Episode 8 - No Fear of Punishment

Tim 00:00:23 All right, guys, so usually when we get together, I try to give us a topic to talk about. I ask the questions and help lead things. I'm gonna try something different tonight. I, I didn't actually bring anything with me, but we've been talking, having a lot of discussions on the side anyway, and I was wondering if there was anything on your heart you wanted to bring up tonight that we could talk through. This is a discussion among friends about the one true gospel. We don't always have to have a direct path to start things off, right? Mark 00:00:50 Correct. And you know what, throughout the week, what, I think we've probably alluded to it, but the three of us throughout the week are constantly, constantly texting each other and just talking about things that come up that we hear other pastors say. Could be a good thing they said could be a bad thing they said, but we're just constantly discussing because we all have a hunger and a passion for God to reveal to us everything that's involved in the gospel. Tim 00:01:20 Just to give an example of that, I've had to learn how to use the do not disturb function on my phone so I can stop it from buzzing after 11:00 PM because these two guys can go on for a long time and I need sleep. Ajai 00:01:34 <laugh> Yeah. Mark 00:01:36 Last night I had to yell. I had to yell “uncle” though, <laugh> until Ajai that, Oh, sorry man, I gotta go to bed. I’m really tired. Tim 00:01:45 I was just gonna say, so what's, what's on our hearts and minds this week? Ajai 00:01:49 Yeah. So one of the things, you know, that I've been thinking about is, 1 John 4:18, “There's no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love, we love because He first loved us”. So, I think here the point is right, you know, there is no fear in love and it's very interesting it says, right, you know, one who has been perfected in love in the sense, right, you know, one who has known the perfect love of God, right, and that will drive away fear. So, it's kind of interesting, right, you know, we know God, you know, we know God allows us, but when we approach God, you know, there is some fear still lurking in our hearts. We, we almost think like, you know, if if I go to God freely right, or He is going to put some burden on me, or He's going to punish me, He is going to say something to me that I don't like, right, He's going to send me out to some ministry. So, I feel like, you know, some of us, and most of the Christians, right, we don't have this, you know, not having fear at all. But you know, the more we see God's love, the Bible assures us, you know, the perfect love drives out fear. So, and also it doesn't qualify any fear here, right, so all kinds of fear, I think the first fear is like, you know, just fear of God himself. Oh my God, if I go to God, He will do something to me, it's like, you know, sometimes I remember sometimes my kids don't come to me because (they think) if I come to dad, you know, he is always telling me, you know, do this, do that, You know, don't do this, don't do this, or, you know, go do this work or be nice to your brother. So, I, I wonder, you know, sometimes we also have this kind of mindset towards God, and we still have some kind of lurking fear about God. So, I'm wondering, you know, what your thoughts are on that? Mark 00:03:52 You know, I love the angelic birth announcements to the shepherd in, in the fields when they said, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom His favor rests”. And when you think about that coming into understanding and knowing to your very core that the favor of God rests on you can give you peace in every area of your life, which is a lack of fear and would be a great definition for peace for me anyway. So, I, I just think there's a key to that, to understanding and the way my old pastor used to put it, it's as you're growing in grace coming to the realization and the confident expectation of God's good in your life, that God means only good for us, that our favor is already His favor's already on us. It's resting, it's not gonna leave because I, I fell to the sin, the flavor sin of the week, you know, whatever that might be. that, that favor is never gonna leave me because it's not by what I do, but what Jesus did for me because of His great love. And to me that's like the core of all peace and lack of fear is to realize God's good intentions and His promises. And there's another great scripture. I love that at the end of it, it says that even if we are faithless, He is faithful because He cannot disown Himself. It's like God's faithfulness is so much a part of His very essence of who He is, that to not be faithful to us would be like disowning Himself, which He's never gonna do. That's, that's even that gives my brain, <laugh>, makes my brain hurt to think about the fact that God is that faithful to us, even when we're faithless in the middle of our sin. [Yeah.] Ajai 00:05:58 Yeah. So that, means to me that, you know, God's faithfulness to us is not dependent on our faithfulness to Him. Tim 00:06:10 Well, there's the biblical 2 Timothy 1 where he says, “God hasn't given you a spirit of fear, but a power and of love and a sound mind”. I said at first half of it, God has not given us the spirit of fear. I interpret, this is my interpretation, now, I interpret that to mean that nothing God does should make us afraid. There's nothing that He will never do anything that will make us be afraid. Therefore, there, He's not gonna punish us, He's not gonna condemn us, He's not going to be unhappy with us, He's not gonna turn away from us that he can, He's not gonna do anything that makes us afraid. But he instead he gives us power, love, and a sound mind. Ajai 00:06:49 Yeah. Yeah. Mark 00:06:50 Which reminds me of, I think it's Jeremiah, where it says, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil to prosper you” and that was even before Jesus came, and it was His love and grace that brought Jesus to us in the first place. Ajai 00:07:08 You know, the other thing I noticed is in this verse, the words that we just talked about, it says, you know, “the perfect love of God”, you know, “casts out fear”. Isn't it so good? Right, you know, it's not, we don't have to worry about casting out fear, but His law cast out fear from us, so all we need to do is like, you know, understand and believe that God loves us and draw closer to Him. Don't run away from God, but the more you draw near to God, the more fear will be cast out from our hearts. It is so good here. Right? So, the perfect love of God cast out fear, but again, I think it is kind of, again, it directly relates to the gospel, right, you know, how do we know the perfect love of God? How are we convinced that, God loves us perfectly? So, we have to jump right to Romans chapter 5, where it says, you know, “God demonstrates His love in that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us.” So that is a key, we look to the cross again and the cross has, again, I think it is again, link linked to, you know, what we are talking about all along, right, you know, that we are not under the law, but under grace, you know, it is a cross of Jesus Christ. It's the death of Jesus Christ that actually removed us from under the law and put us under grace and it is a law that actually brings fear in our hearts. Right? You know, if there's a law between us and God, like in Mount Sinai, you know, when the law was given, even if you touch the mountain, right, even an animal that touches the mountain, it'll be burned. So that's because of the law between God and us. So now through the death of Lord Jesus, this Christ, right, you know, He removed the law between God and us. (The) law says, you know, do this, otherwise, if you do this, you'll be blessed. If you don't do this, I'm going to punish you again. Here also, we see that the fear involves punishment. You know, we have this deep down, we have fear that God will punish us and that fear is coming because of the law. So somewhere we are thinking, I'm supposed to do this and I'm not doing this, therefore God is going to punish me. But through the death of Lord Jesus Christ, right, the root of our fear, which is the law is removed, right, and the fear of punishment is removed. So it's kind of beautiful to see all of this is linked, like, God gave love doesn't, He gave His only begotten Son and who died on the cross. And that changes everything for us and for us all we need to do is believe in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mark 00:09:44 Just to clarify like I like to do from time to time, is the three of us, when we say law, we know exactly what we mean, but for some listeners that might not, law is not, we're not con, I mean, in the time of the Old Testament, in the old covenant law, Israel was under an exact law. (However) When we say law, we mean works, [Yep.] living by re regulations, do this, don't do that, perform, it's a performance system. You're trying to change your performance to get things from God, whether that's His love or His acceptance. It's that whole mentality and I'll call it more than a mentality, it's a system that just drops on, it's pretty much on the entire world when you think about it. [Yeah.] everybody's under a system other than those, and I think that's why it just rings so true when Jesus said, “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed”. When that system just gets torn back away from you, when the bars are broken open and it's no longer this system of trying to do better and not screw up and to do good things and enough good works, when that's gone, life becomes just freedom, it be it becomes joyful and like my old pastor used to say, a lot of Christians that are still trying to mix the law with the go gospel of Jesus Christ, they're not a happy bunch, they're, they're crabby. They seem like they might be constipated or something, you know? [Yeah.] And I used to joke about that, but he said, some of the crabbiest people I ever met were Christians [Yep.] because that's what, when you, when you're living with that guilt and shame and self-inflicted condemnation, life is not a lot of fun, you know? [Yep.] Ajai 00:11:35 Yeah. Mark 00:11:36 And as, as many times as I've heard p pa pastors and preachers say, you know, when you become a Christian, it's not gonna be easy. Well, I don't, I don't buy that and, and, and like my old friend used to say, you know, they'll say, nobody ever said that Christian life is gonna be easy and he'd say, [Yeah] nobody but Jesus who said, “Come to me for my yolk is easy and my burden is light”. [Yeah.] He said, it's gonna be easy. [Yeah.] It's good. Is it gonna be easy? Maybe not. You're still gonna have trials, but it's gonna be a lot easier [Yeah.] than if you're trying to do it on your own or trying to do it by religious, you know, works and doing things. So Tim 00:12:14 I'm gonna define something too, cuz you just said it. Trials, these are not God given trials. [Right.] There's a lot of, there's a lot of misa or mis information out there that God gives us trials. God does not give us trials. God is the giver of good and perfect gifts. A trial doesn't sound like either one of those things. Mark 00:12:35 That's a good point. Tim 00:12:36 You know, it does . So, but the, but the world is still the world you're going to because the system of the earth was broken when the Garden of Eden, you know, when God threw us out of the Garden of Eden, the world was broken. We have weather patterns, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, you, you know, all kinds of bad things and they're gonna do what they're gonna do, and they're gonna go where they're gonna go and if you're in their path, you're gonna have some problems. But those aren't God given problems. You know? I mean, when all the, when all those, televangelist ran down to New Orleans when it got hit with the big hurricane, what was it, Katie or something like that, then they're all going, this is God's judgment on the city, I, I was yelling at my tv, “Shut up! You're making the rest of us look bad”. Mark 00:13:21 Well, it's not the gospel that's false teaching, you know, and, and, and you're right though, and that that's been around forever because Jesus addressed it when he told people, you know, he was mentioning some calamities that happened to certain people, and he said, don't think that that happened to them because of sin cuz they were saying, you know, what caused that to happen? Was it their sin? Was it their parents' sin? They even went to the point of saying that if a parent's sin, God would punish their kids. They just had it all wrong and, you know, and, and scripture says that if God wants to teach us something, that's the reason He gave us his Holy Spirit to teach us all things, to remind us of the things that Jesus said. He doesn't have to gimme cancer to teach me something or cause me to get in a car crash to teach me something. He can teach me through his Spirit, through His word, through other Christians. There's a million, what, what father's gonna teach their kid by other than an evil father, right, but we know God's a good Father, so [Yeah.] Ajai 00:14:23 Yeah. That is so true, Mark and Tim. [Yeah.] So again, I think it goes back to fear, right, we talked about, perfect love casts of a fear, and he that fears is not made perfect in God's love. So, fearing that, you know, God is going to do something bad to us if we don't obey, you know, that again goes back to, you know, not understanding the perfect love of God again. These two things are coming again, right, you know, it all goes back to the law. The law is a system, like you said, a system of earning from God, system of performance so I have to do something before God can bless me, and I have to do something, or I have to not do all these bad things in order to escape God's punishment. So, their mindset about God always is, you know, God is there watching, you know, with the hawk’s eye. Mark 00:15:15 Right. Ajai 00:15:15 especially, you know, if we do wrong, He's going to punish us. Right? So that is a mindset we have, and we think, you know, God is punishing us with all these things that happen in our life. All the bad things. Mark 00:15:28 Yeah. I I was just gonna say the exact same thing. That that is a fruit of the, of that legalistic under the law thinking it causes us to fear, it causes us to be illogical and think anytime good something happens in our life, wow, God must love me I must be doing a good job and every time something bad happens in our lives, oh, I'm doing a bad job God's punishing me. But it's just not correct thinking. In fact, in 2 Corinthians 3 says that when you put yourself under the law, that it dulls your mind. You don't have a sharp mind. It's, it's, it's not thinking correctly. Because being under that condemnation and guilt and shame of the law, it's impossible to think clearly. You know, you're just [Yeah.] Worried about everything. [Yeah.] Fearing everything. Wondering if you did well enough that day for good things to happen. [Yeah.] Ajai 00:16:25 Yeah. Mark 00:16:26 It's that whole, the whole thing of karma, you know? Oh, karma. Karma. You know, someone does something you know, bad, and then well, something bad is gonna happen to them. Karma someone does something, you know, it's this. Karma is just another word for the law, really, when you think about it. Do something good. Karma's gonna bring you something good. Do something bad, karma's gonna, that's karma. You know, doesn't really mean anything though, really. Right? [Yeah, yeah.] Is that, is that from Hinduism? What's that from? Ajai 00:16:53 It's from Hinduism. That's their version of law. Right. They basically say, you know, if you, do something wrong, right? That is karma will come catch you, if not in this life, in the life to come. So they have to pay for what they did, no matter how many lives it takes. Tim 00:17:12 Do they get a chance to balance that out, you know, have coupons or something to get 'em out, get outta jail free? Or is that, you, no matter what you do, you gotta pay for it. I mean, I might have saved 10 kids, but I only murdered one people. Does that give me a break? [Yeah,] Ajai 00:17:28 <laugh>. Well, I don't know. I think they might have this thing about, you know, balancing, right? Good work verses bad works. But I think the general, theology, their theology is, you do something bad in this life, right, in your rebirth, you will be born as something, you have another rebirth where you have to kind of, make up and do something good in a rebirth. You know, until, until you eventually stop doing bad, you know, you continue in this rebirth cycle and eventually they say, I think you will become one with God. You know, some, some philosophy like that. I do not claim that I know everything. So it's probably good, you know, not to talk about things that I do not know. Mark 00:18:13 It seems to me that that system would be a little enabling, because you could be like, Eh, I'll do what I want. I'll pay for in the next life. I'll do some extra good stuff, You know? Ajai 00:18:24 Well, I guess if you are going to be born as man every time, I think that might be enabling, but, in their system, you could be born as a pig in the, in your next life, so <laugh>, so may not always be [Yeah] hopeful. Mark 00:18:42 And do you get, do you get born to a lesser form based upon how well you did in that life, like, if you were a human and you were really bad, does that mean that if you're reincarnated, you're gonna go to be a pig or a dog or a lizard? [Yes. Yes. Yes, it does.] So, you're working, you're trying to work your way up to a higher life form. Tim 00:19:03 Okay? So this is, this is a true conversation. We bunny trail just like everybody else. <laugh>, Mark 00:19:11 It's all the same thing, though. It's all law. Tim 00:19:13 We're not experts in it in these other religions. So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and drag us back onto the main trail. I think we were, we were talking about fear and law and our la our lack of fear. [Yeah.] Ajai 00:19:27 Yeah. You know, speaking of the law again, right? And right in the, and the fear it generates, Romans 8:15 says, you know, for after being born again, Paul says to the born again, believers “for you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship”. So again, the difference between law and grace is right, you know, under the law we relate to God as slaves, right, we have the spirit of slavery. You know, no man cannot have fear before his master if that man is a slave, right? You are always, under slavery there's no such thing as not having fear. You're always afraid of, your master because if you're a slave, basically, you don't have a will of your own the master owns your will, and you basically have to do whatever the master says. You know, that is a kind of slavery, that we were under the law. But under grace, you know, we have a spirit of sonship. You know, that's a totally different, a relationship with God. So that is a stark contrast between law and grace. Under the law, you relate to God as a slave, that's why you're always afraid of God. But under grace, you relate to God as a son Abba Father. Like, you know, when we relate to God as son, you know, sometimes, you know, we have this tendency to kind of relating at a, as a grown-up man to a father, that relationship is kind of still a little distant. But think of a three-year-old kid jumping into dad's lap, right, there's no fear, nothing, they just run to the Father because all because, you know, it is their dad. So that is the kind of relationship we have, like when we say Abba Father, right, you know, child, a small kid crying to the father. Mark 00:21:18 [Yeah.] And Abba, for those who don't know means daddy. And it was just striking me that in the time of the old Covenant, the Old Testament times, the Jewish nation was not allowed to even mention the name of God out loud Tim 00:21:35 Or write it Mark 00:21:36 Yeah. They actually shortened it to what they called the Tetragram, which was just the consonants of Yahweh. And I, I, I always wondered, like, if God didn't want you to speak his name, why would he have told you what it was in the first place? <laugh>, Why did he say to Moses, tell them Yawe sent you, which means the great I am, I am that I am. And then here comes Jesus, all of a sudden, in the midst of that religious sounding thing, Oh, we're not gonna say God's name because he's so holy and so far above us and apart from us that we're gonna make it against the law to say His name. You gonna be stoned for saying His name. And then here comes Jesus teaching him to pray our Father in heaven. That had to be astounding to those people hearing that who would live their entire lives and their parents and grandparents and great parents as far as back as they can remember, You're not allowed to call God by His name. And here we're gonna call him Father, which is a closeness of relationship. And then here comes Paul preaching that. Now by the spirit, you can say, Daddy, you're taking it another step that had to be shocking to people at that time that, that God is our daddy. It even still sounds a little foreign to me when I say it, like, like, I should have more of a respectful tone or something. But He's our daddy. He loves us, like we love our kids even more, better than we love our kids Tim 00:23:11 <laugh>, right? And God says, if we're great, you know, if we being good fathers, how much more is He a good father? Right? And that's, that's no joke, Mark 00:23:21 Hard to fathom that kinda love. I guess all you can do to is look to the cross and spend the rest of your life contemplating what kind of love that took to go through all that. You know, not only did He die from us, He died one of the most excruciating long, He endured so much. In fact, there's a scripture I used to love whenever, whenever I was getting down. Paul said, Paul said, the Apostle, “consider him who endured such opposition at the hands of man so that you will not grow weary and lose heart”. I always love that when you think about, when we're going through stuff, to think about what Jesus went through for us to make us so that we could call God our daddy to bring us that kind of relationship. Yeah. That'll make, that'll, that'll keep you from growing weary and losing heart quickly. Ajai 00:24:18 Yeah. So, you know, when we talk about fear, right, there are two kinds of fear, right? One is for those who believe in God are even Christians, that being afraid of God himself, right, you know, not able to, you know, draw near to God because, you know, we are afraid that, you know, He might do something to us, or He might be angry, He might be punish me. He would, He may punish me, or He might tell me things, you know, that I don't like. So all kinds of fear about God Himself. But the other fear is like, you know, all other fears in life, right, you know, fear of, whatever, losing our job, you know, fear of getting sick, fear of getting in an accident, fear of somebody coming and hurting us. So in this world, you know, we live with all these kind of other fears also. So, you know, when we understand the love of God, right? You know, we have deliverance from both, you know, fearing God Himself, that He will do something to us. And once that is settled, right, we can also rest assured that, you know, God is taking care of all other fears, also even the fear of spiders, <laugh>. So all kinds of fears we have in life. So Mark 00:25:25 I've never been particularly afraid of spiders myself, but Ajai 00:25:29 <laugh>, Mark 00:25:30 I once dated a girl who was, we were doing 65 miles an hour on the expressway, and she saw a spider crawl across dashboard in front of her. She locked up her brakes, came to a screeching stop in the middle of the expressway, jumped out of the car, [wow]and left me in there with, it's starting to roll again as she ran to the side of the road on the expressway <laugh>. Thankfully it was nighttime and there wasn't much traffic out there, so, Ajai 00:26:00 Wow. Mark 00:26:00 Yeah, that sounds terrible on a regular rush hour. Ajai 00:26:03 Yeah. So, Mark 00:26:05 But I digress a little bit, but you know, we don't have to be all business Ajai 00:26:09 <laugh>. Yeah, Yeah. I think the point we are making is, you know, first, when we, I think the cure for all fears is knowing the love of God, right? In fact, the Bible also talks about in Ephesians it requires a power of the Holy Spirit, you know, to truly believe that God allows us and truly understand the depth and the height and the breadth, you know, of the love of God. And the interesting, there's an interesting words there, right, that you may know the love of God and the love of Christ, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So, in order to be filled with all the fullness of God, you know, we need to know the love of God. And we cannot be filled, you know, it cannot be that, you know, we are filled with the Holy, with the love of God and not filled with the Holy Spirit. So there's a lot of talk about, you know, being filled with the Holy Spirit. Don't be drunk with wine but be filled with Holy Spirit. You know, many a time we hear these things like be filled with the Holy Spirit, be filled with the Holy Spirit, but nobody tells us you know how to do that, right? Or if you speak in tongues, you're filled with the Holy Spirit, but they don't really tell you, how do I, how am I filled with the Holy Spirit? Like again, it goes back to, you know, being filled with the love of God, you know, that causes us to be filled with the fullness of God. And being filled with the fullness of God is also being filled with the Holy, Holy Spirit. And there's one more amazing thing in the same chapter, right, if you go further, it says, “Now who is able to do exceedingly above all we can ask or think”. So, in order for us, God, to do the secret to God doing exceedingly about all we can ask or think are experiencing, you know, this, God doing exceedingly about all that we can ask or think. The secret there also is just knowing the love of God. So, it's kind of, you know, cool to see how all these things are linked to the love of God. So, our part is to just wake up every day and know that God loves us beyond a shadow of doubt. And if we doubt, if you ever have a doubt that God loves us, we go back to the cross, right, and see, look at the cross again. That is evidence of God's love for us. Mark 00:28:34 We've been talking a lot about freedom in the recent weeks, and Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”. So, our freedom is tied in to being filled with the fullness of God and the Spirit. Ajai 00:28:54 Yeah. I think, I think that also ties back to not being under the law. So, we clearly saw that, you know, under the law, we have the spirit of slavery. We can never be free under the law. So, where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom. That means you cannot be simultaneously under the law and experience the freedom of the Spirit. So, you cannot be under the law and be led by the Spirit. You cannot be under the law and experience the miracles of the Spirit it's in Galatians chapter 3, and we cannot be under the law and be led by the Spirit of God in Galatians chapter 5. So it is, very, interesting and in fact, it's so liberating to see, we don't have to be under the law, but we really cannot be under the law if you want to experience the Holy Spirit. So, it is a requirement to basically get out of the law, right? It's, it's so good. So, the thing that we cannot do, can never do, God is telling (us), don't even go near it. [Yeah.] How, how, how amazing is that? Mark 00:30:02 The more and more we've been studying about how much scripture has to say about Christ taking us out from under the law, the more and more I'm seeing that it's not a passive thing. Like when Paul's talking about, the two wives that Abraham took Sarah and, ha, Hagar and they each had a child, and how, Isaac was the child of promise from which whose line the, the, Savior would come and the other was a child of, of was a slave woman. And he uses these words, he says, “cast out the slave woman” (Paul's using it as a picture of the law). Which to me, that's not a passive thing. That's like a very emotional cast out the law. Don't even just like, Oh, I'm not coming to kind of not, you know, trial, try not to be under the law and beat myself up when I sin or fought when I fail. But it's saying, cast it out, it's your enemy, you know? And like you've pointed out in the past, Ajai, the devil uses that as a weapon against us. [Yeah.] We just open ourself up to all kind of garbage when we put ourselves under the law; [Yeah.] self-condemnation, the condemnation from others, the devil attacking us through it. We don't have the spirit if we're under it. There's just so much negative that comes from being under that. Ajai 00:31:30 Yeah. Tim 00:31:31 And we falsely give, give credit to of condemnation to God upon us [Yeah.] which He never gave us. Mark 00:31:36 We're imputing His name over things that are, and, and so many people do that, you know, unbelievers will say, you know, oh, how can there be a good and loving God when this is happening or that happening? But they never say, oh, there must be a God because of, oh, look at these people taking care of the homeless. They only use it to go against Him. You never hear him using it in His favor. You know, if you're gonna use evil for an argument against God, then you've gotta use love for an even more powerful argument [Yeah.] of God being a good and loving God. Yeah. Ajai 00:32:15 Yeah. So just one quick clarification again. So, when we say cast out the law, where, like Paul says in Romans chapter seven, we are not saying law is bad. Right. Law is good and holy, but law is not good for us. So that is a reason, you know, we say, you know, don't have anything to do with the law because Lord Jesus Christ through his death, you know, know He delivered us from the law so that, you know, we can be married to another who is risen from the death, that is Lord Jesus. So that we can bear fruit to God. So, law is good. Our Lord Jesus is even better, but we cannot be married to both at the same time, right, so it would be spiritual adultery. Mark 00:32:57 Right. Tim 00:32:58 So what you're saying is that the law is for people who haven't been saved and the law is no longer for people who are saved. So, there's a very clear delineation, a very clear line. Law the the words of the law are good, but they don't apply to us as Christians anymore. Mark 00:33:17 Yeah. [Right.] Yeah. And when I say, when I was saying that Impassion cast out the law, and I'm glad you clarified it, Ajai, but obviously we're not saying that thou shalt not murder isn't a good thing. What we are saying we need to cast out is the system of living under that law, which may be good in itself, but we can't do these things perfectly. And it's that system that is bad and only leads to bad. [Yeah.] It's not that the law is bad, it's that system of us trying to earn God's love. Earn His forgiveness. Earn His blessings and favor. [Yeah.] That's bad. That's evil. That's idolatry. Ajai 00:34:00 Yeah. Yeah. The other thing to note is, you know, under the law, we are already cursed. We are already condemned. So, it's not that, you know, under the law, we are trying to earn our righteousness by our good works, even though that is impossible. But the fact of the matter is, right, you know, because of our sins and because of the sin passed down from Adam, we are already dead under the law and all we can expect. So, if, for someone who committed a murder, right, and who is on the death row, all he can expect is death, nothing else. Right? He can do all kinds of good works on the death row, but that's not going to take him out of the execution because he's already condemned. So that's our situation. You know, that's also important to understand, like every human being born into this world is born under the law and he's born into sin. So, the only consequence of that is we all are on a death row. So, no amount of good works will get us out of there. So, the only way a person, even in the worldly system, right, if a person dies, he's dead to the law. Law has after that, you know, once an execution is done, law has no more power on the dead body. It's done, It's over. So, by some miracle, you know, after the execution, after three or four days, right, if that guy, that man comes back to life by some miracle, law has no say on that man, because according to the law, that person had to be executed and the execution is done. And that's exactly what happened to us, us, right, you know, in Christ we died to the law, but by the miraculous part of God, God raised Jesus from the dead. And in His resurrection, we are also raised. And now we are raised to live a new life, not to go back under the law and try to obey the law because law is done a bit under the law. The punishment and the curse and the condemnation was we must die and we died in Christ, and now we rose again in Christ, and now we live onto God. So, for believers, that's why, you know, law has nothing. And in fact, if you go back to the law because of the sinful flesh, we sin under the law, then the consequence is condemnation again. So we don't want to go back under the law, Mark 00:36:20 Or as Paul said in Galatians, he said that “when you put yourself back under law as a Christian, Christ is of no value to you. You've fallen away from grace”. Ajai 00:36:32 [Yep.] Mark 00:36:33 And that's not a good thing. Ajai 00:36:35 [Yeah.] Tim 00:36:36 Well that sounds like a really natural and good spot to stop tonight.