Have No Fear—Perfect, Fearless Love Is Here | 1 John 4:17-19

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Beloved, okay, let's turn back over to 1st John chapter 4 once again, as we continue to unpack this amazing love chapter, the other love chapter, as I like to call it.

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1st John chapter 4, we'll begin in verse 17, verse 17 through 19.

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God's word says, by this love has been perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.

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There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

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We love because he first loved us. This is God's word, amen.

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So you can see from today's sermon title, what this is primarily going to focus on in verses 17 through 19.

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To have no fear, perfect fearless love is here, and this is an amazing, amazing gospel grace and assurance that continues to be poured out to us through these words in this chapter, in this passage, this whole passage, just one right after the other.

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It's really amazing stuff, and I hope this blesses us and encourages us and overwhelms us with God's grace and favor today and forevermore.

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Now, just a brief recap of last week. The focus was on verse 17, which presents a chain of clauses that refer to many doctrines, such as the doctrines of assurance, of sanctification, of glorification, of the day of judgment, eschatology, our final state, and so on.

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And we saw, too, that the love of God and our mutually abiding union with him in love assures us and gives us confidence in the day of judgment, although that's what by this is referring to in verse 17, by this mutually abiding union with him of love.

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Although God's perfect reformative love also perfects us and has been perfected towards us, that's past tense, now, here and now, because as Christ is now confident and without fear, so also are we now being united to him, confident and without fear in this world, in this world.

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Amen. So, a lot of powerful gospel reassurances all throughout this passage.

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Now, speaking of being confident without fear in this world, we saw in the news again recently how we have yet more well -known departed brothers who, being united to Christ, are now confident and without fear in the next world, in heaven.

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I'm specifically referring to the death, the recent death of Professor Vody Bokum.

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And many of you heard that news, and it was kind of sad.

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He died at a very young age, at the age of 56. And we do ask that you keep his family and friends in your prayers, his wife, his large family.

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He had nine kids, nine kids. And I've appreciated him and his ministry so much because that's a huge personal inspiration for us, for my wife and I, to be motivated, inspired, to have a large family, a big family that bears testimony, a good witness to the world of God's desire to bless us through children, to be fruitful and multiply.

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And that's always been a huge inspiration to us in the life of Brother Vody and his family.

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And needless to say, of course, there is a time to mourn. There is a time to mourn, yet not without hope.

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Amen? We are not without hope, neither in this world or the next, because we have confidence.

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We are confident and without fear in this life and in the next. God has given us full assurance of what he has done for us and what he has completed and accomplished for us.

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And, you know, just a little bit of a personal anecdote.

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My wife and I actually met Pastor Vody when he was still in Houston at Grace Family Baptist Church.

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And it was a blessing to see how they do church. And a lot of the ways they do church has been also inspiring for me and wanting to emulate some of those good things that they also do as a church.

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And so one of the things

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I really appreciated about their service is that they had a Q &A. They had a question and answer after the service.

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And they had a fellowship meal. They would have a meal, a big potluck, and people grabbed their food.

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They sat back down in the service, and they would have a Q &A, entertain questions and answers.

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And I really enjoyed that. That really was a blessing to see. And that's something that I've wanted to do in church.

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And that's why we've done it before. We've had question and answers before here. And this is also similar to what

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Jesus did. When he would preach and teach in public, he would entertain questions. So that's something that pastors should not shy away from, that ministers of God should not shy away from, because it also keeps us connected to what people are thinking and what's going on in the world.

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And it forces us to study and to look at these things carefully and to have a biblical response for the hope that lies within us, that hope that 1

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John also talks about, that leaves us confident and without fear. And I had asked him a question.

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I asked the elders a question back then. This was like 10 years ago.

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My son had barely been born. And the question

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I asked was, how many elders should a church have? How many elders should a church have?

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And Pastor Voti, right away, he just answered, as many as are biblically qualified.

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And that answer was so simple and so profound, so biblically grounded.

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It's like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I had wrestled with that a lot. How should that work?

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How should a church determine that? And his answer was spot on, I think, that as many as are biblically qualified.

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And that should be our prayer for our church, that as many men as are biblically qualified in our church, we would want them to pursue eldership.

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Now, of course, you should want to do it because the Bible says that we should do this without compulsion, without being forced to do it.

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We should willingly do it and desire to do it. But that was a very helpful answer.

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And I definitely would highly recommend to you and commend to you listening to his preaching, his teaching, and reading his books.

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I've even given some of his books away to some of you all. And he has excellent resources, especially on being a godly man, a godly husband, a godly father, and practicing the importance of family worship, which is a very prominent emphasis in our

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Reformed Baptist tradition, to practice family worship in order to bring up our children, our wives and our children, in the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. And so it's a very powerful thing that is sadly very neglected in the church today that we need to bring back and restore, and family integrated worship as well, and not segregate the children off into some other mini children's church, which tends to breed a lot of prodigals, sadly.

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So we want to fight against that and keep the children together with their families and worship together.

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And so I highly commend him to you, and he is very sound overall.

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I might not agree with his eschatology on a few places, but by and large,

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I've always appreciated him, and I always was encouraged to see him in the public sphere and in a place of very a lot of public attention, because his convictions largely agree with ours.

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He is a Reformed Baptist, and I've always appreciated how well he represents what we believe, what we believe in our tradition.

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And so, you know, another interesting thing about this is that Pastor Voti, he was preaching

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First John at around the same time that I started to preach on First John. And I was greatly encouraged to listen to his sermons, because it helped me deal with difficult situations that we were having in our church, because he emphasized many of the same things that I try to emphasize in my preaching, and that greatly encouraged me to see a man of his stature that, hey, we have the same emphasis, the same convictions, and that was very encouraging for me as well.

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So that's something that I will always be grateful for and continue to be grateful for.

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So I want us once again to be encouraged, beloved, and not to not grow weary or to not lose heart, because so many prominent men who have sought to be faithful in God's church have now departed from us.

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But that doesn't mean that God has abandoned us. God has not abandoned us. He will never leave us, nor forsake us, nor his church.

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And he has promised that the gates of Hades will never prevail against it. He will continue to raise up godly men until the

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Eschaton. He will continue to do so for such a time as this.

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Amen. And who may not necessarily be as famous as these men, but nevertheless, faithful, uncompromising, godly men and women to bless

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God's people who can still continue to also be edified by the contributions of the faithful men that have recently departed and have now gone to be with the

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Lord. Their teachings are still out there. Their books are still out there. Their sermons are still out there. And that's something that we would do well to spend our time taking advantage of these better resources that these men of God have deposited to the church, which is the pillar and buttress of the truth.

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Because the faithful men like Pastor Voti. That's why the church has continued to be salt and light before the world and the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

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So that beloved was something that I really wanted to share.

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And now this brings us back to 1st John. 1st John chapter 4, verse 18, which the first line of which says, there is no fear in love.

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There is no fear in love. And fear and love are mutually exclusive.

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Fear and love are mutually exclusive, meaning they are incompatible.

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They are incompatible with each other. You cannot fear and love the same object, the same person that is incompatible because there is no fear in love.

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That's what it literally says. By definition, there is no fear in true love.

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Now, of course, we want to understand what fear means. Fear doesn't mean there is a fear of God in a reverence and awe and respect for God.

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But that's not what this means. This is fear as in phobos, like fear in the sense of afraid, afraid of God and his punishment.

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That's what we talked about last week as well. What I mentioned last week. But by definition, there is no fear in true love because of what the scriptures teach us, reveal to us here and in other places through the analogy of faith and of scripture.

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Yet God, in addition to that,

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God reassures us yet again and even more by telling us also not only that perfect love has no fear, but that perfect love casts out fear.

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It cast it out. It expels fear. Wow, that's a powerful word there.

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And I think this word expelled to cast out is also used in reference to the casting out of demons, casting out fear and these whatever opposes

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God. So that's what this casting out means. To cast out is to force out of or into a place to throw away, to drive out, to expel, to expel.

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So perfect love then figuratively casts out, drives out, expels fear, afraid, being afraid of something, namely

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God's punishment, God's judgment. Because fear, according to this definition of fear, involves or expects punishment for wrongdoing, the expectation of punishment.

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And so the one who fears, that's why the scripture continues to say, the one who fears is not perfected in love.

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They don't understand God's love properly. The one who is afraid of God's judgment is not perfected in love and has not grown into a sufficient understanding of God's mature love, full love for us, perfected love toward us.

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That's kind of how the amplified renders it. And so by way of example, we know that when someone loves us, we trust them and are not afraid of them.

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We don't fear them because there's love and trust there. There's a mutual love and trust which also in large part reflects what the

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Bible says in verse 17, what the scriptures tell us in verse 17, that by this mutually abiding love and respect and conviction for each other, by this, like verse 17 says, by this

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God's love has been perfected with or towards us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment and have no fear of God's judgment, day of judgment.

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And so we are not, we trust somebody that loves us and are not afraid of them.

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It's kind of like a friendly dog, a dog that may look fierce and have a fierce bite, but be friendly.

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This is an example that was inspired by Gordon Clark in his commentary. I thought it was very helpful.

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And you know, I've played with dogs before when I was younger that had very large, scary bites and canine teeth.

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But when they would bite, when they would bite me, it was a playful bite. It was a gentle, like they were just playing.

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They would like to, you know, pretend to bite, but it wasn't to hurt you. It wasn't to harm you.

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And so because of that playful, loving trust that we had for each other, that I had for the dog and the dog had for me,

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I did not fear the dog's otherwise very fearsome looking bite, you know.

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And that's similar, that's a similar picture to what the Bible is communicating to us here.

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God, who is fierce in his attributes of justice and holiness and wrath, is not reserved for us any longer.

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It's God's love that is poured out for us. So that is something that we no longer fear because the judgment has been settled on account of his precious son.

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Amen? So that's what in large part this points to. Yes, we reverence and we fear

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God in the sense of respecting and awe of and reverence and wonder of how amazing and powerful he is.

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Just like last time when I preached on the death of Charlie Kirk.

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Witness and behold both the kindness and the severity of God because God has both for different people.

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Those who are chosen and elect his people and those who are not. Those whom he has reserved for judgment and condemnation because of their sin and unrighteousness and rejection of the truth.

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Suppression of the truth. So that being said now, how then does perfect love cast out fear?

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How does it drive it out? What is this perfect love? What does this mean? This perfect love that casts out fear that verse 18 tells us about.

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It refers to the complete, to the mature, full -grown love that God has given us for him and for our fellow man.

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It's the love that we have for him and our fellow man that was given to us by God based on what

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God has done for us. Because the perfect love that we have comes from, is based on, is grounded in God's perfect love for us.

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Which is exactly what the previous verse tells us as well.

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Verse 17, by this, this mutually abiding love, God's love has been perfected toward us.

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It's God's love that grounds all of this, that gives us all of this, and that gives us a love in turn for him and our fellow man.

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That's an awesome thing. Beautiful thing. So our perfect love, then our, and again it's not that means, it doesn't mean that it's sinlessly perfect.

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It's, it's a mature love. It's a love that understands that God's judgment is no longer going to fall on us because Christ has satisfied it.

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We understand and believe the gospel now, and so we trust God and fear him in reverence, but love him because he first loved us.

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So our perfect mature love ultimately refers to and points back to God's own truly perfect redemptive love for us.

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His redemptive gospel love for us. That is the gospel. That is the gospel by which we are being saved, beloved, by which 1st

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Corinthians 15 tells us. It's his redemptive love that the gospel has revealed to us for his people.

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Our love is perfect because of God's love that has perfected us.

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It is finished love that he has for us, and this is the amazing cycle of the love of God that perfects us and matures us.

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It makes us confident and without fear and into a perfect love which not only that, but casts out all fear of God's judgment.

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It casts it out. It drives it out. This is, there's an active emphasis on this.

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We have been emboldened by God's grace and power and love to drive out fear from our lives, from our minds, from our soul.

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It drives it out because they are mutually incompatible, exclusive because as he is, as Christ is, now so also are we in this world with this perfect love that God has given us and that we now have ourselves, that we respond with by God's grace in this world, in this world.

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So turn with me now, beloved, to the letter to the Hebrews chapter 4 in verse 14 as we further unpack the meaning of this amazing passage from God's word.

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Let's practice, let's exercise the of scripture here in the letter to the

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Hebrews chapter 4 verse 14. Let's read this together, beloved, as God's word speak to us and says, therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,

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Jesus the son of God, let us take hold of our confession, our confession, just like 1st

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John 4 15. Remember that? He who confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he and God.

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That confession, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things like we are, yet without sin, yet without sin.

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That is a profound statement and it's a statement that is also further developed in the

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Carmen Christi that I alluded to earlier in previous sermons and the Carmen Christi by which

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God's love. So we understand that God's love gives us confidence to live without fear and to have the same mind of Christ like 1st

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Corinthians 2 16 says, right? And that the song of Christ, the

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Carmen Christi, gloriously reveals to us in Philippians chapter 2 verse 5.

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So let's turn back with me there as we take a brief hiatus from Hebrews. We'll turn back there, finish up there, but let's turn to Hebrews chapter 2 verse,

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I mean, I'm sorry, Philippians chapter 2 verse 5, Philippians chapter 2 verse 5. This is an amazing message of what

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Christ has done and how we are called to respond in light of what Christ has done.

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It's called the Carmen Christi, the song or the hymn or the ode to Christ as God, really as both

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God and man. So Philippians chapter 2 verse 5, have this way of thinking, have this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in who?

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In Christ Jesus. This is the exact same thing that verse 17 and 16 points to in 1st

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John, this mutually abiding fellowship of love. It is doctrinal. It is the same way of thinking about God and ourselves and the word of God, the doctrines, the faith that is once raw delivered for us, the saints that we now confess as believers.

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In verse 6, who although existing in the form of God, because he is

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God, did not regard equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but rather instead emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.

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He emptied himself by becoming, by taking on human nature, truly man.

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So previously he was truly God. Now he is also truly man by virtue of the incarnation, the virgin birth, truly man in the likeness of men.

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Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself yet again by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Therefore, therefore God also highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, will bow, whether you believe or not, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen. This is believed to be an ancient hymn of the church, which clearly professes

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Christ as truly God and truly man. This is as old as scripture itself, and even older, because it is what

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God has revealed all throughout his word, the old and new testaments. Now Hebrews, let's turn back now and come full circle to Hebrews chapter 4 in verse 16.

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Let's pick up on that passage, Hebrews chapter 4 verse 16, where we now see, beloved, that God's word speaks to us and says, therefore, in light of what was previously said in verses 14 and 15 and prior, and in light of what the common

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Christi also reveals to us, let us draw near, with what?

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With fear? With dread? No, with confidence. That same word again that 1

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John uses to describe us, to the with confidence, to the throne of what?

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Of judgment? Of dreadful judgment? Of fearful expectation of judgment?

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No, a throne of what? Of grace now, a throne of grace, so that why?

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So that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need, in our time of need.

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Amen, beloved. So those of us who believe understand these things, because it's the most basic of all truths in scripture.

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It is the doctrine of salvation. One of my favorite commentaries on this passage comes from John Calvin and his

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Institutes of the Christian Religion. I've written, I've quoted this in my writings,

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I've preached on this before, because it is such a powerful description and commentary on this doctrine revealed in this passage.

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Calvin says, for it is impossible to think of the dread majesty of God, the dreadful majesty of God, without being filled with alarm, with fear, and hence the sense of our own unworthiness must keep us away, must keep us away until Christ interposed, until Christ interposed.

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That's, that is the gospel summed up right there in one phrase, until Christ interposed, intermediates, came down on our behalf, and converts a throne of dreadful glory into now a throne of grace.

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As the apostle himself teaches, that thus we can come boldly onto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

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Like Hebrews 4 16 gloriously reveals to us. Calvin continues,

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Christ given to us by the kindness of God is apprehended and possessed by faith, the faith that gives us confidence now to no longer fear him or be afraid of his judgment, by means of which we obtain in particular a two -fold benefit.

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This is very important, very powerful. First, of being reconciled by the righteousness of who?

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Of Christ, of Christ, amen. That's his redemptive love for us, the gospel redemptive love.

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God becomes now, therefore, instead of a judge, instead of a judge to judge us, he is now an indulgent father, an indulgent loving father.

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That is God's restorative love, right there. He no longer sees us as criminals, as sinners, worthy of his judgment.

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But now, because of Christ interposing on our behalf, instead of facing him as a judge, we now face him as a loving, not just a loving father, but an indulgent father at that, amen.

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And secondly, Calvin continues, being sanctified, sanctified by his spirit, by God's reformative love, actively reforming us and conforming us to the image of his son, we aspire to integrity and purity of life.

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It gives us that perfect love which 1st

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John 4, 8, 17, and 18 talks about. It gives us that perfect love with which we now have no fear of God's punishment and justice.

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And that we aspire to integrity and purity of life, to please our indulgent heavenly father.

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Powerful, powerful summary of what this, the

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Bible teaches. It's such an amazing summary of that. I love that passage there from Calvin and from God's word that we've seen.

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Now that being said, beloved, this is a good opportunity I wanted to take to clarify something

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I said earlier when I preached on Charlie Kirk's assassination. Because when

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I compared and contrasted the kindness and the severity of God in Romans 11, 22, or the goodness and severity of God, I did not at all mean to say that God's severity is somehow not good.

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That's not what I meant, okay? So I just want to clarify that. I didn't mean that at all. The passage says once again in Romans 11, 22, behold then the kindness and severity of God to those who fell, severity.

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God gave severity. But to you who believe, Gentiles specifically,

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God's kindness. If you continue in his kindness, God's kindness, otherwise you also will be cut off and be subject to his severity.

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So this, and to those who fell is referring to the unbelieving

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Jews. And it's a very important thing to recognize that God is both.

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God is both. But God, though he has kindness and severity, God is always good.

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Always good. Both in his kindness and in his severity. Amen? Always without fail and without any exception whatsoever.

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We are not Gnostics here. We don't believe that God is somehow evil because he created matter or whatever not other nonsense that other heretics say.

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God is always good and even well -meaning. But some people who deny

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God's sovereignty, who say that, oh well, God did not allow, it wasn't

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God's doing to allow these men like Charlie Kirk and to be assassinated for these men to die or be killed.

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That's not a good understanding of God. Everything that God does is good and everything that happens is

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God's will, either directly or indirectly by means. We need to understand this truth, beloved, because it challenges a lot of what we hear in many people, many churches, and what we see going on in the world today.

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There's a great amount of evil. But remember what I had mentioned before. It is also

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God is extending grace and mercy to those evil men and women to, at some point, eventually perhaps granting them grace and repentance.

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If it were not for God's divine patience, none of us would be saved. Amen? We all had to get saved at some point.

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Were it not for God's divine forbearance to allow, to not only allow, but to predestinate evil, none of us could be saved.

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So I wanted to make sure that we tied all of that together there.

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Some translations also I don't think are as good because they use the word harshness. And again, we want, we want to be careful not to ascribe some kind of negative connotation to God's attribute, to who

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God is. But another way you can say it is God's hardness.

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God hardens his disposition towards unbelievers. He has chosen to love some and to harden others with his own hardness and severity.

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But that severity is earned. It's deserved. It's what we all deserve.

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And it is only by God's kindness that we have been given grace instead, through what

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Christ and the triumph work of redemption, the trium God has done on our behalf.

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So, so then, all of these things, beloved, and more, is why the

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God -breathed apostle continues to reveal to us in verse 19, the same basic principle that we love, we ourselves love with a perfected, fearless love.

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Why? Why? Because he first loved us and perfects us.

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Amen? Because he first loved us. That is why we love.

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It's not by our own doing. It's not by anything we did, we did, or do, or could have done.

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Because we can't. Because we're hopeless, wretched sinners, apart from the exclusive grace of God, interposing on our behalf, through Christ and his work of redemption.

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I want us to note too, in verse 19, that the we and the he are emphatic here.

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They are both emphatic to contrast the two persons.

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We ourselves love God. But why? It is because we love

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God and our fellow man. It's referring to both. God and our fellow man, especially

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God's people, but only because he himself first loved us.

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Amen? That's the only reason why we are saved, beloved. The only reason.

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Because of his divine love, forbearing love. That being said, let's unpack this yet again, further, with the analogy of scripture and the awesome letter to the

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Romans in chapter 5. The letter to the Romans, chapter 5, verse 6. As we continue to dive, deep dive, into this awesome doctrine of God's love that he first had for us, before the foundation of the world, we had done anything good or bad, like Romans 9 also says.

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Let's look at Romans, chapter 5, in verse 6. I'm going to read up to verse 11. God's word speaks to us and says, for while we were still weak, hopeless, wretched, sinners, at the right time, at the right time, someone died.

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Who was that, beloved? Christ died. For who? For the ungodly.

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For us ungodly sinners, without God, opposed to God, haters of God, unbelievers.

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For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

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But God does what? He demonstrates publicly, visibly, his own love toward us, his own redemptive love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us, for us, on our behalf.

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That is the gospel, beloved. Amen. Christ died for us, specifically for us, to give his life a ransom for many, much more than, verse 9, having now been justified by his blood alone, through faith alone, we shall be saved from the wrath of God, through him.

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That's why we are confident and without fear, because we shall be saved from the wrath of God, through his son, and what his son has done for us.

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For if while we were enemies, we used to be enemies of God, we were once for all reconciled to God.

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How? Through the death of his son. Notice the emphatic repetition of the same powerful gospel doctrine here.

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Much more than, much more than, having been now reconciled, we shall be saved, we shall be saved, yet again, shall be saved, future tense, by his life, both by his propitiatory death and sacrifice, and by his life, his perfect life.

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And not only this, beloved, but we also boast in God, and in his glorious throne of grace, as well as judgment, through our

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Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now, now, beloved, received reconciliation, the reconciliation, the only reconciliation known to man, that has been given to us.

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No other name under heaven has been given to us, beloved, by which we must be saved, like Acts chapter 4 verse 12 says.

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But the name of Jesus Christ, by now we have received the one and only reconciliation.

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Amen. Amen, beloved. This is, this is the gospel.

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This is why 1 John is so emphatic, because that's why we understand now,

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God's kindness has been given to us, instead of his wrath. Those two are not, those two are impossible to be given to the same person.

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God gives one to the one group, and kindness to the one, and severity and judgment to the other.

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He can't, he does not give both to them, because those are incompatible expressions of his attributes.

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And we are now recipients, beloved, of God's reconciliation by what

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Christ and his Son has done for us, for our, on our behalf.

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This is why, beloved, we have no fear. This is why we love with a perfect love, that has no fear of God's punishment, of God's judgment, because this perfect love that we have for God, and our fellow man now, has driven out all fear of God's justice and punishment coming down on us, and to further bring this amazing gospel promise home.

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There are so many passages, beloved, that gloriously reveal this to us. Let's turn now to yet another beautiful passage in Ephesians chapter 2.

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Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4, Ephesians chapter 2 verse 4, beloved, the

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God's Word speaks to us and says,

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But God, but God, being rich in mercy, rich in mercy, indulgent, like Calvin said, indulgent

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Father, rich in mercy, because of what? Because of his great love with which he loved us.

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Notice the emphasis there on God's love. Once again, his great love with which he loved us, even when we were still dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

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By uniting us to Christ, by grace, you have been saved.

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Amen. And raised us up with him to newness of life, to newness of life, and seated us with him, seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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That's his restorative love. He restores to us a divine status on par with God's own son, seats us in the heavenly places because of his great love for us, not by virtue of anything we have done, but by his grace alone, which is why he continues in Christ Jesus.

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This is his restorative love. By virtue of being mutually united to Christ, we now have access to God and to his throne of grace.

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Verse seven, so that in the ages to come, he might show, he might demonstrate, like Romans says, show the surpassing riches, the indulgent surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in who?

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In Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.

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You have been saved through faith. Past tense, it is done. You have been.

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There's no fear now because you have been saved through faith and this not of yourself.

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It is the gift of God. All of it is. All of it is the gift of God. All of salvation by grace through faith alone is the gift of God, not of works so that no one may boast.

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Amen. Amen, beloved. Amen. This is such a precious and amazing truth from God's word and it's one of the most basic, most clear, most emphatic doctrines in all of scripture.

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In all of scripture, the gospel of what God's love has done for us, of what

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God's love has done for us. And we understand, beloved, that not all things in scripture are equally plain in themselves or easy to understand nor equally clear to everyone.

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Yet those things that are essential to be known, believed, and obeyed for salvation are so clearly set forth and explained in one place of scripture or another, as we just saw, that not only the educated but also the uneducated may attain a satisfactory understanding of them, a sufficient understanding of them, by using ordinary means, ordinary means of our minds and God's means of grace.

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That is a very powerful summary of what God's word reveals to us in our

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter one, paragraph seven. Some things are so clear.

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They are, they are what God has clearly taught us and revealed to us so that we may be confident now and without fear.

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It is the gospel, the clearest of things that is revealed in the scriptures.

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Some things are, are hard to understand. Like Peter even says, some things in Paul's letters are hard to understand, in which the unstable twist to their own destruction.

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But these things are so clearly expounded and revealed to us that they now, by which we are saved and are not confused or in fear of God's judgment, of God's judgment.

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And this is it, beloved. This is one of the most obvious and most plain examples that are so clearly set forth and explained in one scripture or another, of why we no longer have that fearful expectation of God's judgment, of why we have a perfect love that casts out all fear because of God's own perfect, omnipotent, sovereign, sufficient, sacrificial love for us.

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For us, beloved, this is the power of God's word.

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This is the amazing power of God's word, of his redemptive love for us.

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Because God the Father has sent his unique son to be the savior of the world and to die for all our sins.

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Like 1 John 4 14 says earlier in today's passage, because of his restorative love for us, which like we saw, seats us now in the heavenly places alongside his own beloved son, his unique son,

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Christ Jesus. Because we are no longer sinners and criminals now in God's eyes, but rather adopted sons and daughters who now call

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God our Abba, our Father, our indulgent, loving

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Father. Like Galatians 4 tells us, who even when we sin, and yes, beloved, we may sometimes struggle and be assailed by fear and doubt, but God will never allow you to fully, utterly despair and be consumed by fear and doubt.

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We have confidence now and we are without fear because of his gospel love for us and because the

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Spirit unites us to Christ and to God's good graces as our

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Father. And yet even if anyone sins, which we all still do, yet we still have an advocate, a paraclete, a defense attorney with the

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Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, the only righteous one, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins.

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And not for ours only, but also for the for those of the whole world of believers.

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Like we saw earlier in 1 John chapter 2 verse 1 through 2.

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God's redemptive love and restorative love for us. It is an amazing love.

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How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me?

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That Christ the God -man has died for his people, his bride. It's also because of his regenerative love for us because when the kindness, once again that word, the kindness and affection of God our

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Savior appeared, God our Savior, he saved us,

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Christ, not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration, his regenerative love and renewing by who?

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By the Holy Spirit, by the third person of the Trinity, by our other paraclete, which

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Christ gives to us when he says, it is good for me to go because I will send you another helper, another paraclete, another advocate.

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We have two advocates before God the Father. So how can we fear

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God's judgment when we have not one but two divine advocates? Christ the righteous, our advocate, and the

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Spirit, our other advocate as well. And God is our

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Father, our loving Father. We don't face God as judge, we face God as our loving

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Father. Amazing love, God's love, that that was the, um, and that's in Titus 3, 4 through 7, and verse 6 continues and says, whom he poured out, poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ, our

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Savior, our God and Savior, so that having been justified by what?

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By his grace alone, we would become heirs. That's his restorative love.

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We would now become heirs, according to the hope and confidence of eternal life, instead of eternal judgment.

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Amen, beloved. And also, finally, because of his reformative sanctifying love for us, which we saw, we've already seen all throughout these scriptures, his love sanctifies us and give us, gives us this perfect love, to love without fear of God's judgment, and to love

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God and our fellow man with this perfect mature love that God has given us.

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I love that that loop. It's that cycle of God's love that motivates us and gives us in, by God's Spirit and means, sanctifies us to love

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God and our fellow man. Because by this, beloved, by this mutually abiding love of God and his people,

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God's, God's love has been perfected towards us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment.

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Because as Christ is now, so also are we in this world, perfected by God's love.

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Now, already, not yet, we are not yet fully glorified and perfected, but we have perfections of God's love already given to us, so that we are confident and without fear, as Christ our

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Savior is, our God and Savior, our great God and Savior, and because of the great love which with God loved us.

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That's the amazing love of God, beloved. As we start to sum up towards the end of this chapter, the other love chapter, and again, like Romans 8 29 through 30 tells us, because those of us whom he foreknew, he foreloved, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his

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Son, beloved, by his reformative love. His reformative love conforms us, it transforms us, and renews us, our minds, and our disposition, and our behavior to become more like Christ in all things.

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So that we, he would be the firstborn among many restored, beloved brethren, us, and those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also ultimately glorified, beloved.

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It is guaranteed. Why, what do we have to look forward to, beloved? What we have to look forward to is our glorification, not

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God's judgment, but our glorification. Do you see this, beloved?

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I hope you see it as one of the clearest teachings in all of scripture.

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Do you believe this? Because this is what saves us, beloved. This is what gives us that confidence without fear of God's judgment.

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Do you have this perfect, mature, fearless love that casts out all fear of God's judgment?

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This perfect love that God has given us, because it not only does it not fear

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God's judgment, but instead looks forward to it. It looks forward to God's judgment, and eagerly anticipates it, beloved, because we are going to be glorified and raised up alongside

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God to judge the world, to judge angels, reprobate angels and men.

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That is what's going to happen. Why is it? That's why it doesn't make sense to have fear, because the

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Bible so clearly teaches against that. That is what we have to look forward to, beloved.

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We should look forward to God's judgment, where he will finally make all things right, and the martyrs in heaven will finally have their justice satisfied, if they are not saved by God's grace.

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They are the persecutors of God's people, and the wicked. That is the most basic of things that we must understand, beloved, of God, of man, and of the salvation that he has given us by means of his all -consuming, amazing love.

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So, beloved, I hope and pray that this outpouring of gospel scripture and love that God has given us overwhelms you with his love.

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That that's really the whole point of this. That's really the whole point of the passage, and so many of the scriptures, because God's love is overwhelmingly assuring, overwhelmingly reassuring to us, and has been perfected toward us already, beloved.

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Like 1st John says, past tense, God's love is redemptive, restorative, regenerative, and reformative, all for us, all of which is for us.

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Not just some of those aspects of God's love, but all of it, all of it is received.

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We receive by virtue of God and what he has in his love for us.

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On our behalf, it has been accomplished. It is satisfied love.

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It has done love, and it has perfected us with a perfect love, beloved, and God's people said, amen.

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What have I to dread? Like the precious hymn that we sang today, again, the amazing providence of God.

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We didn't plan this out with Elder David, but what have I to dread? What do

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I have to dread? What have I to fear? Leaning on the everlasting arms of God, nothing.

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I have, because I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms of God, not the arms of judgment, but the arms of fatherly love and embrace, of redemptive love, and restorative love, and regenerative love, and reformative love, leaning on the everlasting arms, safe and secure, confident and without fear, from all alarms, leaning on the everlasting arms of our great

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God and Savior, and God's people once again said, amen. Amen, beloved.

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Let us go ahead and bow our heads with a word of prayer. Our precious, gracious Lord and heavenly

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Father, we thank you so much for your gospel promises, Father, of your love, your amazing love.

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Lord, this is so amazing how the love, the great love with which you loved us,

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Lord, your redemptive love, your redemptive gospel love, your restorative love, to give us confidence to the throne, to approach your throne of grace, boldly,

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Father, and receive grace in our time of need, your regenerative love, Father, sealed by the regenerating power of your

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Spirit, and your reformative, sanctifying love for us, Father God, we thank you, Lord, so much for all of these things, every aspect of your divine love that has now given us a perfect love with which we have no fear any longer,

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Lord, by virtue of what you have done for us and have given us, Lord. So you have equipped us and empowered us with this perfect love to drive out all fear of your judgment, all fear of your punishment, but instead now eagerly await it and anticipate it and look forward to it,

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Father, in that day where you will glorify us and so that we may reign with you and judge alongside you,

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Lord, in your fierce holiness, justice, and judgment,

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Father. We thank you, Lord, help us to internalize these things, to digest these things, and to love you and our fellow man with this perfect love,

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Father God, without fear and by your means of grace,

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Father, we thank you, Lord, and we ask these things in Jesus Almighty, your firstborn

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Son's name, unique Son, amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com