John 8:13-30 (How To Go To Hell In 4 Easy Steps)

The Shepherd's Church

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If you will, turn with me to the Gospel of John 8, verses 13 -30.

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As we're going to examine a larger section of text today than what we normally look at. Now, why are we looking at a larger section of text?

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Because I believe that this has a consistent theme running throughout these passages.

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And the theme is laid out for us in verse 21, where Jesus says,

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I go away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sins.

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Where I am, you cannot come. Now, we've heard

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Jesus speaking this way before in John 7 -34, where he says, you will seek me, and you will not find me.

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And where I am, you cannot come. And as we discussed in those passages a couple weeks back, that this is

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Jesus forbidding those people from heaven. He is looking at them and saying, you're going to seek me, but you're not going to find me.

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You're going to try hard, but you're not going to see me anymore. You're not going to be able to follow me. You're not going to be able to come where I'm going.

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You are locked out of heaven. No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you look for me, no matter how many books you read, no matter how many seminary courses you go to, no matter how much you pray, he is saying to them, they are forbidden from heaven.

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They will knock, but the door will not be opened to them. Where he is going, they cannot come.

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That's what we spoke about a few weeks ago. Now, where Jesus is going, he's going to die.

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Six months after the passage in John 7, Jesus is going to be arrested and beaten and crucified.

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But ultimately, he's not just going to a crucifixion, he's going to a resurrection. He's going to rise from the dead.

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And ultimately, even more than that, he's going to rise to heaven, to sit at the right hand of God and reign over his eternal kingdom.

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He's going back to the Father. That's where he's going. That's where he says, you will seek for me, but you won't find me.

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You will try to follow me, but you can't come where I'm going. You can't come to heaven. He says they will seek him, but they will not find him.

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There's not even the faintest possibility that Jesus leaves for that option. It's a certainty.

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Now, there is a difference between John 7, 24 and John 8. John 7, 24 gives us a lot of details that Jesus is going to die.

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He's going to rise from the dead. He's going to ascend to heaven. He's going to do all of these things. And there's kind of a sort of a little bit of a subtle undertone in John 7 that the elect, that God's people, are going to be able to seek him.

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They're going to be able to find him. And where he goes, they will end up going. So there's this, even under the surface of such a hard passage, there's this idea in John 7 that God's people, because of Christ, will be able to seek him, will be able to follow him, and will be in heaven.

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John 8 does not speak about these things. John 8 is not to the elect.

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John 8 is not to God's people. This is describing the destination of the wicked.

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It says, I go away and you will seek me and you will die in your sins.

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He's talking to the unbeliever. He's talking about those who remain in their sins.

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Those who are doomed to roam the earth without him and eventually and ultimately doomed to wander the halls of hell for an eternity.

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They will not find him in this life. They will not find him in the next. That is what

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John 8 is saying. And because they're going to die in their sins, they're going to have no redemption.

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Because if you die in your sins and those sins have not been paid for, those are cosmic acts of treason against God.

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That is insurrection against his holiness. And if you die in that state without your sins being paid for, then you die as enemies of a holy

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God. And if you die as an enemy of a holy God, you will not live with him.

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You will live abandoned by him. You will be on a highway to hell with no exit ramp that can get you off of it.

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You will die in your sins. That's what Jesus is saying. You'll seek me. You will not find me.

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And you will die in your sins. They have no choice in the matter. Jesus has already decided it. Now, that's a hard passage.

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But it's true. It's in his word. Today, we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about verses 13 through 30, and we're going to break it up into three sections.

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The first is how to get to hell in four easy steps. If this were a BuzzFeed sermon, this would make perfect sense.

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Clickbait sermons. First point, how do you go to hell in four easy steps?

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The second point is, what is hell? We're going to talk about four realities of hell.

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And then the final thing we're going to talk about. After we've talked about four ways to go to hell and four realities of hell, we're going to talk about the one way to get to heaven, and it's through the way, the truth, the life, and that's

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Jesus Christ. So, let's turn to John 8 together.

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Verse 13. So the Pharisee said to him, You are testifying about yourself.

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Your testimony is not true. Jesus answered and said to them, Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true.

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I know where I came from, and I know where I'm going, but you do not know where I come from or where I'm going.

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You judge according to the flesh. I'm not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone in it, but I am the

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Father who sent me. Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true.

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I am He who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me too.

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So they were saying to him, Where's your father? Jesus answered, You know neither me nor my father.

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If you knew me, you would know my father also. These words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple, and no one seized him because his hour had not yet come.

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Then he said to them again, I go away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.

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So the Jews were saying, Surely he will not kill himself, will he? Since he says where I'm going, you cannot come.

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And he was saying to them, You are from below, and I am from above. You are of this world, and I am not of this world.

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Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

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He repeats it three times for certainty. They were saying to him, Who are you?

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Jesus said to them, What have I been saying to you from the beginning? I have many things to speak in a judge concerning you, but he who sent me is true.

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And the things which I heard from him, these I speak to the world. They did not realize that he had been speaking to them about the father.

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So Jesus said, When you lift up the son of man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on my own initiative.

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But I speak these things as the father taught me, and he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

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And as he spoke these things, many came to believe. Lord, under the surface of this passage is eternal realities that will result in not just physical life and death, but eternal life and death.

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Lord, I pray that we would examine them soberly. I pray that we would examine them carefully. I pray that we would look at the truths that you have revealed in your word, and that,

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Lord, you would speak through your word. That, Lord, you would move beyond this shabby instrument, and that your voice would be the loudest, and that your voice would reign supreme, and that your word would echo through the walls of this church, and that,

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Lord, it would cause us to praise you. Lord, if there's someone here who does not know you, or maybe thinks that they know you,

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Lord, I pray that you would shake them out of slumber. Lord, I pray that if there's anyone listening to this who's not a

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Christian, that, Lord, you would save them. Lord, I pray that salvation would happen even outside these walls as we go out into the world as missionaries, because hell and heaven lie in the balance, and you have appointed us to declare your good news in your word.

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Lord, let us never shy away from declaring your word. Let us not cower at the parts of your word that are hard or difficult.

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Let us be bold instruments that declare the majesty of your gospel, today and forever.

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In Christ's name, amen. At the heart of John's book is a theme running from beginning to end of rejection.

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John 1, they came and they rejected Jesus as the light. They said that men love the darkness rather than the light, so they rejected him.

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John 2, Jesus rejects them. He says he knows the heart that's inside of man, and he would not entrust himself to man, so therefore

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Jesus himself is rejecting them. John 8, we get to right here, is the final rejection, where it means death in sins, and we have to understand that that passage, that phrase, doesn't just mean physical death where we become worm food for trees.

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That is an eternal reality that is hanging over this text. Eternal death in sin.

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And as we said, there's four reasons that that's the case. There's four ways that you can go to hell, and if you do any one of these four things, just one of them, then you will end up eternally separated from God.

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The first way to go to hell is to have a wrong view of Jesus Christ.

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It says in verse 13 and 14, So the Pharisees said to him, You are testifying about yourself.

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Your testimony is not true. Jesus answered and said to them, Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true.

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For I know where I came from and I know where I'm going, but you do not know where I came from or where I am going. They have rejected the testimony of Jesus Christ and not just the testimony at Tabernacles where he says,

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I am the light of the world. But if they rejected that, that would be enough. They rejected not just the fact that he's the light, not just the fact that he's the living water that's going to supply them with all their needs.

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They have totally and utterly rejected the testimony of Jesus Christ. And what is the testimony of Jesus Christ?

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It's what he said about himself this whole time. They've rejected what

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Jesus has said about himself. And in so doing, they have doomed themselves to an eternity separated from him.

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They've rejected his testimony that he's the lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world, that he has divine authority in order to flip over temple tables in John chapter two.

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They've rejected his divine wisdom in John chapter three, his mission to the Gentiles and the Samaritans in John chapter four, his divine power to heal in John chapter five, his divine kingship in his kingdom in John chapter six.

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And in John chapter seven, we introduced the idea of them rejecting his testimony. They have totally and utterly rejected everything that Jesus has to say about himself.

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And when they do that, they don't just reject what Jesus says. They reject what Moses says because Moses was pointing to him.

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And they reject what the prophets said because the prophets were prophesying about him. And they reject what

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David said because David was singing and playing music about Jesus.

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They have rejected the sum total testimony of God's word about his one and only son.

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And they're damned for it. That teaches us something.

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Because when we reject Christ, we're not just rejecting a man.

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He is the man. The one and only son of God, the God man. But we're rejecting the entire word of God.

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Everything that God, by the authority of his Holy Spirit, desired that we would know about Jesus, when we reject him, we reject

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God. Now for us today, we can take everything that Jesus said about himself and boil it down into 14 essential doctrines about Jesus that if you do not affirm each and every single one of them, you will be separated from God.

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These are essential doctrines. 14 of them. And you're like, I can't remember a shopping list that goes above 7.

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That's okay. You don't have to remember each and every word that I say. It's the concepts that are important.

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The first is that Jesus Christ is divine. He is equal with God.

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He does the works of God. He has the attributes of God. He is loving, perfect, holy, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent.

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He has the attributes of God. He makes claims throughout the Gospels to be

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God. He even accepts worship from other people showing that he is

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God. That would have been idolatry if he were anything short of God. When Thomas at the end of the Gospel of John cries out, my

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Lord and my God, Jesus does not rebuke him because he's God.

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That's an essential doctrine. If you don't believe Jesus is God, then you'll die in your sins.

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That's the first. The second essential doctrine that we must understand if we're going to not go to hell is the humanity of Christ.

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Jesus is not only divine, meaning that he was powerful enough to save us. He was human.

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That means he could stand in our place. He was human so that he could be a perfect sacrifice for you and I.

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And we learn this all throughout the Gospels about the humanity of Jesus Christ. The prophets prophesied of his divinity, but they also prophesied of his humanity.

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He had a normal human body. He had weaknesses that are common to the human condition.

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He was hungry at times. He was thirsty at times. He had to fall asleep.

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He fell asleep in the middle of a storm, and they had to wake him up. He was fully God and fully man, truly

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God, truly man. And on the cross, he died.

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His lungs stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating, and they tossed him in a tomb, and he was dead for three days.

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This is an essential doctrine, and although it is difficult for us because none of us understand what it means to be fully

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God and fully man at the exact same time, they're both true. They're both true.

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And if you don't hold both as true, you don't know the Christ of Scriptures. That's the second doctrine.

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The third is the virgin birth. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, then Genesis 3, 15 is not true, and the other prophecies like Isaiah are not true.

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And if those prophecies are not true, then Jesus' ministry is invalidated. If he's not born of a virgin, then he inherited the sin nature of his father,

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Adam. It says that Adam is the head of all who are in sin, and all die in Adam, because the male seed is what transfers the sinful flesh to each and every single offspring.

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So when Jesus died without a male father, contributing to his birth, he did not inherit the sinful nature of Adam, and he became the father of a new covenant, a new head.

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He was born sinless. Had that not happened, he would have been born in sin, and he could not save us.

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He had to be born of a virgin. If you reject that, you reject everything. The fourth doctrine is the sinlessness of Jesus.

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He was born not in sin. He was born perfect, but he still lived perfectly. Every moment of his life, every breath through his lungs, there was not a toddler temper tantrum that set him at odds with God.

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He must be God. I have toddlers. Not one impure thought, not one temptation caved to, not a single lie, not a single half -truth.

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He did in 33 years, every day, every second, every moment, what we cannot do for a single hour.

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He was perfect. To not believe this is to limit his sacrifice.

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It's to limit his sufficiency, and it's ultimately to throw out the entire Gospel. It must be believed, or you do not know

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Christ. The fifth doctrine is that Christ is the prophet.

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You may not have heard this term before, but he's the one who brings the words of God to the people of God.

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He's the final prophet. He's the one who comes, and he ends the Old Testament covenant era, and he gives us new revelation from God.

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Thus saith the Lord, ended with Jesus Christ, and he gave us a good and sufficient and final word.

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He's the prophet, the final prophet. He's the true high priest. Because you and I could not live in relationship with God in the old temple covenant system.

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Lambs and bulls and goats were not sufficient to take away our sin. So we needed a better high priest.

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We needed a man who would be like the Old Testament priest and would bring us and bear us into the presence of God.

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In the Old Testament book of Exodus, I think it's chapter 28. I didn't write it down, so maybe it is.

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Maybe it's not. But in that passage, it talks about the high priest's clothing.

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And in his clothing, he has two shoulder pads. It looks like he's going to war because he is a sinner entering into the presence of God.

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And in those shoulder pads are six stones on this side and six stones on this side.

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And on those stones are written the names of Israel. The symbolic representation is that one man is bearing the people into the presence of God.

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This is who Jesus Christ is. One perfect man who bears his people perfectly and forever into the presence of God.

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And he's not a priest of Aaron. He's a priest after the order of Melchizedek, which means he is better, his priesthood is eternal, and it can never end.

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If we don't believe that he is our mediating priest, then we are locked out of the presence of God with no hope of ever getting in.

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He's the true king after the line of David. And as a king, he brought a better kingdom so that you and I could be citizens.

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If we are not in the kingdom of God and we don't believe that Jesus is a good and great and righteous king, then we're still under the tyranny of Satan.

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We're still lost. That's number seven. The eighth essential doctrine is that Christ experienced humiliation.

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It says in Philippians 2 that even though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but he humbled himself and he made himself in the form of a slave so that he could come to earth and rescue us.

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You see, God for all of eternity lived in heaven. There was nothing but perfection for Jesus Christ, and yet he wrapped himself with corruptible, broken, limited human flesh.

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He humbled himself to the point of being born into the story that he himself authored.

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And he humbled himself even further than that because he not only lived in this wretched world that we live in, he also allowed the creatures that he created to murder him.

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He was humiliated on a cross, hung naked, despised, scorned, beaten, pierced, broken for us.

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If we don't believe that that's what Jesus went through for us, we're not Christians. We're just not.

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Along with his humiliation, Jesus Christ, the ninth doctrine, is Jesus Christ experienced an incredible exaltation.

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Like I said earlier, he didn't just go to be crucified, he went to be resurrected.

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And he was exalted in an exalted body in his resurrection. He told Mary, don't touch me right now because I've got to appear before God.

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His body experienced a change in his resurrection so that now he had an exalted body, a glorified body.

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And 40 days after all of his glorified appearances to his apostles where he was appearing to them as a resurrected

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Christ, he was exalted by ascending to the right hand of God, sitting on the throne of God, reigning over the kingdom of God until he stands up and he returns as exalted

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Lord. The time that Jesus stands is when human history ends.

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Because ever since the resurrection and ascension, he's been sitting down at the throne, reigning over his kingdom.

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So when Christ stands, the end is here. History is over.

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And it says in Philippians that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess this exalted

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Lord of glory. Whether we do so willingly and joyfully because we've been saved and we see the author of our faith, we see the one that we've been worshiping for a lifetime and we bow down before him and we confess with our tongue and we enter into heaven or whether in that moment we're made to bow down out of terror.

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We're made to bow down because of his holiness. We're made to bow down in our fear and we confess, dear

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God, what have I done? And we're cast out into the eternal darkness.

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This Lord is exalted and how you respond to him both now and in eternity matters.

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These doctrines are essential. The 10th doctrine that's essential is that Christ is sacrifice.

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There's five basic doctrines that deal with this or four basic doctrines that deal with this that Christ is the sacrifice.

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The first is that just in general, he is the sacrifice that we've all been waiting for. He's the one that fulfills every type and every shadow of the

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Old Testament. The Old Testament sacrificial system was to bring us back into fellowship with God.

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But the prophets say that the blood of bulls and goats are not enough. Every time you sin, an animal had to die because it was unlimited sacrifice.

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And you look around at your flocks and you look around at your herds and you realize that you don't have that many left if you're honest with yourself and if you're really doing what

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God has called you to do. So maybe you fake it a little bit. Maybe you fluff through it a little bit. But your sin is so serious to God that it requires death.

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So Jesus Christ, the perfect, ultimate, holy sacrifice ended all sacrifices.

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That's why there is no more temple. It's not just because the Romans decided to burn it to the ground.

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It's because God Himself decided to end the Old Testament system. There's no need for the blood of bulls and goats when the blood of Jesus Christ is authored a better covenant.

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He's our true Passover Lamb. He's the one. Remember the Passover and the Old Testament where the blood is painted over the doorpost so that the angel of death will pass over.

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Jesus Christ has painted the blood of the Lamb on our hearts so that death itself passes over us and we enter into eternal life.

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If you don't believe that, then death is coming for you and death will not pass over you and death will grab you and wrestle you like a

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Louisiana alligator down to the bottom and you will be dead. He's the hope of the burnt offerings.

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Do you know in the burnt offerings they burnt the animal whole and then they carried it outside of the city towards the east.

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Jesus was sacrificed whole on a cross. He was carried out of the city and buried in a garden temple to the east.

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He's the hope of the burnt offerings. He's the true grain offering. The grain offering represented provision of God.

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He's growing our crops. He's giving us food. He's supplying us. Jesus came and said, I am the bread, the living bread.

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I am the provision of God. Bread is not enough. You have to live on every word of God.

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Jesus is the one that God provided for us. He's the hope of the grain offering.

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Finally, he's the true peace offering, the true sin offering, the true guilt offering because he gives us peace with God.

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He forgives our sins that we have as an offense to God. And he doesn't just forgive our sins.

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He heals our guilt and our shame that we have perpetrated against God. All of that is in that 10th doctrine that he's our perfect sacrifice.

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But in that sacrifice, he's also atoned for us. This is number 11. Christ has atoned for his people.

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If you don't believe that, you're not a Christian. If you don't believe that, you've not got forgiveness of sins. J .I.

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Packer said, atonement means making amends. It means blotting out our offense and giving satisfaction for the wrong that has been done, reconciling to oneself the alienated other and restoring the disrupted relationship.

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If it were not for his death on the cross, making amends for our sin and reconciling us back into relationship with God, there would be no salvation and our faith would be in vain and we may as well just go home and eat, drink, and be merry.

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It's not important. Number 12. These are maybe terms you've never heard before.

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Maybe terms that you are likely to get confused. That's okay. I do too. But Christ is our expiation and our propitiation.

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Expiation means that he takes our guilt. Propitiation means he takes

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God's wrath. So the point is that Jesus stands in between us and God and he takes our sin, the vile, ugly, wretched sin poured out on him from us, and because of that he takes

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God's wrath protecting us like a mighty dam keeping a floodwater from landing on a small child.

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He stands right in between us and he takes our guilt and he takes God's wrath so that we can walk away free.

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If we don't believe that, then we're not Christians and there is no hope.

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The final two, both deal with sacrifice as well, is that Christ is our substitute meaning that he traded places with us.

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He died on the cross that bore our name and he let us sit down as princes and princesses, kings and queens on chairs that we should have never sat down upon.

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He took our offense and gave us his good pleasure. He took our perversions and gave us his perfections.

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Without that great exchange, there is no hope. I hear many, many, many people talking about how

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Jesus forgave us of our sins. That's the whole game, right? But if you don't also couple that with he gave us something in return, then we still have no hope.

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Jesus Christ could have wiped out an infinite debt so that we stumble into heaven with a zero balance.

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That's not enough. If he doesn't also deposit in us his righteousness so that the debt is not only paid but so that our wage that we need to enter into heaven to be with God is also paid.

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It's both. He takes our sin and cancels our debt and then he deposits in us his righteousness.

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He's our substitute, our perfect substitute. And because of that, which all of these doctrines point, all 14 of them, all 13 of them point to this one, he is our reconciliation.

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He came, he lived, he died, was sacrificed, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven. He did all of this so that he could reconcile you and I to God.

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And again, we don't need to know all of the theological terms. We just need to know the point of all of these doctrines is that he came and did what we could not do and he gave us what we could not earn so that he could reconcile us to a

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God that we did not deserve to know. Any other belief than what we've just stated about Christ is an imaginary Jesus.

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It's a made up Jesus. It's not a biblical Jesus. And imaginary Jesuses don't save you.

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How much better to simply believe the biblical Christ? That's the first way that you can go to heaven or you can go to hell is reject one of those doctrines, just one.

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The second way that you can go to hell and it's easy as well to do, the second easy way is to remain in your flesh.

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Think about it. If you reject one of those 14 doctrines and you reject Christ and if you reject

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Christ, then the way that you're going to be saved is through perfection. The way that you're going to be saved is through you've rejected

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Jesus and the 14 doctrines that he did for us and therefore now you are on the hook and you are responsible for those 14 doctrines all by yourself.

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You need to be God in order to be powerful enough to save yourself but you're not that so let's move on to the next one.

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You need to be human. Okay, good. You check that box. So far so good. You need to be born of a virgin so that you're not born into your sin nature.

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Anyone done that? I'd like to meet your mother. I will tell her that she is a liar.

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Just in case you could do that one, you have to perfectly obey the law from the moment that you were born until the moment that you die.

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Again, no toddler temper tantrums. You have to understand

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Scripture like no one else has understood Scripture and understand God in a way that pleases God. The point is you can't.

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We've only been through four of them and you can't. We have an inability that exists fundamentally down into our nature that we cannot please

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God. And we not only know that from Scripture. Romans says that there's none righteous, no, not one.

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There's none that does what pleases God. We know that from Scripture. Human experience teaches us this as well.

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There's not a single day that you didn't do something that you're like, why did I do that? There's not a single day that you don't raise your voice or tell some kind of fib or do something shady or act in such a way towards your spouse or toward your loved one or toward someone else or cut someone off and then say, serves them right.

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There's not a day where you don't do something where you're like, where did that come from? I'm a

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Christian. I didn't act like it just then. Maybe you're fudging your golf score.

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I mean, we... There's not a day that goes by where we don't do something.

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Like Paul says, we do the things that we don't want to do and we don't do the things that we do want to do. There's not a day.

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John says, if you say that you have no sin, you're a liar. We don't have what it takes.

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We don't have the power. We don't have the intelligence. We don't have the ability and we don't have the virtue in order to save ourselves and rescue ourselves.

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So therefore, if you're going to reject Jesus, then you're going to live in your flesh.

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And if you're going to live in your flesh, then you are doomed. That's the second easy way to go to hell is to reject

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Christ and live in your flesh because your flesh is not enough. John 8, 15 through 16 says, you judge according to the flesh.

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That's the indictment. Jesus is saying your judgment is perverted and it's fleshly.

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He says, I'm not judging anyone, but even if I do, my judgments are true for I'm not alone in it, but I am the

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Father who sent me. His judgments are not fleshly because His judgments are the Father's.

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You see the juxtaposition. He's saying you are damned because you are judging according to the flesh.

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My judgments are from God. Now there's so much we could say in this passage.

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His testimony is true. His judgments are true. All 14 attributes of Jesus are true. We trust that if we believe in God, but they did not trust that because they could not believe.

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Jesus said, you will seek me, but I will not allow you to find me. They will attempt to follow

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Him, but He will not allow them to find Him. They are going to die in their sins because they live in the flesh.

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And because Jesus is leaving them in their flesh. He's not rescuing them out of their flesh.

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How does someone be rescued out of the flesh? By the Spirit of God coming in and dwelling inside of them.

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And if you don't have the Spirit of God, then your flesh is not pleasing to God. Look at what Paul says in Romans 8.

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For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace because the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God.

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It does not subject itself to the law of God for it is not able to do so.

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For those who are in the flesh cannot please God. What Paul is saying is that salvation cannot come from the flesh because you cannot on your own please

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God. John 3, Jesus talks about the Spirit and the sovereignty of the

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Holy Spirit that He goes wherever He wills. If He has not willed to go into a person, then that person remains in the flesh.

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And if that person remains in the flesh, they cannot please God. But if the Holy Spirit has determined to go inside of a person, then they will live.

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That's what He's saying. We don't make a decision for God and then get the

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Spirit. The Spirit awakens us to make a decision for God. Without that, we can't.

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It says the flesh cannot please God. How could you choose God in the flesh if you can't please God? You can't.

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Only if the Spirit comes inside of you can you choose God. Because your flesh is that toxic and that perverted and that mangled.

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Sin is so serious. We often don't give it the credit that it deserves. It's so serious that it renders us dead.

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Jesus doesn't walk up to a blind person and tells them to open their eyes.

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He walks up to a corpse. And they can't respond to Him.

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And they can't choose Him. And He looks at them and He performs a resurrection.

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And then when they open their eyes, then they choose Him. Then they run to Him. That is what happened to you and I when we were saved.

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We were dead in our trespasses and He raised us to life.

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And when our eyes were opened, then we cried out to Jesus. Then we cried out to God. Then we ran to our

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Savior. Before that, we were dead. We were living in the flesh. And again,

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God is just. Even for those who are never awakened, God is just.

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God didn't have to save anyone. He says that in the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree, you will surely die.

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He didn't have to save a single human person. We chose our sin and it wasn't by accident.

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You hear politicians all the time saying, oh, it was a mistake that I cheated on my wife. A mistake is when you trip and you fall into traffic.

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I don't know anyone who's made a mistake by having an affair. You don't trip and fall anywhere. You choose it.

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You're not manipulated by it. You love it. Human beings love sin and are addicted to sin and are drawn by sin.

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And if it's not for the work of Jesus Christ, and it cost him everything, if it's not for that, then we're lost.

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We're in our flesh. I say this even more starkly because I say that one of these four doctrines is enough to send you to hell.

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Let's say you believe all 14 of those truths about Jesus and you don't have the

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Spirit of God inside of you. You're not going to heaven. I've said this so many times.

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There's people who know the Bible better than any of us in this room and they don't know Christ because it's not about human cunning.

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It's not about human intelligence. It's not about human will. It's not about human religiosity.

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Salvation is the work of God and God alone. The central verse in the

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Bible, if you were to count the pages, depending on your typeset, is in the middle of the book of Jonah.

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It says, Salvation belongs to God. At the heart of the Bible is a God -centered salvation.

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And without God's work in our life, we cannot be saved. We'll be puffed up in pride.

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We'll think that community service can fix the disease that's been inflicted upon our soul.

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We'll look at our neighbor and we'll say, I'm better than him. I'm better than her. And yet one sin, one sin is enough to separate us eternally from God because he's infinite.

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And a sin against an infinite God requires an infinite punishment. If you punch someone on the street, let's say that they're low on the socioeconomic totem pole.

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This is just how our world works. I'm using the example. You may get charged with a crime, but it won't be very severe.

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If you punch a governor, you will be arrested. There will be a team of people who pounce on you and pile on top of you.

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If you punch a president, you'll be locked up and they'll throw away the key.

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Even us humans understand that the degree of significance of the person dictates the degree of significance of the crime and the consequence.

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An infinite God that we've sinned against, that we've spit in his face, requires an infinite punishment unless Christ spares us and saves us.

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And we know that we need God's help to believe. I wrote on Facebook yesterday this example that I'm going to share with you.

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But we need a heart transplant. The Bible says we have a heart of stone. Stony hearts don't beat.

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Stony hearts don't pump blood. Stony hearts don't produce life. So we need a heart transplant.

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So if you're going to save yourself, then you need to lay on the operating table with a scalpel and you need to cut your chest open and you need to rip your own heart out and you need to put your heart back in and sew it back together all while not being alive.

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It's ridiculous. It's impossible. We need God to do the work.

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And without his power, we are living in the flesh. And that's the second way that you will be damned to hell is if you reject

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Jesus and if you live in the flesh. The third way, the third easy way that will make sure that you end up in hell is if you reject divine revelation.

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If you reject the words of the Bible. Verse 17 and 18 says this, Even in your law, this is

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Jesus talking, it has been written, that the testimony of two is true. And I am he who testifies about myself and the

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Father who sent me testifies about me. So what is going on here is that they are rejecting the

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God authored testimony of Jesus Christ. And we know in Luke 24 that Jesus opened up the entire

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Bible for his disciples and he said that all of it is all about him. So if you reject his testimony, then you reject the entire

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Bible. And if you reject the entire Bible, then you reject God's revelation for us.

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The only revelation that you and I can have to be saved. If we don't believe what the

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Bible says, then we are on a highway to hell. We've punched our ticket. If we don't know who

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Jesus is, we're damned. If we don't have the Spirit and we're living in the flesh, we're damned. And if we don't understand the

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Scriptures and the message that they say of the one and only Christ, then we are damned.

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We may approach it any number of false ways. We may enjoy its history. It may be a token of our childhood when our great grandma used to bounce us on her knee and read to us.

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It might be this family Bible that gathers dust on the shelf. We might memorize it. We might study it. We might love the details and the history of it.

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But if we do not have the Spirit of God who's awakened us to the truth of the Word of God, then we are not saved.

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We cannot underestimate the value of the book that you and I own.

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Not just the fact that precious blood was spilled by the disciples to write it.

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And precious blood was spilled by the early church to keep it and to transmit it and to collect it and to copy so that we can have it today.

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Not only that, God Himself breathed out the Word of God so that you and I could have a good revelation from God.

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We cannot overestimate the value of Holy Scripture. And if we underestimate the value, if we believe that it's not inerrant, maybe that it has errors, or if we believe that it's not inspired, that God's actual inspiration produced this book, or if we don't believe that it's sufficient for our lives, that we have to go to psychology and anthropology and all of these things in order to get our fulfillment.

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If we believe those things and we don't understand what the Bible's saying, if we don't understand that, we don't know God. There's Bible scholars today.

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A man named Bart Ehrman. Maybe you've heard of him. Bart Ehrman started out as a pastor in a

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Princeton seminary. It's a Presbyterian seminary. Kind of. And when

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Bart finished his training in Princeton, he renounced his faith. He went to the

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University of Chapel Hill, which that makes sense. I'm a Duke fan, you know. Atheist.

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That's pretty funny. He spent his whole life contributing to the study of textual criticism.

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In his scholarly work, he's a good scholar. In his popular work, don't ever read his books because they're pure and utter garbage and heresy.

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In his popular work, he foments how much he hates God. He knows a lot about the

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Bible, especially the ancient Greek language. He's lost because he doesn't have a view of the

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Bible that you and I have. It's not inspired to him. It's not inerrant to him. It's just a window into an ancient world that fascinates him, and that's not a relationship.

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There's Bible skeptics like Richard Dawkins who says that there is no

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God and that these are just myths and fantasies that you and I believe. That belief will separate him from God and one day he will be made to bow down,

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I hope, to God. It's through repentance. There's people who believe that this Bible that we hold is just a roadmap to a good life, that it's just rules for living.

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That's a nice, flowery path to hell, but it's to hell nonetheless. Thomas Jefferson, Marcion.

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Thomas Jefferson is in our history. Marcion's in the ancient history. They liked certain parts of the Bible, so they left them in.

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They hated other parts of the Bible, so they took them out. That kind of view of the Bible will send you straight to hell.

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There's so many different errors and heresies that we could enlist here when it comes just to the word of God that we would be here all year.

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My point is, is that if you reject God's revelation, you're rejecting God. If you reject

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Christ, if you live in the flesh, and if you reject God's testimony to us, then those are three easy ways that you are going to end up in hell, but the final way is where things get personal and terrifying.

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The first three are impersonal ways. They're academic ways. You can reject who Jesus is academically. You can reject who

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Jesus is and live in the flesh and refuse a relationship. And you can pursue any number of philosophies and ideologies and you can live your life with a lot of fulfillment.

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The third, you can reject the Bible because you think you're smart and because you have all of these proofs and all of these theories. Those are impersonal ways to reject

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God. But the fourth is personal and it's the ultimate rejection because it's the one that rejects

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Him. All other objections bow the knee to this one.

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This one is the ultimate rejection and it's alluded to in v. 19 of John chapter eight where the Pharisees look at Him and they say, who is your father?

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They don't know Him. Jesus says, you don't know me or my father. If you knew me, then you would know my father also.

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The greatest rejection of God is to reject the Son of God.

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To hear what He has done for you. To hear the things that He's accomplished for you.

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To see how He has bled and died for you. And to look at Him and to say,

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I don't want you. And to look at Him and to say, I'm gonna be the own Lord of my life and I'm gonna be the own author of my story and I don't want you.

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Maybe you've never said that personally, but when you reject Christ, you are rejecting

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God's most gracious gift that He has ever given to human beings who did not deserve it.

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He gave His one and only Son whom He dearly loved. And if you reject

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Him, then the Father's hand of mercy is no longer protecting you.

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Jonathan Edwards says, in our sin, the bow of God's wrath is pulled tightly.

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And the only thing keeping the arrow from flying loose and plunging into our chest is the sheer mercy of God.

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Why would you provoke the mercy of God by rejecting His beloved Son? You will make

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God a permanent enemy. The first three, again, are supporting evidence in the case against us in our sin that we have had the wrong beliefs about His Son.

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We've had wants and pride in our flesh, willfully rejected His divine revelation. But the case against you and I, if we remain in that state, will be sealed and the gavel will drop against us because of His Son.

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It's a relationship, and it's personal, and it's not just academic, and it's not just ideological.

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People go to hell ultimately because they reject the person of Jesus Christ, and God will not forgive that.

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We will be on a spiritual green mile awaiting a death sentence. Now, while this passage doesn't explicitly use the word hell, it does talk about the reality of it.

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Dead and sins means hell. It means spiritual death.

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It means an eternity separated from Christ. We know from other passages of the

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Bible that we don't just die and cease to exist. Hell is an eternal reality, which takes us to the next section.

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It's a shorter section, but it's the four realities of hell. We've talked about four ways to get to hell.

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Now we're going to talk about four realities that exist in hell when you get there, and they're awful.

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The first kind of overarching point that I want to say before I get to the first reality of hell is that they don't just begin in hell.

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They begin now for the unbeliever. Hell does not begin for the unbeliever when they die.

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Hell begins now, and you will see that in just a second. It begins at birth.

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It begins to the one who's born and to their sin and has not been ordained to eternity with God.

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Hell begins at birth, and it continues on into eternity, and I will show you that through the first reality of hell, which is divine abandonment.

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Verse 21a says, I will go away, and you will seek Me, and you will die in your sins, and where I am you cannot come.

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For the unbeliever, hell begins now because they're seeking

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Him, but they cannot find Him. They're looking for Him, but they cannot acquire

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Him. They have a lifetime of seeking after Him, but their life is going to end in utter error and permanent abandonment from God.

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Hell begins now when we are seeking and we cannot find God, and it goes into eternity where it's an eternity of not being able to find

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Him. An eternity of abandonment. Hell is the place where God's fury and His wrath are most fully manifested, but it's also the place where human beings have been totally abandoned by God.

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Now, this is a complicated thing, and I want to explain it. Hell begins now for the unbeliever in that they're seeking for Him and they can't find

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Him, and one day it will be permanent. But what is hell like? What is it like to be abandoned by God?

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I think about it like a couple who's arguing. When you have a married couple who spends all of their time arguing, they have a toxic relationship and they're devolved into that sort of dysfunction.

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That's not hell because both members are participating in the dysfunction. Hell is more like a marriage where the person that you've prostituted yourself against for a lifetime has finally decided to leave you, but they don't abandon you completely.

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They're still present. You see, the sort of awful, sad grace that's involved in a divorce is that you don't have to look at the person that you've betrayed.

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You don't have to see the hurt on their face. You don't have to see how you've broken them. Hell is different, and that God is fully present but totally inaccessible.

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You will spend an eternity separated from the one that you have denied, and His awful, furious presence will be there in full force with no relief.

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I can think of no more awful reality than that. Hell for eternity, no hope, no forgiveness.

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You can't cry out to God and hope that He'll get into an argument with you. He's totally abandoned you and yet is still there letting you sit in your sin, in your shame.

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That's the first aspect of hell. It begins now. It's a temporary abandonment by God, but it will end in a permanent, irrevocable, eternal abandonment by God again unless Christ redeems and reconciles that person.

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The second aspect of hell is an inescapable spiritual confusion.

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It's not just that you've been permanently abandoned, but you have been left in inescapable confusion and madness.

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Jesus says to the Jews, you will seek Me, but you will not find Me, and you will die in your sins.

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And they say to Him, surely He will not kill Himself, will He? Since He says, where I am going, you cannot come.

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Do you see how confused they are? They don't understand the revelation of God. They don't understand what Jesus is saying.

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They are locked in a confusion because they cannot know Him. He's already said, you will seek

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Me, but you cannot find Me. They are confused. And the confusion will not get better for them because they will never find

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Him. And the confusion will keep growing. When they crucify Jesus, they will tell lies about Him and say that He didn't rise from the dead and they'll perpetrate this lie.

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And they will die in their confusion. Their confusion will grow deeper and darker and more malignant and more perverted over the course of their life.

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It's an inescapable confusion. Just as their abandonment begins this side of heaven, their confusion begins this side of heaven and they cannot understand who

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God is. And that same confusion will last into eternity regardless of their learning, regardless of how much they study, and regardless of how much they attempt to understand

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Him. They are bound to get Him wrong. Heaven is a sort of growing intimacy.

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We're not omnipotent and we're not omniscient. So when all of those here who are blood -bought by Jesus Christ get to heaven, every day will be a day where we learn something new about Christ.

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Every day will be a day where we learn a new fact, a new feature, a new grace, and it will be beautiful and it will be awesome.

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Hell is the opposite in that every day its patrons will grow deeper and darker and more confused and more mangled and more opposed to God.

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Every day in heaven we will sense the presence of God, I think, in a deeper way, in a more awesome way, in a more beautiful way because we're not infinite like God.

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We have room to grow even in heaven. We have room to grow in our understanding of His intimacy. In hell, it is a day -by -day slide into deeper and darker abandonment and into deeper and darker madness.

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Every day in hell is worse than the day before. Hell is the multiplying of paralyzing confusions.

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And that leads to our third aspect of hell, which is utter human inability.

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Beyond abandonment and confusion that increases and darkens, we also are incapable of saving ourselves.

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Again, hell begins on earth and it moves into eternity.

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And for all those who are there, their case gets harder, the wall gets higher, the razor wire gets sharper.

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I'm using metaphors here, but the more and the longer they are there, the more inescapable it becomes so that their hope, whatever hope that there is, actually gets worse.

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Their inability increases. Their confusion increases. This is why people in hell weep and they gnash their teeth because weeping is not sufficient and gnashing is not sufficient.

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So therefore, they weep until they're angry and they gnash their teeth until they're sorrowful and they go back and forth between these awful realities for eternity because nothing satisfies them.

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The final reality is that it's permanent. We've alluded to this. John 8, 13 through 30 doesn't explicitly say this, but the rest of the testimony of Scripture surely does.

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Jesus says it plainly in Matthew 25, 46, though these will go away into eternal punishment, but they're righteous into eternal life.

01:00:27

Revelation 20, 10. This is John. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also.

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And they, and later on in Revelation, along with every other person who's rejected Christ, will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

01:00:49

Revelation 14, 11 says the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast in his image and whoever receives the mark of his name.

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And we don't have time to go into the mark of the beast here, but very simply in the Old Testament, if you have the mark of God on your forehead and on your wrist, then you belong to God.

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In Revelation, he picks up that analogy. If you have the mark of Satan on your forehead or on your wrist, you belong to Satan.

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Those who belong to Satan are eternally tormented. That's the simple answer.

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Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1, 9, these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the

01:01:33

Lord and from the glory of his power. Jude, Jesus' brother, even highlights this in verse 7, and he says, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as examples in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

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There's more verses. The point is that hell is an increasing abandonment, it is an increasing confusion, it is an increasing inability, and it is an eternal separation between us and God.

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And it's for those who reject who Jesus is, and it's for those who reject

01:02:16

Jesus' Word, and it's for those who reject his presence.

01:02:25

Now, what about the hope? We've talked about four ways that you can end up in hell.

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We've talked about four realities once you get in hell, but there is only one way to avoid that reality, and that is the way and the truth and the life, and his name is

01:02:46

Jesus Christ. I want us to look at how this passage ends because I want us to leave celebrating.

01:02:53

If we are in Christ, I want us to sing at the top of our lungs and celebrate what Christ has done because that reality, as awful and as scary as it is, if you're in Jesus, it doesn't apply to you.

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We're teaching it because I want you to understand the gravity of it, and if you're not in Christ, I want you to understand what you are going to face apart from Jesus.

01:03:11

But if you're in Jesus, now let's celebrate the hope that we have in Him. Verse 22 says,

01:03:18

So the Jews were saying, Surely He will not kill Himself, will He? Since He says, Where I am going, you cannot come.

01:03:23

Verse 24 says, Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am

01:03:29

He, you will die in your sins. 28, so Jesus said, When you lift up the

01:03:35

Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing of my own initiative, but I speak these things as the

01:03:41

Father taught me, and He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to God.

01:03:50

In these passages, we see three fundamental truths that we are all destined for hell.

01:03:56

Jesus Christ came, and He was lifted up for our salvation. And every curse that applies, like we talked about in Deuteronomy, where it says that you're cursed, you'll be in the city, and cursed you'll be in the country, and cursed your kneading bowl, and cursed your bread, and cursed when you come in, and cursed when you come out.

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Our total curse is going to be eliminated by this Christ who took our curse and became a curse for us.

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Everything we've talked about in this passage is going to be reversed for you and I by Jesus Christ.

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He came to die because we were born dead. And He didn't just come to die,

01:04:31

He came as the divine Son of God who is going to die the death that we deserved, and in His divinity and in His power,

01:04:38

He's going to pull you and I up out of the grave, and He's going to rescue us if we believe in Him.

01:04:45

In His humanity, He's going to be broken, and He's going to be beaten, and He's going to be bleeding so that He could shed

01:04:50

His blood for a new covenant if you believe in Him. He was born of the virgin so that He could be outside of His sinful nature, so that He could save you in your sinful nature if you believe in Him.

01:05:03

He was perfectly sinless every moment of His life so that you and I can look to a perfect Savior, a spotless

01:05:10

Lamb, if you believe in Him. He's the prophet who brought us the Word of God.

01:05:15

He's the priest who brought us into the presence of God. He's the King who's going to bring us into the kingdom of God if we believe in Him.

01:05:23

He's the one who was humiliated when we should have been humiliated. He's the one who bore our shame when we should have bore our shame.

01:05:29

He's the one who was exalted to the right hand of God, and He's the one who reigns right now over His kingdom if we believe in Him.

01:05:36

He's the sacrifice that paid for our sins. He's the sacrifice that atoned for us. He's the one who took our sins and bore

01:05:43

God's wrath and drank the cup that you and I should have deserved if we believe in Him. He inherited our

01:05:50

God -hating sin so that He could drink God's sin -hating wrath so that you and I could have the peace of God.

01:05:58

He's our substitution and He's our reconciliation. He's our way of escape so that we'll never have to be abandoned.

01:06:04

We don't have to live in the flesh because Jesus Christ has sent His Spirit. There's no more misunderstanding between us and God because this

01:06:12

Jesus has deposited His Spirit inside of us so that now we can understand His testimony, so that we can understand

01:06:18

His judgments, so that we can understand His Word. That is one beautiful evidence of what it means to be a

01:06:25

Christian is that you understand the Word of God and that you love the Word of God and that you crave the

01:06:31

Word of God and you want to read the Word of God and you want to memorize the Word of God and you wrap your life around the

01:06:36

Word of God because His Word, the living Word, has now gotten in you and now you love His Word if you believe.

01:06:45

There's no more broken relationship between us and God. If you're a Christian, you're not abandoned. If you're a

01:06:51

Christian, you're not forsaken. If you're a Christian, you're not going to hell for an eternity because He died and experienced the hell that you deserved.

01:07:03

We need Him. We need Him in our relationship. He is the power that brings us into fellowship with God.

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We need Him to give us a new mind. We need Him to give us a new heart. We need Him to give us new affections. We need Him to give us a new spirit.

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We need Him to rip out our heart of stone and rip out our dead, blind eyes and give us living, spirit, flesh.

01:07:29

And when we open our eyes, we run to Him. And we love Him. And we worship

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Him. That is what makes the

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Father pleased with you and I. That is why when we pray, the Father's face shines on us as the benediction in the

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Old Testament says. That is why He welcomes us into His presence. That is why He calls us

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His child. That is why He says we're co -heirs with Christ. That is why He says that we're going to inherit an eternal reward.

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That's why He says and makes all the promises about us because He is happy and pleased with who

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Jesus is. And who Jesus is is who rescued you and who brought you into Him so that now you are in Christ.

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That is why you are blessed. That is why God loves you. He doesn't love you because you're special and He doesn't love you because you're smart.

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He doesn't love you because you're better than your neighbor. He loves you because you have Christ. He loves

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His dearly and only beloved Son in you. That is what it means to be a

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Christian. That's what it means to believe in Him. The reason you believe in Him is because of Him. The reason you trust

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Him is because of Him. The reason that you are in relationship with Him is because of Him.

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Everything about our life is because of Him. No more confusion.

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Hell is increasing confusion. The Christian life is the opposite. It's increasing clarity.

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It's a life of studying who God is, loving who God is, worshiping who God is, and learning who

01:09:06

God is. I've lived in a Christianity for 30 years that has divorced itself from its mind.

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Where we go to church and we have emotions and feelings and we turn the lights down and we have synthesizers playing in the background when the preacher's at the end of his sermon and we do all of these manipulative things to produce an effect.

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We were to love God with our minds. And in loving God with our minds, we learn about Him.

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And in learning about Him, we grow to love Him. And in growing to love Him, we want to serve Him. And in wanting to serve

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Him, we go out into the ends of the world and we declare the gospel. There's no more confusion if you're a

01:09:44

Christian. There's no more spiritual inability if you're a Christian. Yeah, we live in a world where we still sin, but He's deposited the

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Spirit of God in you so that you can live and walk and please Him and walk with Him and love Him. There's no more hell as your destination if you're a

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Christian. If you're not a Christian, there's three realities that are possible for you.

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If you're listening online, if you're not a Christian, there's three realities that could happen to you today.

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You could be sad about your sin and you could desire to change and you could put this on a bucket list or you could put this on a to -do list or you could put this on a

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New Year's resolution. You could say, I really want to get better, but you're still living in the flesh. And unless the

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Holy Spirit comes inside of you, you were lost. The second way that you could respond to this message is that you could be angry and you could gnash your teeth and you could say, oh, how intolerant or how

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I hate this Jesus. You could say those things and you will grow harder and harder like the sun bakes a desert clay or the

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Spirit of God can come into you and He can awaken you at the preaching of His gospel. And if that happens and you've opened your eyes, you were dead and now you are alive, if you're here,

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I want you to come and I want you to talk to me after service so I can explain what just happened to you. If you're online, reach out to somebody on our website because being a

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Christian is at first a resurrection. For the rest of us in this room who know the

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Lord, this passage is dark, it's hard, it's about four ways that a person can be separated eternally from God.

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It's about four different realities that arrive for the person who gets there. So that should produce in us not chest bumping, prideful, we're the frozen chosen and we're gonna look down our nose at everybody else.

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It should produce in us a humility and it should produce in us a zeal for missions and it should produce in us a desire to go out into the world to preach the gospel because we don't know who's gonna be saved and we don't know who's gonna be lost.

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It should produce in us a passion for the Son of God who did everything to save us and we did nothing.

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It should produce in us a zeal for love because while we were a wretched worm and we deserve nothing but the wrath of God, He loved us and He poured out

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His affection on us and He proved it at the cross. This should produce in us a

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God -glorifying, soul -satisfying worship because He is the way and He is the truth and He is the life.

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Amen. Father, thank

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You so much for the fact Lord, we have nothing to offer You.

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We have nothing to give You. We have nothing to persuade You or to twist Your arm or to impress

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You or to make You fall in love with us. We deserve death.

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We deserve hell. We deserve all of these realities that we've learned about in Your Word and yet, by Your sheer grace, we have been forgiven.

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Lord, let us live as forgiven people. Lord, let us live with our heads held high and our mouths wide open and our hearts full of praise because of what

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You have done. Lord, let this love, greater love has no man than You would give

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Your life. Let this love invade our hearts right now so that we worship You as You deserve and as You are owed.

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And Lord, even if it's just for this weekend or if it's just for a moment, let us, Lord, experience what it's going to be like worshiping

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You in heaven because there, finally, we will worship You in a way that is befitting of Your glory.

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Lord, get rid of all of our distractions and laser focus on the Son, the all -glorious

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Son who has done good things for us. In Christ's name, amen.