A Zeal For God

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Yom Ha 'Arad. Thank you, Brother David, Brother Kevin.
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It's always a blessing to be in the house of the
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Lord, which is with the people of the Lord. I got the bulletin, and in it is the title of the sermon that I gave about a week ago.
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And as I read through this passage and thought about it and prayed about it,
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I have to change the title. I don't reuse sermons.
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I believe that we serve a living God who knows our heart and He knows our mind, and He uses us to speak truth according to His Word as we need it.
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And so I don't say that to glorify me at all, but just to point to the activity of our living
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God. And so the title of today's sermon is, Knowledge is
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Necessary. Knowledge is necessary. It comes from the book of Romans.
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It's the first 17 verses. I would encourage you to go home and read the rest of that chapter and think about what we talked about this morning, but I'm not going to include that in this passage.
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I want you to consider these first 17 verses as one argument.
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In it, Paul states that the Jews who are obedient to the law don't understand the means of salvation, and that only through faith in Jesus Christ can anybody be saved from the wrath of God.
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Let's read that passage now. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.
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For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
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For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.
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For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
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But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring
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Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring
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Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith that we proclaim.
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Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
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For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.
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For the same Lord is Lord over all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him.
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For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him, in whom they have not believed?
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And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
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And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!
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For they have not all believed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what
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He has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the
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Word of God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, You are good and gracious.
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Indeed You are our Heavenly Father. You created us.
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You sustain us. You save us according to Your will and by Your grace and Your mercy. We are dependent on You, Lord.
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We need You. Show us Yourself today. Show us
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Your truth and Your Word. Show us Your love. Show us Your righteousness.
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Feed us, Lord, through Your Word. Help us to grow and be sanctified. We cannot grow without You.
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We have no wisdom of our own. We have no knowledge of our own. We are dependent on You, Lord.
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I am dependent on You. Please speak to us through Your Word and through Your Spirit today for Your glory and our growth.
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We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So Romans was written by an apostle named
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Paul. Paul was a Roman by natural born citizenship and a
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Pharisee by his chosen trade. His father was a Roman citizen, so when he was born, he was born as a
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Roman. Those are his earthly parents and his earthly heritage. He was a scholar of the
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Old Testament Scriptures. He grew up into an authority in the
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Jewish religion. He was taught and studied by a prominent scholar named
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Gamaliel. And he grew to be extremely zealous for the traditions of his fathers.
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That's what it says in Galatians 1 and in Philippians 3 it says, as to righteousness under the law, he was blameless.
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He did what the law required. He knew the law. He obeyed it. He was faithful to the law.
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He lived with specific intent and great aspiration and purpose.
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He ordered his life intentionally and specifically according to the law of Moses. He was pious.
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He was dogmatic. He was certain that according to the way that he lived, he would be saved.
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It's noteworthy here because Paul was an expert Jew. He once believed that salvation was through the law and that personal obedience was the means of salvation.
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And not only did he believe that, but he used to be so extremely zealous towards the law that he was a persecutor of those who disobeyed it.
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And he was a murderer of those who blatantly spoke against it. Zeal is a powerful word.
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Merriam -Webster defines it as eagerness in pursuit of something. And Vocabulary .com
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says it is zeal in dedication or enthusiasm for something.
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Eagerness of something. Dedication for something. So one can have a zeal for a hobby, for a sport, for a profession, for money, for a building, or for a person, or for a cause.
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A husband can have zeal for his wife or he can have zeal for his marriage.
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And that's not the same thing. And guys, I'm not attacking you here. I'm just drawing out an illustration.
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A man can desire the situation of marriage and not desire his wife. A woman can do the same thing.
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A husband may know all the right things to say and all the right things to do so there's an outward appearance of this perfect thing, this perfect union.
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But if he does not truly know his wife, if he doesn't understand her, if he doesn't love her, if he's not conscious of her wants and her needs and her desires, and he does not supply for them, then he may be zealous for marriage instead of being zealous for his wife.
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Paul, before his conversion, was zealous for religion, but he didn't truly know
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God. With all that Paul knew, all that he studied and he understood and the way that he acted, he understood the character of God and the standards of God, but he did not know what
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God really wanted. He was lacking in his information and in his commitment to God.
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So an uninformed or a misinformed zealot would not know the will of God in salvation or what it means to be righteous or what
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God requires of righteousness to be saved. They might be fooled into thinking they can make their own way into heaven.
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They can just be good enough or because God is love,
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He loves them enough or that God won't punish anyone, but according to the
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Bible, those people are going to perish in hell because knowledge is not enough.
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Knowledge is necessary. They don't know that according to Exodus 34, the
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Lord is a God good and merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.
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There is no gospel without understanding and knowing and recognizing and wrestling with our own personal sin.
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There is no salvation outside of the mercy and the grace. God is merciful and God is gracious and God is righteous.
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What does it mean to be righteous? The righteousness of God is the divine attribute that describes
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God as acting always in a way that is consistent with His own character. That means that God always perfectly displays all of His perfect characteristics.
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Not one characteristic can override another and cause it to fail. God always does what is right and what is good because He is good.
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He is perfect. He is righteous. Paul's theme for this passage is that salvation is freely offered to all people who believe in Jesus Christ as the
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Son of God and the only righteous sacrifice that fulfilled the requirements of the law.
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Jesus did everything right. He obeyed the civil law. He followed the ceremonial law.
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And He upheld the moral law. He did everything right. And before His conversion,
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Paul had both religious zeal and an expert knowledge of the Old Testament. He was doing things right, but he didn't have the saving grace of God.
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Paul's zeal was towards the law and he rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah. His pre -conversion zeal was a result of his selfishness, his pride, his self -centeredness.
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He thought that his salvation was founded on his biological birthright and his extensive study of the
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Scriptures and his personal obedience. And the Bible tells us that's not true. Once Paul believed, things changed.
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God poured out His grace to Paul on the road to Damascus. He blinded him. He changed him.
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He saved him. Paul's heart was changed from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.
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And Paul submitted to Jesus as Lord and Savior. And Paul began to trust the people of God and to love the people of God and to love those who did not know
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God. And Paul's life dramatically changed. God gave him an expert understanding of the
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Gospel. And God gave him a heart that loved people. And God gave him the truth of the
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Gospel so that he could write a quarter of the New Testament Scriptures. And in this letter, it's so important to know who
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Paul is and who he was because he was the expert who could best tell the world that none of your previous personal accomplishments or worldly inheritances will matter when
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Jesus comes back to claim those who belong to Him. Eternal salvation does not hinge on our earthly parents or what country we were born in or what our chosen profession is or how much knowledge we have.
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Paul explains in this passage that knowledge of God, salvation by God, and faith in God are all blessings from God.
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At the end of this passage, Paul drops a bomb and he declares that God's design is for the
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Christian to be the instrument that declares the Gospel and saves the world from the eternal wrath of God.
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I'm not saying that salvation is by man or from man, but it is delivered to others through man.
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Paul doesn't say we save people. The Bible doesn't say that we've saved people because God doesn't say that man saves people.
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It's a divine work. We can look back through the earlier portions of Romans and see this because in Romans 3 .10,
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Paul says that no one is righteous. No. Not. One. That means that no one deserves salvation based on their own perfect character.
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In verse 3 .23, it says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That means every person who was ever born has sinned and will be punished.
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And God is perfect. Romans 6 .23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
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Lord. Sin brings death unless they receive salvation in Jesus.
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That's the clear and simple Gospel. And Romans 4 tells us that that salvation is received through faith.
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And finally Romans 7 .4 says that those who are saved through faith in Christ are free from performing the obligations of the law.
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God's Word gives us truth to live by. Here in this chapter 10 where we started these first four verses,
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Paul is expressing his desire for the people of Israel to be saved. And he's explaining that their zeal is misplaced.
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Their knowledge is incomplete. And their faith should be in Jesus Christ alone, not in personal works.
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Paul says there is one Lord over all humanity who richly blesses out of His abundance, but not according to earthly status or family heritage or personal merit.
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Ephesians 2 tells us that He saves because of the great love with which He loved us.
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And that God saves us according to His mercy and according to His grace. That means
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God grants the eternal salvation which they don't deserve, we don't deserve, when
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He poured out His wrath, which we do deserve, on Christ instead of us. That's what
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Paul's driving at here. That the good news of the Gospel is the free gift of God.
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It's not earned, it's simply given. The law was given to Moses to show the
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Israelites that all who came after them, that no man can hold to the perfect standards of God, that none of us can be good enough, that it's only because of Jesus and in Jesus and His righteousness that we can be considered righteous as well.
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God made a way where there was no way. The Son of God left
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Heaven and He was born of the Holy Spirit and a man and He lived a righteous life and He died a sinner's death and He was bodily buried and divinely resurrected and ascended into Heaven.
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That is the righteousness of Christ and the acceptance of God the Father in His sacrifice.
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He is the only all -sufficient Savior that we have. And Jesus was the end of the law.
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That's what it says in verse 4. So the Israelites, just like so many people today, claim to have another truth, another means of salvation, another way to God, or no need of salvation at all.
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And those are all false Gospels. That's what the world today is riddled with, lies and deceit and the ignorance of man.
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And that's why knowledge is necessary. Knowledge that only comes from the Word of God can deliver us into the hands of God for the grace of His salvation.
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Verse 9 and 10, they declare man's necessary response to that Gospel.
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Verses 11 and 12 open up that hope to every single person who will call on Him in faith and God promises to pour out the riches of heaven on them.
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Verse 13 is such a sweet sweet promise of God.
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It guarantees salvation to everyone who calls on Him. Every tongue, every tribe, every nation, every individual who calls on the name of the
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Lord will be saved. Is there a greater promise in the
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Word of God? Matthew 11 Jesus Himself says,
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Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
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Eternal salvation and rest only comes through Christ because of Him, because of His works, because of His life and because of His death.
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It doesn't matter where we come from, what ethnic variety, what cultural heritage, what language or family ties,
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God saves every person who calls on His name in faith. No matter what their sin, no matter their volume of sin, no matter what sin it was, no matter the nature of that sin,
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God poured out His wrath on Jesus Christ 2 ,000 years ago for every sin of every saint who will ever call on the name of Jesus.
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That was years before Paul wrote this letter that God's wrath for those sins was exhausted on Jesus Christ.
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Jesus gave up His righteous life and was shamed for us on the cross to pay the debt that we cannot for a salvation that we didn't earn for the glory of God.
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Romans 8 1 tells us that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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Maybe a better promise, I don't know. What a blessing. What an encouragement.
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What a foundation we have to stand on knowing that we can call on Christ and that once we do and we have knowledge of Him and we have faith in Him that He will redeem us and there is no eternal punishment left for us.
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God has removed the sins of the saint as far as the east is from the west.
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Only because those consequences have been poured out on Christ. Starting in verse 14,
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Paul pleads with the Christian, How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?
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And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
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And how are they to preach unless they are sent? Calling on God requires believing on God.
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Believing in God requires hearing about God. Hearing about God requires someone preaching
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God's word and someone preaching the word happens when the church sends them out.
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Paul is showing the reader the link between people being saved and people being sent.
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And Paul is charging the church to send. Send the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Send it into the world by faithful men and faithful women. Jesus is not to be held by a local gathering of Christians inside a church building.
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Jesus died for the sins of people all around the world and they need to hear about it.
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Mark 16 15 you can turn there if you want it's not a parallel passage necessarily but it is
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God's command to the church. And here
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Paul is encouraging the church and the Christian to fulfill their purpose, their mission which
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Jesus gave them in Mark 16. It says
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Mark 16 15 and he said to them go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.
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Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved but whoever does not believe will be condemned. The gospel does not go forth without the recognition of sin.
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And the gospel does not go forth without the activity of the Christian. Go into the world and preach the gospel to the whole world.
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That's our job. That's the grandest, most magnificent thing we can ever do is proclaim the name of Christ.
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We can live a life of faithful obedience to Him not to the law, not doing stuff but proclaiming
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Christ. We proclaim the excellencies of Him who calls you out of darkness and into His marvelous light.
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You go forth, you tell people this is who Jesus is, this is what
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He did for me, this is what He did for others. Will you have faith in Him? And verse 16 says whoever believes, that's their job.
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We can't make anyone believe. We can plead, we can try and convince but all we can do is speak the truth and love.
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If you're here and you don't know Jesus and you don't know He's the only way then
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I beg you, cry out to Him. Read the
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Bible, pray the Bible, ask people around you. Verse 16 goes on to say whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.
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That's the work of God. Our evangelism is the proclamation. Baptism is by the
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Spirit and it's the work of God. It's not the water baptism that we do in a lake or a river or a tub in some building.
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It's the Romans 6 and the Ephesians 4 baptism. It's into the death and the burial and the resurrection of Christ.
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Jesus was raised from the dead and when we are saved and baptized in the Spirit we can go forth and walk with the
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Father in a newness of life. That's the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the
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Spirit that Titus 3 talks about. That's the bringing of a dead soul to life. That's the work of God.
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And Paul says that only happens when they have knowledge of God.
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When they're saved their zeal can grow. They can have a zeal in Christ and they can have a relationship with Him where they are excited and they have love and they have compassion and they are encouraging others about something.
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About God. About the Gospel. So what does it take to believe?
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What does it take to comprehend one's sin and to trust in the redemptive work of Christ?
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It's clear. Paul says it begins with hearing the Gospel. Paul is engaging the reader.
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He's engaging us and committing them to responding to the understanding of their own salvation and pass that knowledge on to someone else.
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The means of salvation are singular, are definite, are defined, and are completed according to the work of God.
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The means of salvation are declared and clearly and specifically recorded in this one book and people out there need to hear it.
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They need to hear about the Jesus Christ of the Bible. That's Paul's answer.
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Jesus' answer is I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except me. And that there is no salvation in anyone else where there is no other name under heaven by which one must be saved.
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Paul simply points people to God's Word. He says listen to Jesus. Listen to the recorded
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Word. Listen to the canon. And see what it says. It says Jesus Christ is the only way.
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Paul's whole argument in this passage is a command to the saint from the
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Savior with the explanation that God uses the ones he's saved to spread his gospel to others who are lost.
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Notice the references in verse 11 and verse 13 back in Romans 10. One from Isaiah, one from Joel.
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What's Paul's point? His point is this has always been the only plan.
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Thousands of years ago this was written by other prophets and it's still the same today.
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God's always only ever had one plan and it's always only ever been in one man.
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Jesus Christ. Paul expressed his desire for the lost to be saved.
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He declared that salvation is free to all who repent. He argued the necessity of a loving response for Christians according to their salvation to preach the
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Word of God to others. That's the passage. And it ends with these words.
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So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. It doesn't say save or salvation in that word.
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It says faith. What is faith? Man, that's a difficult question to answer.
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Hebrews 11 tells us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen.
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So faith is not a maybe and it's not a I hope so. It's a guarantee, brother.
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Amen. Faith is based on knowledge. Knowledge that comes from God's Word.
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And when that faith is built up and mature, that faith is immovable.
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It's solid. It's built on the rock. Hearing and reading the
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Bible 4 ,000 years of historical accounts of God's activity that describes
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His character and His creation and His intentions with His creation ought to convince the biblical student that God exists and that God reigns and that God judges and that God saves.
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The New Testament has multiple accounts, multiple records of eyewitnesses that describe the divine birth, the sinless life, the bodily death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Christ.
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There is eyewitness factual accounts that we can lean on to say that happened.
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And when the Spirit of God convicts the sinner and turns them into the saint, that's
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God's work. Gathering with the saints, preaching the
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Word, singing hymns. Man, brother, I loved that last hymn we sung. I could have sung three more verses.
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I would have done it with you. And doing it corporately with other
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Christians. What an encouragement. Christian fellowship is where faith is strengthened.
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This is the best this world has to offer. Right here, right now. In this room, or under a tent, or under a tree, or whatever that looks like.
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Gathering with other Christians in this world resembles what will be perfect in the triumphal church.
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Properly setting our eyes on Christ here. Making Him our utmost priority.
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Making Him above all else. That should be the greatest desire of our heart.
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It should be what captivates our mind and excites our heart. Faith is knowing that one day, every soul will submit to Him.
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And every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. And on that day, knowledge will not be mistaken.
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The Lord of all will not be understood. Submission will not be a willful choice.
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And salvation will no longer be an issue of neglect, or of indifference, or of conscious rejection.
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Salvation will be visible to all, but only experienced by some. That's when faith is realized.
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The substance of the things hoped for will be seen. Will be touched.
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Will be experienced in ways that we can't understand. That this body and this mind can't contain.
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The mysteries of God will be fully revealed. No question will go unanswered.
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No truth will be disconnected. And no understanding will be withheld. The fullness of God that would destroy this weak flesh will be before all people.
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And the knowledge of His greatness will be indisputable. Being zealous for God does not earn salvation.
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Believing in God does not earn salvation. And salvation is not a result of belief or of faith.
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Faith is a result of belief in accordance with salvation, which is a gift of God that comes through obedience of saints proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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That's Paul's conclusion. Faith and salvation come by the calling from the
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Father, the ransom by the Son, and the regeneration by the Spirit. That's the biblical conclusion. The righteousness of Christ covers the saint when they are baptized by the
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Spirit, when they are covered like a cloak, when they are adopted into His kingdom as sons and daughters of the
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Most High. That's when we can grow as a
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Christian and be zealous toward God and look forward to eternal life with Him. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to God's Word alone, for the glory of God alone.
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And knowledge is necessary for that salvation. Knowledge and belief in Jesus Christ as the only begotten
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Son of God, as the only sufficient sacrifice for paying the penalty of our sins.
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That's the gospel. That's all a Christian has to take out into the world.
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The eternally begotten Son of God left the glory of His Father to come and live among us.
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What are we willing to do for Him as the church?
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So many verses about the church. I would have been okay if you read that Ephesians 4 passage because, man, to be likened unto the measure of the fullness of Christ.
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That's the aim of the church. We edify. God sanctifies according to the
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Spirit of God, lays a great responsibility and an incredible opportunity on us.
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On both the church and the individual Christian. The church is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them all that He has commanded. The church is to teach and encourage the
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Christian about the truth of God. The Christian is to go into all the world and proclaim that glory to them.
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The local church has a duty to become a theater of grace.
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A nursery for man's faith and the engine for both global and local missions.
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The church is the bride of Christ. Bought, purchased, married, guaranteed.
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We are those who God gave His life for. It is Christ who mediates for us.
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When we go home, it's because of the work that He did. God loves us.
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Back to Ephesians 2. Because of the great love with which He loved us. We were born into death.
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Born into an earthly ethnic group, into a language group, into a hereditary group of people.
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And we were sentenced to death because of the headship of Adam over us. Because of his sins and our sins.
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And we are saved by Christ. We don't have to keep the literal law.
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We have to abide by the moral law. We have to try to be righteous according to the understanding of God's word and the work that He does in our spirit.
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We have to try to follow the ceremonial law. We worship
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Christ with all that we have and all that we are. He gave His everything to us.
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We give our everything back to Him. Paul says if you believe that, that you are obligated to tell others about it.
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If you're a Christian today, it's because you heard God's word. Because some other Christian read or told you about Christ.
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We owe that to someone else. Just like somebody took the time and the effort and the energy to study
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God's word and to be able to speak words that represent the truth of God's word to us.
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We simply need to replicate that. To do it again and again and again and again in the world.
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We preach the word of God. We do it in season. We do it out of season. We do it when it's popular. We do it when it's unpopular.
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We just speak the joy that we have because of the work that Christ has done in us.
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That's why people, that's why God uses people to spread the gospel.
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Because the most important thing that ever happened to us can happen to other people.
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But it's only going to happen to other people if we grab hold of that obligation and we open our mouth and we speak words that represent the truth of Christ.
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We all deserve eternal punishment. Somebody spoke the gospel.
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God saved and now we have an obligation. The most important, most impactful, most life changing and loving act that you can ever do to someone else for someone else is to talk to them about Jesus.
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Because your testimony is powerful. If you know
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Him then believe in Him and have faith in His word and preach it to others.
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Act like Christians. That's the only application from this passage. Imitate Paul as Paul imitates
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Christ. We can't be Christ. We can't save anybody but we can change from who we were and what we used to believe and stand on the truth of God and speak that to others for their good and our enjoyment and God's glory for the salvation of people of His own calling.
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God is renewing all things. This world will end. It will be rolled up like a scroll and when that day comes, if we don't have faith, if we don't believe according to the knowledge of God's word that Jesus Christ is the
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Son of God and He died for our sins, that we will perish eternally because of our sins.
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I pray that was an encouragement to you today. Recognition of our sins is never fun, it's never easy, it's never delightful, but the gospel is only powerful in light of our sins.
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We have to grab onto them, we have to hold them tight and we have to speak the gospel.
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I'm going to read one passage that I hadn't planned on, but it came to my mind after these other two brothers were talking.
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1 Corinthians 1, 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
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I'm not an eloquent speaker, you might not be either, but we don't have to be.
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It's the power in the cross of Christ. We just have to love God and let
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Him work in us and through us. It's His baptism that saves, not ours.
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Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, You are a good and gracious God.
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You use us. We are weak and we are feeble and we probably don't know as much as we should, but Lord, we're trying, we're learning.
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Help us. Encourage our hearts. Open our minds to the truth of Your Word.
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Enlighten us, Lord, with Your truth, with Your character, with who You are and what
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You've done that we might know You more, that we might love You more, that we might be more zealous in our relationship with You.
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And that through that, we might be better stewards of the graces that You've given us.
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Help us to use the time, the money, the possessions, the personal giftings, our talents, whatever it might be,
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Lord. Help us to use them for Your glory as we profess the truth of Your Word.
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Help us to speak boldly and understandably about Your Son and about our sin and about the redemption that comes through Him that others might be saved and that You might be glorified knowing that the church will be built and the gates of hell will not stand against it.
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Lord, send us out. Send us out to be an army of Christians who tear down the gates of hell and release the saints that are captured and are restrained there.
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Lord, work in us. Work through us. Help us to love You and to labor for You for the glory of Jesus in the church.