Heaven, Hell and Everything In Between (part 15)

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Becoming Better Theologians (part 16)

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Our Father, we thank you this morning to even contemplate you, your attributes, your kindness, your love, your graciousness, your justice, and Father, even your hatred for sin, your zeal for your own glory.
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Father, I pray as we look to your word this morning that we would see those attributes, that we would embrace them, that we would delight in them, that we would delight in getting to know you, the one living
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God. Father, I pray that you bless this time in Christ's name, amen. Well, I thought
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I might start, I was supposed to, while I was on vacation, see somebody and that didn't wind up happening because he came up with this lame excuse about open heart surgery.
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So I thought I might just share a little bit from his blog. Now this is an unbeliever, and he's talking about the doctor who operated on him who's 75 years old, and that becomes a key here, and when
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I, I'm just listening to this, I'm going okay, my dad is, how old is my dad, 73, just about turned 73 years old.
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I don't think I want my dad doing this surgery, I mean listen to this. This doctor specializes in high risk surgeries that many surgeons won't attempt, which lets you know how this is going to go.
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Now Randy, my friend, is probably about my age, maybe a year or two younger, and he went to see his doctor because he had a cough.
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So he goes in and sees his doctor, they do a couple tests, and they discover he's got a heart murmur. So they send him for more tests, send him to see a cardiologist.
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After the tests are done, the cardiologist walks in the room and sits down, and he says you're going to need emergency heart surgery within the next three days.
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So then, here's the issue. Your aorta is supposed to be three centimeters,
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I want to write that down, I don't know when. Three centimeters in diameter. If you have, if your aorta is five centimeters, it's immediate heart surgery, got to go right away.
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Randy's was ten centimeters. And worse, he says, it had attached itself to other organs and the cavity of my chest.
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So this was not going to be an ordinary open heart surgery. Surgery was the last four to six hours.
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Well, after nine hours, the procedure was completed, and he was taken downstairs with a critical care unit to recover.
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However, he began losing mass quantities of blood right away. Soon nurses on either side of me were holding and squeezing plasma bags so that blood could enter my body as quickly as it was leaving.
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He says here, things were not going according to plan. He had to go back into surgery.
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The nurses at the hospital did a remarkable job of caring for him and told his wife that going back for a second surgery was rare but sometimes necessary.
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They did their best to comfort her. Eight hours later, after having my chest recracked open, my second heart surgery was completed.
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I'd lost a huge amount of blood and gone through a large percentage of my blood type that was in stock. Unfortunately, once again,
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I began to bleed excessively. Detaching my aorta from other organs caused some weeping and my blood wasn't clotting as it should for some reason.
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More blood was needed, as was a third consecutive surgery. Somehow enough blood was made available so that I might live.
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Many nurses walked around with patches on their arms indicating blood donations, though none would admit to actually having donated.
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When I went back to the operating room to have my chest cracked open for, notice how he keeps saying cracked open, for my third surgery, none of the nurses was able to tell my wife that all would be well and that this sometimes happens, a third surgery.
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In 50 years of operating, Dr. Yokoyama had never taken a patient back for a third consecutive round of open heart surgery.
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He wound up operating for 26 out of 30 hours, this doctor did, 75 years old.
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They got done in the middle of his third surgery at 3 .30
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a .m. on Saturday. As my wife sat in the waiting room, she began to hear my voice whispering my nickname for her in her head.
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About the same time, he says, I have a memory, a very distinct memory, now listen to this. I was going back through time and passing stars by the hundreds.
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I was racing toward the beginning, going further and further away, perhaps moving towards the Big Bang.
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This is not a believer. I also remember at some point the stars reversing direction and my moving forward towards the present.
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Lynn's experience and mine were at similar moments in time. It's a sign. I was responding normally to a neurological stimulant and there was concern, or I was not responding normally to a neurological stimulant, something for his brain, and there was concern that I might be a vegetable.
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This is after he got out of surgery. He says, my time was not yet up, but I still had my own hell, capital
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H, in front of me. At day five, I had already been conscious for two days and my intubation tube was taken out.
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Every breath for every minute of every hour was, for almost 36 hours, I gasped for air.
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He said the sensation was like trying to breathe through a straw. I spent those 36 hours walking through the valley of the shadow.
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That was my hell. It was the worst day of my life by a long shot. Then he says,
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I'll admit to being fond of the nickname the nurses gave me. They now call him the miracle.
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He says that they see thousands of patients every decade and it's kind of amazing they survive.
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Now he says, am I alive because of great science and an amazing surgeon?
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Am I alive because people came to my aid when I needed it most? Am I alive because of my own determined willpower?
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Or was I touched by an angel during my time of greatest need? In general,
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I'm a logic, reason, science kind of guy, but in this case, I have to say, praise be.
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Praise be to what? He doesn't say. As it is hard for me to think that something more than science wasn't going on in that operating recovery room.
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From here on in, I'm going to do my best to think of myself in my life in the context of the immortal words of baseball great
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Lou Gehrig, that I truly am the luckiest man on the face of the earth. And I just wrote that.
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I sent him a little email, kind of nicely asking him to reconsider his position.
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But it's just, it's amazing to think that we can, that somebody could go through all that. And of course, you know,
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I, my first thought was when I read that, I just thought, this guy ought to write a book. It would shoot to the straight to the top of the
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Christian bestsellers list, you know, his trip through hell. And everybody goes, wow, you know, he saw the stars and everything.
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He must know what's going on because that's what we do. We buy all that. Sell, sell, sell.
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It'll really work. 90 minutes in heaven, 23 minutes in hell, you know, and surgical hell.
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I don't know what you'd call that. I don't know. But it just struck me that, you know, the, the unbeliever has such a desire for there not to be a
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God that even when they go through something like that, even when there's something maybe greater than science going on, their impulse is not to believe it's to say praise be to something.
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We've been talking about hell and I, I plan to maybe do maybe one, one more week, we'll see.
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And then we're going to start doing a series on the parables and I'll probably do the first one. But we were talking a little, those many weeks ago, but Jesus and his position on hell and just kind of catches up to where we are.
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Jesus talks about hell as a horrible place. I don't know if any of you still have those notes that was on page 55 and it's interesting here.
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This is a point that often gets overlooked because, and it's this, that God himself is present in hell and is the actual deliverer of punishment is the one who meets or mets whatever it meets.
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He gives out the, the punishment. You know, we like to say sometimes that if you don't repent and believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be separated forever from God. Well, we talked about it before.
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If God is on my presence, if he's everywhere, then is he going to need to be in hell? And the answer is yes, you're separated from hell.
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All right. Or separate from God. All right. But only from his positive attributes. That is love, kindness, mercy.
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You get the wrath of God forever and ever. Jesus also taught that religious activity alone will lead to hell.
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It is frankly amazing. And speaking to another friend of mine who is Jewish, who's a friend of Randy's, it's this idea that somehow
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Randy found God during this whole episode. Found God.
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Well, no, he didn't. He just kind of opened the door to maybe there is something greater than him, but no idea of sin or holiness or anything else.
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Just, you know, maybe something bigger because he saw a bunch of stars while he was out.
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Jesus also taught that there are only two destinations, heaven and hell. There's no intermediate state.
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There's nothing, there's no kind of purgatory. We don't see that anywhere in the New Testament.
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And we left off from page 59 with the idea that hell is forever.
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Hell is forever. Let's open our Bibles to Mark chapter nine. And verses 47 and 48.
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And who has that? Go ahead, Fred. And if your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out.
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It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes and be cast into hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
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It's 149 as well. No, that's right. Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
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It's kind of unusual language. Listen what Kistemacher says. He says, when scripture speaks of unquenchable fire, the point is not merely that there will always be a fire burning in Gehenna.
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Gehenna is that little valley outside of Jerusalem where they burnt the trash and everything.
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That's the picture. But that the wicked will have to endure that torment of hell forever.
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Listen to these words. He says they have to endure that torment forever. Then he says they will always be the objects of God's wrath, never of his love.
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Thus also their worm never dies and their shame is everlasting. So are their bonds.
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They will be tormented with fire and brimstone and the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever so that they have no rest day or night.
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I think it's interesting to look at the reference of Isaiah 66.
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It talks about the, they shall look, go forth and look on the carcasses of men who are transgressed against me for their worm shall not die.
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In other words, these people have died and their worms are active in their bodies. Those worms are never going to quit.
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Yeah. So it's this kind of constant decay, constant suffering, constant nastiness.
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I mean, who wants to go through that forever? Constant pain. The wrath of God poured out forever. Having a body constructed in such a way that you are able to undergo torment forever.
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One hears the objection, Kismacher goes on, but does not scripture teach the destruction of the wicked?
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And he says, yes, indeed. But this destruction is not an instantaneous annihilation. We talked about annihilation, annihilationism many months ago, so that there will be nothing left of the wicked.
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So that in other words, they would cease to exist. The destruction of which scripture speaks to is again an everlasting destruction.
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Their hopes, their joys, their opportunities, their riches have perished and they themselves are tormented by this and that forevermore.
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I couldn't resist this note from the BKC and it will be obvious in a minute.
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If, and that's a Greek, if you're wondering if that's a typo, E -A -N, no, that's the
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Greek word for if, whenever indicating a real possibility. The activity of your hand, an instrument of inward inclinations causes you to sin, then cut it off.
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Jesus meant a disciple should take prompt, decisive action against whatever would draw him away from allegiance to Christ.
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The same is true of the foot and the eye for temptations come through various means. Whatever attempts a disciple to cling to this world's life must be removed.
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Much as a surgeon amputates a gangrenous limb. I talked about gangrene last week.
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You know, what happens if you get gangrene in your hand? Well, I think they have, they may try to treat it with antibiotics for a while, but it doesn't take very long until they just lop it off.
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Why? So it doesn't affect the rest of the body. Because it keeps spreading and eventually it just kills more and more and more of the body and you have to cut more of it off and it eventually can kill you.
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Moses, Moses Stewart in 1830 said this. We must either admit the endless misery of hell or give up the endless happiness of heaven because the two go hand in hand in places where it talks about eternal life.
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It also talks about death. You can't have eternal life unless there is some kind of eternal death or eternal punishment.
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Jesus also taught at page 60, hell is the place where the wrath of God will be unleashed.
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I could have said fully unleashed, which I think better encapsulates it. I mean, basically the picture of God's wrath would be like, you know, a dam and he alone is holding it back and he just keeps building it higher and higher and higher because as sin increases, as there's more and more sin committed, his wrath increases until one day where he no longer holds it back and he fully pours it out.
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Let's look at John 3, 35 and 36. We like to talk about the love of God, but it's important to understand the wrath of God.
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We like to talk about heaven, but it's important to understand hell and we'll explore that a little bit more in a moment.
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John 3, 35 and 36. Who has that? The father loves his son and has given all things into his hand.
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Whoever believes in the son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
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That's pretty plain, isn't it? If you believe you have eternal life.
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If you don't, the wrath of God remains on you. Permanent, ongoing wrath.
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Listen to what Kostenberger says. John 3, 27, it was the
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Baptist testimony that a person can only receive what has been given him from heaven. Here it is said that, or it said what the son has been given by the father, all things.
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The ground of this bountiful equipment is the father's love for the son, through whom believers also become objects of God's love.
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Why does God set his affections on us? Because the work of Christ, because of his accepting that work, because he loves the son, he sets his affection on us.
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Hence, also, people must believe in the son, resulting in eternal life, or else
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God's wrath remains on them. He goes on to note the present tense has in the phrase has eternal life indicates that eternal life is not merely a future expectation, but already a present experience.
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We're already experiencing eternal life in what sense? We're saved.
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Eternal life starts at salvation, not at death. It starts at salvation, not at death. But in what sense?
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I mean, right now, if you think about it, in what sense do you think, well, I have eternal life. We have fellowship with the father right now.
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I think there's one more that I'm really looking for. Let me put it to you this way. Let's phrase it a little bit differently and see if we can come up with this.
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What separates a believer from an unbeliever on their deathbed?
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Hope. You have hope right now. If Randy had,
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I mean, I'm sure he was very afraid. If a believer's in that same situation, he could be afraid, but he could also think, you know what?
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My fear is not for myself. My fear is not for my soul. My fear is for, you know, those whom
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I'm about to leave behind. And gee, if I did everything I could to help them and that sort of thing.
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But even then you just think, well, everything I've done, everything
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I could do is nothing but a gift from God. Anyway, I need to trust him to take care of those.
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A person who truly trusts Christ on their deathbed will say, in some ways, maybe my preference would be to stay, but it's better for me, for me to go.
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For me to die is gain. And in that sense, we truly have eternal life right now.
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We have hope that unsaved people cannot have. Kosenberger goes on to say the final verse of the chapter clearly attests to the fact that the wrath of God rests on unbelievers, which makes believing in the
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Son not optional, but essential. So many times in the scriptures, Jesus Christ is presented as the only way to eternal life, the only way to heaven.
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And yet we even have Christians, famous Christians who say, you know what?
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Other religions have a lot of truth. Other religions, you know, all religions meet at the top kind of thing.
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That's what my sheriff once said. He was holding a briefing at his station. I mean, this is a big department in Los Angeles, obviously.
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And he would say, well, you know, it's important that you have some kind of faith because, you know, it's a helpful component for mental health.
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And one thing we have to understand is all religions meet at the top. And he put his hands right like that. And I'm going, okay, right.
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Mr. Pointy head. He goes on to say the term
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Orge, and that's the Greek transliteration there, is used only here in John's gospel and the
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Yohannine apostles epistles. That means the letters that John wrote in Revelation, both
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Orge and Thymos, the other word for wrath are used repeatedly to refer to God's holy outrage against rebellious humanity.
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You know, people say, well, I don't, I don't think that God should be angry. I don't think that I don't believe in a
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God who would do that to people. I don't believe in a God. I don't know what to tell you. You don't believe in a holy
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God. You don't believe in a God that hates sin. That's not the guy with a Bible. Up at the top of 61, commentator
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Donnelly says this. We must remember also that hell exists for God's glory. There's something we don't think about in hell.
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And we can say this only in trembling reverence. God's glory will be unveiled in new and amazing ways.
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His kingly authority will be seen more clearly than it, than has ever been possible before.
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Fresh aspects of his holiness and justice will be revealed to his wondering people.
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I mean, heaven, will we be sitting around praising
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God, worshiping him, praising him? Yes. And we'll be praising him because we'll be learning new things about him all the time and in awe of him all the time.
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I stole this from Nate Milne. I saw this on his Facebook page the other day. This quote, if you believe what you like in the gospels, in other words, about what
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Jesus said and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
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That's from Augustine, who wrote that, what, about 1600 years ago. I think that's pretty good.
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If you believe what you like in the gospels and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself. Kind of that cafeteria
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Christianity. Even knew about it all the way back then. Paul, the epistles of Paul, what he wrote about hell.
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He never used the word typically translated hell, but he consistently taught the concept.
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First, he would talk about it in terms of death or to die in a spiritual death.
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Let's look at Romans one, starting in verse 18.
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And I will read that because I will read it faster than you and I couldn't resist reading this whole section.
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Romans one, 18 through 32 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
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So that they are without excuse for, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened claiming to be wise.
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They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
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Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
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And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
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They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
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They were full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know, though they know
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God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.
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This is the descent of man, as it were, from having a perfect knowledge of God in the garden of Eden and turning their backs on that and gradually,
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I mean, think about it, Cain knew God in a pretty intimate way and downhill it goes.
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Turning back on God, he turns you over to a new level of depravity and it gets worse and worse and worse.
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And we look at the world today, I'm talking to a friend who just recently went to a conference, one of these kind of reclaiming the culture for Christ things, and he was asking me some questions about it and I go, let me ask you this, if we're going to reclaim the culture for Christ, don't you think
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Christ should have first owned the culture? I mean, when has, you know, the Bible talks about the God of this world and it doesn't say that God of this world or the
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God of this age or the ruler of this age is Christ. It talks about Satan.
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Satan is kind of running, as it were, the spiritual, you know, realm of things, but, and it's ugly in a number of ways.
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But Kistenmacher says this, when he's talking about dying or death there in verse 32, when he says that they deserve to die, what
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Paul is saying is that the perpetrators of the crimes either implied or expressed in verses 29 to 31 in homosexuality would be one of those among many.
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And I think it's easy, or it's very interesting too, when you look at this inventors of evil, I'm consistently amazed.
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I mean, I, I've seen a lot of bad things in my life, but I'm consistently amazed that people find new ways, you know, to either mutilate themselves or what, you know, whatever.
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I mean, it's like people cannot stop inventing things. I hear about some things while I was on the job being a police officer for 21 years, and I just go, how would somebody think of that?
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What, what would, what would motivate someone to, you know, I won't even sully your minds with it, but you just think they, we really are as a race inventors of evil, inventors of new sins.
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I don't know if the biblical writers ever knew the, the, the extent to which we would be involved.
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I mean, they know the heart, but crazy stuff. Kissmarker says, what
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Paul is saying is that the perpetrators of the crimes, either implied or expressed in verses 29 to 31, must not be regarded as being so innocent that they cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
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On the contrary, they know, have an awareness of the fact that according to God's ordinance, his decree that those who practice such vices, such sins are worthy of death.
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And he says, how do they know this? They know it because a righteous and holy God has revealed himself to them in nature.
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Right up there. It says, we know about God because we look around the world in verse 21. What does it say?
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It says, for, although they knew God, they did not honor him or give thanks to him, but they became full of the foolish hearts of darkness.
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I guess it was in verse 20 and really not so much 21, but his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, divine nature, having have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they're without excuse, they look at creation and they know that there's a
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God. They also have a conscience inside of them. Romans 2, 14 and 15 would tell us that they have the law of God written in their hearts.
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They have a conscience. They know that things are wrong and yet they do them anyway. Sometimes it's because they know they're wrong.
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Accordingly, they sense the fact that God will call them to account and that continuing in their evil way will result in perdition for them.
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Nevertheless, in spite of this awareness, they not only continue to practice these vices and to perpetrate these crimes, but even applaud others who do the same.
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There are those who see a problem here, as if the apostle were saying that rejoicing to see other people engage in wickedness while you yourself abstain is even more wicked than taking part in such evil practices.
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Having created this problem, they then try to solve it. He goes on, he says, but as it is not true, what that what
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Paul is saying, actually saying is that those who not only practice these vices would applaud others who engage in them are even worse.
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Uh, blah, blah, blah. Let me skip all that and just get to it. What he's saying is that there are people, and he says this at the end of them, though they know, verse 32, though they know
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God's decree, the law, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.
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You know, it is, it is amazing when you see people that you know that are, uh, immoral, that are involved in debauchery and just really make their living, uh, by doing these kinds of things.
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I think of, uh, some of the pornographers, Larry Flint and, uh, some of these other people and what do they do?
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They're not just content to make their money and live their own debased lives.
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They actually encourage others to do it. They applaud them when they do it. Uh, I mean, it really is a, a mentality of enjoying the, uh, the degradation of the human race of seeing, uh, sin increase.
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I mean, we, we've talked about, uh, I mentioned it last Sunday morning, and I've talked about this in the angels and demons class, there seems to be,
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I mean, demons certainly love to see this growth of sinful activity. They love to see the things, everything that God is for, they're against.
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And it would almost seem certain that some people, I don't know who they are, but that some people are so either influenced by demons or possessed by demons that they have a sort of demonic delight in seeing other people sin.
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Um, and it's, it's really a twisted thing. Most people who are, shall we say, godless want to have other people join them.
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I mean, I remember when I was younger, I mean, there was always somebody who was, you know, at a party or something like that.
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Oh, you've got to have a drink. You just can't stand there without a drink. You've got to, here's a, here's a, you know, cigar, have a cigar,
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I don't care about cigars, but, uh, they're always trying to bring you down to their level.
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Yeah. But I've been, and that's true. I mean, I think there's a certain, uh, certain thing where, you know, social standard where it's just, uh, it's good or it feels good if people are kind of joining in with you, but I mean, even worse when you just think about,
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I mean, some people are so debased and so, you know, anti -god that it seems like they really would not care if the entire society were just destroyed.
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I mean, when we look around and we see, uh, people saying a man and a man, a woman or a woman, whatever, you know, it's all the same, you just go, well, it's not really all the same.
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I mean, I, you know, going back to take it, take a, uh, kind of a silly illustration and make a serious point out of it.
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When I was in the Sheriff's Academy, load those many years ago, that'd be in 1983. And, uh, they were talking to us about officer safety and stuff like that.
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And I said, listen, when you graduate from the Academy and you got on a radio car, there might be times where you're working on one man car, but I want you to know that there's no difference between a one man car and a two man car.
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Let's see, you know, one man car, you know, this is one guy and here's, you know, and he's got the little star.
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I can think of a difference, you know, it's not so hard. There's two people in this car and there's only one in that car.
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There's four sets of, you know, there's four eyes in that, you know, glasses doesn't count as four eyes, but I'd say it because I wear glasses.
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There's a difference. You're safer with two people than you are with one. And, you know, then it goes on to what?
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There's no difference between a man and a woman. And I'm like, well, I can think of a few differences.
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You know, my female partner, now I had a male partner who also weighed about 125 pounds. Um, I could think of some differences, but you know, that all, all those things were out the window.
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I mean, when my dad came out of the apartment, there was a minimum height and weight, you know, and all these other things.
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And now they're like, oh, no, that stuff matters. Well, I don't know. Does it? You know, if you have to wrestle with a guy, does it matter?
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I mean, I watched my male 130 pound partner just get flung around by a guy with one hand was throwing him around.
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I'm going, I don't know. I, I think there's a difference. Um, so, but, and so now we've gotten to the point where male and male, female and female, it doesn't matter.
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You know, it's all the same under the law. Well, what's going to happen? Things that would have been seen as unthinkable are going to be normal.
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We're going to see, uh, I think it's coming. We'll see the normalization of multiple marriages.
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In other words, you know, we'll have a, what's it polygamy. Uh, we might see polyandry, which is one woman with multiple husbands.
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We'll see all these things and they will be legal. They'll never be moral, but there'll be legal.
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Why? Because as our society continues to ignore the plain differences between men and women, you know, they look at God's creation, they see men and women and they go, there's no difference.
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Yeah, there is. No, there isn't. Okay. All right.
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You know, I mean, they just ignore the truth about God. And as they do so, we continue this slide into sin.
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That's just the way this world is. Let's move on to, did you have something you want to say,
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Ms. Cooke? No, it's similar to what you're saying. Cause I was just thinking about, you mentioned, um, Hugh Hefner, how it becomes like with a lot of the actresses now, almost a status thing to have posed in their magazines.
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So it's like what used to be bad is now like almost a status to do these things. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about a time now where, you know, things that ought to be called evil are called good and things that are good are called evil.
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I mean, to stand for something is to, you know, is to sin in this day and age. If you take a stand for God, you're intolerant.
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You're just a shameful person. You're somebody to be shunned. These are amazing times that we live in.
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Uh, to perish, destroyed, to, I was going to say to be destructed.
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Let's look at Galatians six. It reminds me, the kids used to make these goofy movies when they were in high school and they made one where, you know, somebody got exploded.
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And I just thought that was the funniest thing because I just couldn't imagine, uh, you know, that the word being used in that way, she was exploded.
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What? I just never heard that. Galatians six verses seven and eight, who would read that place?
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One who has taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches to not be deceived is not mocked for whatever one sows that will.
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He also reap for the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.
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Okay. This principle of sowing and reaping a kiss marker says this so into the flesh means to allow the old nature to have its way.
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When you get saved, you have a new nature. You are a new creature in Christ. So into the flesh means falling back into those old habits.
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So also sowing to the spirit means to allow the Holy spirit to have his way. The one who does the ladder is walking by the spirits and is being led by the spirit.
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What happens to these contrasted representative individuals already in this life, but especially in and after the resurrection and then in the last day, he who has been sowing to please his flesh will from the harvest field of the flesh, reap destruction or decay.
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On the other hand, he who has been sowing to please the spirit will from the harvest field of the spirit, reap life everlasting.
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So, I mean, here we have a picture, you know, someone says, well, I'm a backslidden
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Christian. And by that, they mean I believed in Christ and then my life from that moment forward,
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I just cannot please myself. I may have gone to church every once in a while, but I, my life never changed at all.
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Well, so into the flesh means destruction, destruction forever. So into the spirit, in other words, living a life controlled by the spirit means life everlasting.
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The two terms corruption and life everlasting must be understood in a double sense, quantitative, that is kind of numerically and qualitative, meaning just the quality, the inherent quality with respect to the form of the two are alike, both last on and on and on.
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Corruption, for example, far from amounting to annihilation, indicates everlasting destruction.
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Again, the worm does not die. The fire does not, is not quenched. Life everlasting is equal in duration.
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Everlasting means everlasting. If you had an everlasting gobstopper, it means a piece of candy that never, you know, stops giving you that pleasure.
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Qualitatively and this reference with, or this with reference to both body and soul, the two corruption and everlasting form a striking contrast.
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Those who have sown to the flesh will awaken unto shame and everlasting contempt. Their worm will not die.
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Their fire will not be quenched. Their dwelling place will be outside the banquet hall.
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That is the place for those who sow to the flesh.
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We have time for one more. Let's look at Colossians three verses five to 11. Who wants to read
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Colossians three, five to 11? It's not as long as it looks. It's one paragraph. Want to get it,
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John? Let's get your first thought.
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Okay. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body is dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
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For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. And in them, you will, you also once walked when you were living in them, but now you also put them all aside.
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Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another.
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Since you have laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge, according to the image of the one who created him, a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,
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Scythian, slave and free, free man. But Christ is all and in all.
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Thank you. This is, this is so important. I mean, the contrast between, uh, having a changed life and not having a changed life, lordship salvation is sometimes called people to say whatever they want.
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Uh, just, we were talking about this yesterday at home, the idea that someone could say they're a Christian and their life be absolutely unchanged.
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And furthermore, uh, individual we were discussing says that they're a
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Christian. And yet if you ask for their testimony, they won't give you one. That's personal.
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And Jesus said, if you deny me before men, I'll deny you before the father. I mean, there is something about a
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Christian. When you understand how much you've been forgiven, when you understand the gravity of your sin, and then you understand that that sin has been forgiven, there's a change of heart.
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There's a change of attitude. There is not a reluctance to talk about the Lord Jesus Christ. There's not a reluctance to talk about the gospel.
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There's a desire and a delight in talking about these things. Look at what Gromacky says about Colossians 3, 5 to 11.
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He says, four truths can be gleaned. I mean, this will preach first men bring divine judgment on themselves.
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God is sovereign, but man is responsible. They bring judgment on themselves. The causal phrase for which things sake is a prepositional phrase, which gives the reason.
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He knows what a prepositional phrase is. Starts with a preposition. That's kind of a key for this preposition, which gives the reasons why they should be judged.
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Men will reap what they have sown. And if you're characteristically a sinner, you should, you will be judged as a sinner.
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Second, the holiness of God and his righteous displeasure over sin are expressed in the phrase, the wrath of God.
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With God, such anger is judicial rather than temperamental, should be temperamental, not temperamental.
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I don't know where, you know, a Tempur -pedic mattress or something. I don't know, temperamental.
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In other words, God, it doesn't just get mad because he has a bad temper. He has anger because his law is violated and his holiness has been breached.
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It's been violated. God's wrath is balanced.
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He goes on to say within his holy being by mercy, compassion, and love. Habakkuk knew that God could not condone sin.
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When he made the confession, O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment and O mighty
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God, thou hast established them for correction. This is the part of the passage that is just killer.
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Thou are of purer eyes than to behold evil and canst not look on iniquity.
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That's King James, but he cannot abide iniquity. He will not countenance it.
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He doesn't look on it kindly. He cannot have it in his presence. When God sees sin in action, he is repulsed by it and is constrained to judge it.
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He isn't shrugged. He must judge it. Third, the divine wrath cometh or is coming.
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The wrath of God presently abides on all who have not trusted Christ. Thus, they can be designated as the children of wrath.
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What does that mean? That their inheritance, as it were, would be the wrath of God. Unless they are saved, this judicial wrath will be transformed into the actual wrath of God.
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In other words, it is like there is a hammer of justice over their heads, and the only thing that will save them from that is the work of Christ and them believing in it.
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It is just as certain and imminent as the return of Christ or physical death. The physical expression of divine wrath will occur after the great tribulation and its eternal manifestation in the lake of fire.
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In other words, there will be, during the great tribulation and outpouring of God's wrath, but an even greater wrath in the lake of fire, that is to say, hell forever.
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Fourth, only the children of disobedience will experience this divine wrath. Literally, they are the sons of disobedience.
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Just as Jesus, interacting with the Jews in John 8, said that they were of their father, the devil.
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In that same sense, these could be said to be sons of disobedience.
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If disobedience were a person, they would be the physical likenesses of disobedience.
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Personified evil, they are the sons of that personified evil and disobedience of the commandments of God.
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Christ delivered the believer from all involvement in the divine wrath.
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I think it was MacArthur years ago, I heard him teaching about this idea of being transferred from the kingdom of darkness, the domain of darkness, into the kingdom of light.
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What a great blessing! We go from being children of disobedience, children of wrath, deserving nothing but the punishment of God forever, and by the work of Christ and Him giving us the faith to believe in Him, we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness, that is, not knowing our way, being slaves of sin and in every way unworthy of the mercy of God, to being adopted by Him.
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We go from being the children of Satan, as it were, to the children of God. Straight from the adoption agency of hell, straight into the house of God.
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No greater blessing. There is no greater blessing. It's something that we ought to rejoice in every single day as we think about it.
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Let's go ahead and close in prayer. Just so you know, we'll do maybe one more week, and we'll talk about judgment briefly, and how that's all going to work out, and then we'll get on to the parables.
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So let's pray. Father, it is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of a living
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God. Lord, for any here who don't know you today, I would pray that you would save them by your mercy, because you are a loving and compassionate
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God, whose loving kindness extends to billions. Lord, I pray that you would open the eyes of even those who are not here today, of those whom we know and love and pray for.
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Lord, that today would be the day of salvation. What a delight it would be on Mother's Day, to get home and to have some kind of message on the machine from some lost son or lost daughter, even from the lost parents.
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Lord, I pray that even this morning as we go to hear your word taught, that you would prepare our hearts to be encouraged by your word, to think often of the promises, to think often of your deliverance of us,
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Father, to think about all that we have earned in terms of your displeasure, and to think of what we have been given by virtue of the perfect work of Christ.