Book of James, Ch. 2 - 08/08/2021

Park Meadows Church

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This morning, we're going to take half of James chapter 2.

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About the first 13 verses, I believe, I'm going to read them, and then we'll begin. My brethren, have not the faith of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come into your assembly a man with a golden ring and in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment, and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him,

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Sit thou here in a good place, and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool?

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Are ye then not partial in yourself, and are become judges of evil thoughts?

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Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, which he hath promised to them that love him?

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But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

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Do they not blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?

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Verse 8, If thou fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well.

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But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit crime, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.

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For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

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For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill.

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Now if they commit no adultery, yet if I kill, they become a transgressor of the law.

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So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.

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For he shall have judgment without mercy, that showeth no mercy, and mercy rejoiceth over judgment.

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Let us pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us into this house today.

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Thank you for giving us the place to come together and study. Thank you for giving us your

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Son that you sent down to bear our sins and to be the way that we can reach you.

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Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit to help us interpret the word that you left behind, and thank you for giving us the scripture itself.

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Take this message that we deliver today, mold it into what you want the people to hear, and take the people and mold them, each one of them, into the very person that you want them to be.

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Bless us and keep us. Go through all the services today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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So now we have reached the fourth of 13 tests presented in the book of James.

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Test four, the test of impartial love, and that will be chapter 2 of James verses 1 through 13.

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Verse 1. My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the

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Lord of glory, with respect of persons. Now understand the entire focus of the

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Holy Spirit, I'm sorry, of the Holy Scripture, as well as the entire focus of the

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Christian faith, is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.

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And it is Him that we should try to emulate. Now James is widely and properly regarded as one of the first letters of the

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New Testament, and it was written perhaps between 44 and 48

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AD. This means that the very earliest Christians considered

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Jesus to be a God, and said so in strong, unmistakable words.

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Here's what James said, Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, the

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Lord of glory. Now we're going to take a second look at that verse to clarify, pardon me, the rest of the sentence.

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I'm going to read what we're not focused on.

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Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. But look at what we are not focused on, and look for details there.

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My brethren, have not the faith with respect of persons. Now the faith that he's talking about is not the faith as in the act of believing.

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It's not the faith of Jesus that he endowed to the believer, but it is a different faith.

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It's a faith in the sense of the entire Christian faith, very much like Jude used the term when he spoke of contending for the faith.

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I'm going to read that passage, Jude chapter 3. Beloved, when

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I give all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith.

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There it is, the faith, which was once delivered unto the saints. Now what is that?

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That's the Christian faith. That's the entire Christianity as we understand it.

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That is the faith that we're talking about. Now what verse 1 is saying is that since Jesus was impartial, well, let me back up and say one more time.

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The first thing it's saying is who the entire faith is focused on.

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What is the focus on the entire faith? It is the Lord Jesus Christ, the

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Lord of glory, but it's also talking about Jesus, and it's saying that Jesus was impartial, so we should be impartial.

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Jesus did not elevate anyone for solely external factors, things like wealth.

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He didn't put a wealthy person ahead of a poor person. He didn't put a poor person above a wealthy person.

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Race didn't matter to Jesus. He spoke to the

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Samaritan woman, and He spoke to the Jews. Gender didn't matter.

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Appearance didn't matter. All the worldly things, all the things that we look at externally, the things that we see,

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He didn't use any of them in elevating a person, nor should we.

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Now if I were to paraphrase this portion of that verse, I would simply say let the church not show partiality.

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Rather than aligning oneself with the world and the things of the world, one should align himself with fellow believers, and he should align himself with fellow believers both in the time of blessing and in the time of testing, and we need to always keep in mind that when you are experiencing your fellow believers testing, you are being tested yourself.

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In watching them, interacting with them as they are being tested, you are being tested to see how you deal with fellow believers that are experiencing trials, and then he presents the scenario of a rich man and a poor man.

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Verse 2, for if there come into your assembly a man with a golden ring in goodly apparel, and there came in also a poor man in vile remnant.

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A rich man and a poor man come into church, and ye have respect to him that wears the gay clothing, the rich man, and say to him, sit here in a good place, and say to the poor, stand thou there or sit here under my footstool.

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If you show deference to the rich man and contempt to the poor man, be cautious, because he follows that scenario with a question.

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Here's the question. Are ye not then partial in yourself, and are become judges of evil thoughts?

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There's a sin revealed in this passage, but it's not the lavish apparel and the rings worn by the deceit.

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The truth sin was that some in the church, just like many in the sinful world, would cater to the rich and prominent, while at the same time shun the poor and the common.

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Now to be clear, it's not the evil thoughts that are being judged. Rather, it's the people in attendance.

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It's the church itself that's being judged as to how they interact with and show either partiality or fail to show partiality or are impartial to those that come into attendance.

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It's the people in attendance to the church that are being judged, and the question is, are they become judges of evil thoughts?

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That's worded awkwardly. A better way to have worded that would be, have they become judges with evil intentions?

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That if you look at a person, the person comes into the church, and you look at him, and you see him, it's hard not to form an opinion, not to judge, but you don't need to allow your judgment to be colored by physical things.

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What do you judge a person with regard to? If you're asked to judge, what do you judge with regard to?

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You judge with regard to whether or not that person is a child of God, and he will give indications that will tell you either he is or he's not, and the

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Holy Spirit will help guide you, but you're not to simply judge people by what they wear, or how prominent they are, or how wealthy they are.

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To show partiality shows that we care more for the outward appearance than we do for the heart.

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God looks at the heart, and he is able to see what's in the heart. He is able to accurately and properly judge every man.

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We're not that good, but we should do as much as we can, as I said earlier, to emulate

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Jesus and the way he did things. Jesus, God, looks on the heart, and so should we.

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Now Samuel was sent by God to select a successor for King Saul, and he was told to go to the house of Jesse and look at his sons, but in going to the house, he was given instructions by God, and here's what

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God told him to look for. This is God talking to Samuel, telling him what to look for.

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Did I get that right? It's God talking to Samuel, telling Samuel what to look at when he is at David's father's house looking at David's looking for a king.

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Thank you, but here's what he said. This is Samuel 16 verse 7.

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But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not upon his countenance or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him.

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For the Lord seeth, for a man looketh upon the outward appearance, but the

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Lord looketh upon the heart. So Samuel goes into Jesse's house knowing what to look for and knowing that God is going to, or the

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Holy Spirit is going to kind of trigger him into making the right choice, and you know the story. He looked at every one of David's sons, and none of them passed the test except the one that wasn't there, except the one that was out with his sheep, the one that Jesse thought was not even worthy to be looked at.

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Jesse looked at all his sons and says, I'm going to line them up, and I'm going to let

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Samuel look at them. Samuel looked at every one of them, and the Lord said, Not he. Not he.

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And Samuel said, Don't you have another son? And Jesse said, Yes.

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He's out in the field. I didn't think he was worthy to come in and be checked. Well, he brought him in, and he was the one that Samuel selected.

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Now interestingly enough, just because God selected him and Samuel selected him, and he was anointed king that very day, he didn't receive the kingship for years later.

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He spent a long time not being king after the

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Lord had chosen him. That's true often. Yes.

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That's right, and you know there's another way to kind of look at the anointing. If you think about being selected, chosen before the foundation of the earth, there comes a time when you are actually anointed, and that might be when you receive your salvation, but then when you receive your salvation like I did at 13,

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I didn't really do anything about it. In fact, I kind of drifted away when

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I went to college. I think as all college students know, that's not right, as many college students tend to do.

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I think if they're trained well enough, they won't drift away, and I didn't drift really away. I just kind of wobbled around.

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It was way later before I recognized that I had a need to do something for God.

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In any case, back to James, and back to verse 5.

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Hearken, my beloved brethren, hath God not chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which

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He hath promised to them that love Him? Well, I wish James had stuck this in.

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It made me feel better. Hath not God chosen the poor as well as the rich? Because He chooses some rich also.

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He chose Abraham, and Abraham was very rich. He chose

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Job, and Job was one of the richest men in the world. There were a lot of rich men that were chosen by God, but it's harder to be chosen by God when there are things to distract you.

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Well, maybe that's not true. God chooses who He chooses, and nothing you can do will make any difference.

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That's right. Yes. Well, I think

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He gives us time and a space to be tested, and when we fail the test, which all unbelievers will fail.

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If you're a believer, you can fail that test, and then you know what will happen? He'll give you another test and another opportunity to fail, and another one, and another one, and if you're

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His, eventually you'll reach one which you've passed the test. That's what

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Jonah did. Remember Jonah? Jonah was selected, given the word, and selected to go to Nineveh.

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Is that right? Nineveh. And to deliver the gospel. What was the gospel?

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He was to deliver. Not good news for them. You're going to be destroyed in 40 days, but he failed the test.

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He went down to the seashore, hopped the ship, and headed exactly the other direction, and then he experienced all he experienced, and he was thrown overboard, swallowed by the fish.

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The fish swam back to the shore, spat him back out right where he left to start with.

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He was regiven the command, told to go to Nineveh, and this time, albeit reluctantly, he went, and then he had a great revival, and that made him mad because it was the heathern that were being saved.

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He didn't want them to be saved. He sat down under a gourd tree and pouted until the

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Lord sent a worm to kill the gourd tree, and then he got mad about that. So, you know, we have a lot of tests that the

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Lord gives us, and if we're his, we will eventually pass the test. If we're not his, we'll fail it every time.

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That's one of the ways we know. Wealthy or poor, that doesn't matter to God.

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All that matters to God is, are they chosen? Or as we like to say here sometimes, are they my sheep?

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And that's all that should matter to the church. So when somebody comes in here that's new, we shouldn't look around and say, oh, he's well dressed.

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We need to move him up from the front row and look at another one here and say, ah, let's put him back in the back so nobody will see him.

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We tend to want to do that, don't we? If somebody comes in, and they look sharp, and they sound like they're well -educated, oh, we like them, and in human nature, we kind of don't want the other people to be seen so well, so we want to shuffle them off the back.

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Maybe let them sit back in the fellowship room back behind, yeah, back behind Brother David.

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But that's human nature. That's not God's nature. God's nature is, if you're mine,

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I love you. And if they are his, we should love them as well.

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That's all that should matter to the church, are they believers or not. Okay, now

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James is going to say something that I thought was very ironic. I'm going to read it, and you tell me what you think.

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Remember, who are the church members showing deference to at this point?

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The rich people. Verse 6, but ye have despised the poor.

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Do not the rich men oppress you and draw you before the judgment seats?

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A question. Did the poor people oppress them? They didn't have the power to oppress them, did they?

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Did they take them before the courts? Who was oppressing the people that they were impressing?

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The rich people. I'd say it's ironic. James calls attention to the fact that many in the church despise the poor.

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If they were going to despise any segment of society, it probably should be the rich.

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After all, it's the rich that haul them into court and oppress them. So if you're going to hate somebody, maybe that's who you should hate, but should you hate them?

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No, you should love them. That's the difference between us and God, us and Jesus, and we should especially love them if they're one of the brethren.

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Well, it wasn't a surprise to God that his disciples were going to be persecuted.

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It was not a surprise to God today that his followers are going to be persecuted.

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In fact, Jesus himself told his disciples that they should expect to be persecuted.

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John chapter 16, verse 1. I'm going to substitute a word.

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When I get to the word synagogue, I'm going to say church. In John's time, the synagogue was kind of the place of the church.

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These things have I spoken unto you, that you should not be offended. They shall put you out of the churches.

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Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth

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God a service. And these things they will do unto you, because they have not known the

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Father nor me. But these things I have told you, that when the time come, you may remember that I told you of them.

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And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.

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So he's telling his disciples that I'm going to be leaving you. I'm going to be leaving the Holy Spirit with you as a comforter, but you should expect to be persecuted.

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After all, they're going to kill me. And is the servant better than his master?

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Verse 7. Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?

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Could anybody make sense of that statement? I read that four or five times, and I couldn't quite make up my mind what he was talking about, but I finally came to this.

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I'm going to ask you a question. Who called you and who's being blasphemed? Christ called you and it's who that's being blasphemed.

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So it's not that it's not the name by which you're called that's being blasphemed. It's Christ himself that's being blasphemed.

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You're called a Christian, but that's not what is being blasphemed. Christ is the one being blasphemed.

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I want to read that verse again. Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?

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When I first read that, I thought they were blaspheming the name Christianity, but it's not.

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They're actually blaspheming Jesus. Verse 8.

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If you fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well.

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Now John MacArthur said this about that verse. The royal law is better translated to sovereign law.

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The idea is that this law is supreme or binding.

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This sovereign law is quoted from Leviticus 19 and from Deuteronomy 64.

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When combined, they summarize all of the laws and the prophets. It goes on to cite

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Matthew 22, 36 when Jesus is being questioned by a lawyer trying to trick him up into saying something wrong so he can be criticized.

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The lawyer says, Master, what is the great commandment of the law?

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And Jesus said to him, Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.

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This is the first and the great commandment. No question about that one.

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And the second is likened to it. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.

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On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. MacArthur goes on to say,

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James is not advocating some sort of emotional affection for oneself. That is self -love.

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Self -love is clearly a sin. Timothy told us that, or actually Paul told

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Timothy that in 2 Timothy 3 .1. I want to read that again because this is such a powerful statement, especially in this time.

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Paul was telling Timothy about times that are soon to come, but he is telling us about times that are yet to come, but I think maybe they're beginning to come right now, and so maybe we should keep in mind what is being said here.

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See how many of these things are of great impact right now.

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Know also this, that in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves.

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That's that self -love. Covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents.

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Check that one out. Unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, cruise breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce.

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This one's appropriate now. Despisers of those that are good, traitors, petty, high -minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof from such turn away.

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All of those are evil things, and all of those are things that are going to be prevalent in the end times, and Paul is warning

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Timothy to be aware of these things and to shun them, to move away from them. Rather, the command is to pursue meeting the physical health and spiritual well -being of one's neighbors, and what's one's neighbors?

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Who's your neighbor? Actually, anyone that falls within the sphere of our influence.

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If you want to look at Luke, I'm not going to do it in a difference of time, but Luke 10 verses 30 through 37, the story of a good

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Samaritan. The Levite came along and passed him by. The priest came along and passed him by, and the

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Samaritan came along, took the injured man, took care of him, and paid his bill and went away, and the

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Lord said, which was the neighbor? It was the

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Samaritan that was the neighbor. All of those people that were put in positions where they should have done the right thing did the wrong thing.

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The Samaritan did the right thing, and the priest and the

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Levites hated him for it, and you should do that with the same intensity and concern as one does for one's own self.

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Now, we're getting ready to change pace of this particular passage, and as we continue to break down this section of the

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Scripture, there's two questions I'd like you to keep in mind. One, to whom do we align ourselves in times of stress?

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I couldn't quite think of the word to be used for, another word to use for align. Who do we associate with?

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Who do we bring into our circle of friends, into our neighbors in the time of stress?

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And that's not just their stress. That's our stress. If we're in stress, who do we go to?

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If someone is in stress, how do we align ourselves with them?

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So, keep that in mind. Both to whom do we align ourselves in times of stress, both our stress and the stress of others, and two, to whom do we turn to alleviate distress?

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Now, this morning, I'm going to attempt to answer question two, and I'm going to leave question one for you to ponder as we continue to go.

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The short answer to question number two is what? To whom do we turn to alleviate stress?

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I'm sorry? Many people tend to turn toward man rather than toward God, but what should we turn to?

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We should turn to God. The obvious answer, we should turn to God, but that still leaves us with the question, what do we do?

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How do we turn to God? And I decided to go back to and redo a little portion of Philippians.

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Philippians chapter four, verse four, and this starts out with what

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Myron Goldman called the most redundant verse in the

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Bible. I'm going to read it the way it's read, and then I'm going to read it the way Brother Golden read it, if I can remember.

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I think I can. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice.

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That's it. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice.

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We've got to understand what rejoice is. To rejoice, you have had to have joy already.

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So, you have joy, and then you have it again. So, rejoice means you have joy, and you have joy again.

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So, there we are. Have joy, have joy again. When? Always.

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Have joy, have joy again, and have it always, and that's not enough. He says again, and I say have joy, and have joy again.

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Now, how many times can you say that? And Brother Goldman did a great sermon on that, and is that one on the archives?

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Okay, if that's on the archives, that is a wonderful sermon to pull up. Some of Myron's work is on the archives, and if that one's there, you'll get a real blessing out of it.

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Okay, verse five. Let your moderation be known unto all men.

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The Lord is at hand. Some of us mistake that word moderation to think that means be half -hearted about something.

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It doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't mean to do something in moderation, but that is to say you can eat cake, but just don't eat whole cake.

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That's not what we're talking about. Moderation is gentleness. He's saying be gentle, be kind.

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Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Now, there's a lot of ways you can look at the

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Lord is at hand. Here, it seems to mean nearness in space. God is near you. The Lord encompasses all believers with His presence.

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If you're a believer, the Lord, you are in the presence of the

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Lord, even if you don't understand.

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That's right. If you weren't in the presence of the Lord, you'd have nothing to rejoice about. You couldn't even enjoy.

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There'd be no joy, much less joy again forever and always and again.

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Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto

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God. Now, be careful for nothing. That means don't worry. Don't worry is easy to say.

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It's harder to do. Instead of worrying, though, try praying.

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That's what this says. Don't worry. Pray. So, now

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I have a question. Does God answer all of our prayers?

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Yes, He answers them all, and sometimes He says no, and sometimes He says later, and sometimes

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He says, I've got a better thing for you, and sometimes He just says no. It was

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Paul that prayed three times to have the thorn removed from his flesh, and God said, no, no, no, and then finally

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He said, when you are weak, I am strong. You are stronger in your weakness than you would be if you were not weak, so sometimes

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I'm keeping you in that condition not for you, but for me, and that's something that we need to know about.

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So, yes, God answers all of our prayers, and now

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I'm going to ask the question again a little bit differently. Does God always give us what we request? The answer to that is clearly no.

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So, what does He give us? Okay. He gives us what we need. He also gives us something else, and we need this too.

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This is in context of worrying. What does He give us? The next verse tells us.

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He gives us the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus.

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Now, I found a quote from John Calvin, and I love reading these old guys because they sound so, that's partiality to the old guys, the way they say it.

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It is on good grounds that He calls it the peace of God. This is

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John Calvin. Inasmuch as it does not hit the wrong button, I've got to go back.

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Inasmuch as it does not depend on the present aspect of things and does not bend itself to the various shiftings of the world, but is founded on the firm immutable word of God.

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That's beautiful, isn't it? You have to read it twice, but it is beautiful.

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It's on good ground that He calls it the peace of God. Inasmuch as it does not depend upon the present aspect of things and does not bend itself to the various shiftings of the world, but is founded on the firm immutable word of God.

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It is on good grounds also that He speaks of it as surpassing all understanding or perception.

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It is on good grounds also that He speaks of it as surpassing all understanding or perception, for nothing is more foreign to the human mind than the following.

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In the depth of despair, to exercise a feeling of hope.

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In the depth of poverty, to see opulence. In the depth of weakness, to keep from giving way.

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And in fine, to promise ourselves that nothing will be wanting in us when we are left destitute of all things.

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So when everything is going great, promise yourself that when we lose everything, we'll still be okay.

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And all this is in the grace of God alone, which is not itself known otherwise than through the word and the inward earnest of the

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Spirit. So how can you know this? You can't even know this unless you're

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His. Finally, my brethren. Now, He says one of the things

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He says to do is if you're experiencing worry, if you're worrying, what's the one thing you should do if you're worried?

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You should pray, and you should understand that God will give you the answer to your prayer. He'll give you the answer that you need, and He'll give you peace.

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What else can you do? Finally, my brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

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So what does He say think about? He says, keep in mind the good things. If I were to give advice to anybody today,

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I would say, cut down the amount of time that you spend listening to the news. Nothing but bad news.

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All that will do is depress you. Think of good things. If you're worried, go read the

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Bible a little bit, and you'll see a lot of good things. Go walk in the park and see the birds and the trees and the squirrels.

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See good things. See the creation. See good things. Give yourself, fill your mind with good things, the good things that God has given you.

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Adam and Eve walked through the Garden of Eden for we don't know how many years, looking at all of God's creation, and at some point in time, they finally looked at something that they didn't like, and instead of looking at all the good things that He had given them and said, you can have all of these that you want in abundance, they looked at the one thing

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He said you can't have, and they dwelt on it. I don't know how long they dwelt on it, but they finally acted on it.

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Think on these things, those things which you have both heard, learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me do, and the

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God of peace shall be with you. Verse 9, and I'll go quicker from now on.

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If you have respect to persons, you commit sin and are convicted of the law as transgressors.

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MacArthur said it's better translated sense. The Greek construction of this conditional statement indicates that this practice was, in fact, already happening among James' readers.

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What was happening? That they showed partiality. They had respect to persons, and this form indicates that the behavior was not an occasional slip.

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It was a continual practice. And transgressors are those who go beyond the law of God, and respect of persons makes one a violator of God's law.

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Verse 10, for whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all.

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Now, MacArthur goes on to say this. The law of God is not a series of detached injunctions, but a basic unity that requires perfect love of Him and our neighbors.

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Although all sins are not equally damaging or hideous, they all shatter that unity and render men transgressors, much like hitting a window with a hammer at only one point will shatter the whole window.

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And guilty of all, not in the sense of having violated every one of the laws, but in the sense of having violated the law's unity.

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It is no longer a cohesive peace. One transgression makes fulfilling the law's most basic commands to love

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God perfectly, and to love one's neighbor as oneself impossible.

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And then he goes on to say, James, for he that said do not commit adultery also said do not kill.

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Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. So you don't have to break them all in order to be outside of the law.

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If you break one, you have broken them all. So speak ye and do so as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.

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Now, the presence of His grace does not mean that there's no moral law or code of conduct for believers to obey.

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What it does mean, among other things, is the believers are enabled by the Holy Spirit to keep the law.

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And when they fail to keep it, they can receive forgiveness.

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First John 1, 9, everybody's got this one committed to memory. If we confess our sins,

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He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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But he goes on to say, if we say that we have not sinned, then we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

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Verse 13, for He shall have mercy, for He shall have judgment without mercy that hath shown no mercy, and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.

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Again, I'm going to quote John MacArthur. A person who shows no mercy and compassion for people in need demonstrates that he has never responded to that great mercy of God.

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And as an unredeemed person will receive only strict, unrelieved judgment in eternal hell.

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The person whose life is characterized by mercy is ready for the day of judgment and will escape all the charges that strict justice might bring against him because by showing mercy to others, he gives genuine evidence of having received

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God's mercy. So, if we show no mercy and no compassion for people in need, we demonstrate that we have never received mercy and compassion from Jesus.

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And if that's the case, there's no place for us to go except to be judged with only strict, unrelieved judgment.

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But if we show mercy and we show compassion, we show that we have received mercy and compassion and it's evidence that we have seen it.

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Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank You for this day. Thank You for all the many blessings that You have given us.

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Thank You for bringing us into a place where we can study Your Word, a place of safety, a sanctuary.

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Thank You for giving us Your Son. Thank You for giving us the Holy Spirit. Thank You for giving us the technology to reach out and to interact with people that are not here.

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Bless us and keep us. Go through all the services today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And that's it for me.

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Anything else? I think we're running into Brother David's time pretty quickly.

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If not already, four more minutes.