Philippians 3:8-9 :: Knowing Christ

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Knowing Christ is of eternal value...and everything else in the world is vain.

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Well, thank you so much for joining us this morning. If you would, please turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter three, where we're gonna be examining verses eight and nine.
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So as you're turning there, I want you to think about a time in your life where maybe you were by yourself and you were thinking about the really hard questions in life.
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Like, what is all this stuff around me about? What is my purpose in this life?
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Why am I here? And maybe you've asked a hard question to yourself, what happens after we die?
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All these are profound questions that depend on the truth. The most profound question of all, what is truth?
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And so it really excites my heart this morning to be able to go to the one who gives us the truth by revealing it to us in his word.
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The most assured foundation that we could possibly look to, the most trustworthy source to understand truth is looking to God.
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He is the one that knows all things and has spoke this world into existence.
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And so it is the scripture that tells us that the Holy Spirit carried the Apostle Paul along to give us
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God's truth. And by the grace of God, the Apostle Paul understood man's purpose in life, to glorify
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God and to enjoy him forever. The way that we glorify God and enjoy sweet relationship with him is by knowing our
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Lord, Jesus Christ. So with that being said, let's look at our text this morning.
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Paul says, indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
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Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain
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Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
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Let's pray again this morning. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for allowing us to be able to gather here.
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This morning, God, I tremble in your presence. I tremble at reading your word,
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God, because we are unworthy people and yet you have lavished grace upon grace in our lives,
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Lord. I pray that you would illuminate our hearts and minds with your truth. I pray that you would sanctify us.
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God, please remove me out of the picture and please guard me from evil. God, just please let us look to you,
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Jesus, as our ultimate example. I pray these things in your name, amen. So at the beginning,
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Paul begins by saying, indeed, I count everything as loss. And I love how last week,
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Pastor Nathan talked about two columns. You have a profit category and a loss category.
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You have assets and liabilities. And that is definitely one good way to look at how the Apostle Paul is comparing the things of the world, his past life, and all that is being lost for the sake of gaining
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Christ. But as I was looking at this word loss, it's really strong. It carries this idea of detriment.
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And so Paul is saying everything previous to his conversion was detrimental to him knowing the truth and being saved.
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And I think it's tempting for us sometimes to think, well, it's the pagan lifestyles. It's those lifestyles that are consumed with sin, with drugs, desire for wealth.
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Those things are vain and empty, sure. Stuff like that is purely a waste of life.
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We may look at the secular world that says atheists, they don't believe in God.
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Surely those types of pagan secular people, those lives are detrimental and dangerous.
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And they absolutely are because those things are vain and futile and they lead down the path of destruction to ultimately hell.
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But I want you to listen. Paul's past life was not pagan or secular. His past life was one of religion.
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And he's saying that even a life of religiosity and trusting in your own achievements, that is detrimental and ultimately of eternal loss.
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So look with me back in verse five in our passage where we learned last week that the
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Apostle Paul, he was the highest kind of Pharisee. And in fact, in Acts chapter 22, he tells us that he studied at the feet of one of the most famous rabbis named
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Gamaliel. Paul's past life as Saul of Tarsus was one of learning the
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Hebrew scriptures, doing good works, fasting, doing ceremonies, and on and on in this big list of achievements that he had.
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And yet Paul, now as a Christian, is saying his previous life, one as a pious
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Pharisee, one that people would marvel at, admire his discipline of all of his accomplishments and good works.
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Paul is saying all that I count as loss. Paul, how can you say that?
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You've accomplished so many great things. And I think that's what people think the purpose of going to church is.
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Don't we go to be a good person? And Paul is saying, no, that type of legalistic thinking is detrimental to our salvation.
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So I wanna talk about that word legalism for a moment. Legalism is the false religion of human achievements.
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Legalism comes in all different shapes and sizes. It could be packaged differently on the outside, but it always has one unifying principle.
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And it's this, you can gain favor with God by your good works. And so for example, the religion of Islam teaches that there are five pillars that you must keep in order to reach paradise.
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The first pillar is you must pray five times a day facing the correct direction, which is
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Mecca. And then the second one is you must recite their creed. Number three, you must give alms and donate money to the poor.
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Number four, fasting during the hours of Ramadan. And lastly, you must strive to make a yearly visit to Mecca.
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And I want you to hear the five pillars of Islam because hopefully you hear that long list.
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You gotta keep these things in order to have a right standing before God. That is legalism.
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And there's another religion that pretty much all religions, like I said, they all say the same thing apart from Christianity, that you must do good works in order to obtain favor with God.
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Roman Catholicism teaches that yes, you must have faith in Jesus, but you also must perform the action of water baptism.
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Not only do you have to do this good work in order to gain a right standing, but you must continue to do good works in order to stay safe.
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They teach that if you don't continue to do the sacramental works like confession and penance, then you can fall from the grace of God and lose your salvation.
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I want you to think about that. This is literally works from the start all the way through until the end.
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And perhaps the chief example of legalism is pharisaical
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Judaism. Now, Pastor Nathan brought this up last week. When we look to the
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Old Testament, true Judaism, it's wonderful because they're looking forward to the coming
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Messiah. But during that 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testaments, you had the
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Pharisees twisting the Old Testament, twisting the Hebrew scriptures. And that's what we're talking about when we say pharisaical
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Judaism. In fact, our Lord talks about what a
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Pharisee's heart looks like in Luke chapter 18. He talks about a Pharisee that says,
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I fast twice a week, and I give tithes of all that I have.
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And this picture that Jesus is painting is that the Pharisees, they're announcing to the world, look at my good works, look at all the wonderful things that I do.
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And in Luke 18, verse nine, it says, Jesus told this parable, please listen, who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else.
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Hopefully you're starting to hear the problems of what comes with legalism. When you're doing good works to earn favor with God, you are trusting in your own efforts, your own achievement.
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And the scripture declares that all of our righteousness is like filthy rags before God who is holy, holy, holy.
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Trusting in your good works is the antithesis of the gospel message.
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We must trust in Jesus Christ alone because his works are perfect. Everything that he accomplished was without sin.
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And so just briefly, back in Luke 18, I wanna make sure you captured all of what
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Jesus is saying there. He told this parable to some Pharisees, those who were trusting in themselves.
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And listen to the result of what happens when you look to yourself. That they were righteous and looked down on.
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On everyone else. And that's so true. When you start looking at how great you think you are, you begin to puff yourself up and begin to look down on others.
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You need to be like me. I've got it all figured out. And like I said, that is legalism.
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I think it's so easy for legalism to creep into the church today. How easy is it to say,
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I go to church most Sundays. I'm not missing however many years. I can't even remember. I even pay tithes.
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I give my offerings. I must be doing something right. I even read the verse of the day on my phone.
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It's so easy to look at your own list of accomplishments and what you've achieved.
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And so friend, I just want you to look and examine yourself. What are you putting your trust in? Are you putting your trust in your list of accomplishments like the
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Pharisee in Luke 18? Now the Apostle Paul, he had a pretty big list of achievements, didn't he?
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We examined that last week. So if you will look back at verse five in our passage, where we read that Paul was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a
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Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
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I really want to key in on that word righteous there because the Apostle Paul is talking about a self -righteousness back in his past life before he converted and followed
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Christ. Paul looked at the law and said, oh yeah, I do a fantastic job of keeping
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God's commandments. He looked at the law as a means to gain favor with God.
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He did not rightly see himself as a lawbreaker. We look at God's law, it should be a mirror.
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We should rightly see ourselves that we break God's commandments. We don't keep them. And when we see ourselves as a lawbreaker, then we will see our need for a savior.
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And so for those that think that they do a good job of keeping the commandments of God, I want to ask you something.
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How do you measure up against the greatest commandment that Jesus said, which was to love the
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Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, with all of your soul, with all of your strength?
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How are you doing in that department? If you say I do a great job of loving
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God, then you've missed it. You don't do a good job, you don't keep the commandments of God, you shatter
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God's commandment. I pray that when you look at God's commandments, you see that, man,
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I don't keep those. Break those commandments. And that you would look to Jesus because he was perfectly obedient to the law.
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Look to him, don't look to yourself. And by the grace of God, Paul understood the utter futility of trusting in himself as a
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Pharisee. So if you want to look back with me at verse eight, where Paul says, indeed
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I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
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Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain
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Christ. So Paul is saying that everything in his past life, everything that this world has to offer totally fails to compare to the infinite value of knowing
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Christ. Isn't this what it means to count the costs? Our Lord told us that whoever is not willing to forsake all is not able to be my disciple.
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This means that our heart is willing to give up whatever it takes in order to follow after our
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Lord. In fact, I'm reminded of what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 16. He said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
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For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
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And please listen to this next part. This has struck me to my very core.
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For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
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The world wants you to be happy. Do whatever you want. Do what makes you feel good.
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The world says to have your best life now. The world says the key to happiness is wealth.
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The key to making other people like you is wealth. Wealth will give you power.
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Who cares? So what? How will any of that stuff help me with my biggest problem, which is sin before a holy, holy
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God? On the day of judgment, I can't take any of that stuff with me. How am
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I going to stand righteously before a holy and perfect God? None of that stuff will help me with the biggest problem, things that have eternal value.
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And I love how Pastor Nathan read a verse from Ecclesiastes last week. Vanity, vanity of vanity says the preacher, all is vanity.
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All the material stuff in this world, all human pursuits that are trusting and their own achievements, they are utterly meaningless, hopeless because they have no eternal value.
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One hymn writer beautifully said, take the world, but give me Jesus. That was the heart of the
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Apostle Paul. And so if I could say that the major point this morning is when
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Paul says, knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. What does it mean to know
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God? What does it mean, Paul, to know Christ Jesus as Lord? Well, I wanna talk about that word knowing for a moment because when you look to the
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Greek word, it carries a twofold meaning. So number one is talking about understanding facts, knowing intellectually about something, but it doesn't just stay there.
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It's knowing facts that leads to experiencing a personal relationship.
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Now, I love this explanation of knowing in a personal way because you know who your spouse is, you know facts about them, their background, what they did in their past life, but it's so much more than just knowing facts, you have a relationship with them.
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That's what it's like with all of your friends. You know things about them and you experience a personal relationship.
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So we see that Paul understood many facts about who Christ was. He understood how he had a threefold description that he was prophet, priest, and king.
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And so when Paul refers to Jesus as the Christ, Christ refers to a title of Messiah, how he is the prophet of God.
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Paul understood the name Jesus means that he is the savior and is therefore believer's great high priest.
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Paul understood that Lord means that he is the sovereign king over all of creation.
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Paul understood all these facts about who Jesus was. And these truths are wonderful.
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This knowledge is sanctifying to believers. That's why 2 Peter 3 .18 exhorts
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Christians to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
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But here's the point. Paul understood these facts, but they didn't stay there.
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He also had a relationship with the Lord. Listen to this again. Paul says, indeed,
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I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
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Christ Jesus my Lord. He could have said the Lord and that would have been accurate, but did you hear that?
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He made it personal. He said, my Lord. In fact, I would like to draw your attention to John chapter 17, verse three, because I want you to see how
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Jesus teaches us that salvation comes only to those who know the true
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God. Jesus says in John 17 .3, and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true
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God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. And once again, those who know
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God do not just have mere intellectual assent or just know facts about who
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God is, but they have a deep, loving relationship with him. And so notice how
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Jesus defines what eternal life is. He says, and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true
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God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Now, I used to think that eternal life was just something that happened after you died, but as I began to understand what
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Jesus is saying, eternal life is a present reality. It is here and now, and it begins when you start walking with our
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Savior. Eternal life is knowing deeply the triune God of Scripture, walking with Jesus whom the
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Father sent. Do you know him?
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Do you have a relationship with Christ? Do you know the only true
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God, not just facts about him, but do you know him in a personal way? I pray that you would examine your heart about these questions.
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Do you long to spend time in the word of God? Do you desire to pray what is on your heart to Jesus who knows everything?
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Are you trusting in him day by day for salvation? That is loving relationship, not cold legalism that is trusting in your own achievements.
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He has lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake,
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I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain
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Christ. I love that heavy repetition, those parallels that he's using, and he starts to bring in just a little bit more information to really drive his point home.
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And so he's basically saying, everything in my past life before Christ, I count as rubbish.
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Let me just say, rubbish is a nice way of putting it here in English because the
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Greek word is skubalon. This is actually a very intense word. Paul is saying his old life apart from Christ is like animal excrement.
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It's like a smoking pile of dung. And that sounds a lot like what the prophet
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Isaiah said when he says, our righteousness is like filthy rats. Paul's point is that life apart from Christ is utterly worthless, detestable to God because of our rank sin.
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We're not good people. We don't keep the law. We shatter the law. And so in verse nine,
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Paul absolutely pierces through the heart of pharisaical Judaism and every brand of legalism that exists.
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Verse nine, he says, and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
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There is so much rich doctrine in this one verse that we can only begin to scratch the surface.
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But this is the entire gospel message being brought to life. In fact, Paul is teaching us the most important doctrine in all of theology.
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What he is teaching us here is the doctrine known as justification by faith alone. And maybe you've heard this referred to as sola fide.
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And what he's talking about in this verse is that there are two kinds of righteousness and they are as different as night and day.
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And that first righteousness belongs to man. And Paul calls this the righteousness of the law.
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The second righteousness comes from God and it is a perfect righteousness and it is to be received by faith.
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One righteousness is flawed and is the product of our works. The other righteousness is perfect and is the product of what
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Christ has done. And we must understand that the only sufficient ground on which we can stand before God is on a righteousness that exists outside of us.
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This is the truth that Saul of Tarsus, which we know is the apostle Paul, he had to come to grips with this.
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And we too must understand this truth as well and what we hope to gain into our life. And it's this, once again, the righteousness that saves us is not our own righteousness.
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This idea completely contradicts the whole system of the Pharisees. It flatly contradicted everything that Paul had ever been taught.
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And this doctrine sets Christianity apart from every religion known to man.
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Every religion that you can name teaches that people must become righteous in order to be made acceptable to God.
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Christianity stands alone and teaches that God supplies on our behalf all the merit we need.
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So the lowliest of sinner, a thief hanging on a cross can be redeemed and restored in a right relationship because it's all been provided for him.
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And so at this point, a lot of people think that, sounds like the apostle Paul just made up this doctrine.
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This is something new. And that is not the case. Justification by faith alone in the
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God that supplies a perfect righteousness existed even back from the beginning. In Genesis 15, six, we read that Abraham believed the
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Lord and it was counted to him as righteousness. Once you think about this,
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Abraham, who existed and lived way before the law came to God's people, he received a righteousness by faith.
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He had faith in the coming Messiah. He didn't know his name, but he knew his coming because he trusted in the promise of God.
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And based on his faith, his sin got put on the cross. And in exchange, he received
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Jesus' perfection, his perfect obedience. And as Christians, we are saved the same way as Abraham.
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We're just looking back to what the savior has done. And we put our faith in him, then we get our sin totally paid for, forgiven, and we receive in exchange the righteousness of Christ.
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So like I said, Abraham is a perfect example because he existed years and years before the law came in Exodus chapter 20.
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The point is, the law was never given to earn favor with God. It was given to expose our sinfulness before him.
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Now, do God's people desire to obey God's commandments? Absolutely. That's our heart's desire, to please him and to give him glory.
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And do we do a perfect job at doing that? No way. That's why we look to Jesus, the one who was.
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And this is where the Pharisees completely got it wrong. They looked at the law and said, yeah, we can do that.
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Remember back in verse six, Paul said, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. This is pretty interesting because to the human eye, the
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Pharisees looked absolutely blameless on the outside. Think about it.
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Before God, God sees the inside. You must be blameless on the inside as well. And God sees the heart.
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You can't fake it with him. And so this is where the greatest sermon ever preached.
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Jesus said this on the Sermon on the Mount, one of his most important points that you can't miss. He says, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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This is a mind blowing statement because what Jesus is saying is that if the
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Pharisees aren't getting in on their good works, nobody's getting in the kingdom based on their good works.
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Jesus continues to make this point in the Sermon on the Mount that the law was always intended to expose sin.
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It goes past just our external actions and it goes to the heart level. It says in Matthew 5 verses 27 and 28, he says, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.
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Now you got the 10 commandments and commandment number seven was not to commit adultery.
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And the Pharisees said, you know what? If we don't commit that sin, then we are righteous. We are good.
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They missed the whole point because God sees once again our sinful heart. Jesus being
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God in the flesh, he's able to correct their misinterpretation and he gives them the right understanding that has always existed since the time of Moses.
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Verse 28 he says, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
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Now this does what? Condemns all of mankind before God because we all have dirty hearts.
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We all have sin at the heart level and by God's grace, he restrains our sinful desires and they don't always manifest themselves in actions.
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But at the heart level, we must understand that we have all sinned and fallen short of God's divine and perfect standard.
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And that's how Jesus concludes his point in Matthew chapter five that you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
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Where are we going to get a perfect righteousness to stand before God? It does not exist from within ourselves.
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Look with me again at Philippians three verse nine where Paul says and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ.
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Now Paul, remember he was a Pharisee of the highest kind but by the grace of God, he understood he needed a perfect righteousness that comes from Christ.
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And very strangely, I have talked with people that believe in the Bible and they think that you still have to do your good works in order to earn faith with God.
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And when they look at that verse, they say, oh Jeremiah, Paul is talking about not having a righteousness from the law.
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We're Christians, we don't live under the law anymore so he's not talking about us.
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And I want to say that is true on one hand. We are no longer under the ceremonial laws of the
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Old Testament. The ceremonial law is like making sacrifices of lambs. That was a picture of what the
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Savior was going to ultimately fulfill. So we're not under the ceremonial laws. Those were all fulfilled in Christ.
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But we are always under the moral law. This is important because the moral law reflects
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God's unchanging character. And so for that person that says we're no longer under the law here,
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I ask them, are we still under the moral law to love your neighbor as yourself? Answer is yes.
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But think about it. That commandment was given to Israel in the Old Testament. That commandment was repeated and reaffirmed by Jesus in the
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Gospels. And that commandment was continued to be taught by the Apostle Paul and James to Christians.
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Are we still under the greatest commandment? To love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength?
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Yes. And guess what? We do not keep those commandments. We shatter those commandments.
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The Apostle Paul understood that he as a sinner in need of saving grace, and we must reflect on that same truth as well.
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And so he says at the beginning of verse nine, to be found in him. This is so important because that is how we receive a perfect righteousness, is being covered by Jesus.
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In him, there is forgiveness for our sin. In him, there is life everlasting.
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In him, we can have relationship. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.
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Paul, tell us, how are we to be found in him? Please, please hear me here.
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And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the wall, but that which comes through faith in Christ.
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We can say it this way. Through faith in Christ, are we to be found in him?
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the gospel message. We can have our sins forgiven and be made right with God by putting our faith, our faith alone, apart from all of our dirty, rotten works that are sinful, we can be found in him by faith.
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Please, I beg you, trust in Jesus Christ in him alone.
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Do not trust in the time where you perform a ceremonial act of water baptism.
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Do not trust in the time that you've repeated a prayer. Do not put your trust in anything that you do, because those are self -righteous works that cannot save.
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That's what Paul says in Romans four. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.
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And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
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This is known as the gospel of grace. I hope that you hear that repeatedly.
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We believe in the gospel of grace, not a gospel of faith plus works, because then we can boast about what we've accomplished.
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Works in no way, shape, or form can aid in our salvation, because then we can boast about our cooperation with the finished work of Christ.
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And so I want to read a familiar passage that a lot of us are familiar with from Ephesians two, but I want to emphasize another word.
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Paul says, for by grace have you been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so no one may boast.
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And I love how verse 10 comes in and says, good works are important. They just don't contribute to our right standing before God.
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He says, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.
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Good works come after you have put your faith in Christ. When you are in him in everything that you do, all of your good works point to the glory of God.
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But that is such a subtle lie from the devil, that all good works are so important, that's why you have to do good works to earn favor with God.
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No, that is by faith, because you can't bring your dirty works to the table. Jesus accomplished all that on the cross.
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Jesus accomplished his perfect obedience to the law. Put your trust in him. So as we're wrapping up in verse nine,
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Paul once again repeats the same truth, but emphasizes it from a slightly different angle.
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He says, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. Now think about this, since this righteousness is from God, this is a perfect righteousness.
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God is perfect. So Paul, what is this righteousness referring to? We've already talked about it multiple times.
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This righteousness is the perfect, sinless, blameless life of Jesus Christ.
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In fact, Paul alluded to this earlier in Philippians chapter two, where he says, Christ being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Now that obedience was a perfect obedience to the father. That was a perfect obedience to the law of God.
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And that perfect righteousness depends solely on our faith. If we want to be found in him, look to Jesus, trust with him with all of your heart.
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So the only thing that I can think to say as we are coming to a close is, are you in Christ?
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Are you found in him? Are you trusting in him alone?
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Or are you trusting what you have done, your righteousness? Or are you trusting the things that you hope to accomplish in the future?
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Are you trusting in your parents? Are you trusting in the work of dead saints?
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Are you trusting in anything else in this vain and empty world? Because Jesus said, for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.
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Listen to me. If you divide your trust, if you have trust in Jesus plus anything else, that is 100 % to miss the gospel.
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To divide your trust in Jesus and anything else is to completely be lost and not be found in him.
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And you will die in your sin. And you will experience the holy justice of God for all eternity, because God is holy, holy, holy.
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I pray that you would think deeply on the things that we have discussed this morning. I beg you to repent in your heart, to turn to Jesus and put your trust in him.
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To be found in him, to know Christ, to walk in relationship with him here and now, and also for the life to come.
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For our sake, the Father made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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Let's pray. Holy Father, so many wonderful truths from your word.
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Thank you so much for clarity on how we can be made right with you, how we can be found in you.
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Lord, we understand that that is by faith. Faith alone, we understand that faith alone that walks with you,
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Jesus, will result in good works that always point to glorify back to you.
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Lord, I understand that that is a heavy message to realize that we are not good people. But God, we are sinners, that we shatter the law.
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I pray that, God, as we stumble, Jesus, that you would pick us right back up and understand that you are the perfect example.
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Lord, I pray that as we look to you, that that would transform us from the inside out. I pray these things in your name,