Christ is the End of the Law

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Well, we welcome everyone back tonight to the Romans, and we are going tonight to look at Romans chapter 10.
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We're going to look at Romans 10 verses 4 through 10.
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That's our hope at least.
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Is it possible we won't make it that far? Eh, maybe.
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But last week we did the first three verses, and tonight the block of text that I'd like for us to focus on is verses 4 through 10.
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So if you want to open up your Bibles to Romans chapter 10, we'll begin by reading the text.
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Romans chapter 10.
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Now verse 4, if you're looking at an English Standard Bible, you'll notice that the translators had stopped the paragraph after verse 4 and started a new paragraph and even a new subheading underneath that in verse 5.
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Yet, as many of you know, and I'm sure most of you would know, the Bible wasn't written with paragraphs.
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It was written with verse demarcations.
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It certainly was not written with these handy little subheadings.
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So just because there's a subheading written by the authors of this particular translation does not mean that's where we have to make our demarcation points.
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And I think that verse 4 certainly moves on into verse 5 and the importance of what verse 4 says affects what we learn in verses 5 and following.
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So I want to begin tonight with verse 4.
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It says, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
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But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, Who will descend into heaven, ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.
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But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim.
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Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
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Father, as we examine this text of scripture this evening, I pray that You would keep me from error.
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Sanctify Your people, put a hedge of protection around them and keep them from error, Lord, in their understanding.
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Use this time, O Lord, to glorify Yourself.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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In verse 4, this text says, For Christ is the end of the law.
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We talked about this a little bit last week because we went through verses 1 through 4, but I wanted to talk tonight in our introductory period about what it means when the text says that Christ is the end of the law.
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Because it is very important that we understand how the Old Testament law, and of course that is the law in which Paul has envisioned here, he's looking at the Old Testament law, and it is important for us to understand how the Old Testament law is managed in the New Testament economy.
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You understand that in the New Testament economy, we no longer have the responsibility to, once a year, take a lamb, one for every family, and to take that lamb out and to sacrifice that lamb, and then to take that lamb's blood and to mark our doorposts of our home, right? We understand that in the New Testament economy, even though we do practice at this church something called the Seder, every year we have a Seder meal, and it's representative of an Old Testament feast, but we understand, as we come together for the Seder, that that's not the Old Testament feast.
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We're not performing a sacrifice of a lamb, and we're not using that lamb's blood to represent God's judgment passing over our homes, and we're not placing that lamb's blood on the doorposts of the church, or going home and placing the blood on the doorposts of our house.
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So when we talk about the law of God, and we talk about it in particular in regard to the Old Testament law, we have to consider, are there aspects of the Old Testament law that we no longer are responsible for maintaining? I think it's a very important question, because Jesus himself, in Matthew 5, says, not one jot or tittle will fall away from the law until all these things are fulfilled.
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And in saying that, he's saying nothing in the law is ever going to just pass away.
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Nothing in the law is ever just going to become unlawful, or nothing that's unlawful is ever going to become just lawful.
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There's something that has to be fulfilled.
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So when we talk about the end of the law, Christ is the end of the law, we have to ask the question, what then do we do with the Old Testament? How then does the Old Testament fall into our responsibilities as believers in Jesus Christ? One of the most important questions, or one of the most important things for us to realize in answering that question, is that in the Old Testament, there are three types of law.
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In the Old Testament, there are three types of law that are given to us.
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The first type of law, which is described in the Old Testament, is what we would call moral law.
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One of the most basic of all moral laws is, thou shalt not commit murder.
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Right? That's the sixth commandment, and it's an easy one for us to recognize, because I would imagine that is the one moral law that sort of is a universal thing that all cultures have adopted.
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That murder, the unlawful taking of one life to another, that almost universally that law is understood within the consciences of people, that it's wrong to take a life.
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One of the most difficult things in the history of warfare has been trying to train soldiers how to take the lives of other soldiers.
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In fact, it is said that in the First World War, when there were the times of battle, was that less than 20% of soldiers would shoot to kill.
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They would shoot over their heads.
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They would shoot into the dirt.
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They would shoot past them, because of this understanding that taking the life of another human being was wrong to do.
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In fact, during the Civil War, they used to collect the muskets after battles.
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One of the things that they found was that many of the muskets had multiple loads in the barrel, which meant this.
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A person would take and load the barrel.
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He'd pick up the gun, pretend to shoot, put it back down, pull it out, and do it again.
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And one of them, they found 23 loads in the barrel of the gun, because he was unwilling to shoot.
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But he was willing to stand and give it everyone to think he was shooting.
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Because there's something within us which tells us there's a moral understanding that's inherent within us that murder is wrong.
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And I'm not equivocating murder and warfare.
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I think there is a difference.
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But at its very nature, we don't want to kill people, most of us.
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In fact, it's only 2% of the society, or 1% or whatever, that's psychotic.
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They're the guys who really, really want to kill.
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And actually, they say those are the soldiers that they want, that are really willing to go out there and battle, because those are the guys that will do what needs to be done.
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But anyway, the long story short is the vast majority of people, 90% and 95% of people, we know what moral law is, and it's etched into our very souls.
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Don't commit murder.
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Don't take what is not yours.
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That's a moral law.
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Do not steal.
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Don't lie.
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Don't bear false witness against thy neighbor.
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We understand from a very young age, lying gets us into a lot of trouble.
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Lying produces more lying, and so on and so forth.
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So that is one type of law that's in the Old Testament.
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There is another type of law that is found in the Old Testament.
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And the other type of law is called ceremonial law.
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Ceremonial law.
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Now what is ceremonial law? Ceremonial law was the law that was given by God to His people for the specific purpose of worship.
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It was ceremony.
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For instance, when the high priest once a year would take the goat for the sacrifice, he would take two goats.
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He would take one goat, and he would pray over the head of that one goat, and then that goat would be sent out into the wilderness, and that goat was said to have carried the sins of the people on its head out into the wilderness.
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And they called that goat the scapegoat.
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And then the other goat would be taken.
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He would be sacrificed, and his blood would be poured out on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.
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And that was inside of the Holy of Holies.
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And we know the great regalia which accompanied the Holy of Holies, that there was this inner room which was past the outer room, which there was the holy place, and then the Holy of Holies, which was the most holy place.
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And only once a year, one man, the high priest, got to go back into the Holy of Holies and pour the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat.
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All of that was ceremonial in nature.
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All of that had a place and a time for worship, and it was done in a specific way.
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Now, there is a third type of law which is given in the Old Testament.
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There's moral law, there's ceremonial law, and then what's the last one? We call it case law.
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Case law.
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What's case law? Most of you probably have at some time of your life watched a courtroom drama.
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Whether it be Matlock or Law and Order or some other type of show.
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But almost all of you have seen courtroom dramas.
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And how do courtroom dramas usually work out? They'll say, well, in the case of People v.
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Johnson, this was a precedent was set.
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And we understand how precedents work.
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Well, if this case was decided years ago between the People v.
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Johnson, and there's been a precedent set, well, they can use that precedent as the case in point for their judgment.
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Well, the Bible does that same thing, too, because in the Old Testament there are many times, particularly in the first five books of the Bible, we see throughout in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and other places, there are laws that are given like this.
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It'll say, well, and I'm not quoting, I'm giving you an example, but it might say, well, if your bull crushes the wheat of your neighbor, then you are to pay that neighbor twice what his wheat is worth, or something to that effect.
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Again, you've all read this.
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You've read these examples of laws.
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And the question becomes, well, what if it wasn't a bull? What if it was a heifer? And what if it wasn't wheat? What if it was chrysanthemums or some kind of other flower? What if it wasn't wheat? Well, that still could be used as a case in point.
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Well, here's an example.
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Here's a precedent where a person's animal destroyed a person's crop.
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As such, all of the labor that was involved in producing that crop is destroyed, so the person has to pay that person back now X amount.
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And thus, that type of law becomes part of the history of the people of Israel.
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So in the Old Testament, we've got moral law, we have ceremonial law, and we have case law.
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And now, all of that was simply brought out to go back to the question, when this text says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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Let's break that down.
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It says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.
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To everyone who believes.
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So we have here, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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We have what He is, what it's for, and who it's going to.
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So this one verse kind of has a lot to say about what Christ's purpose in coming was, and what He does in regard to the law.
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What does it mean when it says He is the end of the law? That means He is the fulfillment.
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He is the completion.
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He is the one in whom the entirety of the law was fulfilled.
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He's the end.
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He's the finality.
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In Him, the law is done.
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So Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, which means that Christ has fulfilled the law.
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Because He is righteous.
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And who has He fulfilled it on behalf of? To everyone who believes.
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Right? So Christ fulfilled the law for righteousness in that He was righteous, and this gift that He has done and is given to everyone who believes.
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Now, we have to go back to the question of the three types of law, because you're probably wondering, why do you even bring up the issue of the three types of law? Now that Christ has come and that Christ is the end of the law to everyone who believes, the question becomes then, what do we now do with the Old Testament? Do we simply, as some people do, jettison it and say, well, Christ is the end of the law.
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The Old Testament was the law.
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We don't need that law anymore.
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We can just sort of do away with it and we have our New Testament that we can live on.
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We may say, no, that's wrong to do.
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But, beloved, I think many of us do that.
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I think many of us spend much more of our time focusing on the New Testament than we do understanding the laws of the Old Testament.
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And yet, is that wrong? Well, let's walk through these very quickly.
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Do we still, as believers in Christ, have a responsibility to obey the moral law of God? Okay, so we have the moral law.
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Check.
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We still have to do that.
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You might say, well, wait a minute, when you say the word have to, are you saying that our salvation is required that we do it? Well, let's back up a second before we even try to answer that question and ask this.
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Is adherence to the law required for salvation? The answer is no, because the Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith and not of work.
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So adherence to the law is not required for salvation.
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However, go a step further.
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Is a person who does not adhere to the law of God being conformed to the image of Christ? The answer is no.
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Is a person who is not being conformed to the image of Christ predestined for salvation? Well, the Bible says no, because it says, for whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.
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So so, you know, the very nature of deductive reasoning tells us if we're not being conformed to the image of Christ, if we're not being sanctified, if our lives are not going through the process of being conformed to Christ, then how can we claim to be in Christ? So even though the moral law of God is not what saves us, it does provide for us the picture of what it means to be conformed to the image of Christ, because Christ was the perfect fulfillment of the moral law of God.
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Now, ceremonial law.
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This is where it gets a little easier, at least, because are we required to fulfill the ceremonial law? No, because the ceremonial law is fulfilled in Christ.
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Remember, he's the end of the law.
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Well, he's the end of the moral law in the sense that he kept the moral law perfectly.
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We still are required to keep the moral law in the sense that because of being conformed to the image of Christ, we seek to be conformed to that image.
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But yet at the same time, we can no longer keep the ceremonial law because it has finished in Christ.
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It would be wrong of us to sacrifice now, because the ultimate sacrifice has come.
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It was not wrong to sacrifice up until the time of Christ, because every one of the sacrifices up until the time of Christ represented Christ's coming.
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But since Christ has come, it would be wrong of us to sacrifice an animal now, because we already have the fulfillment.
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We don't need to go back to shadows and to pictures.
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And that's what the Old Testament sacrifices were.
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They were shadows and they were pictures.
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They were not the actual sacrifice.
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And once the real has come, the shadows and the pictures are put away.
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That's what the Scripture says.
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It says once the fulfillment has come, these old things get put away.
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We don't have to do them anymore.
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In fact, it would be wrong to do them.
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This is why, and I've made this case before, and I don't know how many of you have ever heard it, so I'll just go ahead and say it again.
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This is why I believe that in A.D.
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70 that Jerusalem fell.
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Who did Jerusalem fall to in A.D.
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70? In A.D.
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70, Emperor Titus brought the Roman armies into Jerusalem, and they destroyed the temple as Jesus had prophesied.
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He said not one stone will be left upon another.
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And it wasn't.
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The only thing left over there is the wailing wall, the wall that they all go and pray to every day.
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They pray, they take prayers, write prayers, fold them up in a piece of paper, they stick it in that wall, and that wall has hundreds of thousands of prayers stuck in it.
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And that's what they do.
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They pray against that wall.
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That wall is the only thing left of a temple which was there for the purpose of doing one thing.
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Sacrificing to God.
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And because the sacrifice of God, whom God had brought to the earth, Christ, was completed in A.D.
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33 or somewhere there about.
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Because that sacrifice was done, and yet they continued to do sacrifices every year.
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Every year at Passover, every year, they were continuing to do sacrifices.
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I believe God brought an end to that practice.
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You know, since A.D.
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70, the Jewish people have not sacrificed.
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Because they haven't had a place to do it.
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They have not rebuilt the temple.
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And you know what? It's an amazing thing.
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Because for 2,000 years, they have not rebuilt the temple.
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And you've got to think, how long did David live before Jesus? 1,000 years.
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David, if you think back, it's about 1,000 years from Jesus to David, and it's about 1,000 years from David to Abraham.
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There's sort of a 2,000-year jump.
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All right? So you look back 1,000 years.
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From David to Christ, there were three temples.
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From David to Christ, there were three temples in 1,000 years.
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The first one was Solomon.
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His temple was built.
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That temple was destroyed.
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The temple was built after, which the people cried about, because they had seen the temple of Solomon, and it was so glorious.
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And when they saw the one that was built, it was Zerubbabel's temple.
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When they built that one, it was like, oh, this one's not even to be compared.
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And the people who knew what the greatness of the old one was, they cried over the new one.
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Oh, this is so terrible.
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It's not even fit to be called a temple.
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But yet it was Zerubbabel's temple.
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So you had Solomon's temple, Zerubbabel's temple, and then which one? Because Zerubbabel's temple ended up becoming a fort, which they fought the Battle of the Maccabees out of.
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What came next? The temple of Herod, the one that Jesus would say, not one stone will be left upon another.
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That's the temple that was there when Jesus was there.
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Herod the Great had commissioned the rebuilding of the temple three in a thousand years.
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Yet in two thousand years of recorded history, we have not had a rebuilding of the temple.
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I believe it's the judgment of God.
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I believe it's God saying, no more will there be a picture of what I have brought the fulfillment of in Christ.
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So ceremonial law, we can put an X there.
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That's finished.
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Again, the end of the law.
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In Christ, the ceremonial law.
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Case law, I think case law is judicial.
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And I think that we can make an argument that there are times when it does give us examples of what justice should be.
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If one person takes from another person, one person steals from another person, or one person destroys another person's property, one person kills another person on accident.
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You know, the Bible deals with manslaughter.
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It deals with somebody who accidentally kills somebody else.
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So I would say the justice which is found in the case law is still very much a part of our social construct.
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It's very much a part of our society.
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But yet, all of these are still fulfilled in Christ.
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He is still the end of the law.
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Because it is not by the keeping of the moral law that we will be saved.
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It is not by the keeping of the ceremonial law that we will be saved.
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And there are people who still try to do that.
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Your seventh day Adventists, they say, oh man, you've got to do the Sabbath, and you've got to have all these feasts, and you've got to do it this way, and you've got to do this a certain way at a certain time, at a certain time of year.
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And they try to maintain that ceremonial law.
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And guess what? That law is over.
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And there are people who say, well, if I just live justly before man, if I live socially just in my life, well, I'll have eternal life.
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I'll be saved.
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I'll go to heaven when I die.
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No, none of these will save us.
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Yet, at the same time, Christ fulfilled every one of these perfectly.
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And as such, He is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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So I wanted to bring that out tonight as we looked at verse 4, prior to us moving into verse 5, because it goes on to say in verse 5, For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
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Now, what is Paul trying to intimate here? What is he trying to get across to us in this particular issue? If you say, I am going to be saved, or I am going to be justified before God by keeping the law, then you've got to keep it all.
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And not only do you've got to keep it all, but you have to keep it all perfectly.
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Because that's the only way to be just before the law, right? That's the only way to be justified in the eyes of the law, is that you've never broken the law.
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And we've just gone through that.
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There are many aspects to the law.
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The law of God is not encompassed only in the Ten Commandments.
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The law of God finds its highest form of morality in the Ten Commandments, but that's not the only law.
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There are ceremonial laws, there are case laws, and there are people out there who really believe that they're finding their salvation in the keeping of these laws, and they're working themselves to tears over it.
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They're working their fingers to the bone trying to keep a moral law, a ceremonial law, a case law that is impossible.
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And that's the point of this text.
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He says, For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
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In fact, Moses did write this in Deuteronomy 27.
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He says, Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.
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And all the people said, Amen.
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So Moses was very clear.
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You have to do these things.
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This is the law of God.
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And if you don't do them, then you can't be saved by the law of God.
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And guess what? Nobody can be saved by the law of God.
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The law of God only brings justice, which is judgment.
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It does not bring salvation.
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James 2.
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If you're taking notes just on this issue, you may want to cross-reference James 2 and verse 10.
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He says, For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
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When I'm evangelizing certain people, talking to them, these people will say, Well, Pastor, I ain't never killed nobody.
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Or, Pastor, I ain't never stole nothing.
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Or, Pastor, I ain't never cheated on my wife.
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Or my taxes.
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So I'm good with God and government.
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I've never cheated.
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So they have this idea.
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They have this idea that because they have stayed moral in one area, that their morality has spread out to all areas.
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Yet the problem is that the truth is the opposite of that.
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It's not that just because you've been moral in one area, you're moral in all areas.
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The problem is, if you have been immoral in one area, that spreads to all areas.
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That's what James tells us.
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He says, You may have kept the entire law and only failed at one point, but guess what? By failing at one point, you are then a law breaker.
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It's like the guy who stands up before the judge, and the judge says, You've been convicted of rape.
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And the guy says, Yes, Judge, but I work at the lodge, and I take care of the sick children, and I do all these good things, and I've never stolen anything, Lord.
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And I've never killed anyone, Judge.
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Or I've never done this, and I've never done that.
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And the judge is just sitting there going, That's wonderful! You're still a rapist.
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Even though you've done all these good things, you're still a rapist.
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And that makes you a law breaker.
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And that's James' point.
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He says, If you've broken the law at one point, you have fractured the entire law.
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That doesn't mean, and I've heard people say, Well, that means that if you've hated somebody, then you're just as guilty as somebody who has murdered.
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No, it doesn't mean that.
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And I want to deal with that for a second, because I think that sometimes we get confused on this.
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Jesus said, If you've looked at a woman and said lust after her, you've committed adultery in your heart.
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Yes, that is true.
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But anybody who's married knows that your wife would very much have one over the other.
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I mean, be honest.
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If your wife...
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The Bible says, If you've hated somebody, it's equivalent to murder.
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But obviously, I'd rather you hate me than kill me.
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So how is it that this equivocation happens in Scripture? It happens like this.
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God is saying that the motivation is just as damnable as the action.
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The motivation is just as damnable as the action.
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And no one has ever been murdered that wasn't motivated by hate.
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No one has ever committed adultery who wasn't motivated by lust.
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No one has ever stolen who wasn't motivated by covetousness.
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Right? And that's the thing.
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God is the one who looks upon the heart.
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And because He knows our heart, He knows our most sincere motivations.
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And God judges even what motivates us.
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So God can say, If you've broken the law in one place, you've fractured it all.
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And thus, we are all left in the condition of being lawbreakers.
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Every one of us.
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None of us can stand before God as righteous.
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No matter if we've kept all of the law except for only one.
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Breaking the one means we are lawbreakers.
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Now, the next portion of the text.
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What time is it? I'll get that for me.
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Okay, so I've got plenty of time.
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Okay.
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Verse 5.
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It says, For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
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That point is very simple.
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He's simply saying that Moses is telling us what I just said.
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That if you say you're going to live by the law and that's how you're going to find your salvation, you have to keep the whole law because no one keeps the whole law.
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Then we're all found guilty.
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Verse 6, though, says something kind of cryptic.
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And I wanted to sort of explain this tonight and hopefully get on into verse 8.
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But verse 6 and 7 says this.
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But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.
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All right.
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Very quickly.
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The two things that are being posited here are both impossible.
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No one can go into heaven and bring Christ down.
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We all agree? No one can go into the grave and raise Christ from the dead.
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We all agree? Right? Okay.
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That is Paul's point.
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Because here's the expansion of the point.
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Paul is saying Christ did come down from heaven and you didn't participate.
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Christ did rise from the grave and you didn't participate.
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You didn't go get Him and bring Him down.
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You didn't go get Him and raise Him up.
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So there's another player in this situation.
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There's somebody else who's participating in this particular issue.
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God is the one who sent Christ to the earth to live the perfect life and to be sacrificed on the cross.
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And God is the one who on the third day gave life to Christ to raise Him from the dead to forever be raised and now at the right hand of the Father.
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God did both of those things without our assistance.
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Thus, the only thing we can do is believe and have faith in what God has done through Christ.
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We couldn't do it ourselves.
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We couldn't bring Him down.
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We can't bring Him up.
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All we can do is sit back and look at it and marvel at what God has done for us.
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This is going back to the issue of works.
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I couldn't work.
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I worked every day, 24 hours a day for an entire lifetime.
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I couldn't work enough to bring Christ down from heaven.
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And I couldn't work enough to bring Christ up from the dead.
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But God did that.
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And as such, the righteousness based on faith says this, I won't say in my heart who will ascend into heaven.
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I won't say in my heart who will descend into the abyss.
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But rather, verse 8 says this, but what does it say? What is it? The antecedent of it is the righteousness based on faith.
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So I can say this.
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So what does the righteousness based on faith say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.
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That is the word of faith that we proclaim.
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Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart, one believes and is justified.
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And with the mouth, one confesses and is saved.
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Now, again, please, hear what he's saying.
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He's saying you can't make Christ come down from heaven.
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You can't raise Christ from the dead.
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But if you believe in your heart that God sent Jesus Christ, that Jesus is Lord, that He literally is who He said He was.
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If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God did the work of raising Him from the dead, then you have the faith that saves.
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You have believing faith.
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That's what faith is.
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And I'm going to erase the board very quickly.
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OK.
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I certainly hope this is not dirty.
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If I find a tissue on the floor, it makes me nervous.
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I want to show you something very quickly.
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Does everyone recognize the last verse we just read, verse 8? If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
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What is that? It's part of that thing we used to learn.
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We used to call it the Roman's Road.
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And oftentimes, the bad thing about things like the Roman's Road, and I'm not knocking the Roman's Road, but the bad thing about that is oftentimes things, verses are taken out of context and we get four or five verses to memorize rather than understanding the context.
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The context here is the issue of Israel.
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Israel has tried to, through the law, establish a salvation, a righteousness of their own.
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But it hasn't happened because if you break the law at one point, you've broken the whole law.
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They haven't been able to maintain the law.
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And they rejected faith in Christ, and yet it's faith in Christ that's the only thing that can bring salvation.
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So Paul brings it to this gigantic crescendo where he's saying we can't go up and bring Him down.
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We can't go down and bring Him up.
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We can't do anything except receive by faith this very thing.
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We have to confess Jesus is Lord, and we have to believe God raised Him from the dead.
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We have to confess Jesus is Lord and believe God raised Him from the dead.
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And what is the result of this? And you will be saved.
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Let me ask you a question.
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And this might sound funny.
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Does confessing Jesus is Lord and believing that God raised Him from the dead accomplish my salvation? I'm glad I'm seeing some heads going no because that's right.
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What accomplished my salvation? Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead.
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These things are what accomplished.
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Jesus died on the cross 2,000 years ago and took upon Himself all of my sin even though my sin was at that point not an actuality.
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But it was in the mind of God because God is timeless.
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When Christ took all my sins upon Him past, present, and future, He took all of my sins upon Him 2,000 years ago.
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When He died, He said, Tetelestai, it is finished.
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All of those sins were paid for at the cross.
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And thus, 2,000 years later, I can stand up and I can say Jesus is Lord because I believe in my heart that He died on the cross for my sins and what gives me the confidence that He died for my sins? That God raised Him from the dead.
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The trust in the resurrection is the trust that what Jesus said He died for is what He actually died for.
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The resurrection is the great hope of Christianity.
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As Paul said, If Christ be not raised, we of all men are to be most pitied.
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Now, there is something else.
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And what's my time? I know it's not a big deal, but I do like to keep it an hour.
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Oh, I've got nine whole minutes.
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Yes, sir.
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I think so, but I was going to get to the importance of confession and belief.
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I think that there's something that when we confess Christ as Lord that we're saying about our belief in Him, and yet at the same time, if it's just an empty confession, it would not be real without also the internal.
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Go ahead with what your thought is.
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Yes.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah, and that's true.
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The present tense of is, Jesus is Lord, indicates that He is alive.
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He couldn't be Lord if He were dead.
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He wouldn't be Lord of anything.
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So that's a good point.
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I hadn't really thought about how those two would connect in that way.
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But yeah, I can see that.
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This is assuming this to be true.
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But I think, going back to what I was saying, is I do think that there are people who confess with their mouths whose hearts are not truly converted.
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And I think that Paul, in referencing the heart, you know, because honestly, just real quick, do you believe from your heart or do you believe from your mind? Isn't that an interesting thing that he says you believe in your heart? Well, the reason was is because of the way that they expressed things in the day.
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To say, to believe something in the heart, it is an internal trust.
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It is a belief.
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It is an expression of your innermost belief.
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It's an expression of truth.
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This is something that you have faith in.
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You trust.
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Like if I say, Jennifer, I love you with all my heart.
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Well, I'm not talking about the blood pumper.
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I'm talking about that part of me that's that most real and sincere part of me.
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That spirit.
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That pneuma.
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That real Keith.
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The older I get...
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Now, you all laugh.
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Don't laugh.
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I'm getting gray hair.
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Every day I see new gray hair and it's becoming overwhelming.
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Well, that's true too.
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But every...
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You know, as I think, the older I get, the more I begin to realize what C.S.
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Lewis said was true when he said, we are not bodies with a spirit, but we are spirit with a body.
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That we are the spirit.
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That's who we really are is the spirit.
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And the body will go away and we'll get a new one, but yet the spirit will always be who we are.
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Our consciousness.
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Our real me.
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The real Keith.
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The real you.
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Will go on into eternity.
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And that's who we really are.
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And I think that when he talks about believing in the heart, I think he's talking about that inward most part of us.
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Believing truly.
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Faith.
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You know, we've talked about the difference between dead faith and living faith.
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Real faith and false faith.
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And he's saying here that we have a real and living faith that God raised Jesus from the dead.
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And we've confessed that Jesus is Lord.
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Now, that's important too.
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Because for those who were listening, I underlined the word Lord.
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I always forget.
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People are going to listen to this later and say, what's important? When it says that we have confessed that Jesus is Lord, I think that what we must remember in that is when we come to Christ in salvation, we come to Christ receiving Him not just as fire insurance.
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We're receiving Him not just as a parachute who's going to save us when we have to take that eternal leap.
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But we're accepting Him.
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We're receiving Him as a genuine Lord of our lives who is going to then on be able to call the shots.
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That has become a foreign thing in the church today.
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And it's scary how many people believe that they are Christians and yet they have no Lord in their life other than themselves.
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Their stomach, their lusts, their passions, that's their Lord.
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And Christ is not their Lord.
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The old Lordship controversy question whether or not you can have Jesus as Savior and not as your Lord, it's a joke.
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And I don't mean it's funny.
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I just mean there's no way that you could read the Scriptures in any other way than to come to the conclusion that when you come under Christ and follow after Christ, that you are responsible then to seek after Christ and to live as Christ.
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Do we always make it right? No.
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Do we live perfectly? No.
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And sometimes frighteningly not so.
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But we have confessed Him as Lord.
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We have believed that He raised from the dead.
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And as such can be our Lord.
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I think that some people make it...
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And this is going to sound bad.
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I think some people make it too easy.
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You might say, well, shouldn't it be easy receiving Christ? It's a gift.
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It's the easiest thing in the world.
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The danger of what is called easy-believe-ism.
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And it is an ism, which means it's a sect.
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It's a group.
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It's an offshoot of truth.
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Easy-believe-ism says just believe in Jesus and it doesn't really matter how you live.
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Just believe in Jesus and it doesn't matter what you do with your life.
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Just believe in Jesus and everything will be alright and you'll go to heaven when you die.
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It's the most dangerous thing in the world because in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus said, many will come unto Me that day and say, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in Your name and cast out many demons in Your name and do many mighty works in Your name? And He will look unto them and say, depart from Me, for I never need you.
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That means they said something right, but they didn't believe it in their heart.
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They had Jesus as a bumper sticker, as a t-shirt slogan, as a name tattooed on their arm, but they didn't have Jesus as Lord.
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That's a scary thing.
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It's a frightening thing.
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Two billion people today call themselves followers of Jesus Christ.
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How many of them will face Christ and He say, I never need you? Confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and you will be saved.
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That is true.
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And it goes on to say, for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
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Beloved, that is important for us to realize.
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We believe with our heart, we confess with our mouth, but our lives, oh, our lives, if they do not match our confession, then our confession is in vain, because He is not really our Lord.
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And with that, let us pray.
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Father, thank You for the opportunity to look at Your Word.
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Thank You for the opportunity to have studied more about Your Law and understand our responsibilities in seeking after Christ, being conformed to the image of Christ, sanctification, Lord, that process by which You conform us to Your image.
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We pray, Lord, that You would remind us all of the reality of this wonderful truth, that if we confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead that we will be saved.
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Lord, let us continually make that confession, continually affirm that belief in our heart.
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Give us strength, oh, God, to do that.
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Keep us, oh, Lord, in Your mighty hand.
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And remind us every day of who we live for, not ourselves, not our own desires, but that we are to live for Christ, who is our Lord and Savior.
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And it's in His name we pray, Amen.