A Holy People (04/07/2002)

Park Meadows Church

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When we talk about personal holiness, we have to go to God first, and sometimes the world gets it backwards.

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Worldly religion gets that backwards. Even worldly Christianity gets that backwards.

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Worldly doctrine in Christian circles gets that backwards. So many have come to feel, because it is a natural way to feel, that we do things in order to please

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God. And yet, the Lord reveals himself as that one who loved us before the foundation of the world, before we ever did anything, before we were even thought of in this realm, on the earth.

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And so that he is pleased with us because of who he is, not because of what we do.

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However, the Bible does teach us that we ought to be holy for our

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God is holy. We've spent some time in these last days speaking of the holiness of God, and that brings us to speak of what the

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Bible teaches about the holiness of man, of man being made holy by a holy

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God. We spoke last Sunday about the fact that there are three types of holiness that are taught about in the

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Bible, and one is called positional holiness, which deals with the fact that we are made holy, we are sanctified by the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And remember that when you look in your New Testament, the word sanctified and the word saint and the word holy all come from the same base

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Greek word. So you have to look all those up if you want to find all the teachings on holiness.

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But we are positionally holy because of our position in Christ. Second, the

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Bible teaches about experiential holiness, even though it is true that our position is one of holiness, we are exhorted in the scriptures to walk in newness of life and that we should reckon this great truth to be true, that because Christ lives in us, we are made holy because we have touched the altar, which has made us holy.

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And the Bible says in Romans chapter six, verse 11, likewise, reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed into sin, but alive unto

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God, let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness.

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And first John three, three says every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as God is pure, even as he is pure.

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And so we see these beautiful verses on experiential holiness where God says, yes, you must believe me when

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I tell you that you've been made holy by the son of God. Now I exhort you to live like it.

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Live as who you are. Don't be a hypocrite. Don't be one thing on the inside, which is a child of God and holy and pure and be another thing on the outside and live for the world, the flesh and the devil.

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Simply be who you are. Live as who you are, a new creature in Christ. And then the

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Bible teaches ultimate holiness, which talks about the fact that it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him or we shall see him as he is.

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There's going to come that day at the rapture when even our bodies, which right now our flesh pulls against what we want to do for God, if we allow it to be in control, there'll come a day when that drops off.

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When on the way up, we are changed in the air and even the tabernacle that we dwell in will be pure and holy and righteous altogether.

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And we look forward to that great day. We're not to that part yet. So let's spend some more time this morning talking about experiential holiness.

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There's a verse in the scriptures where it talks about the fact that God has severed us from the others of the world.

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He has brought us out from the world unto himself. And so we talked a little bit last time about this fact.

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Now, if you would go into Deuteronomy chapter six and let's look at verse 18.

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We covered this last time, so we just want to read this to bring us into what we're going to talk about today.

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Deuteronomy chapter six, verse 18. Let's pray for a moment. Father, we thank you so much for your presence.

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We pray that you would make our hearts and minds extremely aware of your presence this morning, for we surely stand on holy ground since you are here.

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Help us, Lord, to have our minds placed in the heavenlies upon the word of God and the things of God.

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And may you teach us to live right before our children, that they might be strong in the day in which they will live in this earth.

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Equip them as well as us, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the

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Lord, that it may be well with thee. So many people think that God's commands are to make it hard on us, and God says, no, they are so that it will go well with you.

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So you see God's heart in the midst of his commands. His heart is that it might go well with his children, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the

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Lord swear unto thy fathers. And it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the

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Lord our God as he has commanded us. And we discussed last time John chapter 17 and how it relates to those verses.

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It really has turned that around. We do not do right that we might possess the promised land today, but rather we possess the promised land, so we are therefore equipped to do right.

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We have all the promises of God. We have the Lord Jesus Christ living in our hearts. Our body is the temple of the living

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God, and we are equipped above all other generations and certainly above all other dispensations to live for the

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Lord and to do right. Now, I want us to continue in this passage,

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Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 19. The scriptures continue, but only are we to do right and to possess the promised land.

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Now, I believe that the promised land in earth time right now to us symbolizes victorious

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Christian living. I believe that going over the Red Sea probably symbolized salvation, but when they moved into the promised land, it symbolized victorious, powerful

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Christian living in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, with that in mind, as we have already talked about that last

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Sunday, let's move on and see where we go from here. Verse 19, to cast out all thine enemies from before thee as the

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Lord hath spoken. Our enemies are cast out before us, and we are to tell our children about our deliverance.

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Now, think of this if you're a mom or a dad or grandmom, granddad. Think what

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God is telling us. Think of the importance of this exhortation. This goes from the church right straight into the home, and look what it says.

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And when thy son asketh thee, now what's the time frame on this?

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This is after you have been saved or delivered. This is after you have found your way into the promised land by following God, and this is after the enemies have begun to be cast out, many of them already cast out, and you are in the promised land.

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You are experiencing victorious Christian living because of Christ in you, the hope of glory.

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And at that time, when you've come to that place in your life, and then as verse 20 says, when your son ask thee in time to come, that's after you're in this place, you're already living the victorious

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Christian life. Your family life is going on, your children are growing up, and they begin to look around them and they begin to think about God, they see some of the things, they get old enough to see some of the bad things in the world, the evil things, and they come and they begin to ask you questions.

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And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the

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Lord our God has commanded you? Your children come to you and say, What's the Bible all about?

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I mean, I've had it since Sunday school, as long as I can remember, but where'd it come from?

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What's it all about? Well, when they ask us this, God exhorts us in verse 21 that we ought to have an answer.

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And the answer goes like this. Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We, or if you're the father, you'd say,

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I was Pharaoh's bondman in Egypt. And the

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Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the

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Lord showed signs and wonders great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh and upon all his household before our eyes.

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And he brought us out from thence that he might bring us in. The whole purpose for bringing us out of captivity was not just to bring us out of captivity, but that he might bring us into the promised land.

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And that's where we are today. He brought us out. He delivered us. He saved us, not just to save us from hell, though that's very important to us, but he saved us that we might live in victorious life, as Jesus said, the abundant life.

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And to give us the land, which he swearing to our fathers, are there not many promises to those who are saved?

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Many promises. He brought us out that he might bring us into a place where we might see these promises fulfilled in our lives and before our children and in their lives.

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And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes that you're asking me about, my child, to fear the

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Lord our God for our good always. You see, son, his commandments are for our good.

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There'll come times when you'll be tempted to go a different way. There'll be times when the enemy will tell you inside that it's easier to take a different path.

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Always remember that God gave us these statutes for our own good always, that he might preserve us alive.

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In fact, my son, there are certain statutes that if you break them over a period of time, the

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Lord might just take you home. So he gave us these that he might preserve us alive as at this day, like we are right now while we're speaking to one another.

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We go on to tell our children something like this. Your dad had some awful sin habits, and therefore he had guilt and defeat in his life before he came to know the

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Lord Jesus Christ, but he delivered me. There was a time in my car on the way to work one day from Waco to Mahea when for no apparent reason in my own life,

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God turned the light on and I looked up and said, Lord, what would you have me to do?

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That day took away the awful guilt, it took away the defeat that was in my life, took away many of the sin habits instantly, and many others the

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Lord and I have been working on through the years, mostly him. When you ask me what meant these testimonies, the statutes, the word of God, the judgments of the

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Lord our God, let me tell you, Jenny and Katie and Paul and Ben and Matt, that I was

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Pharaoh's bondman in Egypt. That means I was an absolute slave to my own flesh and to the devil and to everything the world threw out.

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But the Lord brought me out with a mighty hand. I was a slave to the devil and his philosophical world system, but the

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Lord straightened my thinking out when I was a young man. The Lord has in fact shown mighty signs and wonders in my life.

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He has brought me from the brink of death to the other side on dry ground, and he buried my enemies under the sea right before my eyes.

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Many of those sin habits have been buried. Some of them you've never seen your dad do, you never even knew that I had that in me.

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Buried beneath the sea, he brought me out of that place of death and darkness that he might bring me in to his glorious life, a promised land of victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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He's untethered my feet from this earth and allowed me a thousand times to fly to the very heavenlies.

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He's taught me through his word, through experience in life, that all of his statutes and his rules and his laws and his awesomeness and his holiness are for our good always, and that he might preserve us alive even as we are right now.

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Let's go into chapter 7, and that's the first part. The Lord moves on and says after we tell our children all about what these statutes are, and all about how

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God has delivered us and our generation from bondage, the Pharaoh is a symbol of Satan, he pictures

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Satan. Egypt, where we were bondmen, is a picture of the world system, and the fact that they continue to want to go back and get their garlic and their onions is a picture of the flesh.

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They were freed from all this, and the same has happened to us at the point of salvation. And when we teach our children about that deliverance in our own personal lives, and we let them walk with us, and we speak of the

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Lord as we walk by the way, and they see the difference between the way we say we were and the way we are now, has a great impact on their lives.

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That's not where God stopped. Look at chapter 7 and verse 1. When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land, whether thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the

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Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the

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Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou, when the

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Lord has done that, and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them.

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Now remember, we're still telling our young men and women this. We're speaking to our children.

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We're telling them now, Paul, when God has taken us from these places and delivered us from Satan and the world and the flesh, and he's brought us to a place where we have a certain amount of victorious living in our lives, someday this will happen in your own home.

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When this happens in your own home and you get in the promised land with your wife and your children, take no captives.

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Look what he says. When you get to that place, you shall continue to smite them.

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God has removed seven nations. God saved you. God brought you to the place where you even have a semblance of promised land victorious living.

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God did that for you. But he says, when you're there, you are to continue to smite them.

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That's the world, the flesh, and utterly to destroy them.

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Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.

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Don't take any captives. When you go into that place, those people that are already there, those things that were already in your life before you got saved, slay them.

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Remove them entirely. Don't make promises to them like, well, you know, we'll put you back in the back corner and maybe if you want to come out later, we'll let you.

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Don't put them into bondage. Slay them. Neither shalt thou make marriages with them.

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Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

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Be holy. It is not right to marry a person who is unsaved.

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It is not right to date such a person. And don't think for a minute you're going to date them and marry them and then win them to the

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Lord later. God might save them, but you have no guarantee of that. And I'll promise you this, if it doesn't happen, you'll have a hellish life because the two cannot fellowship.

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You'll have no spiritual unity at all. So just stay away from it. Slay the enemy before you.

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As you go in, many of you young people have already been brought to a place of victorious living in your homes with your parents as they walk with the

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Lord. God is telling you it's your job to continue to slay the enemy. You can't just rely upon your parents.

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When you go out there and you face some temptation from that young person that's out in the world that never has been in a

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Christian home, never has been in a Christian school, maybe when you get out there to college and you get around more normal people, the ones who haven't been severed and set apart by God, the people of the world have many beautiful things to talk about, many shining, glistening things and places to go and people to meet.

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And you're going to be tempted to be friends with them and to simply make a covenant.

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You know they're not of you, but you just say, well, you can come into my place, but you're kind of put in jail over here.

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And yet God says you have to slay everything that's of the world, the flesh and the devil, which means this, you cannot afford to become friends with them.

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You cannot afford to let it come into your life and take a place in your mind and speak to you from time to time and talk to you and talk their language and use their words and tempt you to go into their places and do their things.

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You have to slay that in your mind. You have to kill that voice in your mind. You have to tell it to go away.

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And you have to pray and say, Lord, give me the mind of Jesus. Let me think like he would think in this situation.

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Whether you're in the dorm room, wherever you are, young person, you have to say, Lord, I see this person before me and I hear what they're saying, but help me look at them right now just like Jesus would if I were him.

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How would he think of this person? Would this person be an object of lust, something I could use?

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Or would this person be a human with a soul that God loves? Help me think with the mind of Jesus Christ.

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Slay every other thought that might come into your mind. For they will turn away thy son from following me,

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God says. If they may serve other gods in our lifetime, that means things many times.

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It can mean other gods today. Sorcery and witchcraft that we have.

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So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, Paul and Katie.

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But the anger of the

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Lord, the Lord who loves you, the Lord who is your father, will be kindled against you if you serve other gods.

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And it says he may destroy thee suddenly. All different manner of ways.

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It's not always the gods the Lord's chasing when that happens, but sometimes it is and we just don't know about it.

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But you need to know in your own hearts, in your own life, that if you go after other gods, if you go after the ways of these other young people and you let them bring their gods into your midst, the things they do, the places they go, the friends they have, the way they talk, even their, the way that they dress, the clothes that they have, the jargon that they use, if you allow them to bring those kinds of gods around you, if you ever reach out and take one of those gods from those young people and hold it to your breast, the anger of your

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God will be kindled against you and he may destroy you suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them.

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You shall destroy their altars, you shall break down their images, you shall cut down their groves, the places where they worship these other gods, the places where they go to worship them, you shall burn their graven images with fire.

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Now today all this has to happen in your mind. You can't go out and tear up the Roman Catholic Church, little things in their, little idols in their church.

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Don't do that, but in your heart and mind, as the world system and these children of Satan come and they bring these things to you, in your mind you cut them off, you destroy them.

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You don't fellowship with them and that goes beyond in your mind, that's in the physical. You do not fellowship with them.

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It's a great temptation to make friends out of worldlings when you get out there in the college age. You can be nice to them, you are a light and a witness, but you can't be their buddy.

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You make that mistake, you know what'll happen? They'll pull you down to their level and you won't pull them up. All of a sudden they'll reach out and they'll say, well, here, take this.

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That's not what this is by the way, this is a pamphlet from the church. It's actually part of our musical thing, but let me just use it as an illustration.

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Here, take this, take this home with you. And you'll take that little idol and stick it in your heart, take it home and it's the beginning of your demise.

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God warns about all these things and you ask me the question anyway. You said, Lord, David, Dad. You didn't say

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David, you said Dad. What do these things mean, the statutes of the Lord? You shouldn't have asked, but I'm telling you.

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But thus shall you deal with them, you shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves, burn down their graven images with fire.

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For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God. You don't serve the same

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God they do. You have a holy God. You young people have got to be holy. You can't watch the stuff on television, the little situation things they're showing,

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TV's horrible. I wish you didn't live when I was a kid, it was at least better entertaining. But you watch these little situation things and you see how

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Hollywood wants you to think it is in a home and how it is in a relationship and the music that we have and the movies and you look at all this stuff and they're just handing you these gods one after another.

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And your God says, wait a minute, you have been severed from this. You have been severed, you are a holy people because I am a holy

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God. For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God and the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

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Have you stopped to think about that young people? Have you ever stopped to think that you take the universe and you take the

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God who was there before it was there and you take that God who one day just spoke and it all spun out into perfect order and that God who built your body and put all the little cells in there and all the little organs and all the little things that make you work and gave you that incredible brain and that God that gives you life every moment?

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Have you ever stopped to think that of all the people of the earth that God sees you as special because he called you before the foundation of the world and he loved you from that time?

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Us older people think about that more, don't we? But you younger people aren't going to have the luxury of taking a lot of time to get there because we're in the last of the last days as we believe.

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You've got to get there quickly. You've got to grow up faster than we did. You've got to know what it means to walk with a

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God who is absolutely holy and in him there is no unclean thing and no darkness, only light and you stand before him as a special person that he knew for eons and eons and eons of time before time started and then before that just going back farther than our minds can think he knew you and loved you already and had a name for you and a new name for you someday and then you were born into this world and here you sit today alive and that God right now of the entire universe loves you in a special way.

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What a thought. How dare we ever take other gods and put them in our pockets and take them home and let them slip into our hearts.

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That same God that loved you before the foundation of the world his anger will be kindled against you every time you do it.

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Same for us adults, we've just learned the lesson once or twice and I'm speaking to those in the room who haven't learned the lesson yet.

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You see, you children and young people have been in the promised land if you're in a Christian home and you just may think that everything is just cozy and warm and I'm so proud that you do because that's exactly how your parents should make it be in that home.

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But outside the doors of that home and outside the doors of this church it's not that way. It's full of idolaters and people who hate your

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God and people who hate the Lord Jesus Christ and worship and they'll tell you your professor is going to tell you someday that Mohammed and Buddha they've just all taken us to the same

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God it's just a different way and these people are good and sweet and lovely just like the

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Jesus people are we're all going to the same place but they're going to tell you and they're going to be nicer than half the

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Christians you've ever been around they'll be a whole lot kinder and sweeter to you treat you better they'll give you a hand, they'll open up their home and they'll feed you full of idolatry and you'll never know that they hate

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God until it's too late so moms and dads as God is telling us to tell our children so we see that our enemies are cast out before us we're supposed to tell our children about this great deliverance we're supposed to teach them that as they continue on in that promised land there are many other enemies that are yet to be taken and we're to take no captives we're to slay them all and then lastly we see starting with verse 7 that our holiness is not caused by us but by his great love for us which is from eternity to eternity the

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Lord did not set his love upon you my children nor choose you because you were greater or more in number than any other people or because you're better than those who are out there with you in the world when you go out to college and you sit around these young people that don't know the

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Lord God didn't save you because you're better than they are he didn't save you because you were prettier or smarter or because you had different parents he didn't save you because of anything that had to do with what you do he didn't choose you because you're stronger or more in number for in fact you were the fewest of all people and in the

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Hebrew it means you were the least of the least but here's why verse 8 because he loved you now if you're in grammar class you can't get away with this or if you're in logic class you can't answer a question with the question but if you ask the question why does

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God love you God answered it this way and he's allowed to do this because I loved you he said

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I loved you and I chose you because I loved you but he goes on and he says and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto his fathers because he's faithful he goes on and says he has redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, Satan himself the king of Egypt, the world system with all of its awful philosophies know therefore that the

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Lord thy God he is God the faithful God which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations and repayeth them that hate him to their face to destroy them he will not be slack to him that hateth him he will repay him to his face the

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Lord gives us a lot of information he tells us we're to do right but he tells us we have the equipment to do that with because he has equipped us he tells us ladies and gentlemen to speak to our children when they ask questions about God and tell them about our own personal deliverance but he also teaches us to teach them to take no captives in this world but to slay the enemy slay their idols, burn their altars and he gives the consequences if they don't and then he comes back and ends with this great message that if you go back as far as your mind can take you in time and you drop off out there into eternity you are already in God's heart and mind you were his child and he loved you with an eternal love before the world was now that you find yourself in this place alive in time living and breathing he still loves you with that same love and as you go out tomorrow and the next week and the next month and the next years you can't change that love with anything that you do or don't do that love was there before you were born that love will be there before and even when you depart from this earth that love is what will cause you to do right that love is what will cause you to burn those idols and to say no at the right time and not to make friends with the wrong people even if you don't get to have any friends because Jesus is your friend let's stand and have a prayer together

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Father we thank you for your word and once again we thank you for your Holy Spirit who touches our hearts and moves our hearts and moves information from our minds to that place where it will do the most good to our very hearts we ask that our young people remember this message as they go out into this world they will remember that they have been severed from the world they have been brought out from Egypt so that they might be brought in to the promised land and even when in the promised land they have work to do they must slay the enemy and take no captives help us to remember in the midst of it that you are a