John 6:30-40 (Counterfeit Christianity)

The Shepherd's Church

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I wasn't planning on sharing this, but it's not a normal setup for me.

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So I thought I would share a little bit of my frustrations this morning and share with you something that God reminded me of this morning as well.

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My printer printed half the sermon and then just stopped. Then I tried to print it again and it said, filter error.

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I don't know what that is. I'm like, Lord, this is what I need to do.

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I need to print this sermon so I can preach today. I was reminded of a conversation I had three days ago.

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I was telling someone from the Southern Baptist Convention, what all God was doing at Shepherd's Church.

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He was listening to the story and he said, it's simple. He said, God is blessing the

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Shepherd's Church because you're making it all about him. The minute that you start making about you is when the

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Shepherd's Church will die and fail. I was reminded by that, I was convicted by that and I said, all right,

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I'm going to preach from my laptop today because it's not about me, it's about God. So how about we pray and how about we remember that as a church all the days that we exist.

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Jesus, thank you so much that this church is all about you. We don't exist for our glory, we don't exist for our name, we don't exist for our fame or our impact or any other word you want to use.

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Lord, we exist for you. You're the one who gives life to this church. Lord, we praise you and thank you.

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Lord, we just ask that you would keep us seeking after you, that you would keep us seeking after your glory so that when things happen in this church,

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Lord, that we would turn it back and say God did that, not us. Lord, we thank you and we praise you in Christ's name.

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Amen. Now, I don't make it a habit of looking at Wikipedia. I was told in seminary that Wikipedia is never true and if I used it,

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I'd get an F automatically. So I just, maybe out of fear or whatever else, I never look at Wikipedia. But I did this week because I was looking up an article and I found out something pretty interesting.

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The second oldest profession in the world according to Wikipedia. So who knows if it's true? But the second oldest profession is counterfeiting behind prostitution, oddly enough.

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Now, apparently what people would do is when metal coins became in circulation, they would build molds and then they would take all other metal coins and they would melt them down and then they would have this accumulation of liquid metal and then they would find the exact right fraudulent metals to be able to add into, to mix into, maybe the right dyes, maybe the right substances, whatever it was.

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They would find all of that and then they would increase their mass of metal so that when they recoined the coin, they would have more than they started with.

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And what we found out is that some of these people were actually quite talented at fraud.

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And they were doubling and tripling their money so that when they go to the market, they could buy twice and three times more than what they had.

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Now, it's fascinating to me that Wikipedia said this is the second oldest profession because I thoroughly disagree with that.

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I think it's the oldest profession. And the reason that I say that is because as soon as time and space began,

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Satan was already counterfeiting the things of God. Long before prostitution, long before any other sinful vocation, counterfeiting was right there in the beginning.

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You look at Satan counterfeited the truth of God for lies. That's a counterfeit.

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He said, did God really say? The essence of every sin, in fact, is did God really say?

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It's a lack of trust in God, what he's already said in his word. He counterfeited the love for God with jealousy.

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Wait, is God holding out on us? Is God not giving us all of these things? We can be like God. He counterfeited love.

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He counterfeited relationship with God with rebellion against God. He counterfeited godly fear with arrogance, saying that we can be like God.

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He counterfeited intimacy with God with being naked and ashamed. He counterfeited God's blessing, and he turned around and he gave us back a curse.

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He is the first counterfeiter. He was a liar from the very beginning. And he takes the things of God and he perverts them, and then he gives them back to us and tries to convince us that they're blessings.

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He does this all over the place, but there's no better example to that than faith.

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Counterfeited faith. In the Bible, Satan takes sincere, biblical,

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God -honoring faith, and then he adds a little bit of corruption to it. And then he mixes in malignancy.

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He throws in a dash of error, a little bit of confusion, melts it down into this molten pot of sin, hands it to us and says,

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God will accept that if you give it to him, and God will not accept that if we give it to him. What we know, just like the cash register lady, who when we give her a $100 bill and she takes the marker and she examines to see if it's true, if we come into the presence of God with counterfeit faith, we won't be arrested by the

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Secret Service. If we do that long enough, we'll be chained eternally in hell because counterfeit faith doesn't save.

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Counterfeit faith is not something you can rest in. So that's what

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I want us to talk about today in this sermon is counterfeit Christianity. It appears real, it looks legitimate, it makes us think that there's great value and substance and it's all over the place.

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Much like I'm sure there's counterfeit coin all over the place in circulation in our economy.

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There's counterfeit Christianity all over this country. But the Lord of glory looks right through it.

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And he can see that it's not sincere, it's not authentic. And today what I want us to do is I want us to discern what counterfeit

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Christianity is, because the Bible talks about counterfeit Christianity and the passage that we're in today talks about it. So what we're gonna do today is we're gonna look at what is counterfeit

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Christianity. We're gonna look at four aspects of it so that we can see these are not exhaustive, but these are in the text.

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And then at the end, when we've understood what counterfeit Christianity is, we can't stop there because then we have to understand what the true thing is.

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And Jesus will give us seven things to think about there. So hold on tight, it's an 11 point sermon.

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You will thank me, just kidding, maybe you won't. Let's read the passage together.

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Turn with me to John 6, 30 through 40. This is what is said.

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So they said to him, what then do you do for a sign? This is the crowd, if you'll remember, who's been following and chasing after Jesus.

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What then do you do for a sign, Jesus, so that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?

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Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread out of heaven to eat. And Jesus said to them, truly, truly,

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I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is my father who has given you the true bread out of heaven.

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For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.

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Then they said to him, Lord, always give us this bread. And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

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He who looks to me will not hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe.

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All that the father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out.

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For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. That is the will of him who sent me, that all that he has given me,

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I lose nothing. But raise it up on the last day, for this is the will of my father, that everyone who beholds the son and believes in him will have eternal life.

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And I myself will raise him up on the last day. At the heart of this narrative is a conversation about salvation and the nature of it.

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What's true and what's counterfeit? And John, in fact, has actually been telling the story of the unfolding saga of counterfeit religion all throughout the gospel.

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If you remember, this is the same crowd in John 2 that Jesus said, I know the heart of man, and I will not entrust myself to man because of their impure religion.

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If you're at the end of John 2, right before John 3, Jesus says he would not entrust himself to this crowd because they were approaching him wrongly.

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Counterfeit understanding of him. It's the same crowd in John 4, who after he healed the nobleman's son was cheering him on for the signs and the wonders that he was accomplishing.

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This is the same crowd in John 6 that downgraded their motivations. Remember in John 2, they're looking at Jesus for his kingdom.

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In John 4, they're looking at Jesus for his signs. In John 6, they just want a full belly. In John 6, the only reason they're seeking him is because they got filled.

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And the downgrade happened because they didn't have sincere, authentic faith.

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This is the same crowd who did all that. This is the same crowd who three years from now in the narrative will cheer, crucify him, crucify him.

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Because they do not have sincere, authentic faith. So we need to understand what's the nature of the kind of faith that they had so that you and I can know that we don't have it, their kind of faith.

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So let's start with a little bit of background. We're gonna go two verses back to verse 28 to remind us of where we're at. It says in verse 28, therefore they said to him, what shall we do so that we may do the works of God?

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And Jesus answered them and he said, this is the work of God that you believe. Now imagine the dilemma that they're facing.

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Jesus is saying that the true work of God is belief, but in their sin, they can't believe.

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And they're struggling to try to understand that. And in their struggling, you would think that they would ask very basic questions of Jesus if they were really struggling.

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You would think that they would ask, how do we believe if we're sinful? How do we approach

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God if we are broken? How do we do something so beautiful and so pure as believing in a holy

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God if we are so wretched and depraved in our own sin? But they didn't ask that. That wasn't the question they were struggling with.

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They thought they knew all the answers. And what they're asking Jesus in this passage is, what are you gonna do for us so that we'll believe in you?

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They've got it entirely wrong. Verse 30 says, so they said to him, what then do you do for a son so that we may see and believe?

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Do you see what they're saying? They're saying, okay, Jesus, you want us to believe in you. What are you gonna do for us?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You turn water into wine. Got it. You flipped over some tables.

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That was kind of epic. You healed some people. Nobleman's son, the guy who was paralyzed for 38 years.

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You've done some stuff. 30 hours ago, you fed 20 ,000 people with a Hot Pocket. Okay, we get it.

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But what have you done for me lately? That's what they're saying. They said, what work do you perform?

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Why? So that we'll believe. Are you kidding me? They've just experienced the greatest miracle that any of them have ever seen 30 hours before, and now they're looking at Jesus and they're saying, what have you done for me lately?

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It's the height of arrogance and pride. It's the height of ingratitude. They're even almost kind of hinting at the fact that,

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Jesus, you fed us then, but you need to feed us today and go ahead and sign us up for your miraculous, wonder -working, bread -multiplying miracle tomorrow too.

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They're looking face -to -face with God, the one who had done so much to them, as creatures who are made out of dirt and animated only by the grace of God, the same

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God who holds the stars in motion, the same God who holds the oxygen atoms floating, the same

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God who keeps their eyes focusing on his face so that they don't go blind in an instant, is the same

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God they're looking at and said, what have you done for me lately? Are you kidding me? But how could you blame them?

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That's the way we look at Jesus in our sin. That's the way we look at Jesus when we have counterfeit faith.

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We can't help it. We look at him for what he can do for us instead of what he's already done. And we say things like, what have you done for me lately?

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They say, our father's eight men in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread out of heaven to eat. They're not saying that Moses did like you did,

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Jesus, and fed us one time. They're saying, hey, Jesus, you forgot to feed us the next time. Moses let it rain bread down from heaven every day and twice on Friday, because Friday's the

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Sabbath. So why are you not feeding us again today and tomorrow and the next day?

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They're saying, we need a repeat miracle. We need an ongoing miracle in order to believe in you. That's what they're saying, which gives us a clue that they have, again, counterfeit faith.

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And the first way that we know that it's a man seeking faith. The first clue that they have counterfeit faith is that it's a man seeking faith.

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All throughout the gospels, as John has been detailing, the nature of salvation is not that we seek

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God, that God seeks us, and he's been detailing that. John 1, who's the one who seeks his disciples? Jesus.

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He goes after them and they follow him. John 2, the crowd seeks him and they end up empty.

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John 4, Jesus is the one who finds the woman at the well, and the entire town is saved because Jesus pursued her.

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John 3, a man comes and represents the entire city of Jerusalem. He seeks out

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Jesus, he leaves without Jesus. You see the pattern that's happening? People who have sought

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Jesus in the gospel end up empty. People who Jesus seeks end up full. John 6,

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Jesus abandons the crowd because they have this nationalistic idolatry that we talked about four weeks ago, and yet it's his disciples who are in their frailty and in their brokenness that Jesus walks out onto the water, not to just create a fun miracle, but to demonstrate a truth about salvation that when we are in our weakest, and when we are in our most broken, and when we are in our most incapable of rescuing ourself,

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Jesus comes and finds us. Tells us plainly in Luke 19 10, for the

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Son of Man has come to seek and save that which is lost. Doesn't say the lost have come to seek and save or seek and receive the

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Son of Man. So when we get down to the nitty gritty here, the first element of a counterfeit faith is that they believe that they're the ones who can seek

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Jesus. They believe in their power and their strength and with their own self -interest and their own agenda that they can seek after Jesus and that Jesus will in turn respond to them and give them faith, and that's counterfeit religion.

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But the same kind of error exists today. In the American church for decades, maybe even a century, we've been brought up with this kind of language that's not helpful to help us understand what's going on in salvation.

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All you need to do is turn to Jesus, which means that you need to make a decision. You need to put forth some energy and effort.

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You need to turn your body towards Jesus and run towards Jesus, and then Jesus will respond to you. That's not what the

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Bible's saying. All you have to do is raise your hand because Jesus is up in heaven just waiting for someone to raise their hand and respond.

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Ah, look, they raised their hand. Now I'll save them. You have to pray the magic prayer.

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Oh wait, they didn't say be my Lord and Savior. They didn't say the magic formula.

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Nope. We've created a formulaic salvation where if we just do

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X, Y, and Z, then we'll get saved. What we've done is we've taken law, legalism, and we've applied it to salvation and say if we just do this, if we check this box, if we call this number, if we have someone lay hands on us, if we check off this card, if we do this, do that, then

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Jesus will respond in salvation because he's kind of obligated because we checked the box on the welcome card. We don't obligate

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Jesus for anything. And really, it's not even about the seeking.

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That's the problem. Do you seek Jesus as a Christian? Yes. It's not the seeking that's the problem.

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It's the power that's the problem. Why do we seek Jesus as a

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Christian? Do we seek him because we have the power to discern that we're a sinner or do we seek him because he's provided us with the power to see that we're a sinner?

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There's a difference there. You think about it like a flashlight. You go to Walmart, you buy the flashlight.

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It never comes with batteries because it's Walmart. Seriously. You get home, you push the button, it doesn't work because there's no power inside of it.

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And yet, when you put the power into the flashlight, it lights up and it serves the master's uses.

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In the same way, Christ purchased us while we were empty and we could do nothing for him. Christ purchased us while we were hollow and we had nothing inside of us.

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Christ died on the cross for us, paid for us, and then invested and indwelled the power inside of us so that we would light up for the glory of God.

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And when we lit up, we turned to Christ and we said, be my Lord and Savior. See, there's something that happens before we cry out to Jesus.

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And that's the power that comes into us so that we can see that we're a sinner. Can't even see that we're a sinner if we don't have

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God's power at work in our life. The crowd didn't have the power.

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And as a result, they were trying to seek Jesus in their own strength and that's counterfeit religion. That's the first evidence that we see.

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The second is that they had a man -centered faith. It wasn't only a man -seeking faith, which means they thought they could seek

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Jesus in their own power. It was a man -centered faith, which means it's all about them.

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They replaced God as the object of their faith and they put them at the center of their faith. And it basically, you're saying, if you just keep doing these miracles for us,

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Jesus, then we'll believe in you because it's all about us. You see, what they're doing is they're very subtly defining the terms of what faith is.

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They're saying, okay, God, you do your part and then I'll do my part and then we'll be a good relationship together.

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I've heard even someone say it this boldly. God is gracious and I'm a sinner, so we work well together.

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What? Like, my job is to sin just so that God can be gracious?

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Paul says, God forbid that. That's quite literally what they're saying to him when they say, what then do you do for a sign so that we may see and believe you?

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They want him to prove over and over and over again that he's worth following so that he can keep them interested.

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Honestly, there's so much that we could talk about here, but that's counterfeit faith. And unfortunately, that sort of man -centered worship has infiltrated and infected the church in America so deep that the rot at this point stinks.

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And I don't want to bash any particular denomination here. I just want to create an example. Pentecostal charismatic

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Word of Faith style churches. And I shared that because I know a lot of us in this room have a history with that.

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And I'm not sharing this to be hateful or angry. I'm sharing this because this attitude that is alive and well in this crowd,

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I see it and it's happening in the modern Pentecostal Word of Faith charismatic church where God, if you'll just do this, then

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I'll believe you. If you'll just do this sign, then I'll believe you. If you'll keep healing me, then I'll believe you. The Pentecostal church teaches us that God has to and will always keep doing miraculous things because that's just who

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He is. And if we're faithful, then we will continue to see those things happen in our life. If we're faithful, then we'll speak in tongues.

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If we're faithful, some churches even go as far as to say, you're not even saved if you don't speak in tongues. Or God will keep doing miraculous experiences in my life or He'll keep giving me divine appointments in my life or new revelations of knowledge or visions and dreams and prophecies and holy laughter.

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And if you're lucky enough, some guy with dreadlocks will slay you in the spirit and you'll fall down on the ground dead. It's an evidentiary based faith that is proven by signs and wonders, but yet that's not the

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Bible. That's not Christianity. It's a faith where God keeps shelling out miracles in order to keep us encouraged, in order to keep us invested, in order to keep us interested in Him.

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It's like a human dog relationship. I throw the dog a treat so that it'll roll over and play dead.

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Well, the charismatic church, God gives the treat and you fall over and you play dead. It's an evidentiary based faith.

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And in many churches all over the country, that's the dynamic that's happening. If God doesn't keep doing stuff, then the praise falters.

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If God doesn't keep doing stuff, then people feel discouraged. And we know that because when it happens, when people are living in pain and God hasn't healed them, if they become discouraged and angry with God, it's because they put their faith in their pain and God healing it.

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If I don't speak in tongues and everyone else around me is speaking in tongues, then I must not love God. I must not be close to God.

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I must not be loved by God because I can't do this thing. So I'm going to fake it until I make it. And I'm going to say things that I don't know what

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I'm saying because I'm trying to convince myself that God loves me because if He loved me, then He would give me signs and wonders.

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That's not Christianity. If that check that you sent to that prosperity gospel preacher doesn't produce a hundredfold harvest, then it must be your fault.

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You didn't have the faith because he's living in a mansion with five Bentleys. God is blessing him, but not me.

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When that word from the Lord doesn't happen exactly like the prophet who told you said it would, you're discouraged and you're broken because you put your faith in signs and wonders and not in God.

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The mindset is feed us, please us, perform for us, and we'll give you faith. That's counterfeit

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Christianity. It's more concerned with the gift than the giver.

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It treats God like a cappuccino machine. We put in the money, we get the flow. We put in the faith, you give us the flow of your grace.

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It dishonors God, and it's not real Christianity. And I'll just say it this way.

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Charismatic church, Pentecostal church, word of faith church, prosperity gospel church, all operate under the assumption that God is going to give a repeating miracle to keep us interested.

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Christianity is based off a one -time event that never is repeated, that is sufficient.

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Jesus Christ, 2 ,000 years ago, left the grave empty, and if he never gave us another thing, we have more than what we need.

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We don't need another miracle. And grace upon grace, God has given us the

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Holy Spirit to live inside of us and to dwell with us. One of the things that I see that's so frustrating is that in these churches, the gifts of the

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Holy Spirit, especially the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit are lifted up on this pedestal because extraordinary gifts are made the ordinary of our experience, but yet things like fruits of the

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Spirit are totally neglected. If we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, we should be loving, peaceful, patient, kind, and all of these things should be growing inside of us, but we live sensate lives where we're looking for God to keep doing and doing and doing, and in that relationship, who's the master and who's the slave?

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We've put Jesus in a genie bottle and said, you serve us. Why would we ever think if he, the maker of heaven and earth, came down and he died on a cross for our brokenness and for our sin when all we ever deserved was hell?

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How would we ever look at God and say, what you've done for me is not enough? How could we ever do that?

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Now, I'm gonna be honest, I've done that. All of us probably have done that, but how can we do that?

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It's ingratitude of the highest order, and it showcases a counterfeit faith. That's the second thing that we see.

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The third thing that we see is in verse 32. It's a leader -centric faith.

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Verse 32 says this. Jesus then said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it's not Moses who has given you the bread, but it's my

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Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. Do you see what they've done is they've replaced

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God with a charismatic leader, and they put their faith in the leader instead of God. They've made it all about Moses, and now

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Jesus is just their replacement because Moses has been gone for a long time. They want a new dynamic leader to be excited about.

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They want a new preacher who's just hip, and I know skinny jeans are out right now. I don't know what's in, but whatever it is, they want him to wear that.

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They want a charismatic pastor and teacher. You know, it's really hard to come up with examples when fashions change.

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I've been using skinny jeans for a long time. Somebody tell me after service what's next.

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Masks. They betray their passions here, though.

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Their passions are not for God. Their passions are for the next Moses who's gonna keep doing the wonder -working miracles for them.

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Now, again, we would be remiss if we don't think that this same temptation happens to the American church today. Where we have a leader -centric faith.

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Again, we talked about the Pentecostal church that treats their pastors like they're untouchable. Don't speak about God's anointed.

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I've heard Benny Hinn say that if you speak out against me, then God will give you curses, but if you bless me, then

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God will give you blessings because I'm God's anointed. That's a leader -centric faith. That's saying, look at me.

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Look at what I can do. Don't look at Jesus, look at me. It's counterfeit religion.

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The Catholic church does the same thing in a different way. You're not holy enough because of what

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Jesus did to go and seek Jesus on your own. You need a priest. You need this communion. You need this tradition.

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You need Mary. You need the saints. You need all of this stuff because what God did for you wasn't enough, so you need all this other stuff to prop you up, which is a leader -centric faith.

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When you look at the priest and you have to go to him to apologize to God, instead of just going straight to God, they've made it about the leader and not

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God. That's counterfeit religion. We're infected, too, in the evangelical church.

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I've been discouraged of late, not knowing even what to call myself because I don't want to call myself an evangelical anymore at times.

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The evangelical church began as a group of people who didn't agree on everything, but they agreed on one thing, and what they agreed upon was the sufficiency of Holy Scripture.

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They agreed that God's word was inerrant, meaning it has no errors. It was infallible, meaning it cannot fail, and it was sufficient, meaning that it's all we need to understand and know

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God. You can't even call evangelicals evangelicals anymore because we've lost that grip on the sufficiency of Scripture.

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Evangelicals can be Presbyterian and Baptist because it's not about the issue of baptism, it's about Scripture. They can be Pentecostals and cessationists, which means that you don't believe the miraculous gifts are still occurring today.

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They can be both of those because they hold fast to the Scripture and they say every doctrine that we believe in comes from there.

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Even if we disagree among each other about all those doctrines, we hold fast to the word. That's not even true anymore.

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Six, seven years ago, or eight years ago at this point, nine years ago, I can't even remember, I went to a church in Charlotte, North Carolina that was one of the fastest growing churches in the country.

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It went from 2 ,000 people to 20 ,000 people in two years. What I noticed is that that church was not a church that upheld and worshiped

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Jesus Christ. That was a church that was fascinated by their pastor. And it became a cult of personality so that Pastor Stephen says, and Pastor Stephen does, and it wasn't about Jesus, it was about Pastor Stephen.

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And Shannon and I left that church disgusted that they had replaced Jesus with a man. The same is true in smaller churches.

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A small church, the pastor can become a sort of demigod who walks around and does everything and he does all the ministry and he prays and he teaches and he sweeps the floor and he does everything and everybody looks to him and has faith in him and thinks that he's untouchable until his marriage fails or until he breaks apart and then everybody's left picking up the pieces and wondering what happened.

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It's because the church didn't put their faith in Jesus, they put their faith in a man. Again, we can't list every single instance of how this works, but I think we can agree that's counterfeit.

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We don't follow men, we follow God. That's actually one way you can discern a wolf is do they point to Jesus or do they point to themselves?

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Wolves are actually very subtle. I don't know the mind of the Lord, but we just recently in Christianity had an apologist who fell, awful things that he was doing.

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And the reports are actually striking. The reports say that the ministry,

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Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, they said that we had so much trust in Ravi that we thought he couldn't fail.

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He would go on trips with his massage therapist and no one thought that that's a problem because it's

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Ravi. We put our, Ravi's good, he's good to go. And when

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Ravi would describe these things, he would convince everybody that he was above reproach because it's Ravi.

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Look at what God's done in my life. It's about me, it's not about Jesus. All of us can fail.

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If it's not for Jesus, all of us are gonna fall flat on our face. Which that leads to the final clue about naturalistic, counterfeit religion, which is that it's naturalistic.

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It's not supernatural. It appears to be supernatural, it masquerades as supernatural, but it's not. It's what

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Jesus says in verses 32 through 36. Jesus then said to them, truly, truly,

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I say to you, it's not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it's my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven for the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.

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And they said to him, Lord, always give us this bread. And Jesus said, I am the bread. And he who comes to me will not hunger and he who believes in me will not thirst.

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But I said to you that you've seen and you don't believe. That's the key.

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Faith isn't seeing. There's lots of things. Jesus says, blessed are those who don't see and believe because the substance of faith is not what we see with our eyes.

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The substance of our faith is what God has done in our life through giving us the Holy Spirit that awakens us so we have spiritual eyes.

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Jesus is saying, Moses didn't feed you guys, God did. And what's so interesting is about the spiritual physical dynamic.

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They have physical natural eyes that see, hey, I see a miracle, which again, masquerading as supernatural.

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I see God doing stuff. Let me buy into that. Their spiritual eyes weren't working because they were wanting bread to fall out of the sky when the true bread of heaven was standing right in front of them.

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The one to which every crumb of broken bread that fell out of the exodus sky was pointing to was standing in front of them,

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Jesus. He's the one that really truly left heaven and came down to earth. He's the one to which all the bread that fed his people pointed because he will feed his people, not for a meal, but for a lifetime and for eternity.

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He is the one who like broken bread at a meal was broken on a cross so that forever you and I can be made satisfied in Jesus.

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He is what the bread actually pointed to. And yet they're so focused on the physical and the natural, they can't even see it.

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That's where we were. That's where we were. We can't look really too hard on them as if they're just beneath us or weaker than us or less spiritual than us.

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That's where we were. Just like them at a point in time in our life, we were seeking

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God, thinking that it was all about us, just like they did. We were defining the terms for our relationship with God.

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I remember one time saying, God, if you'll just answer this prayer. And it wasn't even a really big prayer. It was just something stupid.

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It wasn't like I was trying to lead a 300 ,000 person army like Gideon. And he's like, okay, I need to throw out this cotton ball to make sure that everything is working.

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Like it was something dumb that I was praying about. It's like, God, if you'll just do this and I'll follow you, I'll follow you for the rest of my life. I'm so glad that in God's holy, righteous, love for his own purity, he didn't strike me dead right there because that was disrespectful to God.

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We've all done that. And we've all escaped from that because of the grace of God. Because God doesn't have to prove himself for anything.

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God has already proven himself when 2000 years ago, Jerusalem was set on fire by an empty tomb and there was no body that could be found.

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And it wasn't dogs that moved it. And it wasn't the disciples that moved it. It was that God himself rose from the dead.

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That's the sign that you and I are tied to. And though we don't see the empty tomb today, we believe it because of what

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God is doing in our life. I'm more loving and more patient now because of God's work in my life than I ever could have been on my own.

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And here's really the whole point of it. If your faith is centered on you, then it's all about you.

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But if your faith is legitimate and Christ -centered and not counterfeit, then it's all about him.

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That's what true authentic faith is. I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, but we're running after Jesus. I can't do anything in my own power and strength, but I can run after Jesus because of what the

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Holy Spirit's doing in my life. That's what real authentic faith is. And that's what I want us to talk about now as we close. We've talked about counterfeit faith.

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It's man -seeking, man -centered, leader -centric, and naturalistic. Let's talk about what real faith is now.

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And we're gonna do that through seven words. And by the way, it's not gonna be, each point is not as long as each of the four points.

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We're landing the plane here. I don't want you to start doing math equations in your mind and get distracted. Well, it took him 30 minutes to do four points.

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How long does it go? Don't do that. Don't do that. Amen. Seven words that Jesus uses in this passage that are gonna teach us what true

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Christianity really is. Seven words. The first one is all. Let's read verse 36 through 40, and let's see how this works.

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But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. That's false faith. This is true faith.

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All that the Father gives me will come to me. And the ones who come to me,

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I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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This is the will of him who sent me that all that he has given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

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For this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.

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So let's talk about the seven words, or seven phrases even. The first one's all. What does all mean?

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All doesn't mean every person in the world, because we know that not all people come to Jesus. All doesn't mean equal opportunity, because Jesus isn't an equal opportunity

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Jesus. All doesn't mean that Jesus died for everybody and only some choose it.

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All means the believers in this passage. All means that all who the Father gave to Jesus will come to Jesus.

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All the believers. It's an efficacious faith, which means it's effective for salvation. All means all the believers in this verse.

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The second phrase. See how this is going a little faster now? Rejoice in these truths. Rejoice in these truths.

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The second phrase is the Father gives. We wouldn't know who all is until we understand the content of that, and it's the ones who the

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Father gives, which means that God is sovereign over our salvation, which is the exact opposite of the man -centered faith and the counterfeit religion that we just talked about.

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We are not sovereign over anything. God is sovereign over everything, even our salvation. And I know that this stings when we think about it a little bit, that God offers salvation to a limited group of people, and all of them come to Jesus.

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But let me give you a couple things to think about here. The first one is this. It's the wrong question to ask, why doesn't

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God save everybody? The right question is to ask, why did God save anybody? All, another all in the

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Bible, have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us deserved hell and eternal damnation and misery.

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If God saved anyone, then he would be infinitely gracious.

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If he saved anyone. The question's not, why does he save everybody? The question is, why does he save anybody?

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And let me just go to maybe a second point here. There's no pride in that. You and I are not the frozen chosen who bump our chest at the end of service and say, woo, look at how good we are because God chose us.

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I am still blown away and confused by why God chose me. I have nothing to offer him.

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And you don't either. The song says, he saved a wretch like me.

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That's our anthem. For the rest of my life, I hope I'm constantly wondering, what in the world was

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God doing? His ways are higher than my ways. Why'd he save me? Why'd he save you?

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So it's not a point of pride, it's a point of, God must be that generous and that gracious and that good and that holy that if he could save someone, the foolish things of the world like me, gosh, he could save anybody.

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It's a moment where we look at God and we just look at him in gratitude, not with, yeah, I made a good choice,

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God. If I were you, I would have picked me too. No. Look at God with bewildered gratitude and say, dear

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God, you are that gracious and that kind and that good that you would choose someone like me.

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So when we think about the Father limiting his choice, it's not because he's unfair, it's because he's gracious.

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And we think about who he chose, he must be infinitely wise and we must not be able to see reality quite well because if we're honest, we wouldn't have chose us either.

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And then the other thing is he chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, those who trust in their own strength and their own power.

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We are foolish. If you get in a room full of Christians, we're weird. It's okay.

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We're strange people, we don't fit in. We are the foolish things of the world that God is using to shame the wise, just own it.

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I fell down the stairs the other day and I wasn't even wearing socks. We are foolish people, but our salvation gives glory and honor to God.

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The third phrase that we look at is will come. There's an assurance of our salvation.

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All the believers whom the Father chose to give to Jesus will come.

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It's not a might come. It's not a could come. It's a will come.

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And let me just describe it to you like this. Imagine your entire life, you're blind, literally, physically blind, and you're wandering in the middle of an awful, barren,

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Amazon -like forest. And all your life, you're bumbling around, tripping, falling, landing in the mud, bumping into trees, getting bit by bullet ants, which you can watch on YouTube, it's awful, and mildly satisfying to watch.

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But all of your life, you're bumbling around, bumbling around in the darkness. And at just the right moment, your eyes were open and you saw that there was a house right in front of you.

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And you crawl to that house and you knock on the door and the person behind it opens it with a smile on their face and say, well done, good and faithful servant, come in to the rest that I've been preparing for you.

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And what you realize is in that moment, all my life was about my power and my strength, but when my eyes were opened, the only thing that I could do, the only choice that I could make is to knock on the door and the door was opened.

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See, we get this idea that when passages, like it says, knock and the door will be opened to you, that we're the first mover in the salvation equation.

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We're the ones who go up to the door, you know, here's the Buddha door, here's the Krishna door, here's the Jesus door, the atheist door, nobody cares about that one.

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But I just couldn't think of an adjective. Anyway, we knock on the door and then he responds and he responds to us, that's not what it is.

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All who the Father gives to Jesus, so there's movement happening before you knock, will come to Jesus and when we knock, the door will open.

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And that's the next phrase that we see is we certainly will not be cast out.

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If God has found you and if you have come to Christ and knocked on the door and the door has been opened to you, then you will certainly not be cast out.

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In Greek, this is like saying you really, really, really, really won't be cast out. I mean, it's using language to say, don't ever think that you'll be cast out, ever.

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If salvation is about your power to apprehend Jesus, then you're pretty weak and over the course of a lifetime, you're gonna let go.

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In elementary school, we challenged each other, see who could hang on the monkey bars the longest. The one universal factor is that we all let go at some point.

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I don't care how strong you are, I don't care how much you can grin and take it and man up or woman up or anything else, life will kick you so hard at some point that you'll let go if it's your power.

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But if it's Christ's power at work in you, you'll never let go because you're not the one holding on, he's holding on to you.

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And then the last phrase that we see, Jesus promises that I will raise him up on the last day.

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It's a two part work. It's a two part work. The first part of that work is that Christ was the first fruit of our salvation and he was raised from the dead.

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He did what he's going to do for us eventually. And eventually on the last day, when he raises us, whether we're dead or whether we're living, whenever that last day comes, he will raise us to eternal life where we will spend an eternity with our savior,

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Jesus Christ, who's been holding us and keeping us this entire time so that we could not stumble and we could not stray.

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What I want you to understand is that your salvation is not about you and your salvation is not about your power and your salvation is not about your strength and your salvation is not about your ability.

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Your salvation is about God for his glory. It's his strength who saved you.

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It's his strength who's holding you and it's his strength who will resurrect you into eternity where you will spend the rest of infinity with him.

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Let's pray and then let's do that. Dear Jesus, thank you so much for the fact that we don't have a man -centered faith that we cannot rely in.

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We have a God -centered faith that we can put our hope in. Lord Jesus, I just pray that as we sing and as we praise,

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Lord, we'd blow the roof off of this because that's what you're owed and that's what you deserve for all the great things you've done for us.