The Law of Love & the Gospel of Faith | 1 John 3:22-23

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Welcome to the media ministry of Thorne Crown Covenant Baptist Church. This sermon will be a little bit different than usual because we had some technical difficulties and actually lost the original recording of the sermon.

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So I am going to be presenting the message after the fact so that people can still have the recording in case they want to listen to it.

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This message is entitled, The Law of Love and the Gospel of Faith. So if you turn with me now to 1

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John chapter 3, starting in verse 21, God's word says,

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Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep

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His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as He gave a commandment to us.

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And the one who keeps His commandments and abides in Him, and He in Him, we know by this that He abides in us, by the

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Spirit whom He gave us. Amen. The agenda for this message will consist of finishing first the excursion on prayer that I started last week, and then proceeding to the

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Law of Love and Gospel of Faith distinctions throughout verse 23. And I will not be able to finish up with verse 24, we'll probably stop at verse 23.

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So if you recall from last week, verse 22 condenses for us the very essence of prayer, of what prayer is.

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Verse 22 says, and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep

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His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. So prayer is what we ask

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God for. And God also works in us to pray, stirs us to pray, and in our weakness

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He guides us, He guides our prayers and intercedes with us and for us in our prayers as well.

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Last Lord's Day, we also left off with the question that if God gives us whatever we ask for according to 1

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John 3 .22, then why do we not always get what we ask for?

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And this is where we once again have to be careful not to overextend the law, the duties, demands, commands that God gives us at the expense of the gospel, the promises, pardons, and mercies that God also gives us, and lose our balance.

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These verses are descriptive. They teach and remind us that God is omniscient, sovereign, and omnipotent.

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We are creatures, clay, sheep, children, entirely dependent upon God, who is our creator, potter, shepherd, and father.

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And recall that our theology of prayer and our prayer life, that is our prayer perspective and habits, are a reflection of our relationship with God, and of our own spiritual condition and maturity.

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Remember too that it is not pious, it is not pious to obey one command, such as prayer, at the expense or neglect of another, such as studying.

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It is immature and sinful to neglect the whole counsel of God, or to have lopsided or imbalanced priorities and applications of the word.

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What would Jesus have to say about this, about having the right balance? Not surprisingly, when he was rebuking the false, imbalanced piety of the scribes and Pharisees, this is something he addressed in Matthew 23, 23.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

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But these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

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That's extremely important to understand in this day and age where we have so many imbalances and improper priorities in light of God's word.

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Just as you cannot love or write without sound doctrine, which would be the weightier provisions of the law, because we are commanded to first and foremost understand and believe the truth, so likewise you cannot pray or write without the truth of sound doctrine.

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Because prayer is an outworking of our doctrine, it is the orthopraxy of our orthodoxy, therefore we must learn how to pray rightly according to God's word and doctrine, which also requires us to understand and believe who

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God is, what he has done for us and continues to do for us and will do for us, what means he uses, who we are, and we must have an accurate view of ourselves and of our own estate, our walk, our sin, our holiness, our weaknesses, for this is also pleasing in his sight.

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This is where we start seeing more and more the system that God has revealed to us, the system of truth and of doctrine.

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It's not just about simply praying, we have to know who we're praying to, we have to know what we're praying for, how we should pray, and what we should pray for.

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We need to know and understand who God is, and who we are as well, and how we are to relate to him.

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And in Matthew 7, chapter 7, verses 7 through 12, we saw how our

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Lord Jesus instructs us on what a healthy prayer relationship looks like with our Heavenly Father.

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God, our Heavenly Father, loves to bless us with gifts and good things. He loves us and wants us to talk to him, to pray to him, to ask him for good things, for this is also pleasing in his sight.

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Conversely, then, we must not ask or pray for sinful things, nor with selfish or perverse motives.

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Remember the correlation that 1 John 3, 22 teaches us. Whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight.

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So, turning now to James, chapter 4, starting in verse 1, we see this concept of praying rightly further expanded and elaborated, and of how not to pray.

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God's word says, You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your selfish sinful pleasures.

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You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God.

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Or do you think that the scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires a spirit which he has made to dwell in us, but he gives a greater grace.

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Therefore, it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Be subject, therefore, to God.

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Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

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Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. And this is one of those passages where, if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.

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Because this is clearly not pleasing in God's sight. He is rebuking sinful hypocrites in the church who are not even saved.

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This is not talking about people who are saved, about Christians. He's talking about hypocrites in the church who are envious, and are adulteresses, and adulterers, and are friends with the world.

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And that's why the letter rebukes these people and warns them that those who are friends of the world are enemies of God.

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And no enemy of God is saved. Only those who have been adopted into God's household as sons and daughters, and redeemed, only then are you saved.

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Enemies of God are condemned. But in light of that, even though this is addressing sinful hypocrites, such as Pharisees and legalists of that sort, of that type, and also those who are lawless, and are selfish, and simply want to do whatever they want, we nevertheless all struggle with impure motives.

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We all have struggled with sinful or impure motives.

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And so, this is something that we need to bear in mind as well. Because our prayers can be tainted, and sometimes nullified if we have the wrong motives.

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If we are praying for a motive to get attention, or to somehow get some kind of something else that's not according to God's Word.

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So then we must avoid foolish, bad, sinful prayers. And apart from my own life where I've sometimes prayed foolishly or sinfully,

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I've also encountered other people that have prayed sinful or foolish prayers.

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One scenario that I recall when I was younger in the faith, was when we had warned a sister in Christ that she was seeing a very abusive boyfriend.

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All of the signs of abuse were there, and it was very clearly an abusive situation, an abusive relationship.

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And she told us that she would pray about it to God. She saw, she recognized what we told her, but she said, oh yeah,

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I'll go ahead and pray about it to God. And that's not something that you really need to pray for.

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That's something that you need to act on, and not do it any longer. Just like you don't pray about committing adultery.

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You don't pray about whether you should sin or not. Those are foolish. That itself is sinful. And it either is a sign of ignorance of God's Word, or it's a sign that it's something else going on, revealing an impure or perverse motive.

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And another very common example of people praying foolishly is when people will say things like,

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I'm going to pray about whether I should leave a church. And of course, that's not to say that we shouldn't pray for God's guidance in choosing a church or leaving a church, but the fact of the matter is that God has given us discernment, and has given us wisdom and a mind to exercise in situations like that.

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Because some things we are commanded to judge for ourselves repeatedly. And one of those things is when you should leave a church.

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That's something that you have to discern. And God uses means as well to reveal those things to us, to prepare us for when we should leave a church.

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It's not just a matter of praying for it and expecting God to somehow answer us in a vision in our sleep, or something like that.

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That's not how this works. And in addition to that, you also see the rank prominence of prosperity preaching and prayers.

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And asking God for all of this material wealth and things, and planes, trains, and automobiles, and for money.

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As if God were some cosmic ATM machine, where we just ask for it and He gives it to us.

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But this is a total perversion of how we are to relate with God and how

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God relates to us. Because God uses means. If you want money, you need to work.

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Because like the Bible says, he who does not work does not eat. And so then we must learn

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God's provision and means that He gives us. So if we want money, we should be asking for a job, for work.

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Even though, of course, we may fall in hard times and have difficult circumstances where we may need some financial help.

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And of course, it's perfectly appropriate to pray to God for those things, for God to help us.

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And the Lord may use those situations, such as God's church and mercy ministry, in order to provide financial help or physical help in times of need like that.

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And that's what the church partly is there for. We are there to serve and to help with those kinds of physical needs as well as spiritual needs.

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Or in other places in Scripture where the Bible says to help the poor, to not turn a blind eye to them.

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And so, especially those who are of the household of faith. And we must understand as well that prayer itself is a means of God's grace.

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And God answers our prayers and gives us what we ask for through various means, such as the true church, which administers the means of grace to us.

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Particularly the word of God, baptism, the Lord's Supper, and prayer as well.

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This is once again why we must continue taking into account the analogies of Scripture and of faith.

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So that we may understand both the immediate context, as well as the larger biblical context and doctrinal context of the word of God, the whole counsel of God.

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And by rightly dividing and distinguishing the word with the right tools, such as the law and gospel distinction and balance that is so important throughout all of Scripture.

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Remember too that prayer is relational. It reflects how we relate with God. Because God does not pray to us.

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We pray to Him. While God condescends to us. He voluntarily brings

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Himself down to our level. And takes our prayers into consideration and answers them according to His sovereign decree or will.

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Now this brings me to an important public service announcement. That in order to pray rightly in a manner that pleases

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God, we need to have knowledge, faith or trust, humility, patience, and persistence.

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All of these things are key qualities of good prayers, righteous prayer, that pleases

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God. And is pleasing in His sight. We must have knowledge, faith or trust, humility, patience, and persistence in our prayers.

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Prayer is also worship. We worship God and bow before Him in prayer.

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And that is why it is sinful to pray to anybody but God. We shouldn't be praying to anybody but God.

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We shouldn't be praying to saints who are in heaven, or to idols, or to anything that is not

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God. Because prayer is a posturing of worship and acknowledging a higher being.

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Where we also petition and request God for help, for grace, for mercy, for forgiveness, for strength, for support, for provision, for deliverance, for blessings and good things, and on and on.

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So what does this look like then? How should we then pray?

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Turning now to Psalm 37 verse 1, we find here a passage that explains for us, and models for us, what a righteous life of prayer and trust in God looks like.

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Do not fret because of evildoers. Be not envious towards doers of unrighteousness. For they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb.

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Trust in Yahweh and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in Yahweh, in His word,

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His law, His truth, His doctrines, His gospel. And He will give you the desires of your heart.

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Amen. That is the answer. That is the key to answered prayer.

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Delight yourself in Yahweh and He will give you the desires of your heart.

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Commit your way to Yahweh. Trust in Him and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.

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Be still in Yahweh and wait patiently for Him. We have to wait upon God, wait upon the

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Lord. Do not fret because of Him who prospers in His way, because of the man who carries out schemes of wickedness.

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Cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret, it leads only to evil doing.

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Rather, trust God instead. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who hope for Yahweh and pray to Him, they will inherit the land.

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And also from Matthew 7, which we read last week, we see that God wants us to pray persistently, to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, and God will answer us.

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These are some of the things we need to know and consider whenever we ask

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God for something, because they too are pleasing in His sight. And I want us to be of good cheer, and not to be discouraged if and when you fail to pray, or if God does not give you what you ask for.

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Consider these things carefully because our Father knows best. He knows best and we need to rely on Him and His will and His provision,

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His decree, because that is what is best. And remember also that He has given us everything already, through our heavenly inheritance and union with Christ, He who indeed did not spare

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His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all. How will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?

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All things are already a part of our inheritance, because of what

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Christ has done for us, and the Father has given Him over for us. So do not be discouraged.

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And the Lord, by His Spirit and means of grace, will continue to edify you and equip you to pray properly, according to His word.

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So what does it mean then to keep His commandments? In verse 23. To keep

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His commandments. Actually in verse 22, which is where it says that.

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And many of us, some of us may have, there are many preconceived notions of what keeping

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His commandments means. Oftentimes we think that it's about doing right and avoiding wrong, living righteously and avoiding sin, doing righteousness.

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But it's not just about those things, even though it is in part those things.

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Very much so. Not sinning and obeying God, doing what

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He says to do. But back over in verse 23 of 1

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John chapter 3, the Lord explains for us what He also means by this. And this is

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His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He gave a commandment to us.

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And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in Him. We know by this that He abides in us by the

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Spirit whom He gave us. Amen. So here we find,

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I want to reread this and provide some drive -by commentary along the way. And this is

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His commandment, that we first believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and consequently then love one another in good law and gospel order, just as He gave a commandment to us.

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So just as God the Father commanded us, so Christ commanded us, because it's the same One.

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It's the same God. The same will. The same law. The same commands.

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And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in Him. And we know by this that He abides in us, in His anointing, in union with Christ, by the

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Spirit whom He gave us freely, by grace through faith. This is what the law and gospel is all about.

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However, the gospel is one thing, but the command to believe it is another.

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And we must not confuse or conflate the two, which we find oftentimes in movements today, like Lordship Salvation, that can often become very legalistic, because they will define the gospel as a summon to submission, as surrendering, as something that we are required to do, that we must do.

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But the gospel is not that at all. The gospel itself is God's promise. It's what

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God has done for us, not what we must do for God, but what He has done for us.

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That God has sent forth His Son to live perfectly and to fulfill the law and satisfy it on our behalf, and also pay the penalty of death and of wrath that was due to us for our sins.

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That is the gospel. It is a pronouncement of good news. The command to believe it is law.

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The command to believe it is law. It is not a work per se, but it is law nonetheless, because we must believe.

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We are commanded to believe the gospel. That is the only way whereby we can be saved. Faith always comes first, then love and obedience follows, even though there is a sense in which faith is the first act of obedience, though it is not a work, because we are justified by faith apart from works of the law, like the

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Bible repeatedly teaches us as well. Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying,

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The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.

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The very first words that proceeded out of Christ's public ministry, the very first ones, were to repent and believe in the gospel, the gospel of God.

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So then we must first believe. We must first repent and believe, and then do the works that are keeping with this saving repentance and faith, according to John the

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Baptist preaching in Matthew 3 verse 8, and Paul's preaching as well in Acts chapter 26 verse 20.

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Faith comes first, and works in keeping with repentance follows, bearing fruit in keeping with this initial act of repentance and faith as we continue to believe and grow in the faith.

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Now I want to make a distinction here that's very important because I'm using the word repentance as a change of mind, which is biblically what it means.

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In the Bible, metanoia, the Greek word metanoia, means change of mind. And it is an inner change of mind.

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It is internal, not external. It is not some kind of outward working of some kind.

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It is an internal change of mind or a change of conviction, a turning away from false gospels or ideas of salvation, of God, man, and salvation, and two, turning towards or to the gospel, the true saving gospel of Christ.

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That is repentance, and faith is simply understanding and agreeing with the gospel that it is true, that Christ died for our sins, and he was buried and rose again the third day, in accordance with the

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Scriptures. However, in the Reformed tradition, which our church holds to, repentance is defined differently.

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It is defined as the lifelong pursuit of holiness and of growing in all the new ways of obedience that follows faith.

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So, the Reformed confessions and catechisms, they tend to have a more, a much more encompassing, broadly encompassing definition of repentance that includes not just the initial act of repentance or the change of mind, but also the lifelong pursuit of holiness that follows faith.

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So, they tend to say that faith comes first, and then repentance tends to follow. And you'll see that in question 75 of the larger catechism, which defines sanctification, in which the seeds of repentance take place.

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So, the seeds of repentance take place in our sanctification, which follows or is initiated by our justification, which we receive by faith alone.

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So, that's important to understand and to not get confused about as well. Now, we love truly and righteously in word, deed, and truth, in doctrine, in faith, in belief, in our belief, and keep

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His commandments because we were first regenerated by God's grace and spirit.

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And even before that, we were called by God. We were chosen by God before the foundation of the world. God chose us and predestined us to salvation and gives us the gift of faith and repentance, the gifts of faith and repentance by regenerating us by His grace and spirit and means.

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Where we also understand and believe and accept as true the gospel of God, His gospel, and are transformed into good trees that now bear good fruit.

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Whereas before, we were dead in sin and trespasses and were bad trees that bore bad fruit.

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And while faith without works is in fact dead and hypocritical, you nevertheless cannot do good works without first having saving faith.

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Because without faith first, it is impossible to please God in any way, including our works and our prayers.

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Because whatever is not from faith is sin, like Romans 14, 23 says and also Hebrews 11, 6.

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That is what we must understand, beloved. And this consequently informs our understanding of our union with Christ, of the doctrine of our union with Christ.

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Beloved, that is very important that we bear in mind as we seek to understand the law of love and the gospel of faith.

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And love is in fact obedience to God. And it is a summary of the entirety of God's law.

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That's what Christ summarized in the two great commandments, to love God and love your neighbor. That is the summary of the law.

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It is the law, the essence of the law. So as we cover today, the essence of prayer once again, and we understand better now,

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I hope, that even though verse 22 in 1

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John chapter 3 says that God gives us whatever we ask, we nevertheless do not always get what we ask for, because sometimes we ask with impure motives, or we ask for the wrong thing, or sometimes we don't ask at all.

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Like James says, sometimes we don't ask because we don't receive, because we don't ask for it.

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And yet, if we do ask, we need to make sure we don't ask with impure motives. So it's not as simple as many try to make it out to be, that the

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Christian life is simply about praying in humble ignorance and not understanding all of these things that are required for praying rightly.

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We have to understand the whole counsel of God in a certain respect. We need to know and understand all of these things.

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God, man, salvation, and how God relates to us and how we are to relate to Him.

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And we also saw how Jesus taught us about having a right balance, that we cannot overemphasize something like a practice of prayer at the expense of studying and understanding and growing in the faith and in the knowledge of truth, because that itself is what sanctifies us.

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And that itself is what guides and grounds and informs our praying rightly.

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It teaches us to pray. Doctrine teaches us to pray rightly. We must have that balance.

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We must have Biblical priorities and balance in light of what God's Word teaches us, which, of course, consequently means that we must not ask or pray for sinful things, nor with selfish or perverse motives.

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We must pray. And in order to pray rightly in a manner that pleases

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God, we need knowledge. We need knowledge of the truth, of God's Word, of all of these things, and how they connect and relate to each other.

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We need to have faith or trust, which are synonymous, to understand and agree with the

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Gospel. And we need to have humility, because praying is an act of humility.

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Prideful people do not pray. They don't ask for help. Or if they do, they do it out of other perverse reasons or motives.

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They do it for a show or to put on a performance or to try to look pious or holy somehow, like the

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Pharisees did, which is precisely what Jesus condemned them for, their hypocrisy.

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And we need to wait upon the Lord. We need patience. We need patience and persistence to continue to pray.

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I've prayed for things that God still hasn't given me for years. And that is something that is good for us to do, to continue to pray and to continue to seek

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God, even if it does, in fact, take years, longer than just a few days or a few seconds.

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We live in a microwave society where we want everything to be instant, instant gratification. And that is not how

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God works. The Bible repeatedly instructs us to wait upon the Lord, take our burdens to God in prayer, but also wait upon Him to answer us and to reveal to us what

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He would like us to do, what He has predestined us to do. So that is what we must understand.

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And keeping His commandments doesn't just mean to do the outward works of obeying the

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Ten Commandments, the Law, and not sinning. It also means that we must first believe, that we must believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ.

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Believe the Gospel. And with that, beloved, I want us to close out this message and we will pick up next week in verse 24 to finish up the chapter on union with Christ.

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Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the Bible alone and the

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Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be Biblical, Reformed, Historic, Confessional, Loving, Discerning Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the

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Christian faith. If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.