All right, so we've been studying not just what communion is, but how to hold communion, the experience of communion. And we've been studying also not just what faith is, but how to live by faith. and not simply how to be saved by faith, but also how to make use of Christ by faith for life. That's a better way to express it. It would help if you could recite the verses that we've been using in terms of understanding faith. What's a verse that we've been using with regard to knowledge or faith as knowledge? We said faith is three parts of it. Faith as knowledge, faith as assent, and faith as trust or in trust. Faith is knowledge. Which one is that? Romans 10, 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. The Bible gives us the only Christ whom we may know. You cannot know God, you cannot know Christ apart from the scriptures. And there is a minimal that has to be understood about who God is, about who we are in light of who God is, a minimal that we must understand about our fallen nature, and a minimal that we must understand about Christ and faith in Christ. I'm a minimalist when it comes to salvation. The Bible just doesn't tell what needs to be known in order to be saved. The degree of knowledge. I'm a maximalist when it comes to sanctification or life with God. I used to be the other way around, and I front-loaded how much was required in order to be saved, and I believe that's a mistake. Something, you know, the spirit, what the spirit of God will use to save a person, it varies. That's another thing I had to learn too. I was trying to require the same amount of knowledge, the same understanding of salvation of everyone regardless. And I think probably Sinclair Ferguson convinced me it's not true. But it is necessary in order to grow in the Christian life to have as much knowledge of God, much knowledge of ourselves, as much knowledge of Christ as we possibly can. And not just the amount of knowledge, but the kind of knowledge, an experiential knowledge, okay? So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I'm a minimalist when it comes to salvation, maximalist when it comes to discipleship. I want to know as much as I possibly can. I want you to know as much as you possibly can in order to learn to live upon Christ and to teach another person the same thing. All right, faith is knowledge. Faith is a sin. What's the verse that we've been using in terms of OK. He who believe he he who comes to my God must believe that he exists. God is. And that he's a rewarder of those who seek him diligently. It didn't say what the reward is, but it says he's reward. It doesn't say exactly yet what. Uhm? what saving faith consists in, but I must assent to facts. I must give assent to the fact that if I come to God, he will reward me for seeking him. It doesn't tell how I do that. It doesn't tell the operations of the Holy Spirit in that. It doesn't say that. It just tells you the facts, the minimal facts. If you assent to the facts, to be true, God will reward. Simple statement. And then we have described faith as entrusting ourselves to Christ. And what's the verse that we used on that? First, or Second Timothy 112, the last part of Second Timothy 112. I know in whom, so not what. It's not now, we're beyond facts, okay? That's important. I know in whom, it's not just the facts about him. I know in whom I have believed and I'm persuaded. So now we also get the idea that there's some persuasion of who God is and what God will do. if we come to him, some inner persuasion. It didn't say inner persuasion, but that's what it is. And we can know from other passages in the Bible that there's some amount of an understanding we need to have about how God reconciles the soul to him and how he reconciles himself to a soul. So I need to understand justification, right? I need to understand that God will justify. Christ satisfied all God's just demands. I may not understand that fully, but I must understand that I stopped trying to justify myself because Christ satisfied all God's just demands. Dan and I had a conversation earlier before Sunday school, and he said something very similar. For a long time he laid beneath the law, long beneath the law lay, struggled, struggled to obey, and I lived the same way. I couldn't do enough to satisfy, I never had peace with God, I never had rest, because I was depending upon my best efforts, my good works, not Christ. I was banking upon myself really. I knew a little about Christ. But I was under the bondage of the legal demands of the law because I didn't realize that Christ had fulfilled them. All for me. And I also also wondered. For a long time, does God love me? I'm not sure he loves me today. I didn't do enough, you see. I did the, I did the, what's the daisy thing? It's not the daisy, is it? What is it? Yeah. Is it the daisy flower? What is it? He luffed me, he luffed me not. He picked the petals of the daisy off. He let in one, you know, the one you stuck with in the end. That's the truth of it. It shows the uncertainty. There's a degree of certainty in knowing in whom you have believed. I know in whom I believe I'm persuaded. There's an inner persuasion. The spirit of God is the one who gives that inner persuasion of who Christ is and what he's done for your soul. And then the last of it says. That he is able to keep what I've entrusted to him until that day, there's a. There's a deposit. And God holds the deposit. The deposit is Christ. The money is Christ. We imagine that we've deposited money in the bank as a result of our faith. That's not true. The deposit is Christ himself. And God holds Christ as our deposit for us. And he keeps our soul because he keeps us in Christ. Now, we've also gone to the scriptures and formulated two questions to use on a daily basis to know upon whom we're living. We we went to John 6, 36, 57. Mm hmm. As the living Father sent me, I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. We don't live because of our faith. Our faith is instrumental. What does faith do in this passage? It feeds upon Christ for the life of the soul. There's no life in the soul on a daily basis unless I'm feeding upon Christ. The same thing, the reason he uses such God condescends to use language that we can understand. Everybody understands food because everybody eats about three, four, five times a day, right? And everybody understands banking to some extent. Understand if you ain't got no money in the bank, you can't buy no food, right? So whose capital am I living upon? And this one, Whose merits am I living upon? Whose capital am I living upon? And this question that we asked, we formatted with this one is, what am I feeding upon for life? What am I feeding upon for life? And you're gonna feed on something. Everybody feeds on something. And the most difficult thing to see is that we're feeding upon ourselves. or feeding upon what we can see instead of feeding upon Christ. There's a blindness, there's a built-in blindness when we're feeding upon ourself that shields us to the certainty that we're feeding upon Christ. We may think we're feeding upon Christ, but the consequences, the rotten fruits of it are obvious that everybody, maybe, except us. It ought not to be so, We ought to have some inclination that we've put ourselves in the place of Christ, and we're feeding upon ourselves instead of Christ. It ought not to be so, but there's a blindness in that. You see, we go back to Calvin's statement. By nature, we're blind and drunk with self-love. We can't even see it because we use a standard measure of our own making. What's the standard of our making? Huh? Ourselves. And as long as we live with that standard, to the degree that we live the standard of our own making, to that same measure, we will live upon ourselves and we'll be blind to it. That's what he goes through, the problem of our blindness and our drunkenness with self-love, pride, vanity, fictitious righteousness, self-righteousness, fictitious righteousness, false righteousness, and then the idolatry of self. And he winds up in the last statement in that section and says that the idolatry of self is so secretly hidden from us without the right use of the moral law It will destroy us, and we never feel the fatal stab. We'll be dead before we realize what killed us. The poison of the idolatrous self, the poison of our own self-righteousness, the poison of our own living upon ourselves. It has a blinding effect to it. And the more we live upon Christ, by virtue of the right use of His law, have a high view of the law of God, a right use of the law of God. I detest myself as my own standard or standard for anybody else. And often condemnation comes because we're using the wrong standard of measure, and often we give condemnation of other people because we're still using ourselves as a standard of measure, not Christ. So what am I feeding upon for life? The other question that we form in is what am I banking upon? What capital am I living upon? Or whose merits or goodness am I living upon to keep up a communion of love with God and others? If I'm in communion with God, the returns that I'll make will be that I'll spread that communion to everyone else. I won't withhold. Grace is not conditional, you see. You can't say, well, I'll tell you what, Drew, you and I are going to agree to live by grace, but we're going to tell everybody else that they're not living by grace, right? And then Drew and I won't be living by grace, will we? Because we've now determined the conditions of what grace is. Grace is, by nature, unconditional. You don't make agreements with one another of how you're going to live, the grace you're going to give one another, or the grace you're going to withhold from somebody else. That's not the way grace works. Grace does not operate like that. Grace is not exclusive to me and you. If I have grace, I'm going to want everybody to have grace. I'm going to give everybody the same grace. I'm going to love everybody unconditionally. And that's just a very difficult thing to overcome. I think we'll struggle with that till the day we die. It's not that we, it's not that it's impossible for us to see We can see it if we use the right standard of measure. It means we take ourselves out of the picture. We stop living upon ourselves. We stop measuring everybody by ourselves. We stop elevating ourselves above everybody else. Do you know, that's why I say to you quite often, I could care less if you exalt me as a pastor. I could care less if you submit to me as a pastor. But what I care most about is that we submit to King Jesus together according to our various rules. And you see, that's a happy thing for us men to use one another's gifts and offices if we're submitting to Christ as our King together. Now, she's to make conditions about who can be a part of this little kingdom of mine, right? I'm gonna make sure that drew never is a part of this kingdom because he doesn't or I've already already switched. I won't do that I'm gonna make sure that that Gary never is a part of the kingdom that that that drew and are a part of and Automatically I've held I withheld grace from Gary haven't I but but I'm so blind I'm imagining that I'm experiencing grace with drew and But both of us agree that we'll never allow Gary into our kingdom. You see, it doesn't work like that. It's not the nature of grace to operate like that, that we relate to each other on the basis of conditions. As long as you keep up these conditions, we'll be part of this kingdom. But Gary, we know Gary, he could never keep up these conditions, so we'll not even allow him entry into our kingdom. It's more vague than that. It's not that you're consciously making that decision. It's more subtle. Yeah. We don't even realize we're doing it. Is that helpful to everybody? I want us to understand how diminished a view we really, an experience we have of free grace or free love of God. When we want to keep it to ourselves, you know, we'll share it with somebody because this person we deem worthy of it. That's automatically, that's not grace. They're easier to get along with if they're like me. So now the condition is that they like me, that they approve of me, right? But together now we'll disapprove of him. I think part of what you're saying is, part of the struggle is that we are ignorant of what God's writing. So if we would grasp that, you know, we would everyone equally take our place at the foot of the cross, you know. The level ground at the foot of the cross. Everybody would be happy to stand on level ground at the foot of the cross. Same ground. We're all unmerited. We all have demerits. So I know At times, I've heard people, and maybe even expressed it in a similar way myself, where Paul describes himself as the chief of sinners. Some people will say, I'm the chief of sinners, but then the way they treat other people, it doesn't really show that they believe that. That's not the biggest indication for me. It's how I relate to my closest relationships. All right, so now, to make use of these two questions, what we want to do is also learn some expressions, minimal expressions we can, of the love of God, the treasury of grace in Christ, and the comforts of the Holy Spirit. And then what we'll be able to do as a result, if we apply these questions to each of the loves in God, we'll be able to see, am I living upon my love or the love of God? What fruits is it bearing? What fruits should it bear? What fruits am I bearing? So now I can say, oh, I'm not living I'm not feeding upon Christ, or I'm not banking upon the merits of Christ's righteousness. Does that make sense to you? So how about the love of God? We've seen it defined in church history in three parts, benevolence, beneficence, and complacency or rest. How about a verse four, the benevolence of God? Benevolence is, let's define it again. So God's goodwill or desire to do good to other people. God is not, you would say, God is not envious like we are. He has a desire for everyone's good. Or he has a desire, an equal desire for his people's good. There's no one whom he counts as a favorite. I don't even think that the three descriptions in the book of Daniel, where God describes Daniel as highly favored in heaven, means that it's on the basis of his merits, you see. Daniel is so learned to live by the Spirit upon the merits of Christ. God highly favors and uses him to build his kingdom. I believe that's what it means. He's not highly favored because of his own merits. He's highly favored because he's learned to use the merits of Christ. See, also twice the expression that he's the man in whom the spirit of the holy God dwells. That's pretty significant. Similarly, twat, you know, we describe people in the Bible who don't undergo major falls. Daniel's one of them. Paul is, I'd put Paul in that list. His struggle with the thorn in the flesh, whatever that is. I believe he's tired of serving people. I think that's his thorn. He is that whole list of the deprivations that he's undergone happily for the sake of other people he's struggling with. Because they won't make any good use of it. The people that he's served in Corinthians especially. Especially in Corinthians who spoke against him constantly. Corinthians spoke against him constantly, regarded him as being a false apostle. People in church do that kind of thing, you know? Wow. I could do that thing, you know? He's just tired. He's tired, I believe. He's the thorn in the flesh he's given so that he wouldn't exalt himself. And so now he exalts cry. He's tempted to exalt himself. Because of the the great revelations that he's been given. He's tempted for who knows how long. Maybe less than a day, because he does say I die daily. Right. First Corinthians 15, 31, I die daily. Would that apply to the passage in Second Corinthians? Probably. So less than a day's time, he's thinking about giving up, serving other people for God's benefit, right? He corrects. He prays, he has to pray three times. Why can't he just pray once? If his prayers are being effectual, his faith is being effectual, if his faith is banking upon Christ like it was in 2 Timothy 1.12, why isn't it working now? Why isn't the instrument of work now? You see what I'm saying? So I'm just saying, even Daniel doesn't undergo a major fall. Paul doesn't undergo a major fall because he's learned a little upon Christ. So has Daniel. Same thing is true of Joseph. The king of the world, Pharaoh, the Pharaoh of Egypt, the king of the world at the time, regards Daniel as a man in whom God lives. He renames him that. He gives him two Egyptian names. One means God speaks, the other means God lives. Pretty significant that a man would rename you, give you a name after his own Egyptian language and rename you according to the way you live. Interesting, isn't it? God speaks, God lives, because I've seen God living and speaking in you. Isn't that what he's saying? And there's another, one of the Egyptian servants who says something very similar toward the end of the book, I can't remember what chapters it's in, but he recognizes the spirit the Spirit's work in Joseph. And then Joseph said, you know, nobody needs fear. His brothers need not fear. I won't put myself in the place of God. Right? Isn't that what he says? His brothers are scared to death. They're going to get even. He's going to get even. He's going to reveal it because that's the way they live. That's the way they've always lived. I'm going to get even. I'm getting my pound of flesh. And they're fearful that Joseph will treat them the way they would treat him were they in his place. That's the way they saw their daddy living. Their daddy, Jacob, says the exact same thing Joseph does, but then he gives in to deceit, immorality, Not a very good daddy at all. And Genesis gets angry, he's bought off for a night, and then he also has some more relations with the servant girls, all at the request of his two wives. Really, are you obligated to that? Tell me, is Jacob obligated? As long as he lives and puts himself in the place of God, yes, he is obligated. Is Joseph obligated to do evil to his brothers? You meant it for evil. God meant it for good, he says. Wow. Oh, my goodness. All these horrible providences in my life, what you were at the bottom of, God has used for good. Who's who's Joseph banking upon? Who's he feeding upon for life? Not himself. It'd be a difficult place to be in Joseph's place, wouldn't it? Could have been the next king of the world, too. I mean, besides. Besides, Pharaoh, he was the next man, right? but a difficult place. He could have had anything he wanted. Same thing with Moses. Moses, in Hebrews 11, 24 to 27, says a very similar thing. Moses gave up the passing pleasures of sin. He could have had all he wanted, all that would make a human being's heart sing, all the wine, women, and song a man could desire. Everything everything you want he could have had and he gave that him up. What do you know what the next phrase says for the surpassing value of the sufferings of Christ? All that that means. Moses put a greater value even before Christ ever. Was born. Put a greater value on Christ and his sufferings than he did on all of his pleasures. to see who's he living upon? What's he feeding his soul upon? What is Moses banking on? Not the treasures of Egypt. And he could have had them. All right. So what we need to do What we need to learn to do now, if I'm feeding upon Christ, what returns will I make on the love of God's benevolence? If I'm feeding upon myself, what returns will I make? Now we need to get some concrete thought about how we would live on a daily basis were either of these things true, and then begin to sort our lives out using this. If I'm feeding upon not my envy, withholding good from someone else, wouldn't that be some indication I'm living by merits if I'm envious or withholding good or withholding a desire to do good from anyone? Do you see how it works? So a rotten return that I would make in feeding upon myself is I'd be envious. I might even be malicious. I might be hateful or spiteful. I don't have to be all of them at once. And if I'm feeding upon myself, I also will be, to some extent, blind to it. I'll have a poor imagination, a wrong imagination, a sinful imagination about where I actually am. If I'm feeding upon Christ, what returns will I make on God's benevolence? Come on, before we leave here. We'll start here when we come back next week. What would the two look like? Can you sort it out? That's what I'm asking. You have to learn to sort it out for yourself. You ask me particulars about what it looks like to live by faith, here's particulars. Okay. Okay. So, so one part of that, if I'm feeding upon Christ, I'll disadvantage myself for another person's good. I think that probably how it would have more to do with the love of benevolent, beneficence than benevolence. Cause now, now I'm enacting, I'm acting upon it, right? Or actually deny myself for the sake of another's good, especially the church. Right? So, so here I'm more concerned about desires. I'm more on the desire level. Here, I'm on the level of activity. Right? Well, I think both, you could work all of this out in terms of providence, because providence generally, God is using hard providence to either correct some sin or unbelief in our lives, or mold and shape us to be more useful. That's generally the use of providence in our lives, and that would be true of all, any of these. shaping providences, sanctifying providences. That would be true of any of these. So would I pray for good for another person or not pray for? If I'm feeding upon Christ, would I pray for another person's good? Would I look for opportunities to do good? Here we're at the planning stage. Or would I plan, next time I'm with this person, I'm going to let them know how little I care for them. See it? See the difference? We're at the planning stage here. And that will shape desires and prayers, wishes, interests. on both sides. Here, if I'm living upon the love of God's benevolence, I'll look for every opportunity to do good I possibly can because God has done good to me in every possible way he can. I'll be convinced of it, you see. That's right. That's it. Or setting them straight if I'm that kind of personality or just avoiding them if I'm that kind of personality. So that's another thing. If I'm living upon myself, I'll rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse over and over again. I'll also try to broaden the base that I have in support of believing poorly about another person. Right? I need support. I need to garner support among other people to hold, to carry an offense against someone else and withhold good. You always have to do that. To justify doing poorly to another person, you always have to have support. You're gonna get support from somebody. Very few people are so rotten that they can live without Talking against another person to gain support and viewing that person poorly or doing poorly to them. We generally need the support of other people. There are some people who are so horribly turned in upon themselves, they don't need nobody else. That's a very impoverished place to be. There was one thing that you just said that I wanted to expand on. It was right over here. We just said this. The last thing that was said before I come in. We were talking about that. So maybe what I was going to ask is, what is the opposite of that? How would you correct that? Instead of rehearsing and nursing the offense, carrying an offense, making it worse, you know? I weigh that against my offenses. Yeah. Will anybody, could anybody ever sit against me the way I sit against them? Really, that's going back lines relating on the basis. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The same bondage that I was in. Right. And I want to be instrumental in freeing them. I mean, we're ultimately free, but when we're out of communion and we're allowing ourselves to sit in that bondage again, and then coming out of it, it's like, you start recognizing more and more, they're sitting in a bondage, and I want them to be free as well. Because sometimes, when I get a perspective adjustment, they're not in the wrong, in my own heart. A, if we're brokenhearted about our own sin personally, I think we will arrive at that place and also be able to help another in that same place, right? Well, I've told you this before, Ethan was one of the, he was just a stubborn little fellow. And he was so until mid-high school, late high school years. And he knew what buttons to push to get what, you know, to rile a person up. And he pushed my buttons quite often, and I didn't respond well to start with. He pushed Bethany's buttons. She didn't respond well either. And then I recognized, along about a similar time that I learned to live upon Christ, I recognized that I was actually being provoked by Ethan and sinning against him. And so I began to see that for myself, be brokenhearted over it, and then ask Ethan questions. Instead of accusing him or condemning him, for the contribution that he made, I would say, Ethan, I sense something's not right between us. What have I done to cause the breach? And so that began to be useful in helping him just to even think about the contribution he had made or the contribution that I had made. And sometimes he would say what contribution I had made and because I was broken hearted over my sin, broken hearted over my provocation, I was able to, we were able to restore, enter into a relationship of restoring. Or he would share his own difficulties and there was forgiveness and restoration either way. But it was because the recognition of my own, the place that I was, that was useful as an instrument in unlocking him and helping him to get outside himself. It helped me because I would see these interactions and at that time I struggled with why wouldn't you correct him or help him in that way, but you were gracious. learning to live a more gracious life. See, it's the same thing we started out with. I'll be gracious with Paul, and I'll be gracious with Nathan, and I'll be gracious with Benjamin, and I'll be gracious with Bethany, but Nathan, he's just a little too squirrely to be that gracious with, you know, a little too obstinate, a little too stubborn. And I want to be useful. Yeah, I want to be useful as a servant of righteousness, not the end of righteousness. I think that was part of our conversation earlier too. Instead of being the end of righteousness, now I'm happy for Christ to be the end and fulfillment of all righteousness. It's not me that's going to be fulfillment of all righteousness, it's Christ. Living upon Christ, I'm happy for Him to be that for all people, not just myself. All right, we'll come back here next time.