Jeff Durbin- Union With Christ & the Body | Sermon 06/05/2022

Apologia Utah

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It's an honor to be with you. Praise the Lord for what he's doing here in this church and among his people.

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I'm just honored to be here with you. So I am going to try to lay down some foundational essential things from scripture that I think provide a grounding and a foundation for joy in life, peace in life, freedom from anxiety, worry, fear, no fear of death, all of that, but also talk about what that means for our identity as believers in Jesus Christ, which ultimately is everything, our identity.

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Who are we in Christ? And then leading from there into what this means now for us within the body, this is an amazing thing that God has done here to raise up a church like this around Salt Lake City to win this entire state to Jesus Christ and to put it under his feet, which is the ultimate goal.

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It's an amazing thing. But there are things that I want to encourage you as the people of God to consider and to value and to submit to as believers because this is a new church plant.

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And when we look at something like this, we say all glory to God, praise God, but what gives us a foundation for joy in the midst of doing a work like this?

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And what can we do as followers of Christ to guard ourselves from the common schemes of the enemy when it comes to church planting and growing?

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Because I want to say this before we read the text in terms of like why a message like this.

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By the way, I'm going to try to go from Romans 3 to Romans 12 today and some of Colossians. So I'm hoping to have you out of here by sunrise.

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It's important because I don't believe that the enemy has much concern, much concern with the kind of Christian faith that is not out in the public square, with the kind of Christian faith that is not dedicated to God's word, is authoritative over all things.

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I don't think the enemy is overly concerned with the proclamation of a Christ who doesn't have all authority.

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I don't think the enemy is overly concerned with a church that has no pursuit of godliness and holiness.

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I don't think that the enemy is overly concerned with a church that has really very little concern with the full transformation of the world around us.

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I don't think the enemy is overly concerned with a church like that. I know that the enemy is certainly concerned with the kind of people that prize their faith and prize his gospel and his word and the authority of Christ over all things as supreme and ultimate.

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The enemy is certainly concerned with a church like that. Now we're not in any way boasting in and of ourselves.

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We're saying if you believe these things, just know that you have a target on you from the enemy.

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And I've seen amazing works of God in my state, in my own context and around the world who have received similar attacks from the enemy.

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And I'm gonna try to sort of shield you, protect you as a young church that has so much potential for gospel success in the world around you.

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I'm gonna shield you from the kinds of things that are common attacks of the enemy. And much of it is dealing with personal sin.

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But let's start. Romans chapter six, we'll start there. Don't worry, we're gonna start in Romans 3 too.

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You guys, if you've at all been blessed with a ministry of apology at church, you know I have sins in the area of time and keeping on time.

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And I promise you that I don't care. So yeah, it's 4 .35

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right now, okay. All right, so let's go to Romans chapter six. This is sort of the substance, a portion of the substance of what

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I wanna communicate as your brother and as a minister of the gospel today. Romans chapter six, verse one.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

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By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

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Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

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We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Thus far as the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray together.

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Father, I pray that you would bless today the proclamation of your word and the teaching of your word all to the glory of Jesus Christ.

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We pray that you'd bless us, all of us, with the ability to see and hear.

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Lord, renew us in our minds, transform us. Use this work that you've called out of darkness and into light for your glory and kingdom.

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Use it to bring transformation to the world that abounds to exaltation and glory of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Lord, that you'd protect this church. Protect us from our own sin, our own pride, our own strife and envy.

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Protect us. Lord, grant to us the grace and the strength to hate our sin and to put it to death as people who have been made alive and guard this precious work from the onslaught of attacks of the enemy.

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We ask, God, that you would do a work here within this body that would leave a lasting legacy for the kingdom of the

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Messiah. In Jesus' name, amen. So let's talk about the grounding of our hope.

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The Apostle Paul here is sort of midway through a discussion to the church at Rome. Now, if you don't know the book of Romans, I encourage you to get to know it, read it a lot, get to understand it.

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And the reason why that's important is every word of God is pure. Every word of God will bless you. It'll be something that transforms you and renews you.

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But Romans is actually Paul's systematic explanation of the gospel.

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He starts from A and goes all the way to Z. So the Apostle Paul hasn't yet gotten the opportunity to go and minister to the church in Rome.

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He starts off this letter to the church in Rome with this very long, seven verse long sentence.

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Seven verse long sentence about how he's just so excited to be there and to impart some spiritual gift to them.

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He is so thrilled about the work that God is doing among them. He has a deep love for this church, but he hasn't yet gotten an opportunity to be with them.

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And so what he does here is he gives them a letter delivered to them, inspired by God, given by the

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Holy Spirit of God that explains the gospel of Jesus Christ systematically from A all the way down the line.

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And so the Apostle Paul is giving to them a systematic explanation of the gospel that is essential for us to understand.

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It's interesting because oftentimes you'll be out on the street doing evangelism in the public square.

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You might be talking to, say, and since this is the context we're in, you might be talking to Latter -day Saints or Jehovah's Witnesses, and you'll give them something direct from the word of God.

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God says here, and you just read it. Like, for example, the conversation I had with the returned missionaries in Provo the other day, where I just quote the verse, and they say, well, that's your interpretation.

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I just read it. I just read it. Well, no, you read it with your understanding.

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I'm reading the words of God. God speaks with clarity. And it's interesting, as you have these engagements, you'll often find that as you're disputing and arguing, when you give the word of God to someone like that, they'll say, well, we can't really understand what

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God was saying there. I mean, how do we really know that's what he meant? But what's interesting, and you'll find this in every one of these occasions, is the people that you're talking to are actually spending time talking to you and debating with you, assuming that they, as creatures, can be understood.

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When they're communicating with you, they're communicating with you with the assumption that they can be understood.

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So this little creature with a three -pound brain believes that they have the ability to communicate with clarity in a way that God doesn't, or that he can't.

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We should absolutely reject that kind of understanding of God's word. Here's the point. God speaks with clarity.

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He can be understood. It doesn't mean that there aren't things in scripture that are hard to understand. The Apostle Peter says that.

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That Paul's writing stuff that are hard to understand. He doesn't say impossible to understand.

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He says hard to understand, and the people who distort those truths are unstable and untaught men.

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He doesn't say they can't be understood. We believe in the perspicuity of scripture. There's a big theological word for you, perspicuity.

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Sounds Southern. What's it mean? Clarity. We believe God speaks with clarity.

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And so the Apostle Paul gives us in Romans a systematic explanation of the gospel. When we talk so much about the gospel, it's all about the gospel.

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We need to believe the gospel. We need to preach the gospel. We have to have some understanding of what does that actually mean.

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And if you want to have a grounding or a place to plant your feet, an anchor to say, what is the gospel?

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What actually is accomplished in the gospel? Who is Jesus Christ? What does God do in the gospel to reconcile people to himself?

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I don't believe you can go to any better, enter a better place in the book of Romans. Start from the beginning, go to the end, and read it every single day to understand what

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God has done. And in Romans, as Paul opens up, he spends several chapters grounding the hope of the believer in his explanation of the good news.

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Now this is really, really important. Everyone come with me now for a moment because there are ways that the Bible talks about the gospel that are very different.

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For example, the Apostle Paul, when he opens up Romans, just check it out. In Romans chapter one, as you can see, he says this, verse one,

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Paul, a slave of Messiah Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

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There's one way it's described. It's the gospel of God. It's the good news of God. It's also called the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of God's kingdom promised in the

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Old Testament scriptures about the Messiah's rule and reign over the world, bringing salvation to the ends of the earth, spreading his dominion, putting every enemy under his feet, bringing salvation to both

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Jews and Gentiles, all the families of the earth returning to worship Yahweh. That's the hope of the future, by the way.

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That's the hope we have in the future. But also, the gospel is talked about as just the gospel, the gospel preached by me, the gospel.

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And there are aspects of the gospel that are very intimate. They are very personal. And that's what the

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Apostle Paul deals with so much in the first couple of chapters. He talks about the grounding of our hope.

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Now, this is really important. Before we even start this, it's really important to actually take a moment to ask yourself the question, am

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I willing to be corrected? When I read this, there's a difference between affirming that these are the words of God, those things are true, and actually being able to be corrected as a sinful creature to say,

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I've thought this about God, but he says that. I repent. I believe that.

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Or in your own internal monologue, this is where it gets intensely personal. How many of you this week have felt like God was an absentee landlord, like he's far off, that he's distant, that he couldn't really love me that much?

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There's no real depth of love for me. I'm such a failure. I can't get this right.

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I'm constantly face -planting. I'm not always joyful. I'm kind of anxious. I'm rebellious.

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I'm angry. I have lustful thoughts. And because of that, you think, these promises couldn't possibly be for me.

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If there was an exam, a Christian exam, I could check the boxes. I know how to give all the right answers and say

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A, B, C. I'll get all the right answers, 100 % on the exam. But the truth is, while I affirm these truths as those are true,

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I actually believe myself in my own inner monologue over God virtually 90 % of the time.

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I tell myself things constantly that are just simply not true about God's love for me, about the promise

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I have and hope I have for the future. All those things, they have to be dealt with right now as we open the text here and talk about a grounding of our hope as a church.

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This is, for the moment, highlighted for me. I received a message from somebody this week. And it's difficult for me because I get so many messages, just an onslaught of messages on a daily basis.

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Sometimes Pastor Wado messaged me, I won't even see it, and he has to message again because it just gets buried.

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And oftentimes I try to really only respond to messages from people that I know or from church members.

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Otherwise, it'll be a full -time job just responding to strangers, right? And I have to care for my family and my church first and foremost.

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But I happened to see a message from someone that I didn't know. I actually opened it, maybe by accident, and it was somebody who was really struggling in a different state from me.

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And this is a person talking about cutting herself and possibly committing suicide. And that was something

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I needed to take seriously. And so I immediately put the pastor headgear on and went right in to make sure

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I could minister to her, make sure she wasn't gonna hurt herself. And the first thing I asked her was, what church do you go to?

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And she didn't have a church. Well, obviously you're struggling. You're disconnecting yourself from the very organism that God uses to actually bless and heal.

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So I talked about, let me find you a church. And so I looked around her area and Googled and I found a good church for her, connected to a pastor.

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But I kept getting messages all week from this young woman talking about the fact that I'm just such a mess.

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I have blown it. I'm not, I shouldn't even go to church. God couldn't possibly love me. And my response to her was, read this passage.

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Read these promises from God. And she kept resisting and resisting. Every time I would give her verses, I would say, well,

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I know you're saying that, but actually God says this. He says, here's what his word says here. And she kept resisting and resisting.

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And finally I just said to her, with a serrated edge, I said, so here's the deal. You're telling yourself things right now and God says things right now through his word.

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And your words are contradicting his words. So either Jesus is the liar or you're the liar.

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Which one do you think it is? And she said, well, I'm probably the liar.

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I said, yes. So here's the thing. You have to be willing to say, I am so prideful.

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You can be the most pious, mature believer in the world, but there's some pride there. You gotta confess to it or you're never gonna heal.

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You have to be able to say, I'm wrong, God's right. And let his word heal you.

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And so as we go through this, there's one way you can do this right now. I can read through the text. You can all do the yeas and amens and hallelujahs and you can say, yes, that's all to the glory of God.

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God says that. And never actually be changed yourself because deep down, you're so prideful and so resistant to actually say,

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God is right and I am wrong. I'm believing him over me from now on.

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And so as we go through this text to talk about the grounding of our hope in Christ, it's important to ask the question, do

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I really believe that? Do I believe it, right? Because one last thing as we go into the text, very important,

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James says, even the demons believe and tremble, right? Like even the demons believe and tremble.

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What's that mean? They know all those things about Jesus are true facts. They know it's all real.

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Like demons believe all that is true about Jesus. They believe it. Not in terms of trusting in Jesus for themselves, but they could pass the theological exam and they've been around for longer than all of us.

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And they've seen a lot more than us. And so even the demons believe and tremble, they accept all these things as true in scripture.

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That's true. They affirm it intellectually. That's true. But they don't believe it.

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They don't trust in Christ. They don't turn to it. They don't receive it as that's true for me.

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And so as we go into this text and talk about the grounding of our hope, it's important to ask the question, do I actually trust this over myself?

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Do I believe his promises about eternal life and his forgiveness in a way that actually transforms me into a person that has joy in God, even in the midst of trouble, into the kind of person that rejoices in the

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Lord always. Little background for those of you new to the

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Bible. The apostle Paul is the kind of person that can be in a dungeon that he can't even stand up in, in chains, in darkness, and write a small letter that can't stop talking about rejoicing, that can't stop talking about joy, that can't stop talking about what

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Pastor Wade talked about a moment ago, to live as Christ, to die as gain. He writes that, if you didn't know, that little letter, he writes that in a dungeon, in chains, in a place where he could barely stand up.

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Joy, joy, joy, rejoicing the Lord. I don't know, I don't know what I wanna do. If I wanna stay and bear fruit with you, it just means it's fruit for Christ, or I wanna weigh the anchor and sail away to be with Jesus.

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I don't know what I want. To depart and be with Christ is far better, but if I stay here, it's good for you. I don't know.

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I'm twisted between two positions right now. And the whole time you think and reflect on what he's saying, you have to remember, it's a man writing in a dungeon who says that he is constantly on the run, he's been beaten times without number, he's being lowered out of windows, he's constantly under siege from false brethren, he's been lost at sea.

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I mean, this man has endured everything, and he's like, rejoicing the Lord always, don't worry about anything. How? How does a person get to a place like that, where you can be in the midst of death, and disease, and pain, and sickness, and fear, and all the rest, and you can still say,

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I love you, Lord, and I'm loved by you, God, and I know your word is true. Do you see?

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It's very important to allow yourself right now to get checked, to go past all the

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God face and the Christian ease. God face is that face where like, you know, you're traveling down the road coming to church, like, you know, you've just had a little thing with you and your spouse, right?

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Like, you're at each other's throats, and you're trying to find a leg to pull off one of your children in the back seat, and then you pull into church parking lot, and all of a sudden, it's like, ah, super spiritual, right?

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You come in, hello, brother, hello, sister, God is good, praise the Lord, right? Right? You gotta learn to take that off, take it off, take it right off, right?

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Take off the God face, stop with the Christian ease, and all the Christian language, and actually allow yourself to be checked to say, do

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I actually believe that? Does it cause me to rejoice? Because God is saying that that's true of me in Christ.

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So Romans chapter three, grounding of our hope. I'm not gonna read every verse to go over everything, but I wanna provide a foundation here.

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Romans chapter three, the Apostle Paul spent the last three chapters with an indictment upon all of humanity.

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Get this, and you'll get everything. It's an indictment that man -made religious systems do not believe.

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Man -made tradition, man -made religious systems do not believe this. I don't care that God, I don't care the religious text,

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I don't care the religious ritual and garb, man -made religion has the same testimony about mankind.

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Yeah, maybe you're a little messy, maybe you've blown it a bit, but you're not that far gone where you can't pull yourself up and obey enough and become righteous enough.

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It's very rare for man -made religion to say that you don't need the grace of God, right?

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Like we need it somewhat, but we still sort of have to work together with it to get right with God. We can become righteous somehow through obedience, through maybe temple ceremonies, or going door to door, or whatever the religious system says, it's all basically the same story.

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It's up to me to become righteous enough and obedient enough so that God can accept me. And in Romans chapter three, the

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Apostle Paul has spent three chapters basically saying, here's the deal, all of humanity, all of humanity knows a true

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God, doesn't want to know the true God, suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness, they switch

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God for idols, which is a fantastic explanation for every religious system in the world.

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Why, if there's only one God, why are there so many different religions? Romans chapter one, because we all are made in God's image, made from the same

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God, we know the same God, and we don't want to know him. And so we'd rather have the creature or the thing that looks a lot like us instead of the real

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God. And Paul says, so people switch God for a false God and they start doing things that are perverse with their own bodies, they're disobedient to parents, they're enemies of God, to which you have, of course,

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Romans two, the Jewish person lurking in the background saying things like, that's right, Paul, you get those

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Gentiles. And what they don't realize is that Paul has really given this indictment to all of humanity.

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And Paul then goes after the Jew and says, you think you have the law and that somehow justifies you.

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If that was the case, you would have to do the things in the law in order to be justified by it, and you don't, do you?

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And the apostle Paul basically does the first century version of Ray Comfort, right?

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You ever seen Ray Comfort, my friend Ray Comfort? Love the man, he's sweeter and better in real life than he is on YouTube.

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Have you ever lied? Have you ever looked at a woman with lust, right?

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That thing. Well, Paul basically does the same thing there, first century version where he's like, you tell people not to steal, you steal?

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What's it do? They go, well, yeah, I am actually a hypocrite. I am actually guilty of violating

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God's law. And Paul's point in Romans three is to bring it to a crescendo where he says Jews and Gentiles all understand you're all in the same place before God, whether you're

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Jewish or you're Gentile. There is none righteous, Paul says, no, not one.

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There's weight to that. You gotta receive that. Because if somehow you think that you can climb to God through your obedience and your righteousness, that just eviscerated that position, takes the legs right off of it.

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There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who does good.

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There is none who seeks after God. Where's Paul getting this from? He's not inventing it.

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He knows his Bible. He knows the Old Testament scriptures. He's pulling together a katina of verses from the

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Old Testament revelation to show his audience that this has always been the testimony of scripture.

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Nobody is righteous in God's eyes, nobody. No one does good. No one fears

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God. And that's why you need Jesus. That's why the condescension of God in the flesh, because nobody is righteous in and of themselves.

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And so that's why you need the Savior. And so Paul, giving a grounding for our hope, after he says in 3 .18,

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there is no fear of God before their eyes, he says this, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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What's that mean? The law is given to shut you up, right?

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I mean, what's the law gonna do to the sinner when they stand before God in judgment?

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What's it gonna do? Condemn them, indict them.

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But look, God, I did this. Yeah, you did it as a rebel against me. It was just activity, it wasn't obedience.

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But look, God, at this one time, I had the opportunity to sin and I didn't do it.

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And then the rest of that day was sin upon sin upon sin upon sin. And James 2 .10

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says, whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, he's guilty of all of it, because the law of God is a unit.

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If you break a piece of it, you've destroyed the entire thing, like throwing a small pebble through a big window, right?

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No big deal, it's just a small hole. You've destroyed the thing. It has to be replaced.

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And the law of God doesn't actually justify or declare anyone righteous. No one will be declared righteous by the law of God because we're all sinners, because we're not good, because we're enemies of God, because we're rebels.

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That's Paul's whole belief. And he says in Romans 3, verse 19, that the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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So is the law just for Israel? This is a big one. It's gonna come up maybe later in a test, okay?

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So get ready. By the way, get those tests ready, Luke, at the end. You're not leaving before an exam, ladies and gentlemen.

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We'll see how much you're paying attention, especially you kids. Think about that.

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The law is given to shut you up, to close your mouth, to show you your sin, and it's given, so what?

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The whole world may be held accountable to God. The whole world, not just Israel.

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The law of God applies to all of life and all of mankind. And the text says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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Stop for a moment and let's get this grounded. This word justified clearly in Paul's context is legal in nature.

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He uses it later to say, who is he who condemns? God is the one who justifies.

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How are you gonna be condemned when God is the one doing the justifying? He's putting

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God in the judgment seat as judge with a declaration, justified, declared righteous.

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Love that word. Embrace that word because that word is everything. And Paul says that nobody will be declared righteous in God's court through the law.

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It won't happen. Nobody will. For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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It won't be because of law for Jew or Gentile. It will only be because of grace.

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And so Paul goes on to explain how is it that God can declare someone righteous who is not actually righteous in themselves?

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And he gives the beautiful story of the gospel. Christ, and it is intensely personal. If you trust in Christ, if you've turned to him in faith, this is you.

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You're in this story. It says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who, what?

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Believe. For all who believe. For there is no distinction for all of sin fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift.

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I've said this often as I do this text. I think it's very important to get it. Paul is basically stuttering here in the

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Greek when he says here and are justified by his grace as a gift. It's the same thing.

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A gift is gracious, right? So basically Paul is saying this. Christians, you are declared righteous by God as a gift gift.

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Not just as a gift. It's as a gift gift. Unmerited favor as a gift.

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Not by works. You didn't earn it. You're not righteous. The law won't do it for you.

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And God did it through Jesus as a gift gift. And he says through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

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That word redemption is weighty. It's weighty. And they would have understood it then.

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Redemption, this terminology here has to do with taking something and making a payment and it's a complete payment that releases it so now it's owned.

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It's yours. It belongs to you. The transaction is complete. It's over with.

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Nothing else is due. It's over. It's sprung out of its slavery. It's done.

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It's owned. And so we are justified, declared righteous as a gift by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus.

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How? Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. That word propitiation is also precious.

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It's weighty. Don't be thrown by it. Don't be afraid of it. It's a big word. Has a lot of meaning and it's everything.

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The propitiation that is in Christ Jesus. This propitiation is that God rightly should give to the unrighteous judgment.

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We deserve it. All of it. Every inch of it. All of it.

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And instead of actually giving us what is due to us, that judgment is diverted away from me the sinner, from you the sinner, and it is absorbed and fully exhausted in Jesus instead.

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There's the whole picture of propitiation. He declares you righteous, not because you are, but actually because of the righteousness of another whom you're hiding in.

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The righteousness of the one who actually received in himself the penalty that was due to all of us.

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And he exhausts the judgment, the justice, and the wrath of God in the place of his people completely.

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Now this is very important, especially for those of you guys who have been in Christ for some time. You might feel at times like, man,

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I'm a mess. You only know you're a mess because the spirit of God, right? You don't have a lot of like dead spiritual people like longing for holiness and hating their sin.

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So if you long for holiness and you hate your sin and you constantly are burdened by it, welcome to the club called the kingdom of God.

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Welcome to those who are filled with the spirit of God. But sometimes we can be in Christ for some period of time and we can neglect these glorious truths and we can actually start walking with Jesus in such a way where we start acting like man -made religion.

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Like somehow God's pleasure in me or in his love for me is dependent upon my daily performance.

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How good of a godly husband I am or a godly wife or a godly child. Am I loving

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God enough and loving neighbor enough? Well, God must be kind of ticked with me today, right?

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Like I had to sort of climb my way back again. The apostle Paul knows nothing of that in the gospel, nothing.

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The whole wrath of God, all of it was diverted away from me and given to Jesus Christ and Jesus has three words for the enemy.

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It is finished. It's over. No more trying to climb to God through my good deeds.

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No, if you recognize your brokenness and your sinfulness, the call for the believer is confess and repent and rejoice over the righteousness that you have in another,

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Jesus Christ. It's not your righteousness. But then Paul goes on to say, what's this all about?

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He says, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, verse 25, to be received by faith.

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This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins, that's in his people over time before Christ.

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He had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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That's also weighty. It's also weighty because you want to know one glaring inconsistency.

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Get this, one glaring inconsistency of all man -made religion is in the area of justice.

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They will say, sure, we're bad. Whatever the God is or gods, they'll say, they're really good or it's really good or he's really good or today in the modern, she's really good.

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And I'm just a mess, but I'm wrong, I blow it, I'm inconsistent, but if I'm good enough,

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I can climb back. Can you imagine a courtroom like that where you have a condemned criminal in the dock and you have the judge and the person is truly guilty, really guilty, absolutely guilty without question.

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And the judge goes to give sentence and says, you know you're really guilty, you've created a lot of victims here, but you know what, you're looking kind of good today.

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And I like your personality and I'm gonna go ahead and say, we'll let you go.

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Matter of fact, you've been really nice to me during this trial as judge, so I'm gonna try to view you in a different way as judge.

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I know there's a lot of victims over there watching the trial, but I'm just gonna let you go. What would all of us say to a judge like that?

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That's unjust. There's a bunch of victims here, there's a bunch of victims here and there's a real crime here, there's real guilt here.

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You cannot as a good judge simply let people go because what happened to justice?

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The God of the Bible, the Bible is the only thing that solves the problem of justice with human sin because God doesn't simply say,

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I'll just let you go. He can't and remain just. That's Paul's whole point right here.

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The propitiation of Christ is because God is just and he doesn't just say to Brian or to Wade or to Luke or anybody else, he doesn't just say,

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I really like you, you're free to go. He can never do that, it would be a distortion of justice and righteousness.

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And what about the victims? No, God actually solves the problem of sin and justice and victims by condescending in the person of Christ to receive the full justice, the full weight of the wrath of God due to God's people in himself.

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So that God is just because he never let a single sin go, not one, not one sin in human history is simply let go because God is just.

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For the unbeliever, they answer for their own sin outside of Christ for all eternity.

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Every idle word, every sin, everything will be addressed.

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In their day of judgment, they will depart from Christ and they will answer for every thought, every single word, every single deed.

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But for those who have received grace and mercy in Jesus Christ, every thought, every word, every deed ever done by you and me was answered at the cross, every single one.

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No justice is perverted. And that's Paul's whole point here. So for the believer, what we have in Jesus Christ is a declaration of righteousness, not because you are or I am, we're not.

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It's because of the righteousness of another. And so then Paul says, verse 27, that what becomes of our boasting, it is excluded by what kind of law?

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By law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Here it is. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

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Some of them might say, where do you ever get the idea that we are justified or saved by faith alone and not by faith plus works?

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My answer is, well, it's everywhere in the Bible. We can start at the beginning of the Bible. We can go through Abraham and move our way down.

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But is Romans 3 .28 enough? We declare that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.

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Faith apart from works of law. Here it is. If you have faith plus works. Here, two things, faith and works, okay?

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Obedience to law, faith, works here. Paul says, we conclude, we declare that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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So if you're justified by faith apart from the works of the law, that's faith over here by itself.

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We have a word for that. It's called alone. Faith alone. And that's what

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Paul says here. So when he's explaining his gospel to the church in Rome, what he says is you're justified, declared righteous by faith apart from works of law.

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Faith alone, faith by itself. That's Romans 3. We're going to 12. Are you ready?

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Just kidding. You guys are like, wow. I heard it was bad, but not this bad. Romans chapter four then.

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I'm just going to give you a summary here that's very important and I hope this ministers to you directly. Again, you have to be willing to be corrected in this area as a believer on a daily basis.

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Preach to yourself every day. Tell yourself that you're wrong every single day.

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And don't just say it in terms of diminishing and taking away your own dignity. Do it in a way to actually fill you up because you're not saying you're wrong and now there's despair.

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We're saying you're wrong. You're missing the hope. This is the hope. God's word is right and you're wrong.

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Let it heal your mind. Let it heal your heart. Paul goes on to explain in Romans chapter four that this is how

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God has always justified people. Always. Sorry, dispensationalists. He's always justified people in this way.

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He's always justified people by faith and by faith alone. He goes in to show Father Abraham.

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This is a big deal. By the way, for the Jewish person that's hearing this, gospel explained,

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Paul brings in the heavy hitters, the big guns. He shows the example of Abraham and David. To the

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Jew, okay, you don't get better than Father Abraham and King David, okay? And he shows that both

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Father Abraham and King David were justified in exactly the same way, only they were doing it before Christ and were doing it post -redemption in Christ.

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So he explains, from the text of Genesis, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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Now for those of you guys, very important, doing a lot of evangelism in the area, it is critical that you get this. Abraham believed

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God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Where's that from? Who knows it? Who knows it?

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10 bucks, too late. Genesis 15, six. Genesis 15, six. Abraham believed

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God and it was credited to him as righteousness. That's how Abraham was justified. Quick thing, when did that happen in Abraham's life?

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When did it happen? Did it happen before circumcision or after circumcision? Before, did it happen before Moses or after Moses?

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So what did Abraham offer God? Hands, right?

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Please give me, right? Can I, like, it's just reception. Abraham's posture was pure reception.

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And here's Paul's point, are you ready? You want biblical faith? You want true religion? Then you have to have a faith like Abraham.

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If your salvation, justification, doesn't look like Abraham, it's not from God, which is why

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Roman Catholicism is wrong, which is why Mormonism is wrong, the Watchtower is wrong,

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Islam is wrong, because if you do not have salvation that looks like Father Abraham, you're not a child of Abraham.

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How was Abraham justified? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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Charged to his account, logitimae, charged up to his account.

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Your bank account is not only zero, right? It's below, you ever had that?

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You ever had that? Don't shout out loud, we'll judge you. No joking, okay. You ever had that? You go to your bank account and you're like, why does it say that I'm $2 ,000 negative, right?

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Or something like that? I'm giving a confession here, right? No, once I owned a business and someone had stolen money out of my account, and I went to get a cup of coffee, and I had plenty of money in my account,

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I'm gonna get a cup of coffee, and they were like, sorry sir, your card's declined. I'm like, run it again, it's your machine. And ran it again, they were like, sorry sir, it's declined.

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I'm like, how about one more time, right? And the line's starting to look at me and groan behind me. Sorry sir, it's declined.

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I'm like, there must be something wrong with the card. I'm like, you know, like blowing it off as I walk away.

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Run across the street to the bank. I go, hey, my card's not working. And they're like, yeah, it's because you're negative $8 ,500 in your account.

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That was a big hit. It was fraud, stolen money out of my account. But that wasn't just a zero balance, that was a $8 ,500 negative.

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That's like humanity, that's your account. You're not just at a level playing ground with God. You are negative, you have debt, you owe.

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And Paul's word here, when he says credited, means to charge to your account.

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It's charged up, right? It's full, so he says Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him, charged to him as righteousness.

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And then he says this, he says in verse four, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

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Pause, context is everything. Has he talked about gift anywhere else in Romans, maybe near or around this passage?

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I gave you the words he used, what did I say it was? What was it? Oh my gosh, I'm a terrible teacher.

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The word was, it's a gift what? Oh, there you go, okay.

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I even tried to do it in a snappy way, so you're like, I remember that, it's a gift gift, right? It's a gift gift, he just said it.

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Forget the chapter divisions, forget the verse divisions. Paul wasn't writing like that. He wasn't like chapter three, verse one.

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Chapter three, verse two, he's writing a letter. It's continuous thoughts. We're a few verses away from where he said that you are justified as a gift gift.

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Gift by his grace to the redemption that's in Jesus. Now he's saying, how about Abraham? How was he justified before God?

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Abraham believed God, it was charged to his account as righteousness. And now he says to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

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In other words, if you're working for this justification, if you're working to earn salvation and righteousness before God, if you're saying, hey, look at my obedience to law, look what

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I can contribute to this. Paul's saying, then what you're doing isn't connected to what

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Jesus did, which is a gift gift. So if you're working for it, what you're getting is a wage, not a gift.

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Then he says something that let's be honest, doesn't make any sense from a human perspective.

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It doesn't. Man -made religion can't conceive of it, which is why Joseph Smith in the Joseph Smith translation completely changed it.

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Because it doesn't make any sense. What Paul's gonna say here defies man -made religion, all of it.

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He says, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.

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There it is. How does a judge declare a wicked person, an ungodly person to be righteous?

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How? Without perverting justice. You know, the Bible talks about this.

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It does. We talk about it all the time in our mission to abolish abortion. God says in his word, in the book of Proverbs, he says, the one who acquits the guilty, who justifies the guilty, and the one who condemns the righteous are both alike in abomination to God.

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So if you condemn a righteous person, God says, that's an abomination. He also says that if you say to a guilty person, you're righteous, that's also an abomination.

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So how's God doing it? How's God looking at a guilty person and saying,

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I declare you righteous? Because they are not righteous in themselves, they are covered in the righteousness of another.

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God can declare you and me righteous because we are in Christ. And he is declaring you righteous on the basis of the merit of Christ and his work.

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That's the glory of the gospel. And Paul's saying, that's how God does this.

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Look at Father Abraham, and here's the benefits. The next big hitter, David, verse six.

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Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts up righteousness apart from works. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom

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God counts righteousness apart from works. Do you catch that? God counts to the believer righteousness apart from works of righteousness.

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Do you catch it? I was out at the Provo the other day.

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Or as Pastor Zach says, Provolone. He just can't stop saying it. And he actually means it.

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We're going to Provolone. It's not Provolone. We were there and I was talking to the return missionaries and at one point,

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I felt like God was really doing something in this one young man. Giving him verses, giving him scripture and trying to be respectful and gracious to them.

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And he finally says, by the way, this will go up tomorrow. You'll be able to see it on Apologia Studios. So you can see the conversation. It was something like he asks like midway through the conversation.

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Okay, let's say that I accept all of this and I say that it's true. And he was asking like he was really asking.

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He's like, well, then what? Like, what does it actually mean? Like, what's it mean to turn to this

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Jesus over against the Jesus of Joseph Smith? What's it mean? Are you ready?

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Here's one. God counts to you righteousness apart from your works. All you're striving, all you're working, all you're pulling yourself up, all of this labor, all of these works before holy

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God, filthy rags, not righteous. But in Christ, the true

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God, come as man who lived blamelessly and obediently and died for sinners and rose again from the dead.

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You have God the Father counting to you righteousness apart from any of your works. Oh, remember that Christian tomorrow when you feel like an absolute failure at noon and you somehow think that like my failure as a believer has sort of lessened my righteousness and so God is moving further and further away from me because I'm just not quite who

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I'm supposed to be in Christ. God is never gonna look at you as righteous.

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That's terrifying. He's never gonna look at you as righteous because you are in yourself righteous.

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He declares you righteous because He charges to you a righteousness that is not your own. It's Christ's and He does it apart from any work.

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So then He says this, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the

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Lord will not count his sin. Okay, so pause, reflect, challenge yourself.

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Be renewed in your mind, be transformed. Don't come to worship to not be transformed and renewed and challenged.

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Let it sit. Are you the blessed man? Are you the blessed woman?

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Are you the one that God has declared righteous apart from any of your works? Are you the one, here it is, that God will never count your sins against you?

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Did you catch that? Never. God in Christ has declared me righteous, charged to me a righteousness that is not my own, it's

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Christ's, and He will never, ever count my sins against me. He charges me righteous and He does not charge me as sinful.

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Are you the blessed man? Are you the blessed woman? You say,

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I hope so. Well, it's only through faith. So you need to turn and bow the knee to Christ and come to Him to be joined to Him by faith.

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That's where it's found. And it will only ever be found there. The only people who come to God and are made right with God, reconciled to God and have peace with God are beggars.

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Which are you? Are you the one who's striving, who thinks you're righteous in yourself? Are you coming to God like Abraham with empty hands?

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In a posture of reception only, with a mouth that is open to receive living waters.

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So then Paul goes on to describe how this works out with Abraham.

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It happened before circumcision, it happened before the law, but here's the summary. Are you ready? The summary, Romans 5 .1.

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Therefore, and whenever as a Christian, if you're new to church, you see the word, therefore you should see what it's there for, right?

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You have to, because he's in the middle of an argument. Romans 5 .1. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, since we have been, past tense, declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God.

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When that return missionary asked me that question, okay, what's it all mean? If I turn to the true

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Christ, what does it mean? Here's what it means fundamentally. Are you ready? Peace with God. Peace with God.

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Do you know what the gospel is according to scripture? The real essence of the good news, the real essence of the gospel is this.

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And it's shocking, I think, in the context you're in. I hate to talk about it all the time, but this is the area we live in and you can't go 20 feet without running into a ward or seeing a temple off in the horizon, all the rest.

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Like this is the essence of the Christian gospel, is this. You get God. I don't know why this doesn't sound

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Pentecostal in here right now. You get God. You see, religion wants the stuff.

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Give me the mansion on the other side. Give me this. Give me the planet and all the wives.

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Give me this. I'm gonna labor for all. The good news is that one day I can get all these things and I can be the supreme being or whatever.

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No, for the Christian who understands where they're at and who God is and what Christ has done, the good news is you get

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God. That's the good news, is that you're reconciled to God. You have peace with God.

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That's the essence of the gospel. If you wanna summarize it all, it's Romans 5 .1. Therefore, having been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God.

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Real shalom, real peace. As Pastor James says, this is not a temporary ceasefire like religion offers you.

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All right, you want in? Great, okay. Do this service, do this religious thing, do this, and then you're on your way, but screw up, maybe it's a reboot.

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You gotta start over again. Maybe you gotta do this ritual, do this thing, pray this prayer.

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Whatever the case may be, there can be a point in your relationship with whatever

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God where you're back to zero and you're gonna climb your way back again and maybe you and God are at war again.

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The Christian gospel knows nothing of that. There's never a possibility that if you're truly a believer and you're in Christ and you've been saved and you're regenerate and God lives in you, there's no way, there's no power in hell that can separate you from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus.

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Nothing can because you've been declared righteous, charged righteousness.

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Apart from works, God will never count your sins against you. He declares you righteous and you have presently peace, peace with God.

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If that doesn't change your life, I think you have some repenting to do, right?

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I think you have some repenting to do. Like if you don't feel the weight of this and let it transform you into rejoicing in the

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Lord and loving God and be able to endure trials, then you need to allow these verses. Just write them down, stick them in your pocket and every time your inner monologue contradicts it, you go back to that word.

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You say, God, I'm gonna believe your word over my own inner monologue. I'm gonna believe that. This is, listen, these aren't texts just to go out into the public square and preach to others.

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They're texts that you preach to yourself constantly. Do you believe it? What time is it?

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Okay, one hour. Only 12 more to go and I'm just joking, okay. I wanted to lay that as a foundation, grounding.

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Everything else I'm about to say is grounded in that truth. Romans 5 .1,

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that's the summary. You declared righteous, you have peace with God. How did it take place? Because of what Christ did, this gift, this redemption.

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What God did to declare you righteous. So then it leads on to where Paul knows that lurking in the background is the person who's ready to leap in with the objection, oh, so this is all grace?

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It's all faith? God credits to you righteousness apart from actual righteousness on your part?

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And he will never count your sins against you? So what, you can just do whatever you want? Paul knows that guy's there.

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He knows they're there. So in Romans 5, after he explains how peace with God is given, he then goes on to explain that there are really two heads of humanity, two.

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And here's the deal, are you ready? Union with Christ, you're in one or the other. Every single person that you and I will ever come across on God's earth are in one of two representatives.

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You're either in Adam, fallen, condemned, dead, in sin and trespass.

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You're part of fallen humanity, you're in Adam, or you are in Christ, in Christ, in Christ.

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That's the language in the New Testament. Not just beside Christ, not just around Christ, you are in Christ.

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And so Paul explains in verse 15 of chapter five, but the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many die through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man,

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Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin.

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By the way, you understand like free gift is sort of like double speak? A gift is free, it is a gift.

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So free gift is again like it's just layering more and more on just the essence of the graciousness of this.

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He says, and the free gift, verse 16, is not like the result of that one man's sin, Adam. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

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For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.

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For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

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Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our

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Lord. That's glorious, beautiful. And how much already has been

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God, God, God, God, God to his glory, it's not you, it's a gift, gift.

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It's a free gift. It's free gift of righteousness. It's all God counting righteous apart from actual righteousness in yourself.

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It's all God not counting your sins against you. It's God declaring you righteous. It is peace with God and that's heavy.

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And he says you're in Christ and you have the gift of eternal life because you are united to him, which leads to the person in the background saying, chapter six, verse one, what shall we say then?

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Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? You ever know anybody like that?

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You ever know anybody like that? That is as much a perversion of the gospel as anything you'll ever find in Mormonism or the

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Watchtower or any religious cult and counterfeit of Christianity. When you find the modern evangelical saying, well,

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I prayed that magic prayer, I'm saved so I can pretty much do what I want now because my ticket is punched. You never understood the gospel.

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You clearly haven't died with Christ and you haven't been joined to him. You're not in him. And Paul explains that.

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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means.

01:00:05

How can we, here it is, the essence of it all, how can we who died to sin still live in it?

01:00:14

You see, this concept, this concept of being united to Jesus and being in him is not just theory out there, right?

01:00:24

Just words that are meaningless. Paul doesn't see it as just like this theory of being in Christ.

01:00:30

He says, no, you can't continue living in sin because if you're in Christ, then you've died.

01:00:40

Like he really died for sinners. And if you're really in him, how can you continue living in sin when you died with him and you were raised with him?

01:00:52

Because if you're really in Jesus by faith and you've received all the blessings of the gospel, then that means that in reality, before God, you are alive from the dead.

01:01:05

There's an old man, there's an old woman, there's an old child, they're gone.

01:01:11

You're talking about a dead man. I can just live in my sin and do what I want. No, you're talking like a dead man.

01:01:19

Like a spiritually dead man. And that person was supposed to die a death and you've been raised with Christ.

01:01:27

So here's the point I have for you. As a church plant that God has brought together to bring him glory and to expand his kingdom, the foundation of your hope is found in the fact that you have peace with God through Jesus Christ.

01:01:44

This justification is something that God has done all to his glory in every day that should abound in thanksgiving and fruit.

01:01:54

You have union with Jesus Christ, so you have the gift of eternal life. You don't have condemnation and death.

01:02:01

You have the gift of eternal life. That's the foundation. That's the essence of it all. You have peace with God.

01:02:07

It's eternal life, not 10 weeks of life, not 10 years of life.

01:02:14

This is eternal life, never -ending life. And then Paul says, okay, because that's true, because you're at peace, because you've been declared righteous, because you're united to Jesus, if it's true, then you've died a death.

01:02:30

He says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? There's his response.

01:02:36

So he says, don't go on presenting yourself, your bodies, your members, as instruments of sin and unrighteousness, but present yourselves as those who are alive to God.

01:02:47

That's Paul's entire argument. So Paul, through inspiration of the

01:02:56

Holy Spirit, tells Christians, here's your hope. Here's the blessings. Here's the peace.

01:03:02

This is your identity now. Is it true? Okay, if it's true, then you're alive from the dead.

01:03:09

So don't keep acting like a spiritually dead person. You're alive. And then he goes on to explain

01:03:18

God's sovereign will and mercy in salvation.

01:03:25

He speaks of some issues of law, but he just continues to actually expand upon the concept of grace, grace, grace, grace, grace.

01:03:33

God does the choosing. God does the saving. God does the gifting. God does all of this.

01:03:39

And then he gets to chapter 12, which is what I wanna leave you with and talk through it.

01:03:47

He says, chapter 12, verse one, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

01:04:03

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

01:04:13

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.

01:04:20

Very important. Young men, young men, especially young men who love

01:04:26

Jesus, love God's word. You have a strong commitment to rightly handling the scriptures.

01:04:35

You have a strong commitment to the truth. Don't ever lose that. But recognize, holding on to truth that is this glorious can oftentimes lead to pride.

01:04:46

You ever heard of the caged stage Calvinist? Yeah? Caged stage Calvinist.

01:04:51

I don't know who made that. Did James make up that term? I think James made it. Pastor James might've made that term up. The person who like, you know, might just be sort of like standard, you know, everyday 21st century evangelical.

01:05:03

And they start actually reading what Jesus said about salvation and him being the shepherd, knowing his sheep and giving them eternal life and them never perishing, you know, and that he comes down from heaven not to do his will, but the will of him who sent him, that of all that he has been given, he should lose nothing.

01:05:19

And they start saying, hey, this sounds sort of like Calvinism here. And they start getting changed by that and they embrace it and they see it on every page because it really is everywhere.

01:05:27

And they just go, let's kill everybody. Right? I'm saying in terms of like, let's go knock everybody's heads off with the sword.

01:05:38

And so Pastor James says, what you should really do with the person, especially the young men who become reformed and, you know, really glory in the doctrines of grace is put them away in a cage just for a little while so they don't hurt themselves and others.

01:05:52

Right? Because pride is a huge thing. And Paul says this, he says, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measures of faith that God has assigned for as in one body, we may have many members and the members do not all have the same function.

01:06:14

So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members, one of another.

01:06:20

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness, very important to recognize something.

01:06:42

This right here, this here, this pulpit, this ministry of the word, this teaching role is not the ultimate.

01:06:52

Please embrace that. This is not the ultimate spirituality.

01:06:59

Don't believe that. It's one of the perversions of Roman Catholicism is the idea of like that priesthood over there, that's the real thing.

01:07:09

That's the special gift. That's where true spirituality takes place. It's in that cathedral with those windows and all that beauty and that guy over there, he has the most important role.

01:07:22

That's the space, which is why so many young men, I think, feel called to ministry as pastors.

01:07:29

I do my best to talk them out of it. Don't I? How many years did

01:07:35

I try to stop you? Yeah, six years. I do my best to talk you out of it because so many young men have thought, well, that's the spiritual, that's the place

01:07:44

I gotta be to really be sort of like really loved by God and have this real supreme spiritual gift.

01:07:49

And that's why the turnover for pastors is about three to five years and they quit.

01:08:00

Because it's not what they thought it was gonna be. And you shouldn't think and I shouldn't think that this is supreme.

01:08:08

Get this, all of life is worship. Now, don't let that pass over you as some platitude or some pithy slogan.

01:08:16

All of life is worship. All of life is worship. All of it.

01:08:21

Everything you and I do is giving glory to and sacrificing to something in the midst of it.

01:08:27

It's either gonna be to God or something else. And if you wanna see this place transform to the glory of God, you need to all use your gifts as believers to do it.

01:08:38

Live your life as worship to God. You see what Paul says here? All of us are part of this one body with gifts differing and they all need to be used.

01:08:50

One's not more important than the other. Wade, Pastor Wade is not the most important part of this church.

01:08:57

This isn't a church about Pastor Wade. This is Christ's church.

01:09:03

He has a role. He has an authority as a pastor that we're called to respect.

01:09:09

God says that, submit to those who are in authority over you. That's a position. But he is not the ultimate,

01:09:14

Jesus is. And all of you as part of this body have been called to be a part of this body to use your gifts.

01:09:21

Use them, serve. Where are you gifted? What are you passionate about? And somebody says, well,

01:09:26

I don't really know how to teach up there. Great, how many of you guys are amazing businessmen? You're great businessmen.

01:09:33

You can run businesses that establish wealth and bless people and you can use that wealth for the kingdom of God.

01:09:40

Did you know that that's worship? How many of you guys are great artists? Be a great artist for the glory of God.

01:09:49

Transform this city for the glory of God by being the best artist in this entire city. Right?

01:09:55

Like, it sounds strange to some people at times, but we have to get this. All of life is worship. Do you know one of the first places in scripture that talks about the spirit of God, like filling somebody, was when

01:10:06

God was filling the artists to do their duty to build for God? That that was worship.

01:10:13

That was a gift. That was as important as this. Each having unique gifts.

01:10:21

Moms, raising your families, educating your children. Never say something like, well,

01:10:26

I guess I'm just a mom. I guess I'm just a housewife. Like my friend

01:10:32

N .D. Wilson says, yeah, just a mom, raising up the heroes for Christ who are gonna conquer the world.

01:10:39

No big deal. No big deal. Probably one of the most significant and important roles in the history of humanity is the role of the mother.

01:10:50

The woman mother. Have to say it today, right?

01:10:55

Like that role, that gift so transcends what most people even think of when they think of like spiritual gifts and worship in the church.

01:11:06

Play basketball for the glory of God. Worship God there. Build a farm, raise things for the glory of God and do it all to the glory of God under the rule of Christ.

01:11:19

You don't, listen, is it important to go out into Provo and to preach the gospel on the streets?

01:11:25

Yes, you have to do that. Christianity goes into the public square. Jesus comes to bring a gospel of a kingdom that advances into the world and brings light into darkness.

01:11:36

What's the church doing, hiding behind walls? Yes, you're supposed to go do the hard things. Yes, there's gonna be persecution.

01:11:41

Yes, there'll be difficulty. Are you supposed to be out there preaching the gospel on the streets? Yes, and do it as much as you possibly can.

01:11:49

But some of you have gifts that are supremely valuable that don't look like that.

01:11:56

And I think oftentimes you might see like a video of us out doing evangelism at an abortion mill or at a temple or at ASU or wherever and you might think, boy, that's real spiritual gifts right there.

01:12:10

I guess I just don't have any significant spiritual gifts for God's kingdom. That's really special.

01:12:16

It's just one part. It's one aspect of the kingdom of God and the gifts that are necessary to advance

01:12:22

Christ's kingdom and his gospel. So where are your gifts? What are you called to do?

01:12:28

How are you gonna serve Christ with your life and use your gifts for the glory of God and for his kingdom?

01:12:35

You see, light in this valley is gonna come, of course, through confrontation. It's gonna come through confrontation.

01:12:41

You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna be persecuted. It's gonna be difficult. But light isn't just gonna come through the proclamation of the gospel.

01:12:47

It's gonna come through the people in collision on the street. It's gonna come through your lives. Now, I'm not, please don't misunderstand this.

01:12:54

It is so important you don't. I'm not saying, well, I guess I need to earn the right to preach the gospel to people and just let them see my life and then they'll turn to Jesus.

01:13:01

That doesn't work. You have to preach the gospel. You have to give the gospel for God to use that to turn sinners to Christ.

01:13:09

But Christ is in his people taking dominion, beautifying the world, turning this desert into a garden and he does it through his people and he does it through your gifts.

01:13:21

So what are your gifts? How will you serve Christ with your gifts for the glory of God? Some might say, a business person?

01:13:28

How does a business person glorify God with that gift? Oh, I don't know. The only reason this exists and the only reason

01:13:35

Apologia in Arizona exists is because wealthy Christian business owners saw what

01:13:43

God was doing and they funded everything we needed to have you here today.

01:13:49

So you are actually only sitting in this room right now because down the line of you were some wealthy

01:13:54

Christian business owners that believed in what God was doing and funded a ministry that was in a drug rehab in a hospital.

01:14:03

That's the only reason you're here today because there were wealthy business owners who loved

01:14:08

Jesus and were building businesses to bless the world to the glory of God and to take that wealth and to actually use it to spread the gospel in God's kingdom.

01:14:18

And they still do it today. End abortion now only exists today because of wealthy Christian business owners who believed in it from the start and said,

01:14:25

I'll give $500 ,000. 50 ,000 babies saved probably now.

01:14:33

Bills of abolition in states across the country and coming more and more and more. And if you get down the line, you say, but how'd that really happen?

01:14:40

Well, God's people. And it was actually some wealthy Christian business owners that said, I'll help get started.

01:14:48

So can you do that to the glory of God with your gifts? Please do. Please do. And Paul is explaining, you use these gifts and do it to the glory of God.

01:14:56

He says this, and this is where I want you to challenge. Please get challenged here. I'm not your enemy. I'm a pastor.

01:15:02

I've done church plants now. I know the tactics of the enemy and please take this serious.

01:15:11

Embrace it. Let love be genuine. Paul's a church planter too, by the way.

01:15:18

So this is from experience here, right? He says to church, here's your hope and now let me deal with you as a church.

01:15:25

Are you ready? Use your gifts. They're all important. And he says, let love be genuine. Abort what is evil.

01:15:34

Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection.

01:15:41

Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal.

01:15:47

Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

01:15:57

That little section right there, that's like a six year sermon series. That one section there.

01:16:05

It really is, because you can go on for days about how scripture talks about all those things. The enemy will, the enemy will sow seeds within a healthy body of discord, disunity, hatred, jealousies, strife, envies, backbiting, slander, gossip.

01:16:31

You know what's amazing? I've seen this in our whole life as a ministry, is that you prepare

01:16:38

God's people, you teach, you give everything you can to rightly divide the word of truth, to give it to the people of God.

01:16:45

And oftentimes there's such a strong commitment and foundation to the truth that we're not even affected by the attacks of the enemy out there.

01:16:55

You think like, well, we're unbreakable. Why? Because I see what the enemy's lies are.

01:17:00

I know what the word of God says. The people of God here are so prepared that we recognize an attack from the enemy from the outside when we see it, because we know the word of God.

01:17:09

We know that's just the working of the enemy. It's easy just to run right off the back. Do you know what's not as easy?

01:17:17

To recognize the schemes of the enemy within the body. Your pride, your lack of love, your gossip, your faction building, your slander.

01:17:36

The enemy has tried to use slander and gossip and faction building to take down Apologia at home in Arizona so many times we could sit here for days and tell you stories.

01:17:49

For days. And you would never see it coming because it comes from the person right next to you that you thought was a brother or a sister and would never do such a thing.

01:18:00

So you have to, as a body, cherish the foundation of your hope. Know what God has given.

01:18:06

Know who you are in Christ and say, I am alive from the dead. I'm putting away that old person.

01:18:12

I am putting that sin to death. And you have to be constantly aware of your own sin. I'm called to love.

01:18:19

I'm called to outdo you in showing honor. Outdo you.

01:18:24

I'm called to show hospitality. That's a command. Show hospitality. What's hospitality?

01:18:31

Well, it's really a combination of words but there's different usages of it. The essence of it is this.

01:18:38

Is generous to guests. It's generosity to guests and strangers.

01:18:44

Generosity. It's like liberality in giving to others. We have a rule at Apologia Church.

01:18:51

If we have people serving with us, if we have people that are doing missions with us, we don't abuse them.

01:18:58

We give. We take them to the nicest places we can to say thank you for doing what you're doing for our church and our ministry.

01:19:06

We try to feed them well. We try to, you know, okay, can I just show you a comparison here? Okay, don't ever do this.

01:19:13

Early on in ministry, Pastor Luke and I were taking every opportunity we could to go and serve and to preach. And I can tell you,

01:19:19

I've been around the country and it was always such a gift just to be able to give the word of God to people and defend the gospel. But I gotta tell you, there are some people who love

01:19:26

Jesus that they wouldn't know the word hospitality if it sat on their face. Right, like one time

01:19:31

I went to, I won't mention who or what, I went to a city. It was a city, okay?

01:19:40

And it was a city in a really bad part of the country. Right, not the kind of place you would just typically just go, let's go tour, take a visit there.

01:19:47

Right, it's not a good place. And I get there and they chose like the flight path that had like the most layovers because it was cheapest.

01:19:55

So by the time you get there, you're like completely wore out. You've been all over the country. You've been layovered and all the rest. And I get there and it's a stranger picking me up.

01:20:03

I don't even know the guy. And he says, hey, hey, nice to meet you. And by the way, I'm starving. I've been flying all day.

01:20:09

And he says, hey, good to have you here. We're gonna have to wait for the next guy's plane to land. I said, okay, cool.

01:20:16

What, like when's it showing up? Where is, he says, oh, it's a couple hours from now. Now mind you, so he just sort of sits down and like forgets

01:20:24

I'm even there. And I'm like, now I'm like, I can hear my stomach like, help. Like, you know,

01:20:30

I'm like dying. And Luke and I are basically poor at this point. And so I'm there to serve and I'm waiting for a stranger.

01:20:39

We get in the car, we drive all the way into like, it is, it's gangster. I mean, we are in a bad part of town.

01:20:45

I'm like, roll up the window. Like, you know, sort of a thing. We get there, it's late at night and I get to this building and it's another stranger that greets me.

01:20:53

And he's like, hey, welcome, right on. Okay, here's where you're gonna stay. And it's this really cold old building where it was like,

01:21:00

I think it was basically winter time and the window wouldn't close to my room. And it was basically a closet and they put another stranger in the room with me.

01:21:08

So I was like laying next to a dude I'd never really met in my life with the window wide open.

01:21:13

And I'm like, oh, this is horrible. And then I'm now, now

01:21:19

I'm with other people. Now they're starving, I'm starving. We've been traveling all day and we go to the guy.

01:21:24

We're like, hey, is there anything to eat? He goes, oh, oh yeah.

01:21:32

I think I have like a box of spaghetti, maybe in the pantry, I don't think so. Maybe, I'll go check for you.

01:21:38

And finally, we're like, look, dude, we're starving. We gotta eat something. He was like, all right, I guess we'll drive and get something to eat.

01:21:45

He was like frustrated. Don't do that.

01:21:52

Don't do that. That's not hospitality. We should live lives with one another in such a way that we are loving one another with brotherly affection.

01:22:02

We're outdoing each other with honor. We are seeing others as more important than ourselves. And that is a daily dying you're gonna have to do because trust me, there are some weird people in the

01:22:11

Christian church. I said it. There are people that, let's be honest, it's just not your cup of tea, right?

01:22:24

And you're not called to be best friends with everybody. As a matter of fact, that's a really unwise thing to do.

01:22:30

But you are called to have given them affection, to outdo them with honor, to love them, and to be generous to one another, to be generous to one another, to constantly seek to care for one another's needs.

01:22:43

Now, you're gonna do that daily, with inviting people, caring for those needs. When you see something come up, someone's car breaks down, somebody should be the first to say,

01:22:50

I can handle that, I can deal with that, I can care for them. This person's in a desperate situation, I'm gonna be generous to them,

01:22:56

I'm gonna care for them. It also is gonna be found in how you give, in how you give.

01:23:02

You see how quiet it got in here just now? Let's talk turkey. Let's talk serious as a church.

01:23:10

When we started Apologia Church, again, we were a drug rehab church plant.

01:23:16

Everybody that was at Apologia Church were all in rehab, they were all in halfway houses, they had no money, we had no money.

01:23:23

We were trusting God day by day by day to take care of their needs, and to take care of our needs.

01:23:31

And what God did was he sent people to us that didn't even go to our church, that took care of our church.

01:23:38

So if somebody needed to pay for their halfway house, I didn't have it, I was trying to find how I was gonna get dinner the night for my kids.

01:23:44

I didn't know how it was gonna happen. But they have to have this need cared for, and we would pray and ask God, he'd show up. We had to take care of our church body, their needs.

01:23:52

We had to put people up in houses, we had to pay medical bills, we had to feed people, but we didn't have it. God had to provide it from the sky.

01:23:58

He just dropped it out of the sky at times. People who didn't even go to our church, you need to know this, our entire church early on was funded from people who did not go to our church.

01:24:12

And years into our church plant, we had to have a heart -to -heart with our church. We had, you know, like 75, 100 people at our church, and our entire budget every week was being funded by two people.

01:24:27

One of them didn't even go to our church. They lived in Chicago. And it happened like that for a while, and we had to have a heart -to -heart with our church and say, look, we can't take care of the needs of our body, you guys.

01:24:38

We can't take care of those needs unless we are all worshiping to God together with our money, we can't.

01:24:44

Do you know that this year alone, this is all the glory of God, and you're part of this work too, just I want you to praise God for this. This year alone at Apologia in Arizona, this year alone, we've given away over $75 ,000 to our church members to pay for their food, to pay for their houses, to pay for their cars, to get them out of bad situations.

01:25:03

We've given away over $75 ,000. It's June. The only reason we were able to do that is because we are worshiping

01:25:13

God together with our money, all of us, including the pastors. We are worshiping, when that thing comes around as a church body, that's worship, or it's not.

01:25:25

And I want to just give you a personal confession here. I haven't said this a lot out loud, but I'll say it to you as a young church plant. I'll say it to you.

01:25:31

I was the guy who was just wrapped up in apologetics and theology and seminary, hitting the streets and teaching and all the rest.

01:25:40

I'm a young man, you know, I'm a young man, 25 years old, I'm the guy that everyone goes to and they say, hey, where does the

01:25:46

Bible say this? And I'd be happy to say, oh, that's from here. I learned this in seminary. I was happy to go on the street and do battle and do all the rest.

01:25:53

And you know what? I never gave, never, totally in sin.

01:26:01

Because I was so arrogant as to think, well, I know I serve God, I worship God. I go out in the streets,

01:26:06

I preach the gospel, I study all this theology, I do all this stuff. And then one day, a pastor that I highly respected, he was a godly man, very intimate with Jesus, had a life of worship.

01:26:17

He said in a sermon one Sunday, he said, if you wanna show me how truly spiritual you are and how much you actually believe this, show me your pocketbook, show me your checkbook.

01:26:33

That nailed me as a young, zealous man who loved

01:26:38

God, did evangelism, defended the faith, all the rest, and never actually worshiped God in the offering.

01:26:44

It never happened. Because the truth is, if you would have ever looked at my bank account related to my spirituality, you would have never seen anything outgoing to the church.

01:26:55

Never. I always made excuses for myself. Well, this is my giving. I'm giving my

01:27:01

Friday night out on Mill Avenue to go preach the gospel, and I never actually worshiped

01:27:07

God in the offering. And remember this, as a church, the offering is a moment where the community comes together to worship

01:27:14

God or not. Or not.

01:27:20

And I'll end with this. I know that it's especially difficult in this context, where so many of you in this room, before you were saved and you came to Christ, you were abused in a context, abused in a man -made religious system that taught you, you will give by command, and you will do it so that you're seen as righteous, so that all is well with you in the group.

01:27:45

We'll have the meeting to see how you're doing with your tithe. Well, now you're in Christ and you recognize none of that would have got you righteousness but from God in the first place.

01:27:56

But you need to be transformed and renewed in your mind to see in the Christian church, in a biblical

01:28:02

New Testament church, every aspect is worship. Everything, the singing is worship.

01:28:11

The response to this message is worship or it's not. When it's time for the offering, that's worship or it's not.

01:28:21

And when you're going to do the offering as a believer in a solid New Testament church, when you're going to that offering, you're not doing it to score points with God.

01:28:30

You're not even doing it to call God down to have him do your bidding. You're not doing it to make

01:28:36

God better than he is. You are worshiping God because the whole earth is

01:28:43

God's, all of its fullness, everything belongs to God. You're his creature and he calls you to worship him with your first fruits.

01:28:51

He calls you to worship him in the offering. And do you know what? When God's people are faithful in that, of course there's blessings in that.

01:29:02

A whole lot of mouths are fed because God's people are faithful in the offering. A whole lot of homes are paid for.

01:29:10

People are kept with a roof over their head because God's people are faithful. You know,

01:29:15

I can say, listen, think about it. We had a meeting last year. We had our church meeting, members meeting.

01:29:23

We talked about all that God has done, all the blessings. We're not a big church, guys. I don't know if you've ever been to Arizona and seen it.

01:29:29

It's not a big church. We're not a megachurch. We're, on a good day, what,

01:29:35

Luke? Like a good, 650? It's not a megachurch. We had done this, our budget, we had given away as a smaller church, we had given away since the last meeting, we had given away like $200 ,000 to our church, to our church members, able to,

01:29:55

I'm telling you, there were things, we were paying for medical expenses, we were paying for adoptions, we were paying for funerals, we were paying for food, we were paying for so much for our church body.

01:30:08

And the only reason we could do that and be that generous with our body and care for their needs is because, as a body, we were all worshiping

01:30:16

God with our money. So abandon the thinking, as a church body, that you can purchase righteousness from God, that somehow you can make him better than he is, or somehow that you're giving to somehow make the community see you as hot, spiritual stuff.

01:30:34

No, every time you and I go to the offering, we are worshiping God. We're worshiping God, like we are with our art, like we are with our businesses, like we are with our evangelism, like we are with our songs.

01:30:46

All of life is worship, or it's not. And one last word, and I know it's six o 'clock already, is that an hour and a half?

01:30:55

That's an hour and a half, okay, all right. One last word of encouragement to you as your brother, just so pleased with what

01:31:03

God is doing here in Utah, one of the things that you have to have a firm commitment against and put it down as much as you possibly can within you is be aware of how the enemy will use gossip and slander among you to divide you.

01:31:18

What is gossip? Gossip isn't a clear accusation. Gossip is more like a subtle swipe at a person's dignity or reputation, right?

01:31:33

Like someone's, as a mom, my little woman's group gets together, and one of the women isn't making an accusation, she just says to someone like, did you see

01:31:43

Lucy, are there any Lucys in this church? No Lucys? Good, picked a good name, okay. Did you see

01:31:48

Lucy? I just don't know if she's ever had any training in this. Her kids don't really seem like they're ruled over by her really well, but I don't know, right?

01:31:57

That's like the little jab, it's the little swipe, it's the little attempt to take down someone's dignity.

01:32:03

It's not an actual accusation, it's just a swipe, it's just a slow taking down of the person's dignity and their reputation, that's gossip.

01:32:13

Let that breed, you've let the enemy in, he'll destroy your fellowship. Slander is actual accusation, slander is an abomination.

01:32:23

God hates lying lips, God hates the one who divides brothers and sisters, and it happens more often within the

01:32:30

Christian community, slander will destroy a church. I've seen churches split, I've seen churches get erased from existence, literally, they don't even exist anymore as churches, because of faction building and slander amongst the body.

01:32:45

Put it to death. You and I should have a commitment to the law word of God that says we assume everybody's innocence until there is proof of guilt, where's that come?

01:32:56

Old and New Testament, it's in both of them, it's that you don't receive accusations against people unless it's on the basis of two to three independent lines of witness and evidence, right?

01:33:08

That means that just because somebody says something, doesn't mean it's true. Proverbs 18, 17 is a very good thing to live your life by, brothers and sisters.

01:33:18

One person's case sounds right, sounds true, until another one comes to examine them. You ever been in a situation like that before?

01:33:24

You heard a story about someone, you're like, oh dang, and then all of a sudden, you go back and you go, oh wait, they were actually the innocent one, and there was the guilty one,

01:33:32

Amber Heard, right? You know what I'm saying? Sorry, I'm just trying to see how many of you guys are listening.

01:33:39

But you know what I'm talking about, like a situation like that, even most recently, this crazy circus that's online with Amber Heard, Johnny Depp thing, like that's a perfect example, like accusation goes lobbing out into the community, everyone goes, oh my gosh, what a monster, and then you hear the other side, you go, wait a minute, maybe not such a monster, wait a second, maybe you're actually the monster.

01:33:59

Now you realize you really need to listen and assume people's innocence until you have proof of what?

01:34:05

Proof of guilt, which means that if someone brings to you something that seems slanderous or accusatory, you should say, not from my ears, go talk to Pastor Wade, go talk to that person directly,

01:34:18

I'll leave you with this, I think it's a very good thing, my friend Doug Wilson said that his mother, godly woman, his father

01:34:24

Jim just passed away, he was a pastor, godly man, Pastor Doug said this, his mom used to have a pattern as a pastor's wife, where she'd be in little women's groups, and women would be talking, and you'd have someone sort of whisper, like, hey, did you know such and such did this?

01:34:43

And she would say, oh, she did, let's go talk to her right now, right? Good strategy, because then how many times people would say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no,

01:34:55

I am so sorry, and then she would talk to him about slander, that's slander, if you're not part of the solution, you shouldn't be talking about it, okay?

01:35:06

As brothers and sisters, to guard this work, you need to guard yourself against your own sin, your own pride, be willing to be corrected at times, that's wisdom, by the way, fools despise wisdom and correction, don't be a fool, be willing to be corrected, do it with humility, and when it comes to things like affection and hospitality, give it liberally, give it liberally, as much as you possibly can, and when it comes to gossip and slander, let it not even be named among you, and you will protect what

01:35:39

God is doing here, let's pray. Father, I pray that you bless, Lord, the word that went out today, thank you,

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Lord, for giving me the privilege to do so, we love you, Lord, and what you're doing with this church, glorify yourself, Lord, in this body, in Jesus' name, amen.