God Has Spoken

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You will take your Bibles out and turn to Hebrews chapter 1.
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Can everybody hear me okay? Yay, nay? Because the microphone kept flinging off my head, so I'm not gonna be able to use it.
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Little head.
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I have no way of turning my volume up.
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Every time I turn my head, that thing, boink.
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Is that better? Yay, nay? How about now? We'll get Nathan to turn it on.
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We've got people working on it, brother.
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While he's working on that, let's go ahead and read Hebrews chapter 1 and the following verses.
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And I'm gonna go into verse 2, I mean to chapter 2 and then in verse 4.
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Remember, chapters and verses are not inspired in their chronological order.
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So when I stop at verse 4, that's because I'm stopping at a specific section.
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God, who in various times and in various ways spoke in past times to the fathers by the prophets, but has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed the heir of all things, for whom He has made the worlds, who being the brightness of His glory and the expressed image of His person, and of holding all things by the word of His power, and when He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much greater than the angels, as He has in inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
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For to which of the angels has He ever said this? You are my son, and today I have begotten you.
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And again, I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son.
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And when he again brings that firstborn into the world, he will say, let all the angels of God worship him.
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And of the angels, has He ever said this? Who makes His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire? But to the Son, He says, your throne, O God, is forever.
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A scepter of righteousness is a scepter of your kingdom.
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And you have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.
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Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companions.
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And you, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
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They will perish, but you will remain, and they will all grow old like a garment.
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And like a cloak, you will fold them up, and they will be changed.
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And you are the same, and your years will not fail.
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But to which of the angels has He ever said this? Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.
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Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest we drift away.
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For if the word spoken through angels proves steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received its just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation, which at the first was began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, and God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders and with various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will? Father God, I come before you right now, and I pray that, Father, I would decrease and you would increase, and that, Father, you would use me as a vessel to proclaim the truth of your word.
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Father, I cannot do this apart from you.
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Apart from you, I can do nothing.
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Father, I pray that you would empower the words that come out of my mouth to go to the hearts and minds of the people here today to encourage the believer to strike fear and terror into the loss that, Father, they would turn from their sin, place faith in Christ and Him alone and His finished work.
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In your name we pray, amen.
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In 1982, can you hear me now? In 1982, a girl named Sarah Estep opened up an organization and foundation called the AAEVP.
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It was the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena.
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And what the reason for it was was they were getting these rhythmic thumps and beatings and blurpings and burpings coming from either extraterrestrial beings or from outer space.
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And some even said this may even be some spirits from the dead trying to talk to us.
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So they got this organization to try to decode and decipher all of this ridiculous noises.
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You have these white noises, creaking pipes, and all of it to say that extraterrestrial being or some intelligent being, maybe even the God of all creation is trying to speak to us.
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Well, I tell you today, under the authority of this text we will get in today, that God has spoken.
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He has spoken clearly.
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He has spoken finally.
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And he has spoken without ambiguousness.
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It is unambiguous.
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It is no confusion of how God has spoken.
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And he has spoken finality in his son.
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We don't need scientific people.
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We don't need scientists and mediums to try to tell us what God has said.
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Because what he has said in his word is very clear.
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I want us to just take for a moment and just think about those three words.
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God has spoken.
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You understand the profoundity of that very thing.
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God has spoken.
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What seems to be a statement of simplicity is one of the most profound statements to ever be uttered from the words of a man.
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The God of all creation has spoken.
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But before we dive into the text, and I don't know how far we'll get.
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We'll go for an hour and a half, like the guy that was here a few weeks ago.
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We'll see how far we go.
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I'll land the plane sometime around 12.
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Some observations from the text in the book of Hebrews before we go any further.
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Kind of set the context.
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Problem with coming and doing something like this is you have to start somewhere and finish somewhere within 30 to 45 minutes.
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The author of Hebrews is unknown.
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We don't know who wrote it.
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Other than we know that it was inspired by God.
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The date of the book is sometime between 64 and 68, and I would even argue the fact that all of the New Testament was written before AD 68.
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Reason being is the temple fell in AD 70, and we have no record of that in any of the writings.
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This is the most elegant and highest Greek in all of the New Testament.
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There is only two other books that even come close to the Greek that's in the book of Hebrews.
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One is the book of Luke and Acts, and both of those written by the same man, Luke.
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Although this seems to be an epistle.
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I know that some of your Bibles might even say that the epistle to the Hebrews, it's not a letter.
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It's a structure of a sermon.
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As we go through, you'll hear words that don't talk about reading.
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It's not, you don't have a, this is from Paul the bond servant.
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You don't have any of that beginning.
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It's an actual sermon.
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It's an exhortation.
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If you look at the end of Hebrews chapter 13, it actually says, I'm giving you a word of exhortation, and everybody knows what exhortation is.
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It's the preaching of God's word.
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So what we have here is a structure of a written sermon, and it uses sermonic language time and time again.
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35 times in 13 chapters, you hear these words.
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God is speaking.
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Take heed to what the spirit says.
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Listen to his voice.
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87 times in this book are direct quotations and allusions from the Old Testament.
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In 13 chapters, that's stuffed full of the Old Testament.
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There's only one other book that touches that, and it's the book of Matthew, and in 22 chapters, it has 100 direct quotations or allusions.
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He also uses what's called an alliteration, which is what preachers do, to be fancy, snazzy, and to grab your attention.
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Matter of fact, Pastor Keith is using one over the next five weeks to talk about Advent.
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If you look at your bulletin over the next five weeks, you'll see it all begins with a P.
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Well, the same thing you have in the beginning of Hebrews.
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Now, you have to be careful in saying this because anytime you hear someone say, I know you can't see this, you have to clarify that.
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Well, we have the fundamental assumption, the reason why you can't see what I'm fixing to read to you is because it was in Greek.
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There is an alliteration, five points, beginning with the same letter in the beginning of Hebrews.
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I'm gonna tell you, it says, Palomeros palataros, chi, palai lasesos, patrasen, in propheteos.
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You hear those five Ps.
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They use the letter Pi, or P in the Greek, to set up the structure of the whole book, and we're fixing to go through part of that.
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Not only is there an alliteration used, but he also uses a continuity in the contrast.
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Let me show you the contrast in verses one and two and the continuity.
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One, God has spoken.
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There is the continuity, but look at the contrast.
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God spoke in verse one long ago.
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What does he do in verse two? In these last days.
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Verse one, he spoke to the prophets.
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What does he do in verse two? To us.
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Verse one, in the prophets, in son.
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So you have long ago to the fathers and the prophets.
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Verse two, these last days to us in son, and we're gonna show the continuity and the contrast and how God brings that together in the fullness of his son.
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The book of Hebrews contains the most, a doctrine of Christology, meaning the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ and all of scripture.
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As you would look to the book of Romans to teach you of the soteriology or the study of salvation, Hebrews is that book, but of Christology.
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And I am telling you, it contains the clearest teaching on the deity of Christ.
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Don't take my word for it.
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I want you to go home and read it after today.
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Read it.
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It contains the most doctrine, teaching on the deity of Christ, the purpose and the function of the cross, the clearest teaching of the atonement, including propitiation and expiation, which both of them are part of the atoning work of Christ, but we separate them and try to say it's one or the other.
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No, it's both.
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He pays the penalty of our sin, and then he bears the wrath, which is the propitiation.
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And then that expiation is he takes it away.
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And then it's the clearest of intercession as him being our high priest.
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It is the highest book of Christology in all of the New Testament.
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I'm firmly convinced of this very thing.
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We have an effeminate Christ.
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We have a limp-wristed deity because we do not study this book.
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There is no way you go home and you read this book.
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If your heart is not stirred, I would put a huge question mark.
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Does Jesus Christ, the spirit of God reside in you? It will change your life.
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I'm not just saying that.
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Read it, study it.
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Verse one, and like always in teaching and preaching, I'm gonna start with the first word, God.
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Rats, it ain't about you and it ain't about me.
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It's about God, Elohim, Yahweh of the Old Testament, the Eternal One who was before all things, the Almighty, All-Powerful, the All-Knowing, All-Wise, Sovereign, Ruler, and King.
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That's what it's about.
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It's not about you, it's about God saying, let there be light, and that Creator sending light bursting forth into the darkness.
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Listen to what Psalm 33 says about God.
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Psalm 33, verses three through nine.
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I'm sorry, six through nine.
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By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.
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He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap and he lays up the deep in the storehouse.
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Let all the earth fear him.
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Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him for he spoke and it was done.
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He commanded and it stood fast.
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By the word of the Lord, all things were created and just with a spoken word, all the expanse of all the heavens were into a being.
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We've got these telescopes that look far out into space and 13 billion light years away.
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Imagine that in a split second.
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The Lord had that light here.
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Here.
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Psalm 51, 50, verse one says, the mighty one God, the Lord has spoken.
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The mighty God in the Hebrew there is the Elohim, the Lord is Yahweh, saying that the God creator of all things is the covenant keeping God and that is the same one who spoke all things into existence.
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That God, the creator has spoken to men through natural revelation.
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And in Psalm 19, I'll just flip over there.
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Psalm 19, I know we have went through this before, but the heavens declared the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.
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Day and today utters his speech.
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Night and tonight reveals knowledge.
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There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.
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Their line goes out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
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You hear all the speaking words of visual things.
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Says the heavens declared, declare is not a singing thing.
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It's a saying thing.
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What the heavens declare about God that he's great and he's big and he's huge.
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You can go to other places.
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Psalm 29, the voice of the Lord is over the waters.
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The God of glory thunders.
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The Lord is over many waters.
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His voice is powerful.
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The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
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The voice of the Lord snaps and breaks the cedars.
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The voice of the Lord splinters the cedars of Lebanon.
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He makes them also to skip like a calf and Lebanon and Sarion like a young wild ox.
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The voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire.
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It's the voice of the Lord that shakes the wilderness.
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The Lord shakes Kadesh.
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The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth.
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You understand it's the very speaking of God that does this.
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I remember we were on vacation at the condo and Luke was watching TV and the lady had gotten struck by lightning at a dock.
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And he's like, wow, that was an accident.
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And I remember my oldest going, yeah, I bet dad's got a Bible verse for that.
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And this is what I said.
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Job 36, 32, God holds the lightning in his hand.
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He commands it to hit his mark and it doesn't miss every time.
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Now, I was not making light of the woman being struck by lightning, but know this, that was not an accident.
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That was not an accident.
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God said strike, it didn't miss his mark, it hit the lady.
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That's where he said hit it.
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The universe is so vast.
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It is so huge that we, our minds can't even comprehend how far it is.
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Like I said, 13 billion light years away is as far as the latest telescope can go.
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And God says, I have it right there, right there.
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Isaiah says he holds it in the breadth of his hand.
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We have no idea.
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And as far as those telescopes will see, we will see crazy stars exploding, supernovas nebulize, galaxies squirting out more stars and all this crazy stuff.
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And what it's saying is that this God is a great huge God.
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He's all powerful, he's all knowing, and he is deserving of our worship.
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We are intricately designed people, but we were created to worship God.
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But Romans 1 tells us that man takes the knowledge of God and turns it into idolatry.
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Then he takes the knowledge of the elements of creation and he worships it.
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Isaiah says, I think it's in chapter 40, he says you go out into the wilderness, you chop some tree down, you pull it down, you come in or you get a stone, you come in, you chisel away, you whack at it, you put all these decorations on it.
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Then you take the refuse by which you did all that with, you sweep it up in your dustpan, you throw it in the trash can, and then you bow down and you talk to it.
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Now, I'm not saying that you and I bow down and talk to any graven images anymore, but we bow down to other things.
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And don't think because we're in a church today that we don't have idols.
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Our theologies and books become idols.
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Our perceptions of theology become idols.
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And to the unbeliever, it can be anything from sex, cars, drugs, money, whatever, put anything in there.
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But natural revelation does not have the sufficiency to save.
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God put this grand thing on display, but that natural revelation cannot save, it can only condemn.
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And the only way I can explain that is, and you would say, well, why does natural revelation condemn? Because it's enough to know that there's a creator and to go to him.
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If I was to take and sit right here, a bloody deer liver, and I was gonna give you a piece of it.
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I know some of you in here might eat that.
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So I would be careful who I handed it to.
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And I would say, I would cut a little sliver of that deer liver off, and I would come down and I would go to hand it to you.
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And I would say, the vast majority of you would say, I don't want it.
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All right, you rejected the sliver of the liver, did you not? You rejected the whole as well.
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And what we're doing when we reject that which God has done, and we suppress that truth and unrighteousness, instead of worshiping the creator, we wind up worshiping the created thing, we reject God's natural revelation.
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But God, being rich in mercy and grace, reached down to us because it was not sufficient.
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Natural revelation is not sufficient to save man.
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It is only sufficient to condemn.
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And it is not sufficient enough to show the truth and grace that comes in Jesus Christ.
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So God has to do something.
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And that is exactly what the writer is going to do of Hebrews as we move forward.
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It says that he did that through the prophets.
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Look, special revelation came through two stages.
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It came through the prophets and it came through his son.
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And we're going to look at the prophets.
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It says right here, after God, I know some of your translations will be a little different, but it says in various times and in various ways, spoke, various times.
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The Greek word is poly, where we get our word poly, multiple, many, meros and pieces or piecemeal.
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And some of your translations actually say many portions.
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And that's actually is a better translation of the Greek.
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It says that the revelation came by piecemeal.
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So God in various times came and he gave revelation by piecemeal in stages.
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And it was by nature fragmentary.
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It was by nature progressive.
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Each bit building on another bit.
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One part building on another.
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And then it says in various ways.
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And in some of your translations, it may say different manners or different modes.
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And actually many modes would be the more accurate because you have the poly and the word tropos, which means mode.
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And he did it in different modes.
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And I want you just for a moment to think about all the different ways that God spoke in the Old Testament.
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Just think about it for a second.
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I made a list of them and when I start saying these, you'll go, wow, that's a lot.
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Think how God spoke through the miraculous acts.
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Did God speak through the flood? He sure did, his judgment.
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And he also showed his grace on Noah.
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And then he also spoke by putting a sign of the bow, the rainbow in the air saying he would never do that again, at least in that manner.
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He spoke for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah where God rained hell down from heaven.
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He spoke through a flaming bush.
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He spoke through 10 plagues of Egypt.
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He spoke through a parting of a Red Sea.
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He spoke through manna for 40 years in the wilderness.
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He spoke through not letting their clothes or their sandals wear out for 40 years.
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Man, that would be great.
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40 years.
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And one that's always caught me as being somewhat strange, but it's Moses' pet rock.
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Do you ever think about that? God was speaking through a rock that gushed out water and had followed them around.
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And I know y'all are more sanctified than me, but I do wonder if Moses' kids ever kind of, to see if it would chase them.
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For 40 years, that rock followed them.
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Think about places how God spoke.
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How about the Garden of Eden? The Garden of Eden was the beginning of the dwelling place of God.
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And through the fall, it was expelled.
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And we don't see the dwelling place of God again for 1,500 years before it ever comes onto the stage again.
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We have Mount Sinai.
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We've got the tabernacle.
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Think about institutions of the priesthood or the sacrificial system.
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God's speaking through every time that priest would take a little lamb or a bird and wring its neck and pour the blood out or slit its throat and pour all of its blood out on the altar and cut out its loins and all those things.
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God was speaking.
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How about the wisdom of inspired sages like Solomon? How about how God spoke through the Mosaic legislation? How he spoke through laws? And there was even times when God actually spoke audibly.
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There were times when God even wrote with his finger on the wall like he did in Daniel chapter five, telling the man that his kingdom was no good and it was over and tonight was his destruction.
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He even made a donkey speak.
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Y'all are probably thinking that right now.
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God spoke through living object lessons.
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And we don't think about this as much, but I was thinking about this like, look at the living object lessons that God used through the prophets.
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Look at Hosea.
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Go marry a prostitute.
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Go marry a prostitute.
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Because it's going to be a reproach to the nation.
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Then he told Isaiah to walk around naked and barefoot for three years.
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Y'all remember reading that, do you? Then when you get finished, Isaiah walking around naked and barefoot for three years, I want you to lay on your left side for a year.
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In the street.
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What about Ezekiel? I want you Ezekiel to start cooking all of your food over human dung.
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Lord, can I get some different instructions? That's what Ezekiel says.
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He says, you know what, you're right.
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Cook it over cow dung.
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Living object lessons of what God was doing.
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Look how he spoke through kings like David, sad prophets like Jeremiah, bold prophets like Elijah, wicked prophets like Balaam.
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God spoke through notorious sinners like Samson.
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From the moralistic standpoint, just for a second, time out, what do we do with Samson? That's not a story you tell your kids.
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The man was a womanizer.
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He was a lawbreaker and he was disobedient to your parents.
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That's what he was.
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And we try to make some moral, he was a great guy.
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Look man, Samson was a wicked man that God showed his grace on to kill the Philistines.
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God spoke through the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms, empires and rulers, dreams and visions.
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Each one of these, each one of these things was piece by piece, part by part, one on top of another, the revelation of God and what he was doing.
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It was the self-disclosure of God of himself.
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And it is a record of the self-disclosure from Genesis to Malachi.
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And if you have a Hebrew Bible, it would be from the book of Moses to the Chronicles.
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That was the self-disclosure of God himself.
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A record of progressive revelation of writing that took some 1,000 years.
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23 different authors from each different way of life, fragmentary, going to foreign cultures, writing things that were inconsistent with the culture in which they were living in.
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Not one contradiction in the revelation of God.
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Not one.
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One millennium.
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1,000 years.
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1,000 years.
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And you know what's the problem with that? There's a problem with this.
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If I take this part right now and throw it away, it's an incomplete book.
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It's a story unfinished.
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It's promised with no fulfillment.
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It's a drama with no closing act.
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So we take 1,000 years of revelation that if it stopped right then, it would be over.
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And people would be wondering what is going on.
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And if you go to the Middle East and you talk to any Jewish person, that's why they are the most unhappy people.
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They're, please stop here.
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They're still waiting.
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Waiting for what? The substance of the Old Testament has come.
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Now for some grammar.
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Yay.
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And I know I'm probably and completely aware that I'm probably gonna lose some of you here, but this is important.
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So if you just try to follow me for just a second, and if you don't understand, catch me at the end of the service and I will do everything that I can to explain it better.
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It's one of these times when it's hard to see what I'm fixing to explain to you because we have an English translation, okay? I don't, for any stretch of the imagination, I don't want you to think that you have to know Greek or read Greek to understand the Bible.
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Look, the message of the Bible is very clear.
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Repent and trust in Jesus Christ.
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But there are times when we look at the translation and we're exegeting a text, and sometimes it becomes unclear of what is being conveyed.
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So just listen to me.
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Like I said, I will be completely fine defending myself and my point after the service, if you don't understand.
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The assumption was they were reading this in Greek.
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The word spoke.
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The word spoke in verse one.
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If we were gonna diagram this in the English language, it appears to be the verb.
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Everybody know what a verb is? What's a verb? It's a, that's right, a verb is an action, all right? What's a participle? Okay, well, you're gonna learn, you'll learn something.
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It's, a verb is an action word, and if you see it and you go, oh, well, he spoke, God spoke.
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That's the verb.
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It's not the verb.
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The main verb is actually in verse two when it says the Son has spoken, okay? So if I'm explaining to you, in verse one, it appears to be the main verb.
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It's not.
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The word lalesos, which is the word for speak or spoken in verse one, is a participle.
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A participle is dependent on the main verb.
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Follow me that far.
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Verb, participle.
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That participle works as an action verb, as a verb, but it's dependent on the main verb in the sentence, which is in verse two, and we'll get there in a second, so just follow me.
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It's in the aorist tense, which is huge in the Greek language.
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A snapshot, completed action.
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So, God spoke in the aorist tense, meaning after Malachi, no more.
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That's it.
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It's over.
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God's not gonna speak anymore that way.
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God spoke through the prophets up until the time of the intertestamental time, and it was over.
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Now, it didn't mean that what they said was irrelevant.
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It didn't mean that what they were saying had no application, but what it was saying was that for that particular time, the chapter in which God was revealing himself in that manner was over, the aorist meaning past completed action.
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Now, because that's dependent on the main verb, it's important because the time that God was speaking was over, done, no more.
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That revelation was clear.
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It was God breathed that revelation, but that was incomplete and was in fragmentary pieces, but it was contingent.
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Remember, the participle's dependent on something else.
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It's dependent and contingent on someone else speaking.
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When did this take place? It took place, it says, in the past, or long ago, depending on what translation you have.
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When did this revelation come? How did it come? Who did it come to? It says it came to the fathers.
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Well, who were the fathers? Was it restricted to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? I would say no.
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It was all the ancestry, because if you take the revelation that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had, it would have all been oral.
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There was nothing written.
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So I think it's speaking of all of the fathers, and sometimes you hear that when Stephen's plea before the Sanhedrin, do you not know what our fathers have done to the prophets and all those? He is speaking of their ancestry.
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It says the avenue by which the fathers, this message came to the fathers was the prophets.
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They were the revelatory mediators of God.
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The prophets need to be clarified as well, because not only was the fathers not relegated to the patriarchs, neither is the prophets only restricted to what was here.
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Okay, I'll explain that.
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There was oral transmission of the revelation of God from the time of Adam to the book of Moses.
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We all would agree with that, correct? Okay.
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God made a provision though.
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Once the book of Moses came, that oral, whoever spoke orally about God, spoke the oracles of God, spoke the truth, claimed to be the truth about God, better do it with clarity and with understanding and with truth.
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Why? Because what was in the Mosaic law? You speak wrongly about God and his revelation, we're gonna take these big stones and we're gonna take you outside the camp and we're gonna stone you to death.
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So, the stuff that had been passed down orally had been consistent with the revelation that God had given the Mosaic law.
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Now, if you wanna see an example of that, good, go to Kings chapter 18.
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Jezebel was going around killing the prophets and Elijah meets Obadiah and he's Obadiah says, hey, Jezebel's killing all the prophets, I'm gonna take 100 of them and put 50 in that cave and 50 in that cave.
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Now, those prophets were not written writing prophets, they were speaking prophets.
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So, understand that not just the prophets was restricted to the prophets we have in the Old Testament, it was every person that spoke revelatory in the Old Testament about God.
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The prophets were the mouthpieces of God, they were the covenant prosecutors for God, but if it stopped here, it would be a story left unfinished.
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Like we said earlier, if it stopped, that revelation stopped, it was incomplete.
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So, in the past, long ago, God promised that the seed of Abraham would come and that through his seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed.
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Long ago, God promised that out of his chosen people, Israel and not only just out of Israel, but out of the tribe of Judah, and then you narrow that down, out of the seed of David, there would become a prophet, priest, king that would rule over his people.
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Long ago, God promised his servant would come and he would suffer for the sins of his people.
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Long ago, God promised and saw and said that he would send a God's savior who would save his people.
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And not only would he save his people, but he would dwell amongst them in the midst of his people.
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Long ago, God promised a king and he promised a kingdom and it would be associated with the coming of Messiah.
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And that one that would come would be called everlasting father, the prince of peace.
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And he would sit on that throne forever.
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Long ago, God promised that the king Messiah would come and he would set captives free.
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Listen to what Isaiah says.
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What would be associated with the coming of Messiah? He says that they shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellency of our God, strengthen the weak hands.
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He will make firm the feeble knees.
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He will say to those with a fearful heart, be strong, do not fear.
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Behold, your God will come with vengeance and with recompense of God, he will come and save you.
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Eyes shall see, ears of the deaf will be unstopped, the lame will leap like deer and the tongue of the dumb shall speak.
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And he will say, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord, this is in chapter 61.
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The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach the good tidings and has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives.
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And he would open up the prisons for those who were bound and then he would proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
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That is what the Messiah would do when he would come.
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Long ago that God would promise that this would happen in the last days.
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He said that in the last days, he would pour out his flesh upon all men.
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He would pour out his spirit on all people.
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Long ago, God promised that he would make a new covenant with his people and that covenant would not be like the one he made with his forefathers when he brought them out of the land of Egypt and that covenant that they could not keep.
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But they would do one that would be dependent upon God and him alone.
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And it would be an internal covenant, not an external covenant based on laws and circumcision and dietary laws.
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But it would be one that would come internal by the gift of the spirit.
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Verse two, hasn't these last days spoken to us by his son? The promised last days would be a time when God's people would have the spirit.
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They would have the spirit and everybody that would call upon the name of the Lord would be saved.
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That was the anticipated time.
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It was promised by Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, that God was going to save the Gentile.
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And these days were long awaited for because the idea of the last days would mean that the promised Messiah had come, that the promised seed had come, that he had crushed the head of the serpent and that the prophet, priest and king was now ruling and reigning and that the coming king would have a kingdom.
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And the old covenant was going to be gone and a new covenant would come.
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That is what they were looking forward to.
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Now, you have an overlap of the old covenant and the new covenant.
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Our Bibles are separated in such a way that our New Testament begins with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
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You know, Jesus was actually intertestamental.
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Do y'all know that? The new covenant was not when Jesus came.
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Jesus was fulfilling the old covenant and bringing in the new.
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So when we read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we're still under the old covenant.
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We're reading a theological biography of the fulfillment of Jesus Christ and all that God promised.
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So we have this overlap of what Jesus was doing.
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What did Jesus say? He says, I am here.
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He was baptized by John.
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John says, hey, I can't do that.
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He says, yes, you got to.
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So the all righteousness must be fulfilled.
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He sends him down to water.
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He comes out, the spirit of God comes, fills Jesus Christ.
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The Holy Spirit fills Jesus Christ to go out and do the messianic work.
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We have the triune God right there.
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So if there's anybody, you know, who's a modalist, I want you to go to Matthew chapter three and see you have Father, Son and Holy Spirit all together in one at the same time.
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One declaring the Son, one empowering the Son.
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Then that Son comes up out of the water.
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He's led off to be tempted by the Holy Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights.
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Then what's the first thing that Jesus does when he comes out of the wilderness? Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
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The kingdom is here because the King is here.
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Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God in human flesh, yet unglorified at this point, was ruling and reigning his kingdom.
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But the last days are here.
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And they're here because he has spoken in his Son.
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Spoken in Son.
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That's the main verb.
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Back to the grammar point, it's important.
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I know it's making your brain probably hurt.
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But it's important because it says here that we were looking, we're now, we were looking for something that was still dependent.
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Now we move from something dependent, which was the participle in the aorist tense in verse one, to something definitive and complete in verse two.
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Understand, once it, just from the grammatical point here, okay, just grammar alone, any jack leg tells you he's had a word from the Lord, he's a liar.
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God has spoken fully and completely and clearly in his Son.
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Some pastor, teacher, preacher, whoever stands up and says, I've got a special word from the Lord.
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No, you don't.
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He said all he's gonna say, and it says it right here.
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All Joseph Smith and the Mormons, all they gotta do is read that in the Greek language, and there is no argument.
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Words have meaning, they have a semantic range.
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But those words have meaning for a reason.
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That's why God gave us a book with words to study.
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He didn't give us a movie.
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He didn't give us a music video.
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He didn't give us a song and chants.
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He gave us a book to examine and to study so that we know what's right and wrong, what's truth and error.
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And it's right there.
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All Joseph Smith had to do was look at that and say, in these last days, he has spoken in his Son.
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It's a completed, definitive act.
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It's in the aorist tense, aorist indicative, indicating completion, no more.
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There is no more.
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With the coming of Messiah, and the death, burial, resurrection, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God, we have entered those last days.
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Look what, let me show you.
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I've got to lay on the plane here shortly, don't worry.
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Peter gets a bad rap about putting his feet in his mouth and all this stuff.
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But look what Peter did once he was filled with the Holy Spirit, had all the tongue talking and all that stuff, and the big commotion.
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He says, hey, check it out, man, those dudes are drunk.
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Those guys are drunk, and listen to what Peter says.
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Peter said, standing up with the eleven, and we forget that, Peter didn't just stand up his own.
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He stood up with the eleven, raised his voice.
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He said, men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, this is in the street, let this be known to you.
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Heed my words, we ain't drunk, as you suppose, because it's only the third hour.
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I always thought that was funny.
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We're not drunk, because it's three o'clock.
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But this is what this prophet Joel spoke.
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Now, he's telling us it's the last day's wife, because here, this is that which the prophet spoke in those last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.
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Your sons, your daughters shall prophesy.
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Your young men shall see visions.
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Your old men shall dream dreams.
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And my servants and my maid servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.
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I will show wonders in heaven, signs on the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor and smoke.
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Sun shall be darkened, and the moon will be turned into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.
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And it shall come to pass that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
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Peter says, with the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, we are in the last days.
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We're not waiting on some ridiculous configuration of countries in Europe and the Middle East.
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We're here.
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This is it.
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This is the last days.
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Now, the exaltation and enthronement and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of God was everything that the prophets had anticipated.
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That was it.
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That's what they were waiting for.
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Now, Peter preaches this sermon right here.
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I didn't finish the whole thing.
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He preaches that sermon.
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Next thing you know, 3,000 people get saved, okay? So what does he do? He goes right down to the temple, heals a man, lame, and listen to what he preaches here.
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Chapter three, we'll start in verse 15.
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You killed the prince of life, God, whom God raised from the dead, and you were witnesses.
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You understand, the people he's speaking to knew that Jesus Christ had raised from the dead.
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He said, you crucified him, you killed him, and you saw him alive or knew he was alive.
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And in his name, through faith, in his name, I'm sorry, and in his name, through faith, and in his name, has made this man strong, meaning the one that was crippled.
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But those things which God foretold by the mouth of his prophets that the Christ would suffer, he has done these things and has fulfilled them.
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Therefore, repent and be converted that your sins be blotted out so that the times of refreshing may come of the presence of the Lord and that he may send Jesus Christ who was preached to you, whom the heavens received until the times of restoration, which God has spoken of by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
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For Moses truly said to the fathers, the Lord will raise up a prophet like me from your brethren.
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Him you shall hear and you will hear all things and do whatever he tells you.
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And it shall be that every soul who will hear that prophet, I'm sorry, and every person that does not hear that prophet shall be utterly destroyed.
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And then listen to what he says here.
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Yes, all the prophets from Samuel and those who followed, as many as have spoken foretold of these very things.
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You are the sons of the prophets.
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You are the covenant of the God that he made with Abraham and your fathers.
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And in the seed of the families, all the earth of this seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed.
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To you first, God having raised up his servant, Jesus sent him to bless you and to turn you from your sins.
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He knew that when Jesus came, there was no other revelation to be got.
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Jesus came, poured out the Holy Spirit, that's it.
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That is it.
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And I know some of you what you're thinking.
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Well, what about the book of Revelation? What about these other books? Understand that the book of Revelation, that apocalyptic literature, was only an exposition of what was given in the Old Testament.
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It wasn't some radically new revelation.
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It was, that's why you better know your Old Testament if you're gonna read those books.
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It is the very thing that was spoken of in Ezekiel and Daniel is what was being spoke of in Revelation.
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Now, as great as it would have been for you and me to walk through a parted Red Sea, that would have been awesome.
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It would have.
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I mean, you're walking through, you just go up to the wall of water, you just gotta see little fish looking at you.
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That would be awesome.
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And it would have been awesome to walk to the Jordan behind the Levitical priest and as soon as they put their feet in the water, it would split.
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That would have been awesome.
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But do you know that under the words of Moses, it is better for you and us today because we have the Spirit.
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It is better today than it was in those days.
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It says that how the prophets longed for those days, longed that they would have the Spirit.
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Look, the Spirit was only given to here and there and it wasn't given in the way it is to the believer today.
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Here a bit, there a bit, empowered to do some things and then it would be go away.
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No, we are empowered by the same Holy Spirit.
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And I wanna make sure you hear me correctly.
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When Jesus came out of the water on his baptism and God poured out the Holy Spirit in him in fullness, that's the same Holy Spirit in quantity and in fullness that's within you.
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Why don't we live that way? Why don't we live that way? I'm speaking to me too.
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Why don't we live that way? We cower in our proclamation of God's Word.
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We're worried about coming across someone and him tripping us up.
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Look, we have the truth of God's Word.
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We have the truth.
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Truth always stamps out error.
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You don't have to get off on all these other tangents, political baloney and all that.
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Preach the Word.
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There's no other revelation.
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Every revelation that came from the prophets up until Christ was a fulfillment of Christ.
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Do we read our Old Testament? You better believe it.
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But how do we read it? The text tells us in sun.
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We read it in light of the sun.
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We look back at the Old Testament.
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Now we're looking back, not looking forward.
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And we go, oh, there he is.
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There's Jesus there.
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There's Jesus there.
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There's Jesus there.
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That's how we read it.
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I would ask you today, could you say this? These things.
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Here's what the writer of Hebrews says.
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He says that Jesus is better than the angels.
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Jesus is better than Moses.
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Jesus is better than Joshua.
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Jesus is better than the Levitical priesthood.
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Jesus was better than Melchizedek.
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Now probably y'all go, who in the world is Melchizedek? Jesus is better than all of those things.
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That's what the Jewish person would have said.
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Well, would you say this? Jesus is better than my job.
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Jesus is better than money.
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Jesus is better than my kids.
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Jesus is better than my spouse.
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Would you say this? Jesus is better than my hobby.
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Put anything in it.
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But Jesus is better to fill in the blank.
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Or do we do it the other way? My job, my wife, my money, my hobby is better than Jesus.
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That's how we live our life.
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What is your confession today? What is your confession? Jesus is better or something is better than Christ.
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Jesus Christ is the author and perfecter of our faith if you're a believer.
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We should pursue God, pursue holiness.
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Pursue holiness, this is the words of Hebrews.
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Pursue holiness, for without it, no man will see God.
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Oh, you're putting a contingent on my salvation.
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No, I'm saying that's what the word says.
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You take it.
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If it scares the mess out of you, live holy.
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To the unbeliever, I want you to read, listen to the words of the writer of Hebrews.
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For if we go on sinning willfully, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fiery indignation that will devour the adversaries.
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Anyone who rejected Moses' law and violated his law died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
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Think of the mechanics of that for a second.
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Just time out for a second.
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What happened if you broke the law of Moses? Those two or three witnesses? Take me out of there.
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If I took Mr.
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Belcher here and I lied against him, caused him harm to him and his family, he found claim against me, Chris would say, take me before the courts, him, his wife, and whoever else that I had done something wrong, and then them two and whoever else he brought would pick up a big old rock, first one, to put me to death.
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And they did it without mercy.
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It was brutal.
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And sometimes even set on fire.
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He says that those who reject the law of Moses died without mercy under the testimony of two or three witnesses.
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He says, well, how much worse a punishment do you suppose it will be for those who trample under the blood of the Son of God? You understand the punishment under the old covenant doesn't even touch what it is under the new covenant.
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Severe, severe, more revelation, more punishment.
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So now we sit here today going, oh, God of the old covenant, he didn't mind, he was angry, he just opened up the ground, swallowed people, he'd flood them with water and kill them and all that.
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Well, the scripture says right here that that ain't nothing compared to what's gonna happen if you don't put faith in what Jesus' blood has done on your behalf.
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It says, how much more severe punishment do you suppose it will be thought worthy of those who have trampled on the Son of God and put his blood under their feet and trampled that covenant by which it sanctified them? For we know him who said this, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and the Lord will judge his people.
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It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
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That's the word of God.
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Then it says in Hebrews 13, verse 25, don't refuse him who's speaking, not me, not what I'm saying.
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I'm just telling you what this person says.
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Hey, you wanna get mad with the messenger? I'm fine with that.
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You take up your problems with what the text says.
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Is it indicting you? Then it says in Hebrews 3, verses 7 and 13, the Holy Spirit says to you today, today, as long as it's today.
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How many times is it today? Will tomorrow be today? Yeah, if you wake up.
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So as long as it's still today, do not let your heart be hardened.
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Let you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
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Jesus Christ came into the world, bore the justice and judgment that men deserve so that he could be forgiven.
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There is no other sacrifice.
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There is no other way.
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That's it, no more.
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You trust in anything else, the trap door opens up and you're in trouble.
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So I would ask you today, man, sir, boy, girl, young, old, is Jesus Christ your all in all? I'm not talking about, did you come here today? Do you believe he was a real man? I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt.
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You could sit here today and believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and you could still die in your sin.
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That's right.
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That's a scary thing.
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That's why the Bible says examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.
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Kids, examine yourself.
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Your parent, I said it time and time again, and I will say it as long as there's breath within me.
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Your parent's faith cannot save you.
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Your mom and dad on the day of judgment is not gonna be your advocate.
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They're not gonna be able to stand and say, well, God, I know he did this or I know he did that.
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I'm telling you today, the call to you is the same to the call of the old person.
01:00:01
Turn, turn from serving self, quit serving sin, and that can come in a multifaceted different way, but quit serving self and turn and serve the living God who has displayed himself as Jesus Christ the God-man who is the full embodiment of the Godhead.
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We can look to him, there's no other way to look.
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That's the only remedy for my problem and for your problem.
01:00:33
Let's pray.
01:00:36
Father God, we thank you for your word.
01:00:39
We thank you for the writer of Hebrews.
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Father, I'm even thankful we don't even know the guy was.
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Father, you used someone.
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That seemed to be very insignificant that he didn't even want his name put in there.
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But God, you have used him for 2,000 years to strike fear into the heart of believers, to prod them to walk and to continue to hold fast their confession of faith.
01:01:09
And Father, I pray that the ones in here that don't know you that God today would be the day of salvation.
01:01:15
I pray that Father, if they leave here today and they do not know you, that Father, you would have grace and mercy on them to have another opportunity to hear the words come unto me.
01:01:26
All you are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
01:01:30
Father, I pray for that person in here that thinks he's a little sinner or she is a little sinner.
01:01:39
Father God, you don't save little sinners.
01:01:42
You save big, gigantic sinners because we're all big, gigantic sinners.
01:01:45
That's why you sent a big, gigantic savior.
01:01:50
Father, we thank you for what you have done.
01:01:52
We thank you for giving us a book to examine and to see what it says and what it reveals about you and what it says about us and how we can remedy the problem of sin in our life.
01:02:04
Father, I pray that as we remember your sacrifice, as we take up the Lord's table, Father, you took up that chalice, that cup full of God's wrath and you drank it down to the last drop and you did not quit.
01:02:25
And you didn't do that with us on your mind.
01:02:28
You didn't do that thinking of me or anyone else.
01:02:32
You did that to glorify your Father.
01:02:38
God, thank you.
01:02:42
And then you didn't leave us on our own, but you took that believer that you paid his penalty, you propitiated his sin, and then you poured out the Holy Spirit on him to say, yes, I can now walk.
01:02:54
Because then you took that Holy Spirit and then you wrote on the heart of that believer to walk and obey your statutes.
01:03:02
And we know we can't do it perfectly.
01:03:04
That's why we trust in you.
01:03:06
God, give us a desire to walk closer to you.
01:03:10
Father, through this time of reflection, I pray for those that do not know you, they would come to know you today.
01:03:17
And for those who need to examine themselves, that, Father, they would repent of the sin in their life and not take the table in an unworthy manner.
01:03:26
Father, they would take it in such a way that it remembers the sacrifice which you did in man's place.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
01:03:37
And stand with us as we repent this time.