John 16:1-4 (Comfort and Assurance In Christ)

The Shepherd's Church

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Seminary is a weird place. I moved up here to go to seminary and I cannot tell you how many analogies to underwear that I heard when

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I was in seminary. I'm not even kidding. Your Greek is like underwear. It should be there but it should be hidden.

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So in preaching they told us not to ever mention Greek words because it's like showing your underwear. Another one is your hermeneutics and your exegesis.

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That should be there. It should be worn. It should be present but hidden. Don't reveal all.

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And the assumption was that because of the modern world, because of the TikTok generation, our sermons must be short and pithy and to the point and we can't go deep or else we're gonna lose people.

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And that might be true but I reject it because the word of God is deep.

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Understanding it is important. There are different cultural aspects, Greek and grammar and things that sometimes we need to talk about.

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And if we lose folks doing that, I'm okay with it.

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But I also reject that premise because I think that the people of God want to know the word of God and they don't want to just be placated with stories and anecdotes.

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Just my thoughts. So with that, hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation.

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It's not your uncle hermeneutic. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. It means how do we understand the

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Bible? And what I think, I think one of the greatest errors in hermeneutics and everyone's understanding of the

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Bible, how do we get to the root of the truth is not understanding a historical grammatical method.

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A historical grammatical method. Now it's a fancy terminology, but I will say that if you don't have a proper understanding of the historical grammatical method, then you could accidentally come to the right interpretation of a text, but more than likely you will come to the wrong understanding of the text if you don't understand this principle.

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You may misunderstand what the Bible's saying. You may misapply what it is saying. You may overemphasize something that's supposed to be subtle.

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You may underemphasize something that's supposed to be massive. Not understanding this method, this rule, this principle will dictate so much confusion in your time of trying to understand the scriptures.

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Now you may not have heard of this rule before. It's likely because every seminarian was told not to share it, but the definition is actually quite simple.

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The historical grammatical method is trying to understand what the original author of the scripture was trying to teach the original audience.

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When we come to the scripture, it's not about us. It wasn't written to a 21st century audience.

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When we come to the scripture, we're trying to understand what the original author meant and what he's trying to say to the original audience because every text has one meaning, but every text also has a variety of applications.

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When we come to the text and we say, what does this mean to me? We're already lost because it means one thing.

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It means what it meant to the original author who wrote it, to the original audience that it was written to, inspired by God.

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That's the meaning. Every text has one. It may have a variety of applications though.

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The Bible is not a subjective painting. Have you ever seen a group of people standing in front of a painting and we all pretend like we know what we're doing?

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You know, I think that swirl right there means this and I think that blotch of ink means that. I do it with wine.

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Oh yeah, I can taste the dark chocolate notes. I don't taste the dark chocolate notes. I'm just trying to be sophisticated.

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Maybe I pre -gamed with a little Downton Abbey. That's a subjective experience.

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I'm trying to tell you what I think it means. That's not how we approach the Bible. We don't approach the

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Bible that way because the Bible has a concrete meaning. That's what the original author intended to say to the original audience.

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And if we don't get that right, we'll come away with a lot of crazy interpretations and theology from the text.

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Now, how do we do that? Well, we have to dive into their world. We have to understand how they felt and what was going on when they wrote it, what was happening in their geography or what was happening in their calendar, what assumptions they had, what passages maybe that they're quoting from.

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We need to get into the situation and the context. We need to get into the grammar and the verbs and the nouns.

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And we have to do hard work to get there to understand what it means. But when we do, our application is now rooted to something solid.

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That is what we're trying to accomplish today. And it has great relevance. Because again, if you don't do this well, you will miss it.

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Let me give you some examples. Jeremiah 29 11. For I know the plans

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I have for you, who declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. That sounds awesome, doesn't it?

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I know the plans I have for you. Plans for a great future and for prosperity and how many prosperity gospel preachers have taken that passage out of context and said,

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God's gonna give you your big house, your Benjamins, your Bentley and whatever else. That is not what that passage is saying.

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That passage is Jeremiah talking to a people who have iron shackles that are getting ready to be placed on their ankles where they're gonna march 700 miles with open blisters to a land that is not their own in exile just after their city is set on fire and burnt to a smoldering crisp.

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And he's saying, don't worry, I've not abandoned you. That is much different than if you just have enough faith, you can have a big house and a yacht.

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That passage is misused all the time. Because the historical grammatical method.

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It means what it means to me. It doesn't mean what it meant to Jeremiah. That's not true. Here's another one.

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I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4, 13. I've said this before. We prayed this before every basketball game in Christian high school.

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We can do it. We can beat the Catholic school because Christ strengthens us. That's not what that passage means.

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Paul, in multiple occasions, was beaten within an inch of his life. Left for dead, shipwrecked, bitten by snakes, rejected by his own people.

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And he's saying, you know what? All of that's really painful and really hard. But I can be faithful to Christ because it's

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Christ who strengthens me. This is not what we pray before we get under a bench press and say,

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I'm gonna make my max today. This is not what we pray when we finally get up enough motivation to do our taxes.

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I can do all things through Christ. I don't wanna do my taxes, but I am. It's not the verse where we say, you know what?

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I'm not gonna flip that person off today. None of us here would do that, thankfully. Because they cut us off.

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I can do all things through Christ. That's not what that passage means. This passage is about Paul trusting in Christ to help him in the most awful circumstances to be a follower of Christ.

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There's another one, Matthew 18, 20. Wherever two or three are gathered in my name. How many folks have sat at home and taken communion with cheese crackers and grape juice because where two or three are gathered in my name, there's the church.

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It's me, my wife, and my children. That's not what that passage means. That passage is when the church gathers on the

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Lord's day to worship Christ, that he's in our midst. That passage is not a

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Bible study at Starbucks, and it's not a pajama session on Sunday where you're watching a YouTube preacher.

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That's not what that passage means. What about John 14, 13? If you ask anything in my name,

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I will do it. This one's been abused. I barely even need to illustrate it.

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The examples abound where passages have been horribly ripped out of their context and misunderstood because we don't understand the principle of what did the original author intend to communicate to the original audience.

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We do not treat the Bible like a genie in the bottle. If I just read it this way, rub it that way, then

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I'll get whatever I want. It's not a vending machine. This concept's really important for our text today.

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Because our text today could be read in a way that you and I are gonna have trials and tribulations.

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You and I are gonna be persecuted. And we could sort of read this passage and develop a persecution complex that whenever someone gives us a dirty look, we're being persecuted.

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That is not what this passage means. As we will see, this passage is talking about a peculiar and a particular very painful and very white -hot season of persecution in the life of the church.

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That season of persecution, Jesus is going to prepare his disciples for, and it's gonna happen immediately after his ascension into heaven.

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And it's going to be the greatest season of persecution, I believe, that has happened in church history, and it's gonna happen right there in the first century.

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He's gonna prepare his disciples for it. He's gonna teach them principles on how to deal with it, which we can learn from today, but this passage ultimately is not about us, and it's not about our persecution.

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It's about the first century church. Again, we're gonna learn some things from that. But if you will, turn with me to John 16, verse one through four, as we attempt to understand what the original author intended to communicate to the original audience of this passage.

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Now, let me point to the elephant in the room. I normally don't have this many verses.

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I will not be reading all of these. These are here for you. So if you take a picture of it and you reference it, these are there for you.

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You can look at all the different verses that are coming into this message. There's a lot, but they're there for you, for your blessing.

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So turn with me, John 16, one through four, as we read the word of God together. These things

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I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue.

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But an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.

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These things they will do because they have not known the Father or me. But these things

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I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them.

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These things I did not say to you at the beginning because I was with you. Now, a little bit of background on this passage.

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These things is what Jesus is referring to. These things I've spoken, he says the words that I've spoken to you, he's referring back to a body of words that he's been speaking.

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And I think that there's several ways that we can look at that. We can look at the triumphal entry where Jesus enters into Jerusalem in chapter 12 and those words that he shared there.

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We can look at the upper room where he serves the Passover meal and then he serves the Lord's table and then he gets down and washes their feet and then he teaches them words there in John 13.

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Those words are applying to what he means by these things I've spoken to you. Chapter 14, the upper room discourse where one of the most famous discourses in John's gospel where he's teaching his disciples who he is and who they are.

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These things I've spoken to you could refer to that. The end of John 14, it says that they left the upper room.

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Jesus said, let us get up and go. And then they start traveling. They travel through the city because they knew that Judas had already left and he was already with the high priest and he was doing his treachery.

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So they left and they tiptoed through the city of Jerusalem in the dark of night and they got to the gate called Beautiful and they left the city of Jerusalem.

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They went down into the Kidron Valley. They went up towards the Mount of Olives looking for the Garden of Gethsemane and they did that on purpose because they knew that's where Judas was gonna come looking for Jesus.

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Jesus knew that his hour had come and that he was going to arrest them. But the entire time,

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John 15, when we read it, that's Jesus marching towards the Mount of Olives and teaching them on the way.

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They're not sitting in a classroom behind chairs and Jesus behind a lectern. They're walking and he is talking.

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Now, how relevant is it that he says that a time is coming where they're gonna kick you out of the synagogue, they're gonna kill you and they're gonna think that they're serving

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God because they're getting ready to do it to him. In just a few chapters, they're gonna seize him, arrest him and kill him.

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He is intentionally preparing his disciples for what life in his kingdom is gonna look like.

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That is why in John 15, 20, he says, "'Remember the word that I said to you.'" Very similar phrase there.

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"'A slave is not greater than his master. "'If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.'"

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He's talking to his 12 disciples. Now today, if you get used to the structure of the sermons, this one's a little different.

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Today, we're gonna pray after I give the purpose of this sermon, but I wanna do three things today.

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Number one, I want us to see what did the persecution look like in the first century? Because we can often, as we read the

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Bible and neglect it a little bit, we can read and say, God, what do you have for me today? What do you have, what do you want me to see?

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What do you want me to learn? We approach the Bible that way and we kind of miss the forest for the trees sometimes.

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The persecution that was happening in the first century was intense. So I wanna draw that theme together for us today to show what the disciples actually went through.

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And the primary enemy of the church was the Jewish nation who opposed

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Christ and his gospel. So that's the first thing I want us to do. The second thing, I wanna look at the comforts that Jesus promised to his disciples in the midst of their pain.

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And then finally, I want us to close by looking at in light of that, who is

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God and what can we learn today? How can we be comforted in the trials and tribulations that we go through as well?

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But we have to get there by going back into the text first. So if you will, let's pray and then let's jump in.

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Lord, we thank you that you brought your church. You brought your church to bear on this world and you brought it through many tribulations.

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Lord, you compare it to labor pains even, that increase in intensity. Lord, I pray that as we read these scriptures today, that we would have great gratitude for the men and women who went before us who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their faith.

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Lord, I pray that we would see how they suffered and how they suffered with great joy.

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Lord, I pray that it would be an encouragement to us who do not suffer the way that they suffered back then.

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Lord, also pray that we would see the principles here, that you comfort us, that you care for us, that you've provided assurances for us.

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Lord, I pray that we would see that. We would see it with great joy. Lord, it's in Christ's name we pray, amen.

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There's so much we could say about this. John 16's a great place to begin. Jesus says that there's gonna be a time coming where they're gonna kick people out of the synagogue and we know that that's already happening.

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We look back in John chapter nine, the blind man who professed faith in Jesus, he was kicked out of the synagogue that day for his allegiance to Jesus.

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So this sort of persecution is already ramping up and it's already happening. Now what does that mean, kicked out of the synagogue?

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Why was that such a bad thing? That sounds like not that big of a deal. Why didn't he just go to the synagogue down the street?

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He got kicked out of the Baptist synagogue? Well, maybe he can go to the Presbyterian synagogue. Why is that such a big deal? Well, back then there was one synagogue in one town and that was it.

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You could not go to the next one and they talked to each other so they would let each other know why you were kicked out and you probably wouldn't be allowed in the neighboring synagogues either.

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So that's the first thing. But more importantly, the synagogue was the center of Jewish life.

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On Saturday, they would worship together. On Monday, the children would be there learning the

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Torah. The scribes and the Pharisees would be there teaching the children as the mothers would bring the little ones there to learn what the scripture said.

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They would have meals there, communal meals. They would have celebrations there. Most of the Feast of Israel, they would celebrate there.

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Your entire communal identity happened at the synagogue so that if you were cut off from the synagogue, you weren't just cut off from worship services, you were cut off from your people.

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In a culture that radically identified communally, you would have been isolated.

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It would have been a death sentence, in a sense, to you, to be cut off from the people of God.

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And that's what they did to the blind man who identified with Christ. They cut him off from his people. They punished him.

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And the punishments get worse as time goes on. Jesus promises that his disciples are gonna get murdered and the reason they're gonna get murdered is because people think that they're actually serving

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God. You think about Saul of Tarsus. The great apostle, yes, but before that, he was going on killing sprees, killing the people of God.

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He was going to Damascus to kill a group of the people of God when God intersected him with a dazzling display of his own glory.

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The violence Jesus is promising was going to come quickly upon the church and it was going to be awful for the first 40 years of the church.

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The Olivet Discourse talks about this in chapter 24. They call it the Olivet Discourse because it was proclaimed on the

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Mount of Olives. Matthew 24, Jesus says this, but these things, the persecutions and the tribulations are merely the beginning of the birth pains.

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Then they will deliver you to tribulation and they will kill you and you will be hated by all nations because of my name.

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Now the birth pain analogy that Jesus is drawing here, there's wonderful blessings when a woman realizes that she's pregnant.

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When she sees the plus sign on the little tester, it is a wonderful thing, but there's some trials that happen, there's morning sickness, there's joint pains, there's all sorts of, you know, the waddling at the end, you know.

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I don't know anything about that, but I know of it. But it doesn't compare to the pain that happens in the labor.

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If you don't have the drugs and you don't have the, whatever it's called, you know, I can't remember. If you don't, it doesn't affect me.

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I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. If you don't have that, it's painful.

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It is very painful and it's the worst part of the pregnancy. It is a pain that, men, we just don't understand.

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Jesus is comparing his first three years of ministry, I think, to the first three trimesters of pregnancy, that there's been some trials, there's been some struggles, there's been some things, but now that he has ascended into heaven, the labor pains have come and they've been unleashed upon the church and they are gonna be hurtful and painful.

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Now, the reason that Jesus is doing this is not because he wants to see his people in pain. Jesus is doing this because the old covenant needs to end.

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The era of temples and priesthood and clean and unclean laws and dietary laws and all of that stuff that was pointing to Jesus needs to come to an end.

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You see, because when Jesus ascended to heaven, the temple still stood, the priesthood still stood, the sacrificial system still stood.

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Jesus, over 40 years, is going to put away everything in the old covenant and he's gonna bring his church, like a delivery of a child, onto the earth stage so that it can be his vehicle of redemption to all the nations.

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He's gonna put away the old and he's gonna bring and inaugurate the new. Now, these persecutions, like I said, happen quickly.

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Acts chapter four, the apostles are arrested the very first time. Acts four, one through three. After that, they're released.

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In Acts chapter five, they're arrested again. An angel, at that point, helped them escape and they started preaching again.

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And guess what happened? They got arrested a third time. This time, they were beaten. It says that they were beaten severely.

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At that time, though, they left and they were praising God that Jesus counted them worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. They looked at their suffering as a blessing because they were counted worthy to be like Christ.

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They were beaten by the Jewish officials right there in the temple who left them almost for dead. Not much later,

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Saul was murdering Christians and Stephen was the first one to be murdered. That's Acts chapter seven. That unleashed a series of violence that I think no era of history has ever known.

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Saul was being sent like a hitman. Acts chapter eight, one, when he was converted. And then after he's converted, they try to kill him.

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Herod the Great, in chapter eight as well, Herod the Great was killing

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Christians because he realized politically that it was advantageous. The Jews enjoyed it when he killed

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Christians, so he was doing that. We learn that from history. Tacitus talks about it. It says that the persecutions in chapter eight, one, that they were great, which means that they were both qualitatively awful and they were quantitatively repetitive.

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So they were happening with great intensity and great relevancy or frequency.

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The violence eventually became so painful and so bad for the early church that they scattered out of Jerusalem.

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Most of the people left because they couldn't bear it anymore. That's Acts 11, 19. That's when

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Paul was actually beginning to get started in his Gentile mission. So he was going from city to city in the

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Roman world, declaring the gospel. He was going to Jewish synagogues as a base of operations. At that time, though, while Paul was given a blessing to go to the

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Gentile world, most of the apostles actually stayed in Jerusalem because they believed that God had called them to evangelize the

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Jews because the Jews were, Jesus had already promised that in 40 years, their city was gonna be destroyed, so they were preaching the gospel ferociously so the

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Jews would repent. It was at that point that James was murdered by Herod Agrippa.

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James was a great leader in the early church. That's Acts 12. Made the Jews, again, happy.

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Peter would've been killed if it weren't for an earthquake that freed him from the prison. It's a great funny scene also, by the way.

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Peter leaves the jail cell. He runs, and this sweet lady named Rhoda came to the gate, and she thought he was an angel, and she left him out there, didn't let him in.

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He's a fugitive. She went in to go tell everybody that Peter was outside while he's standing out there thinking he's gonna get arrested again.

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Finally, they did let him in. After that, Paul goes to the Jewish synagogues where he's preaching the gospel and creating a great base of operations, and it was the

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Jews in all of those synagogues. Some of them believed. Some of them turned to Christ, but some of them whipped up the crowds against him and turned entire cities against him.

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Paul had trouble, not because of Gentile opposition. For the most part in his ministry, it was Jewish opposition that accosted

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Paul. In Acts 14, one through six, they almost stoned him. He escaped, and he fled.

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They chased him. They did stone him. They left him for dead in the streets. When Paul finally gets up, in Acts 14, verse 22, they thought he was dead.

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He stands up, and he goes back into the city to preach again because he knew what

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Jesus had told him to do. He even says, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. Paul, you just almost died.

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Now you're going back again, and he's like, I count my life as worth nothing. To live is

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Christ, to die is gain. Many tribulations, we're entering the kingdom. They beat him again, but he had an overmastering passion for Jesus that you can hurt my body, but you can't take away my joy.

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There's other examples, Acts 17, Acts 18, Acts 20, where Paul is being abused, where the church is being abused.

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You have Agabus, who's a young man who prophesied, Paul, don't go back to Jerusalem. If you go back to Jerusalem, they're gonna arrest you.

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They're gonna bind you, and they're going to take you to Rome, and Paul says, yeah, but I gotta go.

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Agabus' prophecy came true, and Paul went, and he was beaten within an inch of his life, and the moment before they kill him, the

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Romans step in, thinking that some great thing is happening, they arrest Paul and save his life by arresting him.

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The Romans then, later on, in Acts 22, they scourge Paul. That word is very intentional.

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It's the same word Jesus was beaten 40 lashes. Paul, with a cat of nine tails, was beaten 40 times, his flesh ripped open, his circulatory system exposed, his bones and his organs exposed to different diseases and different things, he was left almost for dead, and they did that to pacify the

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Jews who hated Paul and who hated the church. The labor pains were intense.

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It wasn't just Paul, it was many New Testament Christians were being beaten for their faith. They put

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Paul on trial for crimes that the Jews had accused him of. That's Acts 24, five and nine. While in prison,

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Paul wrote to the churches about persecution that was happening in their congregations. For instance, Romans, he says, for them to praise the

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Lord in the midst of their tribulations, that's Romans 5, three through five, he tells them that tribulations cannot separate them from the love of Christ.

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Why would he write that unless they were going through intense persecutions? And they were thinking, maybe God has abandoned me.

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Maybe God's not with me. My pain, my trials, my tribulations, they're proof, right, that God doesn't love me.

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No, Paul says that they cannot separate you from the love of Christ. They're because you love Christ that these things are happening.

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That's Romans 8, 35. Romans 12, 12, he tells them to persevere with hope because living that way in the midst of trials and pains and tribulations honors

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Christ. He does this for Corinth. He tells them to bless those who persecute them. He wouldn't have said that unless they were being persecuted.

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To endure with tribulations facing joy, that's 1 Corinthians 4, 12. 2

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Corinthians, he tells them to encourage one another. We read that in the God's greeting passage. To comfort one another when you've been afflicted and persecuted, he tells them that these things are light and easy in comparison to the surpassing hope that they have that's coming in Christ.

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2 Corinthians 7, he tells them that for them to have joy, that God is gonna bring joy in their suffering.

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2 Corinthians 11, 23 through 26, look at how Paul describes the Christian life. Are they servants of Christ?

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I speak as if insane. I am more so in far more labors and far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.

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Five times I received from the Jews, 39 lashes, five times. He was scourged.

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They had scientifically figured out that 40 would kill most men, so they beat him five different occasions, 39 times, to get him to the point of death, but not all the way there.

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Can you imagine the scar tissue on Paul's arms and on his back and on his legs and on his hamstrings and all of them, like the man was mangled with knotted scar tissue all over his body and he kept going.

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He said, three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.

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Three times shipwrecked. A night and a day I've spent in the deep. I've been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from countrymen, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers in the sea, dangers from false brethren.

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Paul was not living his best life now, according to what many promise you, that if you're a

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Christian that you'll have it easy. This man was afflicted on every side. To the

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Philippian church, he thanked them for sharing in his afflictions, which meant they were being persecuted just like him and he thanked them for not giving up hope.

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He said their behavior was a sure sign of their salvation, Philippians 127, and the people who were abusing them, it's a sign of their damnation.

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Philippians 128. To the Colossians, he taught them that they could have purpose in the midst of their pain, in the midst of their persecution.

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That's verse 24 of chapter one. Thessalonians, he tells them, they received the word with great tribulations. They were beaten because they received the word.

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Some of them were maimed, some of them were murdered for receiving the word. He tells them they were destined for great tribulations.

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First Thessalonians three, they were beaten by the Gentiles in the same way that Paul was beaten by the Jews. First Thessalonians two.

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He tells them that he's overjoyed when churches endured violent beatings. That's second Thessalonians one, four.

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Because they demonstrated their worthiness to be entering into the kingdom of God. That's second Thessalonians one, five.

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The book of Hebrews suggests that suffering was vital to our sanctification. Because we're leaving the old

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Jerusalem, the old covenant kingdom, and we're heading to the new Jerusalem, the new kingdom of Christ.

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James tells them that to have joy in their various trials and tribulations because that pleases

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God. That's James one, two, and four. He told them that the punishment that was gonna come upon the people who were persecuting them was imminent.

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The judge is right at the door, getting ready to drop the gavel against them. In James chapter five, this is before he was murdered.

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Second Timothy tells, or Paul tells him to suffer well for the sake of Christ. Remembering that the

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Lord is sovereign in our suffering. And he even says all who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted, second

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Timothy 3 .12. First Peter says, to the persecuted

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Christians who were forced to leave Jerusalem and to be scattered through the Roman Empire that God had a purpose in this and that they ought not to be surprised when the fiery trial comes upon them.

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How many times have we been late on a bill and we've been like, that verse is for me. Not be surprised when the fiery trial has come.

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That verse was talking about a peculiar kind of pain that they were going through. For them not to be surprised because faith in Christ is offensive to the world.

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Revelation says, I know your tribulation. It's Jesus talking to his church, by the way. He says, I know your tribulation.

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I know your poverty, but you are rich. And I know the blasphemy of those who say that they are

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Jews, but they're not. Do you know why Jesus says that? It's not because they weren't ethnically born and they got the wrong birth certificate.

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That's not what he's saying. He's saying they're not Jews because Jews come from Israel. Israel. The word

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Israel was given to Jacob. Jacob was called Israel because he wrestled with God. How can the people with the name

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Israel be a people who wrestle with God when they're murdering God's saints?

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Jesus is saying they think that they're Jews, but they're not. They're a synagogue of Satan, he says in verse nine of chapter two in Revelation.

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Do not fear what you're about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison.

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So that you will be tested and you will have tribulation for 10 days. But be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

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Do you see the scene that's happening in the first century church? You're gonna be imprisoned, you're gonna be beaten.

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You're gonna wanna give up, but don't. Be faithful to Jesus Christ. You will get the crown of life.

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From the earliest days of the church all the way into the final moments, they were persecuted.

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There's reports, I don't have the reference for this, but I've read this and I think

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Tacitus or Suetonius that it was the Jews in Rome who conspired with Nero to set the

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Christians on fire in the city there and to blame them for his fire that he set on the city of Rome. There's all kinds of reports of the hated race of Christians.

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Josephus tells us that they were a despised race and that everybody was trying to stamp and stomp them out.

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And yet it was Tertullian who said, it's the blood of the martyrs that's the seed of the church. When the church is persecuted, she grows.

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When the church is killed, she prospers. And there's no greater period of prospering than in that first century when the church took the gospel to the entire

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Roman world. Paul says that the gospel had been preached to every creature under heaven. He said that in Colossians.

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But that's not all that Jesus said to them. He warned them that persecution was coming.

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He warned them that it was for their good. He warned them because they were to receive it with great joy. He told them that by being persecuted, they were identifying with him and his sufferings.

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He told them all of these things, but he also told them that there's comfort when you're persecuted.

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And he gives them three different things that will comfort them, that will be like a life raft for them when they suffer, that'll be like a balm on their lips when they're in the midst of a wilderness in a desert.

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The first thing is, as he said, I've given you my word. I've given you my word.

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Not just the Bible, because at that time, the Bible wasn't fully written yet. It was still being written. He's saying,

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I've given you my word. Everything that I've said to you, every campfire sermon that you've heard me, every parable that I've told, every conversation that we've had, every promise that has exited my lips,

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I've told you, I've given you my word, and the promises of God do not fail. The thing

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I wanna encourage everyone here with is the thing Jesus wanna encourage his disciples with. Your circumstances do not nullify the promises of God.

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I don't care what you're going through. Your circumstances do not nullify what God has said in his word.

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And Jesus gave that to his disciples to comfort them. The second thing that he gave them to comfort them, he said,

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I gave you my word so that you would not stumble. That's a comfort.

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That's an assurance. Paul is not saying that he gave them that so that they wouldn't stumble emotionally or whatever else.

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He wasn't saying, hey, Peter, you've got this really bad habit of whining, so I'm gonna give you my word to correct that.

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The word stumbling here means falling into hell. He's telling them that I gave you my word so that you will not fall from me, so that you will not lose what

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I have given you, so that you will understand that you are safe.

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You can charge the greatest and most fiercest mountains with every sword aimed at you, every bow pulled back, ready to drink your blood, and don't you fear because I've got you safe.

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Your body may pass away, but I've got you. Can you imagine the comfort that the people who heard that would have felt?

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I can't be lost, Jesus. You yourself are going to protect me from stumbling, and he's the one who rose from the dead.

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He's the one who came out of the grave alive, so if anybody could be trusted to keep me from stumbling, it's him, and he's the one who's promised to keep me.

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This isn't the application part of the sermon, but I think it's important to say there's a lot of times where we struggle with assurance of our salvation.

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There's a lot of times where we wonder to ourself, do I really have it? I will tell you this, if Christ Jesus has saved you, you cannot be lost.

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You are not powerful enough to pull yourself out of his hand. You are not smart enough to extricate yourself from his love, and you are not good enough and holy enough to undo what he has done.

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You struggle with your sin, yes you do, but you cannot be lost because Christ is the one who holds you.

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Christ is the one who keeps you. He promised if you're his that he will keep you from stumbling.

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If you believe you can lose your salvation, you believe Jesus can fail on a promise that he's a liar, and he's not.

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He will keep his until the very end. No matter what happens, no matter how much pain and misery you go through, no matter how deep your doubts are, no matter how much depression, sin, persecution, pain that you walk through, if you are his, you are his.

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Look at the examples. John 3 .16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish.

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Let's emphasize that one, right? You can't perish if you belong to him.

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John 3 .36, you will have eternal life, it's a promise. John 5 .24, you will not come under judgment.

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John 6 .35, you will never hunger and you will never thirst because you belong to Christ. John 6 .37, everyone that the

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Father gives to Jesus will not be lost, everyone. John 6 .40,

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you will be saved because it's the Father's will. John 10 .27, no one can snatch the elect sheep out of his hand, no one.

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John 11 .25, his people will live in him. John 14 .6, he is the way, the truth, and the life.

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No one can come to the Father except through him, which means that you can't be lost because you came in through him.

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He's the good shepherd that lays in the door so that the wolf can't come in and steal you and so you can't get out.

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The point, that's just John, that's just John. These passages are all throughout the scripture.

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If you belong to Jesus, you're his. He who began a good work and you will see it through to the day of completion.

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Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. Not height, not depth, not powers in hell, not powers below, not powers above, nothing.

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Not only can it not separate you from Christ, it can't separate you from the love of Christ.

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Nothing, through patience, even through pain, and through trial, he is working out his good plan in your life and he will see it through on the day that he's completed it, if you belong to him.

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And you will see the day when your enemies fall, either in this life or in the life to come.

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Look at what Jesus says to them about their enemies. This is the third comfort he gives. These things they will do, that's the people who persecuted them, they will do because they have not known the

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Father, they have not known me. But these things

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I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes, you will remember that I told you.

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Jesus is not saying when some random hour happens, he's saying their hour, the hour of their demise.

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That's a common Johannine, just means John, it's a common phrase in the book of John which means the hour of their death.

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Jesus uses it for himself, he says my hour's not yet come, my hour has come. When their hour comes, when their death comes, you will remember that I said it, that your enemies cannot take from you what

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Christ has given they can't steal from you what God has safeguarded and vouchsafed.

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And we know from the history of these things that some of those who were standing there did not taste death until they saw these truths coming in picture perfect clarity.

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The Romans in AD 68, 38 years after Jesus ascended, they burned down city after city after city in Galilee.

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They burned down city after city in Judea. They surrounded the city of Jerusalem and the rebels who were persecuting

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Jesus's church, who were killing God's people, who were murdering his prophets and his apostles and his disciples and his people, that city was surrounded.

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And by the time it was over, there was a million bodies that were lying there on that ground that day.

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There were crows and vultures swarming the city because of the stench. Josephus tells us that there was not one inch of pavement that wasn't covered with a dead body.

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We don't hear about that a lot. When God promises something, when he promises that his enemies will be put down, he does it.

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And that would have been a sign not to rejoice in because of what happened to them, but to rejoice in that God is caring for us and protecting us and keeping us according to the promise.

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The old covenant passed away that day. The new covenant came in full. And for 2 ,000 years,

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Christ has been building his church and safeguarding his people, not from pain, not from persecutions, not from trials, but so that you will not stumble and you will not fall away.

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And his witness on earth will continue and it will continue to grow and it will continue to be bolstered by Christ until it has won the entire planet.

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Those are the three comforts that he gave his disciples and those are the comforts that he gives to us. You may not face the kinds of pressures and pains and persecutions that the first century disciples faced, but we serve the same

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God who comforts us with his word. When you're in pain, when you're broken, or when you're in pleasure and you have joy, the word of God and the promises of God are your comfort.

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They are your buttress. They're what hold you up. Again, your circumstances cannot negate the promises of God.

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I don't care what you're going through today, dear Christian. If you belong to him, you are his. Believe that, hold to that, cling to that, rejoice in that.

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Second thing is we know that God does allow suffering. He does. It may not be of the same kind and the same variety.

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That's why I say that this text is not about us in the way that it's being described, but God does allow suffering.

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There's pains and there's trials and there's hurts and there's all kinds of things, terrors that afflict us, marriages that break us, jobs, finances, you name it.

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We live in the first world, but it doesn't mean we don't have problems. And those problems are real. I talk to people all the time who are hurting over their problems.

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Remember Jesus said a slave is not greater than his master. You're his slave. You're gonna go through pain and trial, but it's gonna beautify you.

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Jesus has not got a whip and whipping you just for the sake of tormenting you.

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Jesus is a master sculptor who is pounding, cutting, chiseling, crafting, it hurts, sanding so that you will become beautiful in him through both pain and through pleasure.

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He comforts us with his word. He says, your word's a lamp to my feet, a light to my path. I've inherited your testimonies forever.

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Your law is love and it's great peace. Nothing causes the ones who hold to it to stumble.

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That's Psalm 119, 165, which is the exact same thing Jesus said. If you hold to his word, you will not stumble.

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You can have comfort and you can have assurance, just like we read in 2 Corinthians 1 -6.

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Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. When you go to God, you know, you don't go to a threadbare shelf.

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Have you ever been to a grocery store, especially during, you know, the woof woof time frame? Where like there's no toilet paper and there's no bread, there's no milk.

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In the south, in the south when it snows, there's no milk and bread anywhere.

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It's like it ceased to exist. One snowflake and it's gone.

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It's a miracle. You don't go to a God who lacks comforts and mercies to give to you.

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His shelves are always full. Every time you go to him, he has treasures forever.

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Our hope and our assurance today, brothers and sisters, is rooted in the promises of God. It's rooted in his love for you and his love for his word.

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He promised that you would not stumble. Believe that and find your encouragement and hope in that.

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Amen? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that your word is true and that everyone else is a liar, but your word is true.

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Lord, I pray that today that we would cling to your word and your promises. If we belong to you,

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Lord, I pray that we would not doubt it. I pray that, Lord, we would rejoice in the fact that even though our circumstances look strange and peculiar and may cause us to stumble, that you,

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Lord Jesus, will never let your people stumble. Our feelings don't dictate reality.

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Your word and your promises are truth forevermore. Help us to trust these things,

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Lord, and rejoice in them in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you for subscribing to the

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Shepherd's Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. We pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word, and may the Lord be with you.