehow adopted this idea that, you know, it's all gonna burn.

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Chris
 So to speak, and have missed out the fact that, you know, we're not going to heaven, which is just in the sense that we're going to this otherworldly place where we're, it's very much a spiritual, just a spiritual reality, or again, to make light of it a little bit, where, you know, floating on clouds, playing harps and shooting nerf guns at each other and stuff like that.

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Chris
 And that's, it's just so interesting. That's kind of what I,

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Chris
 and I don't want to necessarily blame on anybody specifically,

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Chris
 but that's just kind of what I grew up developing out there, this kind of idea, but that's not very appealing. And you really, really think about it.

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Chris
 And so the biblical picture is much richer than that where we have a restoration of what has been cursed and what has fallen through sin. And so it's a new recreated, God is gonna recreate the world, restore it, renew it. That's the biblical language.

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Chris
 And so I think that that should help us to, it actually, you know, we talked about this a while back in terms of like, in eternity, I believe that we're gonna, many of us are gonna do similar things to what we do now, even as occupations, like work is still gonna be a thing, vocation,

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Chris
 but it's not, it's gonna be without the curse. So it's not gonna be something that we experience pain or frustration in, but we just get the enjoyment and pleasure out of giving ourselves to something that is building something beautiful and wonderful. And many of us are doing that right now, but it's still really hard, right? And like you do a lot of video work and I don't know that, you know, will you do video work and eternity? I think it's, I mean, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility, but you enjoy, I know that you enjoy doing it, but it's also frustrating at times, right?

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Brenton
 Sure, yeah, absolutely.

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Chris
 And so I think it's really helpful when we begin to think of it more in those terms, and it gives us more to be excited about and to look forward to. And it fills that biblical word hope with more of maybe meaning than we often take it to mean.

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Brenton
 Yeah, what do you think brings on this misunderstanding of what heaven is? I don't know if that was just something from the past that has been left over, like why do we kind of view it in this like ethereal spiritual way instead of like actual physical world?

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Chris
 I think a lot of it comes down to, there's this really been poor teaching about this, and I don't think it's probably the full history of the church, but it'll last several hundred years.

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Chris
 And I just think we've not been taught, we've been taught incorrectly, or we just have not really been taught at all. We just don't talk about it a whole lot. And so it's kind of fascinating. We've talked a lot more about the end times and what happens in the last days, then we have actually, which is a relatively short period of time compared to eternity, right? And we've got so fascinated by that, that we've missed something that is actually more, it's in my opinion is clearer than the end times. This is actually part of eschatology. Like what we're talking eternity in heaven is part of eschatology, but we focused on the revelation and some of the Daniel stuff and 1 Thessalonians 4.

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Chris
 And okay, that's there, but they're within that, they're actually find some things that are more, I think actually helpful to our spiritual life and meaningful.

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Brenton
 Yeah, I wonder how much of this stuff has been shaped by just secular culture to so many of the images you think of, like my mind goes back to like cartoons of like sitting on clouds and stuff. And I don't know if there was any basis in Christian thought at that point, or if it

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Chris
 was just-- Well, it goes back to dualism all the way back to the ancient, really, to Greeks and philosophers is that the body is bad and the spirit is good. And so we need to be raptured from this evil body and just be in this, and so that's actually the roots of it if you go back and entrace it. And there's still unfortunately a fair measure of that dualism in the church today, is that the body is not bad, it's fallen,

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Chris
 but it's going to be restored.

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Brenton
 So is the spirit though?

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Chris
 Yeah, it's fallen as well. Right, but it's not like,

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Chris
 there will be a period of time, no, this is probably gonna get question, because every time I say this, people will go, "What?" There will be a period of time where our body and spirit are separated.

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Chris
 When we die, body goes in the ground, to be as for the bodies to be present with the Lord, 2 Corinthians 5, look it up. And so,

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Chris
 but that's a relatively short period of time. When Christ returns, our bodies will be reunited with our spirit, there's 1 Thessalonians 4, and then we show shall we live with the Lord forever.

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Chris
 Now, where? On a new recreated earth,

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Chris
 which heaven and earth become one, that's Revelation 21 and 22. That's Revelation 21 and 22. So, yeah, I just think we've gotten off there, we've been influenced by pagan Greek culture teaching, that still, it's amazing, it's been thousands and thousands of years since the inception. And then that actually has infiltrated theology and still to still us today, and our culture and all of that as well.

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Brenton
 Okay,

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Brenton
 so you mentioned that if Jesus wasn't raised bodily, we're still in our sins.

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Brenton
 Can you kind of help connect those dots for me? Like, why does forgiveness depend on a physical resurrection? Why couldn't it just be a spiritual resurrection for the forgiveness of sins?

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Chris
 Yeah, so I'll just read the verse to begin 1 Corinthians 1517, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." So your faith is futile.

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Chris
 And so, and you're still in your sins, those two things are connected. What is our faith? Well, our faith is in the fact that Jesus Christ claimed to be the Son of God, and that he claimed that he was gonna die and resurrect, maybe resurrected. So if he wasn't resurrected, then our faith is futile because we're believing something that was not true.

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Chris
 So there's that, we also know that the resurrection is God's validation of the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. So on the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. The resurrection actually verifies that God accepted his Christ's death on our behalf. So if he's not resurrected, then he may have died, but that it's lost his meaning. So we're still left in our sins. We have to pay for our own sins instead of Jesus paying for us. So it's, you know, I talked about like on Sunday, this is, I mean, there's almost nothing that matters more than affirming the physical resurrection. And just the spiritual, he came out of the grave, but his body somewhere just doesn't, it doesn't work.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Okay, good. Thanks for that. You made an important distinction that the peace is not just a fact, but something that we should experience.

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Brenton
 First, I'm curious, like just before we get into this conversation on peace, can you define peace or shalom?

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Brenton
 Like what does it actually look like to experience this peace?

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Chris
 Well,

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Chris
 first I will say, you know, this is one of those things, and there are many of them, that is kind of an already and not yet.

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Chris
 Like we,

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Chris
 so eternal life, we already have it, but we don't fully have it yet.

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Chris
 Because we're living in between the times, so to speak.

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Chris
 And so shalom, that word,

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Chris
 very important word in the Old Testament, it's a Hebrew word, it's not a Greek word,

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Chris
 but it means wholeness and security and stability, and all, you know, okay, total wellbeing, like in every way, physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, like all of those kind of things. And so this is what Adam and Eve had before the fall, and when they lost it the moment that they sinned, and we can even see that, they're running, they're hiding,

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Chris
 they're blaming, like in that. And that's a symptom, those are all symptoms of being separated now from God, not being at peace with God, so they are not at peace with themselves,

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Chris
 with other people and with the world around them.

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Chris
 And they physically begin to have problems, emotionally problems, you know, relationally, like all of those things. And so shalom is when we actually are restored to a place where everything is, we talk sometimes about everything is right in the world,

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Chris
 okay?

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Chris
 We say that it's not true, it's never true in this lifetime, okay? But that's what we're talking about, everything is right, contentment, I'm not worried, I'm not anxious, I feel secure and stable,

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Chris
 my relationships are good,

[00:15:01:15 - 00:15:03:15]
Chris
 and so that's what is,

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Chris
 you know, Jesus is a prince of peace, so that's that Isaiah, passage he's promised to be that, because he's bringing,

[00:15:13:03 - 00:15:23:04]
Chris
 this is what he's bringing. And it's ours, it's ours in the sense that we have it, like it's possible for us to experience it,

[00:15:24:05 - 00:15:29:16]
Chris
 in measure, and we will, that will be our eternal, that will be our eternal state.

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Brenton
 Okay, yeah, I think that's helpful, and I think it's important, as we go into this next question, because I think that we can often think that we have peace in certain ways, or at least present it like we do.

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Brenton
 So what are some ways that Christians try to manufacture peace, apart from the gospel?

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Chris
 Yeah,

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Chris
 that's a great question.

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Chris
 I think sometimes we settle for a false peace,

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Chris
 and what that means is we ignore that there's actually things that need to be addressed, and that things that are breaking the peace that need to be addressed, so that there actually can be, so one of the beatitudes of us is that we're the peacemakers,

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Chris
 and well, sometimes to be a peacemaker, you gotta recognize that the peace is already broken, and so one of the ways that we try to manufacture peace is just by pretending that things are okay, whether or not, and refusing to address issues, whether it would be in ourselves, or in other people, or between ourselves and other people, and that's a big way, I think, other way to try to manufacture peace is we give ourselves to things that we think are gonna make us peaceful, but they don't.

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Chris
 There's another Isaiah passage where God says to the people of Israel, you're giving yourself to sisters that hold no water,

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Chris
 and it's like, you think that this is what's going to

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Chris
 make you happy and content, but it can't do that for you, and only I can, and there's also the time where Jesus was weeping over Jerusalem. This is literally right after the triumphal entry, so this is, this is get some, this is another example of how I can always find another place to go in these conversations, but Jesus says he's weeping over Jerusalem, he says,

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Chris
 "If you even now knew the things "that led to peace, that resulted in peace," and of course, they're cheering him on because they think he's the conquering king,

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Chris
 and they think that's the peace that he's gonna bring. I'm gonna military, I'm gonna take over, and we're gonna be on top of the world again, and Jesus actually weeps at this because he realizes that they're looking for peace and political, a political savior when they don't realize that the peace literally only comes through him,

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Chris
 and not him in military might, but it is his sacrifice and everything that he's done for us. So we just,

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Chris
 there's so many things, it's like if we get the right person in office or the right laws in the land, or if I have this amount of money, there's almost an infinite number of ways that we can try to manufacture a peace rather than understanding that if we have peace with God, and that is the center, and if we make that our center, then that can give us peace even in the most difficult situations that we face in life. And so you just Paul, Paul talks in Philippians 4 I've learned the secret of being content in all things, in all circumstances, whether in much or in little,

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Chris
 I can do all through things through Christ who's raised since me. So that's not, by the way, that's not a verse,

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Chris
 like for us to wear on our eye black football players or whatever, it's like I can win the football game or whatever, it means that I can be content if I have nothing.

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Chris
 And why? Because Christ, I have Christ, and I have Christ and I have absolutely everything.

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Chris
 So, yeah.

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Brenton
 Yeah, I think one thing that comes to mind for me and probably something that I do is it's easy to kind of fake peace and hope that that means that actual peace will come.

[00:19:43:04 - 00:19:43:04]
 (Laughing)

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Brenton
 Like, you know, that's, you know my personality, I'm pretty steady. At least outwardly, mostly outwardly, not necessarily.

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Chris
 That's not a good deal to get today, right? Yeah, right.

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Brenton
 But no, I think there's often times where I try to convince myself that I have peace, right?

[00:20:02:19 - 00:20:07:06]
Chris
 And so, yeah. Yeah, well, I think sometimes

[00:20:09:04 - 00:20:20:14]
Chris
 that actually does the exact opposite of what we are hoping that it will do is we don't, we're not willing to face the fact that we're not experiencing peace.

[00:20:22:06 - 00:20:27:21]
Chris
 And so I don't wanna deal with that, and so I'm gonna pretend or I'm gonna try to force it.

[00:20:29:01 - 00:20:39:12]
Chris
 And then there's also times where we feel guilty or ashamed that I'm not, I should be, I should have peace. And instead of, we spend so much time trying to

[00:20:40:22 - 00:20:54:16]
Chris
 be what we think we ought to be and we should be that we fail to just deal with what we actually are and to wrestle with that.

[00:20:56:07 - 00:21:03:15]
Chris
 Because we know that we should be, I should be anxiety free, worry free, right?

[00:21:05:09 - 00:21:17:03]
Chris
 And yet, none of us are that way. It's amazing, Paul wasn't, he even talks about, in a place like I have, he literally uses the word, I have the anxiety of all the churches, like all these churches and he's,

[00:21:19:09 - 00:21:25:17]
Chris
 that gives me comfort sometimes because there's quite a few days where I have anxiety about our church and these things that are going on.

[00:21:27:10 - 00:21:38:09]
Chris
 And so we, but he says I do, I have it. It's not like I'm denying that. And that actually, I actually think that that can be really helpful if we were like, okay, this is,

[00:21:39:12 - 00:21:48:15]
Chris
 this is where I'm at and this is part of my humanness is that I'm going to, I'm gonna have worry and anxiety.

[00:21:50:09 - 00:22:00:16]
Brenton
 So I guess, playing off that, anxiety is a big part of this. What are some practical steps you would suggest to someone that's dealing with anxiety?

[00:22:00:16 - 00:22:02:05]
Chris
 Sure, I mean,

[00:22:03:11 - 00:22:25:23]
Chris
 and there are different levels and degrees of anxiety and there are the mild cases that almost everybody experiences and then there's actually some very serious psychological struggles that people have and a lot in between for sure.

[00:22:27:03 - 00:22:52:03]
Chris
 So I will just speak more to those who maybe speak low level, low grade or just more in the middle somewhere. And I think there's a whole host of things but the one that I pointed to and I will always point to is the deeper that were rooted in the gospel. And I read the passage from Colossians 2 is like,

[00:22:53:08 - 00:22:55:11]
Chris
 as you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord,

[00:22:56:16 - 00:24:26:15]
Chris
 so walk in him, being rooted and grounded in him, build up in the faith, established in the faith. And so I know like, okay, yeah, well, but this is where it's at is the more that we are rooted in the gospel and what Christ has done for us and we understand that and work that into our heart and into our lives and that is our center and we can go back to the more trust that we will have and the less the anxiety will actually get to us and negatively impact us and we'll know where to run and what to do, where to go when those anxious waves hit us. I would say other things that we can do is to do some serious spirit guided introspection on why am I, like, what am I anxious about? Why am I anxious? What is going on there? And I think we need other people in our lives and this is an easier said than done at times, but other people who can help me to stay rooted in Christ and who can talk me through what I find myself in this place and who can help to, you know, a lot of, we're secure and stable in Christ, but we need people to help us, to help be our security and our stability and appoint us to him.

[00:24:28:13 - 00:24:33:23]
Chris
 You know, if I would go a little bit further, I think we also have to look at,

[00:24:35:07 - 00:24:45:19]
Chris
 especially today, and this is, you know, this is unquestionable in my opinion, is that our technology is making us more anxious.

[00:24:47:00 - 00:24:47:17]
Chris
 It just is.

[00:24:49:01 - 00:25:04:13]
Chris
 The phone, like, the phones, the social media, they directly contribute to increased anxiety and the evidence is abundant that that is the case. And so, you know,

[00:25:05:13 - 00:25:27:22]
Chris
 I don't want to say nobody must have this conversation, but like, we want easy answers instead of, no, you need to quit sending someone a show on your phone or you need it on social media or like scrolling on different sites where you're gonna buy stuff, like in all of those kinds of things. So there's offense and there's defense and I just kind of provided both of those there.

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Brenton
 Yeah, good.

[00:25:30:04 - 00:25:34:03]
Brenton
 Okay, getting into the last section here, you framed mission as a gift,

[00:25:35:19 - 00:25:40:12]
Brenton
 which, you know, isn't how most people likely think about it.

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Brenton
 Why do you think we tend to experience mission more as like pressure and guilt if we don't do it rather than a gift?

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Chris
 Well, one reason, and I think I've been guilty of this, is we've heard a lot of messages

[00:25:55:11 - 00:25:57:19]
Chris
 where it's just my more your, you know,

[00:26:00:08 - 00:26:15:05]
Chris
 Jesus commanded you to go, you know, and it's just been in this, which is true. And, but it's been more presented in terms of like, people are gonna die and go to hell if you don't go on mission and like, like it's all like,

[00:26:16:13 - 00:26:37:20]
Chris
 it's just in those things, oh, I better, you know, because I don't want people to die and go to hell or I don't want Jesus to punish me or something like that. And in less in terms of like, this is, what a privilege and an opportunity that God has given us. This is like, I mean, it really is crazy. Like he,

[00:26:39:12 - 00:26:58:04]
Chris
 that second Corinthians five passage where he says like, God is reconciling the world to himself through Christ. And this is a message of reconciliation. And he says, and we are his ambassadors. God making his appeal through us. Why would he do it? Why would he do it through us?

[00:26:59:21 - 00:27:36:23]
Chris
 And yet he does. That's what he chooses to do. And for my humans for that, it doesn't make sense. Like God, just do it yourself. And that's not Holy Spirit, you know, like we'll get in the way. And God says, that's not the way that I'm, I've chosen to do things. And, you know, we can think, hey, illustration will help. If you're a Hawkeye fan, imagine Kirk Farance saying like, hey, I want you, like next year we're going for the, we're going for all like the big 10 championship. And that's our mission next year. And we want you to be, like, we want you to, we want you to be a part of it. We're gonna give you a really significant role here

[00:27:38:09 - 00:27:47:16]
Chris
 with the team and you get to travel with us. You get to be in on the sidelines and it's gonna be really important for you to have this role. Most of us would,

[00:27:48:16 - 00:28:13:06]
Chris
 you know, who are Hawkeye football fans. I know you're ISA kit, so cyclones, you just put your team in there. Most of us will be like, man, wow. They're asking me to do that. I get to do that. Like, I don't have any qualifications for that, but hey, yes, I'm me up. I mean, like, it would be, and it's such a privilege. And like, this is so much greater than that.

[00:28:14:18 - 00:28:16:15]
Chris
 And to,

[00:28:17:15 - 00:28:34:08]
Chris
 if you want to look at it, that's what God is accomplishing you to. But you look at it from this standpoint, it's like, I get to be a means that God uses to see people's sins forgiven so that their eternity, like, their eternity has changed.

[00:28:35:12 - 00:29:15:14]
Chris
 I mean, like, how awesome is that? And I just have to tell everybody who will listen is like, there's no better experience in life than to see God use you to be the means, a means that he uses to change people. Like, there's just nothing better. And it's a tragedy, in my opinion, that there's a lot of Christians who've never actually had that experience because they've never seen it as, yes, they're calling, but also as like this opportunity.

[00:29:16:23 - 00:29:17:05]
Brenton
 Okay.

[00:29:18:09 - 00:29:35:17]
Brenton
 You also clarified that like, we don't forgive sins, right? So you talked about verse 23 and how we, as Protestants at least don't interpret it that way, but we, what we do is proclaim forgiveness through Christ.

[00:29:37:02 - 00:29:52:14]
Brenton
 How would you describe our responsibility in evangelism? Like, if it's not forgiveness of sins and it's not spiritually raising people from the dead like we saw in Ezekiel, like, what is our objective?

[00:29:55:10 - 00:30:11:21]
Chris
 So, yeah, there's a couple of different ways to answer this and both of them are correct. In the broadest stroke, our responsibility is to get the, get the word out, spread the seed, so to speak,

[00:30:12:22 - 00:30:23:01]
Chris
 the parable, the sower, you know, like let's get the gospel message out. Okay, so there's that. But then there's passages where Jesus says, "Hey, you're the salt of the earth.

[00:30:24:11 - 00:30:41:15]
Chris
 You're the light of the world." And so those have to do as well with the way that we live. Salt's a preservative. So that means like, how are we working to see our culture preserved? So it's not falling apart like, and then the light,

[00:30:42:19 - 00:30:47:05]
Chris
 we're living in such a way that our lives become attractive.

[00:30:49:04 - 00:30:54:03]
Chris
 And Paul also talks about in 2 Corinthians about we are the aroma of Christ.

[00:30:55:15 - 00:31:06:13]
Chris
 So someday I'm gonna preach a message, how do you smell? Okay, so but he literally uses words. So we're the aroma of Christ, but he goes on and he says, from some death to death and some life to life.

[00:31:07:17 - 00:31:29:23]
Chris
 And so that, he's talking about spreading the gospel, but there's also this like just, you know, he says aroma. And so like, are people like sensing something here? Is the gospel becoming attractive to us? If we wanted to go even further, we could talk about how do we create

[00:31:31:06 - 00:31:33:10]
Chris
 plausibility structures for people?

[00:31:34:17 - 00:31:57:14]
Chris
 And what that means is like, how do we help them to consider the gospel in a way that makes sense to them? Okay, so and what I mean by like, we gotta look at our culture where we're at today. And so there's American culture, there's a Midwestern culture, there's a Southeast Iowa, West Central Illinois culture. Now this is Syria, I'm dead serious, like, and I,

[00:31:59:07 - 00:32:11:19]
Chris
 and this is, you know, like not everybody's in a place to think about this, okay, and to get there. But it is important, like, especially for us as pastors and leaders to think about like

[00:32:13:01 - 00:32:17:15]
Chris
 the people that we are specifically called to hear and to reach, what,

[00:32:19:00 - 00:32:38:23]
Chris
 how do we need to talk to them? What objections do they have to the gospel? And they're not gonna be the same as they are in like New York City or Los Angeles, or even in the South, like it's just, we got different. So how do we speak to people in such a way that

[00:32:40:21 - 00:32:50:03]
Chris
 we're gonna do everything we can to help them to understand the gospel is what does the work through the spirit, through the word, but there are things that we can do

[00:32:51:19 - 00:32:56:14]
Chris
 and the way we can speak and relate to people that can help.

[00:32:56:14 - 00:32:59:12]
Brenton
 Yeah, man. Okay, that's good.

[00:33:00:23 - 00:33:14:19]
Brenton
 You also said every Christian is a sent one and you said that it's without exception, all of us. What are some of the, you know, most common ways people tend to opt out of that calling?

[00:33:16:13 - 00:33:19:17]
Chris
 Well, this is, you know, pastors,

[00:33:22:05 - 00:33:30:15]
Chris
 you know, church leaders. This is for missionary, like they, missionary sent one, these are mentioned, these are people who go cross cultural, like,

[00:33:32:11 - 00:33:44:21]
Chris
 and so there's that, there's the opt out, I just, like I'm not gifted, like they do the Moses thing, I'm not, I'm slow speech, I can't do this.

[00:33:46:13 - 00:33:47:18]
Chris
 I don't have the knowledge.

[00:33:49:16 - 00:33:51:18]
Chris
 And then there's just quite honestly, and I,

[00:33:53:00 - 00:34:03:03]
Chris
 this is just rather blunt, just people are like, they don't even consider it, like I'm just not doing that, or they, I'm an introvert.

[00:34:04:18 - 00:34:19:22]
Chris
 Like, just, you see all of these in scripture. Sure. It was so amazing about, and people don't realize this about, but if you, a lot about Paul, like, it's really clear that Paul wasn't a very good speaker.

[00:34:19:22 - 00:34:21:01]
Brenton
 Yeah, he's pretty clear about that.

[00:34:21:01 - 00:34:45:01]
Chris
 Like, just kind of gets missed though, like he wasn't, he apparently just was not, he was rather hard to listen to. Now there's the story of where he was speaking and the guy fell asleep and died, and he had to resurrect him, raised him, he was raised for the dead. Like, and he wasn't apparently much to look at, like his appearance was off putting.

[00:34:47:08 - 00:35:02:23]
Chris
 He didn't let any of that, and he also, you know, he was a, he persecuted the church. Like, this guy had everything going against him, and yeah, he's like, okay, this is what God called me to do, and I'll just do it, and yeah, so.

[00:35:04:12 - 00:35:04:17]
Brenton
 Okay,

[00:35:05:21 - 00:35:13:12]
Brenton
 I guess we'll end with something practical. How would you encourage someone to take the first step in this, this week?

[00:35:15:16 - 00:35:37:06]
Chris
 I think the best first step is, for all of us just to be open and be willing to be sensitive to the spirit it's leading about and the people that we are around, like to open our eyes to be able to see the people that are in front of us,

[00:35:39:10 - 00:35:47:14]
Chris
 whether it's the waitress or waiter that's serving us, or the customer, somebody in Walmart,

[00:35:50:03 - 00:36:14:07]
Chris
 somebody at the gym, you know, like, I'm not saying that necessarily, or we're just approaching strangers randomly or anything, but you're gonna interact with people, and are there ways, you know, is the spirit gonna open up an opportunity there? And just, yeah, I think it's, are we willing to, and are we actually willing to, looking to?

[00:36:16:07 - 00:36:17:16]
Chris
 And I think that's a great place to start.

[00:36:19:06 - 00:36:28:12]
Brenton
 Okay, good. All right, well, thanks again for your work here. And we're getting toward the end of John, right?

[00:36:28:12 - 00:36:45:00]
Chris
 One more message in chapter 20, we're gonna take a break for a month, because we're gonna do another all-in series that I'm really, really coming forward to, probably more than any of the ones we've done so far. And then we'll wrap up when we get to June,

[00:36:46:13 - 00:36:51:09]
Chris
 the end of May and then June, we'll wrap up John here. So it's almost there.

[00:36:51:09 - 00:36:58:17]
Brenton
 All right, sounds good. Well, thanks again. If you have any questions, ask at furtherpodcast.com. We'll talk to you next week.

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