WWUTT 387 Our Fellowship Indeed?

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Does God want you to have assurance of salvation, or does He always want you to be guessing so that way you'll do the right thing, never sure if you're in His good graces or not?

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No, our God is a loving Father when we understand the text. Many of the

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Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text, as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. 1 John 1 verses 1 through 10 is where we are again today, the whole first chapter where the apostle says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

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The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the

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Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us.

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And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things to you so that our joy may be complete.

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This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

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If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

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But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

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If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 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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If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

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This is the beginning of John's first letter, at least the first one in the trilogy of letters that we have referred to as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd

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John. And the whole book of 1st John, the five chapters that we'll be studying here, is kind of a

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CliffsNotes version of the Gospel of John. The better you understand 1st John, the easier it is to understand the

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Gospel of John. And among the four Gospels, at least in my opinion, I believe that John is one of the most difficult to grasp.

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There are some very deep concepts in the Gospel of John. As a matter of fact, several years back, a friend of mine who had just gotten saved actually had claimed to be a

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Christian for a good number of years, but then fell into sin and debauchery and came to the confession,

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I was never actually a Christian at all, never was a Christian in the first place. So once he got saved, we were talking together and he was saying, okay, what do

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I need to do? How do I start out with understanding the truth of the Word of God?

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And I said, well, it would seem logical to me to study the Gospel of John. So that's what we did.

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We started studying John together, and I can't remember how many chapters into it we got before I said, man, you know this stuff, this is hard.

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This is difficult stuff to understand. And he said, boy, I'm glad you feel that way because I've been lost. And now hearing that you've struggled with this too, that helps me feel a little bit better about this.

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So we kind of went back to the drawing board. What would be a better way to understand the Gospel of John?

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And it was about that time. I can't remember how long ago this was, 2006 or 2007. It was about that time that I came into what

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I've since referred to as the John MacArthur method of understanding the Gospel of John.

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And you go to 1 John and you read it every day for 30 days, all five chapters every day for 30 days.

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After you do that, you read it again. All of 1 John, all five chapters every day for 30 days.

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And once you do that, then you do it again. You do all five chapters of 1

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John another 30 days, every single day, reading the whole letter.

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Now, why would you do it that way? Why would you say three periods of 30 days instead of just saying, read 1

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John for 90 straight days? Well, I think that it helps to reset your mind.

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After you do it 30 days, you're kind of resetting your mind and you're coming back to it again. And then again, after doing it for 30 days, you reset your mind and you do it yet a third time.

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It's kind of like the beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes of studying and understanding the book of 1

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John. There are things that you're going to be mastering about your comprehension of this letter in your second 30 days than you will in your first 30 days.

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And likewise, when you get to that third set of 30 days. So if you think of it as three different sets or three different months of reading the entire letter of 1

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John, then it kind of resets your mind to look at these things at a new way and in a fresh way.

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There are things that you're going to start seeing in the letter that you weren't seeing the first few times that you read it.

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And once you get done with reading 1 John, that deliberately, that intentionally and absorbing the truth that is written in this letter, almost to the point of having it memorized.

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Then when you go to the gospel of John, you will have such a grasp of John's theology that the gospel of John is illuminated all the more for you.

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And excuse me if I have to pause a few times here because I'm still fighting allergies and everything, still getting over the allergies that I brought back with me from California.

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So anyway, that's again, that's what I've come to refer to as the John MacArthur method of studying 1

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John and then by proxy also the gospel of John. And this is a method that I typically give to a person who has come to me and has said that they're struggling with assurance of salvation.

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I will say to them, read 1 John every day for 30 days. Even if I don't go as far as encouraging them to do it three sets of 30 days,

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I will at least say, read it every day for 30 days. I think one of the key passages in 1

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John, particularly when it comes to helping the person who doubts their salvation or is having difficulty with assurance.

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One of those key passages is 1 John 5, 13, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

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God does indeed want us to know the assurances that we have in Christ Jesus.

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If indeed we know him and are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, God is not a kind of father that wants to leave us in mystery.

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We don't know if God really loves us or not. I guess I'm just going to go about doing the right things and hope that he loves me.

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There are some churches and denominations out there that play the gospel like that. They want to play you like that.

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They want you to believe that you can't actually know whether or not God loves you.

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That way you are obligated to remain in that church out of fear.

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So the closest I can get to assurance is what this church is teaching me. So I'm going to stay here just so I can be a little bit closer to understanding that God actually does love me and I really am saved.

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That's typically a method those kinds of churches will use to keep you in their midst, striking fear into your heart, to make you believe you would be under the condemnation of God if you were to leave that church or go anywhere else.

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So there are churches that do that, but that's not the way the Bible speaks to us. God does want us to have assurance of our salvation.

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God is not like a father. I think this was J .D. Greer I heard that used this example.

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God is not the kind of father who would be leaving for work one morning and would say to his kids, all right, daddy will be home later.

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Maybe, maybe I'm coming home after work. Maybe you're never going to see me again. Who knows?

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Who knows? This could be the very last time that you give daddy a hug and a kiss. I mean, what kind of feelings would a father be instilling in the heart of his children that they would be going throughout their day wondering if they would ever see daddy again?

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Does he actually love us enough to come home after work? God is not the kind of father that would leave us with that kind of doubt.

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He is the kind of father that gives us all the assurances in eternity that we have in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord, Christ said to his disciples, I will not leave you as orphans.

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I will come to you. And so we have this assurance through the son, the salvation, the acceptance we have by the father, this adoption through Jesus Christ.

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And John saying in first John three, see what kind of love the father has given to us that we should be called the children of God.

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And so we are no question there. If we have been adopted by Christ Jesus into the family of God, we are his children.

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The reason why the world does not know us, John goes on to say, is that it did not know him.

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Likewise, Paul said to the Ephesians that we wear the name of God, our father.

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And so we, as his children, indeed bear the marks of our father who has called us to himself through his son,

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Jesus Christ. So this is one of those key passages in first John, first John five, 13.

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I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

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So this is one of those letters that helps us to understand that assurance that we have in Christ Jesus.

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In addition to being a letter that helps us to understand the gospel of John even better.

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Let's go to John one and we see very similar themes. In fact, you've probably already recognized it with what we're reading in first John chapter one.

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We see in John chapter one. It's here that John says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

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God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life and the life was the light of men.

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The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Skipping to verse nine, the true light, which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

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He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

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But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God already starting to see some similarities between this and first John chapter one, right?

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And even first John three, one, which we had just read and first John chapter five, verse 13,

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John one 14 now and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory.

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Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

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John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me from his fullness.

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We have received grace upon grace for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

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No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the father's side. He has made him known.

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And so we have these constant references back to what we are reading here in first John or rather I should say what we're reading here in first John is referencing back to what we would have already read in the gospel of John, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

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The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

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So just as John the Baptist bore witness about these things and testified about them, he bore witness about what he saw and heard.

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So the apostle John is now saying we are among them also. Many more have been added to those who have witnessed the son of God who came in grace and truth and we have seen it and we testify and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

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This is Jesus who was from the beginning, who was with the father before the foundation of the world.

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He has been made manifest to us and now we who have seen it share that gospel with you so that you may know that you have eternal life through Jesus Christ.

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That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son,

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Jesus Christ. One of the things that we need to realize here that we need to come to understand as Christians, as fellow saints, is that when we understand the gospel together, we have fellowship with one another.

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And when we fellowship with each other, that fellowship should include the public reading of the scriptures of the word of God.

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This is something that Paul instructed to Timothy, that he should make it a regular practice of reading the word of God in public, which is a public exhortation, the reading and the studying of God's word among the people of God, his church.

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And so by this instruction that John is giving here in 1 John 1 3, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son,

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Jesus Christ. You could read this verse as a command to attend church and that church would include the public exposition, the open reading and teaching of the scriptures, the word of God.

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And that brings us closer to fellowship with one another. If somebody ever says to you that it is not necessary to attend church, but we are the church.

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So wherever the people of God will gather, then that is the church. But but in saying that they seem to place this emphasis on attending church is not important.

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They're they're a liar. They are going against what has been commanded in the word of God that we fellowship with one another and that we love the proclamation of his word.

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This is given to us all throughout the scriptures. Jesus instructing his own disciples that they would gather together and partake in the

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Lord's supper regularly, that there would be baptism, that you would teach the disciples to observe all that I have commanded you.

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All of these things are something that happens in a congregation of believers, ecclesia, the gathering of the church so that we may grow in brotherly love and equip one another according to the word of God.

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This is our fellowship. This is what happens in our fellowship. And as we grow in an understanding of God, we grow in brotherly brotherly love with one another as well.

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John is saying, I am sharing these things with you so that you too may have fellowship with us so that you are part of the growing body of believers, not just in number, but also in maturity, in spiritual maturity.

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And indeed, the body of Christ is growing. It is growing in number. It is not shrinking. The body of Christ is always growing in number.

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Even if, you know, if there was a way that we could track this around the globe, there is not any way that we can do this because there's no way that we can be certain exactly who is saved and who is not.

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You can know that you are saved, but I can't make that declaration for you. That is between you and the

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Lord. So it would not be possible for us to take some sort of global census to find out who is really a

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Christian and who is really not. But say it were possible, say we were able to do that. Even though there might be a time when the number of Christians counted on the globe goes down, the number of Christians added to God's kingdom is always going up because of what we see in John 10, that my sheep know my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.

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I and the father are one. So those who come to Christ, who hear the voice of the good shepherd and are his sheep and they respond to his call, they are in his care forever and no one is able to snatch them out of his hand.

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When they die, they go to heaven. And so therefore, the number of Christians that are added to the kingdom of God is always going up.

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It is never in decline, even if the total population or number of Christians on planet earth might be in descent in number.

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The number of Christians in God's kingdom is never going down. It is always going up.

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And so as the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, the fellowship is being added to.

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It is growing in number and in maturity. And John's saying here to the churches to whom he is writing, we share these things with you.

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We proclaim all of this with you so that you have this fellowship with us. You are growing in maturity.

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You are growing with the number of the saints that are being added to with the father and with his son,

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Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

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As this number in the church, in the family and the kingdom of God is being added to, so is our joy being added to.

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We are rejoicing all the more in seeing the children of God come to the faith.

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And we rejoice in our father by whom all of his children are named.

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They have received adoption through Jesus Christ. They are sealed in the

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Holy Spirit, indwelt in every believer in God. And so we rejoice and our joy is growing all the more that the work of God is being accomplished in the world by the declaration of the gospel.

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Likewise, we have been called to this declaration. We have been called to preach the gospel to the world and this also in adding our joy and also adding joy to the saints that come to the light of Christ.

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So let us understand the instruction that has been given to us and that as part of this fellowship, all of us have been called to be ministers in the faith in sharing the gospel of Christ to a dark and dying world.

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Let us pray. Our great God, what great salvation we have received through Jesus Christ, a salvation that we do not deserve, a fellowship that we did nothing to earn, but it is by your grace and your mercy that we can be called the children of God.

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See how wonderful the love of the father is that we can be called the children of God. And that is what we are.

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We praise you because you have begotten us as your children.

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We have been adopted through Jesus Christ who by his blood on the cross and his resurrection from the grave has forgiven our sins and made us right before our father.

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And so Lord, I pray that being sealed with the Holy Spirit, we would be emboldened to take this gospel to the world so that the number of the saints, the number of your children might be added to by those who hear the gospel proclaimed, turn from their sin and follow in the righteousness of Christ.

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Keep us steadfast in this course as well as we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you for listening to when we understand the text.

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Pastor Gabe is the author of the book 40 of the most popular Bible verses and what they really mean available in paperback or for your

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Kindle can be found at our website at www .tt .com. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's word when we understand the text.