God’s Seed Grows a New Nature in Believers (1 John 3:4-10)

Kootenai Church

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Good morning, everyone. Glad you're here. Good to be in the house of the Lord, be around the saints, be encouraged.

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We're gonna be in the book of 1 John. So if you'll open your copy of God's word to 1

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John chapter three, we'll get going. Today's lesson is titled,

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God's seed grows a new nature in believers. God's seed grows a new nature in believers.

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It was the longest title I could think of. So wanted to get it right out there at the beginning.

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So we'll be in chapter three and we're gonna be looking at verses four through 10. But before we get going, let's have a word of prayer.

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Father, thank you for loving us the way that you do and giving us so much grace and mercy and the ability to look into your word, to trust you, to give us guidance in our lives.

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We thank you for your wisdom and your truth and just the way that you watch over and guide us,

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Lord. We just thank you so much that you're an amazing God. And we pray, Lord, as you go forward in this study this morning, that you'll open our hearts and minds to what you have for us and teach us the things that we need to know today to be able to live our lives for your glory tomorrow.

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In Jesus' name, amen. So for context, we're just gonna read starting in chapter three.

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We'll just start in verse one and we'll go down through verse 10. See how great a love the

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Father has given to us that we would be called children of God, and we are. For this reason, the world does not know us because it did not know him.

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Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be.

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We know that when he is manifested, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is.

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And everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure.

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Everyone who does sin also does lawlessness and sin is lawlessness.

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And you know that he was manifested in order to take away sins and in him there is no sin.

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No one who abides in him sins. No one who sins has seen him or has come to know him.

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Little children, let no one deceive you. The one who does righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous.

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The one who does sin is of the devil because the devil sins from the beginning.

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The son of God was manifested for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil.

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Everyone who has been born of God does not sin because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.

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By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifested.

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Everyone who does not do righteousness is not of God as well as the one who does not love his brother.

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So we've been working our way through the book of 1 John and the emphasis has been on the marks of a true believer.

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Right from the start of this book, the emphasis we've seen has been on Christ. What John saw, he proclaimed to the saints in Asia Minor and the goal was to urge them to live their lives in a righteous manner, to follow after Christ because when

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Christ appears, again, he wanted them to have confidence at his appearing.

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He didn't want them to shrink away or to be ashamed at Christ that is coming. We covered that last week and like a good pastor,

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John is protecting those in the church from the deception and he has a desire that they know the difference between true and false converts.

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We've seen that in this book where he's contrasting true and false believers and what they're doing.

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And he wants us to live godly lives. If we have the nature of Christ within us, the message is we should be different.

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Our lives are not the same. And so he's encouraging us through various tests to prove our authenticity in knowing

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Christ and his righteousness because those that truly know him will practice godly living.

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They'll live their lives for his glory. And today we're gonna move into a section that has a lot to do with sin.

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10 times we've seen in these verses, if you read down through it, 10 times the word sin or sins is used and there's an emphasis on it.

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So last week we were talking about moving from purifying our lives, removing sin from our lives and to be pure.

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And now we're moving into an area where we're focusing on sin.

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How do we get there? It seems most likely that the readers were being tempted to regard sin as a matter of indifference and to fall into sin was not a serious matter to them.

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And if you remember, we talked about the Gnostic beliefs and some of this comes from that teaching.

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They were teaching dualism. If you remember some of the earlier lessons that we talked about where more emphasis was placed on the spiritual and then the physical world in Gnosticism.

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Sin wasn't the problem to them, but more of a lack of divinity. They were in lockstep with the devil.

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You will be like God, just like Satan talked about. To achieve spiritual immortality, they just had to climb the ladder of knowledge.

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This was the Gnostic belief. The secret knowledge was what they were after. And if you got that, you could attain eternal life, but it was through secret knowledge.

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Not everyone could know this knowledge. And the beauty of the

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Bible is, is it's open to all. You don't have to worry about any secret knowledge. It's not a mystery.

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You just open it up and you read it and you don't have to climb the ladder to success.

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And they just regarded sin so flippantly because to them, the body was evil.

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The physical world was evil. So what does it matter if a person lives their life sinning and doing everything that they want to do in their lives?

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Because who cares? At the end of their lives, they just get spiritual immortality anyway.

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That was their belief. Well, you can see how this false teaching could cause some of the believers in Asia Minor to regard sin not as harmful as it really is.

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And that's the emphasis. So the first point I want to bring to your attention in verse four is sin breaks

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God's law. Sin breaks God's law. Look at it again. Everyone who does sin also does lawlessness and sin is lawlessness.

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So sin breaks the law. It always has. The 10 commandments, the law, they're going to break them eventually, but it's our standard.

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And the one who practices sin, who's the one who practices sin? Is it the believer or the unbeliever?

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The unbeliever is the one who practices sin in their lives. How do we know this?

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Look down at verse nine. Everyone who has been born of God does not sin. Everyone who has been born of God does not sin because his seed abides in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.

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You see, only an unbeliever can practice sin. The believer has the seed, the new nature of God in their lives, and that life is not reflected in an everyday practice of sin.

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And that's what it is. It's an everyday practice of sin where believers just don't fall into this category.

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And we shouldn't be patterning our lives after the sinful way.

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But because believers, their lives are focused on Christ and not the sin nature that once drove their behavior.

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That's really what it is, right? One point you were focused on sin, and when you got saved, then you had a different turn.

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You turned 180 degrees different from where you were. And I want to make it a point that this doesn't mean that a believer never sins, obviously, right?

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I mean, we certainly do sin, and it uses this language quite a bit in this passage is that the one who loves him does not sin.

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Well, it's that habitual practicing of sin is what John is talking about here.

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And we can see that in chapter one, verse eight, we talked about this before, but if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, it says.

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Obviously, a believer is going to sin. In verse 10 in chapter one, it says, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

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Of course, believers do sin. I mean, that's just the reality of it, but it doesn't become a persistent, relentless and habitual practice in our lives.

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We're doing everything we can to kill sin in our lives. We see someone that doesn't know

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Christ pursues sin because it's all that they know. It's all that they know.

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They don't know about the righteousness of Christ. They don't know about the standards that we are laid out to follow.

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And we could make a case in this verse that sin is singular. It's referring to the root and not the sins.

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Sins refers to the fruit of the root. When the root drinks of the water that is poisoned by the devil, the result is fruit that is undernourished, fruit that can never sustain a person long -term.

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Scripture says we're to be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither in Psalm 1 .3.

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When the root of the tree is pulling from clean, pure water, the fruit is lush and sweet.

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And that's the picture is that, where's your nature? Is it in the nature of the devil or is it in the nature of Christ?

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Because there's repercussions for each. For the fleshly mind has its root deep in the world and the fruit cannot help but be bad.

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Galatians 5 .19 says, "'Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, "'which are sexual immorality and purity.

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"'Everyone who does sin also does lawlessness.'"

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That's the second point here in this side of it. But when you think about it, unbelievers are said to practice sin, which begs the question, what is sin?

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What is sin? We know from looking at the word itself, it just means to miss the mark.

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It means to miss the mark. It's an archer's term where you're aiming at the target and somewhere along the line, it veers off the path and you miss the mark.

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So to miss the mark in this situation is to miss the standards of God. You set out to be obedient to Christ and you veered off course.

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That's the idea. You missed the bullseye. Instead of holiness, you may have pursued fame.

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You traded righteousness for riches. You missed the mark. And our lives are to be reflected as true believers in aiming hard after the target for Christ and following it and hitting that target because God has changed our lives.

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Then it says, everyone who does sin also does lawlessness. What is lawlessness? This is the only time in this book that John uses this word.

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Two things I want to draw your attention to here. Lawlessness literally means no law.

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And I think about the last verse of Judges when I think about this. In those days, there was no king in Israel.

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Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. You see, when there's no law, you just do whatever that you want to do.

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And we can make a real strong case that we see that going on in our world today. You can look around.

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There's not very many people seem to be being punished for the crimes that are very apparent.

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There's no law, it's lawlessness. Basically, everyone who sins breaks the law.

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Despite what some might think, I think the 10 commandments are still really relevant today. We can't just ignore that because that's our standard that God has set out.

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The word lawlessness is associated with the coming man of lawlessness, the

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Antichrist. We've spoken about that already in chapter two, verse 18. And it says, children, it is the last hour.

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And just as you heard, that Antichrist is coming. There's an association there with lawlessness and the

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Antichrist. And we also see this association when we can look at 2 Thessalonians 2, 3, where it says, let no one in any way deceive you.

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For it has not come unless the apostasy comes first. And the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.

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See, there's an association with lawlessness, the Antichrist and the devil and all that we're talking about today.

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And then we can see in 2 Thessalonians 2, 7, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.

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Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.

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There's that association. Sin and lawlessness have been together. And those who pursue a lifestyle of lawlessness are on the side of the devil.

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That's what this passage is talking about. They are in direct opposition to our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Those who practice lawlessness follow after the man of lawlessness because their father, the devil, has sinned from the beginning.

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So the seriousness of it all is that when we break

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God's law as a believer, we really think about it.

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There's guilt there. There should be some kind of a understanding that we have done these things, but an unbeliever,

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I don't think, has that same kind of commitment. So that's verse four.

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Is there any questions related to that particular passage? Anything that you want to talk about?

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Yeah, that's a very good point. Rick brought out that he hates his sin, where an unbeliever has a seared conscience and they don't really have that same motivation.

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They pursue it. They don't hate it like we do. And that's the difference in our lives here.

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When you have a new nature, that comes into play. You're not seeking after those things that are going to be destructive anymore.

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And you think about Paul in the New Testament. I mean, after he got saved, he didn't go back to persecuting

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Christians. He turned his life around and he sought the Lord and his whole life was changed after that.

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So it makes a huge difference in that way. Anybody else? Because lawlessness has increased, most people's love will grow cold.

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Matthew 24, 12, that's a good point. That is true. That's a good point. We're seeing as the times get more difficult, the love is harder to sustain.

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It's harder to go after. But yet that's our mandate.

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Even though we're seeing sin increasing all around us, we're still called to love those people, still called to embrace those people.

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Anybody else? Okay. The next point I want to draw your attention to is the seriousness of sin.

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The seriousness of sin in verse five, actually verse five and six.

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And you know that he was manifested in order to take away sins and in him, there is no sin. So here we learn, yeah, he was manifested to take away our sins.

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So we learn here about the purpose of why Christ came. Remember that he's speaking to believers here.

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He writes, and you know, he was manifested. So knowing the purpose of Christ is common knowledge to a believer.

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It's, and you know, oh yeah. I mean, we all know that Christ came to take away sins.

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That's the idea with that comment there. For us, we could say, you know, we know we're going to be in Hebrews for at least another year.

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I mean, that's common knowledge, right? I mean, we just know it, it's going to happen. It's the same here.

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You know, when Christ appeared the first time, it was in order to take away sins and believers know this very well.

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It's a common phrase. And you think about purpose of Christ came, it started from the very beginning when

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John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

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Well, that's really what it's about. To take away sin means to lift up and carry away.

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Like that time my shade canopy was lifted up by the wind and carried it away, it was just gone. I had no idea where it went.

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That's the idea here. Your sins are just lifted up and carried away. We could use a little more biblical term for this.

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We see this in the Old Testament with the scapegoat. It's in Leviticus 16 .10.

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But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive before Yahweh to make atonement upon it, to send it out into the wilderness as the scapegoat.

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That's a beautiful picture, isn't it? Of sins being placed on the scapegoat and sending it out into the wilderness never to return.

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Our God's amazing. He takes our sins. He removes them from us as far as the

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East is from the West. He sends them off with the scapegoat into the wilderness and we'll never see those again.

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Why does John make this point to remind these believers that the purpose of Christ was to take away sins?

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Why did he do that so much? Because without it, we cannot be saved.

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We have to understand that the removal of our sins is an avenue. Christ on the cross, saving us, it provides us a way to be saved.

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Sin is so completely infected humanity that the only way to deal with it is to know and believe that the wrath of God was satisfied on our behalf.

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We have to understand why Christ came. And I think of this song in Christ alone, where it says, and the great song says, till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied for every sin on him was laid here in the death of Christ I live.

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This is our mandate. We celebrate communion to remember what he has done for us on the cross.

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That's our goal. And I was thinking about this, reading some stuff this week about just the brutal way that Christ died on the cross.

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That was one of the most wicked ways that you could die, I think.

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And yet that symbol of the cross became love for us, even though it was the most brutal way for someone to die.

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Verse six, no one who abides in him sins. No one who sins has seen him or has come to know him.

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No one that abides or remains in Christ. We've been talking about this quite a bit, haven't we? It's like John's teaching style is repetition.

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It's kind of going over similar things, but saying it in a different way. It's a great teaching style because it just embeds it into you over and over again.

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But we've heard about it. True believers do not have an ongoing love affair with sin.

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We remain, we abide in Christ, we are about his business. And there isn't an active defiance or a continued pursuit of sin in their lives.

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I love how Stephen Lawson illustrated this. He had a really good way to do it. He said, it's like a movie that has thousands of frames for the believer, excuse me, thousands of frames.

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And for the believer, sin represents just one or two frames. It's not their whole life.

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It's not the whole length of their movie. It's just a small portion. That's a great analogy.

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Sin is not representing the believer as a way of life. If it is a way of life, it's clear that we don't know him.

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It's clear that we don't know him because nobody who makes sin intentional in their lives has seen Christ or has come to know him.

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And these Gnostics believe that you could sin endlessly with no repercussions. So that's 5 and 6, verses 5 and 6.

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Any thoughts on those verses? Don't sin. Anybody?

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Okay. The next point I want to draw your attention to in verse 7 is the confusion between sin and righteousness.

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Little children, let no one deceive you. The one who does righteousness is righteous just as he is righteous.

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The word deceive here means to wander or go astray. Let no one cause you to wander or go astray from the scriptures.

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Not the Gnostic teachers that were teaching false teaching. Don't let these people lead you astray.

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Don't let a friend who thinks they know a better way or anyone else that can cause you to wander away from the truth.

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They are unrighteous and practice the deeds of darkness, but we're the ones who practice righteousness because of Christ and his righteousness.

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He has a nature that is righteous. That's what our nature is. That's what we're supposed to be emulating.

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We're emulating the Father and the Son. So in Romans chapter 6, it says, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were given over and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

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I love that. We're freed from sin and slaves to righteousness, slaves to doing the right thing, slaves to upholding

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God's standard of living in our lives. And we reject the ways of the world.

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That's a beautiful verse that illustrates that greatly. And then in verse eight, it says, the one who does sin is of the devil because the devil sins from the beginning.

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The Son of God was manifested for this purpose to destroy the works of the devil. The devil is the accuser.

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He's the slanderer. His goal is to destroy and lead you away from Christ.

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That's his whole mission. He doesn't want to see you saved. He doesn't want to see you going into the kingdom of heaven.

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He doesn't want to see you in the new heavens and new earth. He wants to destroy and to accuse you of every wrongdoing.

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Mark 4 .15 says, and these are the ones who are beside the road where the word is sown. When they hear, immediately

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Satan comes and takes away the word which has been sown in them. You see, that's his mission.

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His mission is to take away the word of God from the people. He is the first rebel.

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Luke 10 .18, and he said to them, I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

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He sinned from the beginning in the garden. Did God really say? And if you read in Isaiah, I mean, he's prideful.

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He's kicked out of heaven for wanting to be like God and rebelling against him. He is the adversary and chief nemesis of God who opposes everything that God is trying to do in this world.

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To practice sin is doing the work of the devil. You take on his nature, his characteristics.

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You do that when you covet, when you lie, when you steal, you're considered to be doing the works of the devil.

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This is not a phrase you want to hear about yourself, that your life is so steeped in sin that you're considered of the devil.

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It's not what you want to hear. If you take on the nature of the devil, you produce works associated with him.

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That's the difference. But the purpose of Christ, it says in this verse, is to destroy the works of the devil.

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Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. To destroy means to unbind or to undo all of his work.

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That's what it means. And what is his work? His work is to tempt all men into a life of sin.

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And the goal, to lead them away and ultimately from heaven. Everything the devil accomplished,

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Christ came to undo and is undoing through the saints and the preaching of his word.

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This means that we believers are in opposition to sin exactly as Christ is. You see how vehemently

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Christ came to destroy the works of the devil? That's what we're trying to do as well.

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We're in opposition to the works of the devil. The Gnostics denied the deity of Christ.

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So are many of the Antichrist today. And it's because the origin of sin is from the devil.

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He has been the instigator of sin from the beginning. John 8, 44, you are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

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He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature. He is a liar and the father of lies.

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See that? That's his nature. He's a father of lies.

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There's no riding the fence when it comes to sin. Either you are an enemy of God and a friend or a friend of the devil, or you practice the righteousness of God.

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There's no in -betweens. Spurgeon says this about sin. He says, as the salt flavors every drop in the

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Atlantic, so does sin affect every atom of our nature. It is so sadly there, so abundantly there that if you cannot detect it, you are deceived.

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It's a great quote. So that's verse eight, seven and eight.

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Any thoughts on those passages? Can't get a response.

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All right. The next point I want to draw your attention to in verse nine is the incorruptible seed.

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In verse nine, everyone who has been born of God does not sin because his seed abides in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.

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Again, everyone born of God does not practice sin. And that's the idea. It doesn't mean that they don't ever sin. We learn the reason why now in this verse, right?

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Everyone who is born of God does not sin because his seed abides in him.

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There's some discussion about what the seed is referring to here. Is it the Holy Spirit? Is it the word of God?

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And what is it? And many scholars have debated about it. But what I think it means is that the seed represents our new nature.

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It's our new nature. Ephesians 4, 22 through 24 says, to lay aside in reference to your former conduct, the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind and to put on the new man, which in the likeness of Christ has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

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That's it. We are to lay aside the way we've formerly conducted our lives.

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That old man doesn't live here anymore. We have a new nature now. Put on the new nature, not the lies from the devil.

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Colossians 3, 10 says, and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.

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That's it. Put on the new nature according to the image of the one who created him. The new nature comes from the new birth.

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That's what it is. As 1 Peter 1, 23 says, for you have been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible.

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That is through the living and enduring word of God. 1 Peter 1, 23. It is a seed that is incorruptible.

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And by that, it means not subject to death or decay. The seed that is in us is not subject to death and decay, like all the other seeds in this world.

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Isn't that a beautiful thing? When God's seed resides in us, it's gonna produce the fruit that's gonna last forever.

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Seeds when planted are intended to grow. Nobody plants a seed without an expectation of growth, do they?

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And I think we see this in the parable of the sower in Luke 8, verse 8.

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Another seed fell into the good soil and growing up it produced a crop 100 times as great.

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In verse 15 says this, but the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart and hold it fast and bear fruit with perseverance.

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That's what happens when God's seeds abide in us. It bears fruit.

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That's how we can tell the difference between unbelievers and believers is that seed is bearing fruit for God, for living good, for the righteous standards that he has set out for us.

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All right, that's verse 9. Any thoughts on verse 9? I'm gonna ask until somebody says something.

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Yeah, I'm gonna keep asking. All right. Okay, so the last portion then is verse 10.

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And this is where God's seed reveals who are the children of God and children of the devil.

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As the seed grows, our lives become more and more a reality of our changed nature.

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That's what it comes down to. And we know it's impossible for us not to sin, but God does give us the

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Holy Spirit, doesn't he? To help us not to sin. He gives us a way to minimize it as much as possible.

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The Spirit, or excuse me, Romans 8, 16 and 17 says this. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we're children of God.

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And if children also heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

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So the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we're children of God and heirs of Christ.

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And then in Galatians 3, 26, for you all, for all, excuse me,

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Galatians 3, 26, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. If the incorruptible seed is not in you, you've not been regenerated.

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Without the seed, you are children of the devil. The devil produces only lives that are focused on missing the mark.

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It is obvious that the seed in us produces people who are distinctly different from those called the children of the devil.

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That's the difference. There's a distinction and we can see who is a believer and who is not.

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And the nature and the seed that is in us, it's proof that we're not like them, that we can distinguish.

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I mean, can we fully say someone is or isn't saved, you know, to the core?

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No, but we can certainly see by their actions, you know, whether the nature is children of God or children of the devil.

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And I think that's what we're looking at here. So in conclusion, John said, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Being born again is called regeneration, which literally means a new birth, new birth.

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The new birth cleanses a person on the inside and produces a new nature that is focused on pleasing

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God. It means that we have new motivations in our lives to live for him, but we still have a propensity to sin and to wander away in an ever -present reality in our lives.

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It's just there. Since we still sin, you might be thinking, what can

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I do to deal with sin in my own life? And I wanna give you a couple ideas just to focus on as I close this out.

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Three things that you can do to minimize sin in your life. Number one, keep your eyes on the

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Lord. Keep your eyes on the Lord. Psalm 57 .7,

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my heart is set, O God, my heart is set. I will sing, yes,

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I will sing praises. When we get our eyes off of ourselves and put them on God, things come into perspective.

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Things that we are thinking about are godly things. When we take our eyes off of him, anything can happen.

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And so number one is to keep your eyes on the Lord. Number two, meditate on God's word.

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Meditate on God's word. This is what Joshua 1 .8 said. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

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For then you will make your way successful and then you will be prosperous. And I think that's it.

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We read, we study, we consider God's word, look into it, listen to sermons, do everything we can to just saturate our lives with God's word, whatever it might be.

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So the third thing is practice obedience. Practice obedience,

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John 14 .21. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me.

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And he who loves me will be loved by my father. And I will love him and will disclose myself to him.

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I mean, how else do we show our love for God? You can't give him a hug.

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Can't go up there and say, well done, good job, thank you. I mean, we show our love to the

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Savior by our obedience to him. And in 14 .23,

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he says this, John 14 .23, Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him.

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And we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. You hear that? If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and will come to him and make our dwelling with him.

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Our nature must be reflected by our obedience to Christ. I mean, how else can we show

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Jesus how much that we love him? So to recap, children of God, they don't practice sin.

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They have seen him and know him. They do righteousness because of the father.

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They are born of God. And the reason children of God don't sin is his seed is in them.

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You contrast that with children of the devil who practice sin. They practice sin.

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They have seen him, yet they don't know him. Many out there have seen and understood a little bit about the faith, but yet they don't know him.

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They've rejected him. The evil deeds that they do are because the devil is their father.

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They don't love the brethren. And sin because the devil sins from the beginning.

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There's two natures. Our nature needs to reflect that we are truly children of God and not children of the devil.

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All right, that's all I've got. Is there any questions? Yes, Ephesians 4, 22 and 24.

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That's a great passage that dovetails in with what we're talking about here pretty strongly.

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Yeah, we're supposed to be doing the works of the Lord. Put on the new person.

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It's like, you know, you take a coat off, the old coat, you know, that was stained and terrible.

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And you put on the new one that reflects Christ and what he's done for you. Washed whiter than snow, exactly.

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I know, it's like when you come out of the water in baptism, right, that's proof to the world you're gonna live a newness of life.

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That's what you want. Anybody else? All right, let's pray.

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Father, we thank you that you love us so deeply. I pray, Lord, for our service this morning that everything that we say and do would be glorifying to you.

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Let the word of God be proclaimed boldly. Prepare the hearts and minds of all that would hear here in this building and online.

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Lord, help us to live our lives for your glory. As believers, help us to kill sin and to live righteously and to reflect the new nature that has been put into us.

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Help the seed that is implanted grow in our lives that we might produce fruit abundantly and that we could share the faith that we have within us to everybody that will listen.