Sunday Sermon: This Light, Momentary Affliction (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

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Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

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Second Corinthians four, beginning in verse 16, the apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth.

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So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

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For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

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As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

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For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

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Let us pray. Our Lord God, as we come to you this morning,

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I pray that you would open the scriptures to us, that what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears may be known to our heart by your

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Holy Spirit. All of us here in this room are individual persons with individual lives, and we go through individual struggles.

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And even with our respective biology and physiology, each one of us deals with a particular situation a different way.

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It affects all of us differently. And so I pray that whatever we may be going through, whatever struggles or trials or afflictions may come our way, that the passages that we're reading this morning will remind us that these trials that we endure now are but light momentary afflictions compared to the eternal glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus at the end of days.

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We do not lose heart. We do not doubt. We do not begin to wane in our faith.

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But we seize all the more with confidence because of what your Word has said, the promise of that great day, that all who are in Christ Jesus will pass from this life into the next, where there will not be this constant struggle, this enduring, no temptation into sin, no being afflicted by other evils, no mourning over the state of the world, over personal relationships in our life, no longer trying to push through the pain and the decay that we might feel in our own bodies.

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But we look forward to a day in which all the former things will have passed away and we will be brand new in Christ, perfect and eternal as He is with Him forever in glory.

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Help us to cling all the more to Christ, not to the stuff of this world, which is transient, which is passing away, but we look to Christ who is eternal and forevermore,

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King of kings and Lord of lords, whose Word will never pass away.

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And it's in the name of Christ we pray and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.

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I want to take a moment here because I didn't do this right before we began reading.

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So I'm going to pause for a moment to welcome Philip back. Philip, so glad to have you back and want to encourage you also to remember our military personnel in your prayers, not just because this is a particular weekend for that.

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We remember those who have been lost fighting for our freedom. We no doubt have people here in this church that have seen combat and seen friends lose their lives, fellow soldiers and comrades fighting for the cause of freedom.

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So keep them in your prayers, but also because the military right now is kind of at such a high level of readiness.

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Everything seems to be go, go, go, and everybody's having to stay at a certain peak of preparedness. And so as this is such a great strain on our military and also on those families who have to let their loved ones go to continue this work or this training or the deployments that they might have to do, just continue to be in prayer for those soldiers, also for those families and don't just pray for them.

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Don't just think about those families in your mind and in your heart when they cross your mind, but also reach out to them and be a friend, be a loved one, be someone who is compassionate and caring and able to help to build them up during a trial such as this, such as the times have been the way that they have been.

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It's kind of like you turn on the news and you see some other strife or conflict that's going on in the world and you wonder, is this going to be the next conflict that's going to take some of our soldiers overseas?

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But we continue to entrust ourselves to him who judges justly, and that is our great

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God and Father, and we know that all things are in his hands, especially as we are considering this passage this morning, knowing that what we endure here while we are in this world, we are in this life, they are but light momentary afflictions.

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They do not compare to the eternal weight of glory that awaits us in the end in the promise that we have in Christ Jesus.

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Ever since returning from vacation a month ago, I have a suitcase that is still sitting on the floor at the foot of our bed.

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There is only a pair of jeans in it, which I haven't worn because it's been really hot.

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So since there's still clothing in it, which I just haven't pulled out and put in its proper place in a drawer on my shelf in the closet, there it sits in the suitcase on the floor at the foot of our bed.

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And I never think about the suitcase being there until I stub my toe on it late at night when

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I'm trying to get back into bed. Becky's already in bed, she's already asleep, the lights are off,

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I've taken care of the girls, making sure those who need to go potty in the middle of the night are taken care of so Becky doesn't have to do that.

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She wakes up with them in the morning, I take care of all the nighttime stuff whenever they have to get up in the night and have to go potty or otherwise.

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So I get up, I take care of that problem, I might go to the bathroom myself, I come back around the bed, and walking around the foot of the bed,

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I stub my toe. And this happens two or three times a week ever since we got back from vacation, and I still just won't put the suitcase away.

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But I don't know what it is about finding things in the dark with your toes, but the moment your foot connects,

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I don't know if this is the same way with you as it is for me, but there's that moment, it's like a second or two, but it's just a moment where once your foot hits and you feel that pain shoot through your lower digits.

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And I think to myself, Lord Jesus, come quickly. That's the thought that goes through my mind is that pain shoots through my foot.

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There's something about stubbing your toe that's unlike any other pain that you get. There's a second where you feel like your leg's gonna fall off or something.

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Stubbing your toe, and yet it quickly passes. It's just one of those pains that you endure, but for a moment, and then it's gone.

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And yet the way that Paul describes the pains and the struggles that we experience in our life right now, the way that he describes those things here in 2

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Corinthians chapter four, they would be the equivalent of stubbing your toe when you compare it to the eternal glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus.

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As Paul puts it in Romans 8, 18, and I even prayed it this way this morning already. Paul says,

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I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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So by comparison, this is but a light momentary affliction. Whatever you go through in this life, and even just the daily grind.

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Maybe you don't have anything serious going on in your life right now, but just the daily grind of the day by day, waking up, doing this, making sure all the things get done so that I can see the zeros on the end of my paycheck to pay the bills that I owe.

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And then you're paying the bills and all those other things that we have responsibilities to have to do. They don't really feel like there's any meaning or purpose to them.

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You just know that you have to do them. And maybe you go through those things begrudgingly.

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Maybe it's a struggle. Maybe it puts stress on your life. But whatever is going on with you as you go through those things, great or small, they are but light momentary afflictions.

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Do you consider that? That it is light and momentary.

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We have but a small portion of this life here on earth and the rest of life we spend in eternity with God.

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This thing that we're experiencing now is but light and momentary. As we look at these passages this morning, we have three verses.

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And so like with last week, with the three verses that we consider verses 13 through 15, with these three verses,

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I've sectioned off these verses into three points. We are being renewed.

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That's what we read in verse 16. We are being prepared is what we read in verse 17.

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And finally in verse 18, we are being promised. Let's look again in verse 16.

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We do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

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We're here in the last half of the month of May. A lot of graduations happen in May. Used to be that graduations were kind of more of a

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June thing. It just kind of depends on the part of the country you live in, I guess. Here in Kansas, most of those graduations happen in the month of May.

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I think our high school graduation was this last weekend, but there are still stories of graduations

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I'm hearing about this weekend as well, even the Memorial Day weekend. I have never been invited to speak at a graduation and I probably never will.

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I've been invited to speak at baccalaureates. I've done that a few times, but I've never spoken at a graduation before.

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But whenever we have a large graduating class come from our church, I usually have a Sunday where I will do some sort of a graduation speech.

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This year, we don't have any graduates. Is that correct? No graduates this year from First Southern? Okay, just making sure.

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I didn't see any hands. Yes, I've got a graduate and I totally overlooked you, which would be terrible. But if I were doing a graduation speech here in May of 2018, these six words that we have right here at the start of verse 16 would be a great theme to that graduation speech.

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So we do not lose heart. Because I would encourage graduates as they go from this chapter of their life into the next not to lose heart, especially if you're going from high school into college.

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Because if you think that you've gone through a lion's den in high school, you ain't seen nothing yet until you get to college.

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I mean, the secular institutions out there and what they are ingraining our students with is insane.

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That's what we would have called it decades ago. We would have called it insanity. Here it's considered norm. And if you don't accept whatever it is that the popular culture is accepting, then you are considered, what do they call you, bigot or prejudiced or whatever names they're going to peg you with because you won't go along with the zeitgeist.

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And so as you step into a culture that is actively trying to assault you with satanic philosophies, my encouragement to the graduate would be to not lose heart.

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To now more than ever, seize hold of the truth that you have been taught from the word of God and do not let go of it.

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No matter what, anybody else is going to try to get you to think or to believe.

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Never let your thoughts stray from the promise that we have in Christ Jesus.

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I pray for anybody who has been raised up in a home in which they've heard the truth of the gospel, that in the years that they've heard the gospel of Jesus Christ preached to them, that it's gotten through their mind to their heart and it is written there on tablets of stone so that when you walk into a world that is trying to bombard you with all kinds of venomous and poisonous thoughts, all of that acid that splashes against those stone tablets in your heart on which the word of God has been written will not wither away those words that are etched there, but they will be solid and ingrained and secure.

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And folks, that is a work that only the Holy Spirit of God does. Parents, you could be so fearful for your child that from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you're trying to make them memorize

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Bible verses and catechism and all these other things, and this is the only way I know that I'm going to be able to protect my child from the outside.

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But none of that will matter if the Holy Spirit has not written those words on the heart of your child.

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Love them, be gracious, be diligent. As we're instructed in Ephesians chapter 6, to raise up our children in the training and the instruction of the

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Lord, but pray that God may have grace and favor upon your child to rescue them from the stain of this world and wash them in the blood of the

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Lamb, clothing them in garments white. The apostle

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John wrote, there's nothing more that I desired than to know that my children are walking in the truth.

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And as he's writing that to the church, he's talking about those who have been converted to the truth because of the gospel that John proclaimed.

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But my father said to all of us kids when we were very young, there's nothing that would please me more on Father's Day or on Christmas or on my birthday than to hear you say,

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I'm walking in the faith because of you. I haven't bought my dad a

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Father's Day Christmas present or birthday gift ever since. I just call him up and say, I'm walking in the faith because of you.

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I'm just kidding. That's not true. The sad part about that is

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I'm the only one. I'm the only one of my siblings walking in the truth.

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But even in these things, in these hurts, in these serious trials that we go through, we do not lose heart.

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See, my friends, we have to have an understanding that the world really is a decrepit, depraved, wretched, fallen place.

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Just a couple of days ago, Ireland legalized abortion on demand, and it was a landslide victory.

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It wasn't even close. The band U2 was behind the passing of this law, and they campaigned actively through social media that Ireland would repeal the law that prevented abortion on demand.

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So throw all your U2 albums away. I'm not saying that. It nonetheless was extremely heartbreaking to see this band that many

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Christians have thought was a Christian band doing this thing and campaigning the way that they did in Ireland so that little children would be killed so mom and dad can have casual sex.

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That's really what abortion is. It's to attempt to erase the stain of guilt of the sexual immorality that's going on in the culture, which we can't do.

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It's just sins being compounded upon sins. It gets darker and darker until even our children are being sacrificed.

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We know this world is dark. We know it's sinister. We know it's wasting away.

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And yet, even knowing that, we don't lose heart because we know these things that we're going through now are transient.

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That means they don't last. That means they're wasting away. They're decaying.

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They're becoming dust. None of us really truly believes that the trinkets and the gadgets and the doodads that we buy are going to give us any sort of lasting pleasure, even though there may be a moment in there in which we feel elated because of this new thing that we have just bought.

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Everybody says it's the latest thing and I need to have it in order to be happy and we experience that cognitive dissonance in our minds and in our hearts to believe it's bringing us some kind of satisfaction.

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But even then, even then in that moment that you feel that happiness over this new trinket that you have purchased, you know, in your heart of hearts, you know that thing's not really going to last.

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And the happiness and the experience that you have for that moment is but fleeting. For tomorrow, they're going to come out with an updated version of that gadget.

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Now you have to trade that one in in order to feel the happiness that you had before for the one that you're now looking at your hand going, boy,

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I hate this thing that once brought me happiness and now it's preventing me from getting the next thing that will bring me happiness.

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There, there's really nothing material, no offering in this world that will give you any lasting satisfaction, which is why our trust and our hope cannot be in the things of this world.

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We have to have hearts and minds that are fixed firmly upon Christ Jesus for only he endures for all time.

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So, therefore, we do not lose heart. Remember last week, we, in looking at verses 13 through 17, we talked about how belief in Christ developed in us a heart to speak and confess the name of Christ, the gospel that we believe.

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It is by faith in Christ that we've been raised from the dead to life. It is by faith in Christ that we are thankful for what

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God has done for us and is doing for us day by day. And so because of our faith in Christ, as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God, verse 15, then verse 16, so we do not lose heart.

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By the grace of God that we've been given in Jesus Christ, we do not lose heart. Your sins are forgiven by faith in Christ.

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We do not lose heart. The world may not let you forget your sin, but God has said, as far as the east is from the west,

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I have removed your transgressions from you. As deep is the sea, I have put them there, and I remember your transgressions no more.

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So all the sins that we have committed against God, all those things that will be held against us on the day of judgment,

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God has paid for them by the blood of Christ, and they are no longer held against us.

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So therefore, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self,

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Paul says, is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

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The moment you came to faith in Christ, you were immediately justified. Immediately in that moment that you believed in Christ Jesus, his death on the cross for your sins, his resurrection from the grave and conquering death, his ascending to heaven and being seated at the right hand of the throne of God, the promise of his coming again to judge the living and the dead.

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When you placed your faith in Christ Jesus, you were immediately in that moment justified before God.

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You could stand in the holy of holies and God would receive you as a son or daughter in his name.

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But though you were immediately justified, you were not yet fully sanctified.

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Being sanctified means being made holy. So there were still things in your mind that were attached to this world and had not yet been turned in the direction of the kingdom of God when you came to Christ.

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You had a heart that was mourning over your sin, but your mind was still attached to things of this world.

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And even now where you are, that is the case. For you still inhabit a fleshly body that exists in this world, it's impossible for you to completely detach your mind from earth to focus completely on the things of heaven.

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But day by day, your mind is being renewed. The toxicity of this world is being washed out.

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And your heart and your mind are being wooed all the time, drawn all the more to Christ and his word by the

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Holy Spirit, to the Father who is in heaven over us. And day by day, as we grow in the knowledge of his word, we long all the more for heaven and less and less for this earth.

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This is the renewal that we experience in our minds on a daily basis.

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We are being renewed. Less like the world, more like Christ.

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In Romans 12, 1 and 2, Paul says, in view of God's mercy, in view of the fact that you have been justified in Christ Jesus, present your bodies as a holy and living sacrifice unto the

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Lord, holy and acceptable to him. And this is your spiritual act of worship.

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And when Paul is talking there in Romans 12, 1 about presenting your body unto the Lord, he's not talking about a spiritual body, just a spiritual body.

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He's talking your physical bodies. Even in your physical body, live lives of holiness.

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Abstain from sexual immorality. Do not any longer have anger or malice in your heart toward other people.

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Do not covet. Do not envy. Do not desire those things which you do not have, as though you aren't satisfied in Christ in all that he has done for you.

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All of these things, the passions of our flesh, we must put away, no longer desiring those things with our bodies.

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But instead, even with our bodies, because the soul has been transformed, we would desire that that would be reflected by the way that we live on the outside as well.

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So presenting our bodies to God as a living sacrifice.

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You don't have to die to shed your own blood as a sacrifice to God. Why?

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Because Christ did it. Your blood wouldn't have been good enough anyway. But Christ, who is perfect, his blood shed for you so that you can live for him and be a living sacrifice unto the

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Lord. And this is your spiritual act of worship. Present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice, and this is your spiritual act of worship.

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And then verse 2. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

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And then you will see what God's will is for you, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

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This whole idea of being transformed by the renewing of the mind is an understanding that every day we are taking thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ.

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Paul, by the way, gets to that here in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

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So this is a daily exercise. It regularly needs to be done. Taking thoughts captive, making them obey

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Christ. There was a man that I visited with here in this community this past week, and we had such a great conversation.

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I really thought I was going to see him in church this morning, but he's not here. But he really was quite knowledgeable about the scriptures.

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And he said he had been to several other churches in town, and they all told him that, you know, you can just sin and ask

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God for forgiveness, and he's going to forgive you. And he would look at them and go, no, no,

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I can't just go sin as though that's okay, and then ask

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God for forgiveness. If that's the case, I'm still enslaved to my sin. And he's telling me this with all the, you know, gusto and animation that his arms can give me, and I'm like, amen, brother, exactly right.

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You can't continue in your sin. But as we were talking, he divulged to me that he's not a churchgoer, and he doesn't want to go to church.

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And he said, I shouldn't have to go to church. I'm not about tradition. And I said, well, brother, you're not following Christ.

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And he was totally shocked that I told him that, and I said, Christ was all about tradition. He went into the synagogue on the

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Jewish holidays. He told his disciples to baptize and be baptized.

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That's a ritual. At the Last Supper, when he took the

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Passover meal and reinstituted it to remember his body that is broken for us and his blood that is spilled for the forgiveness of sins, do this in remembrance of me.

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That's tradition. That's a custom. That's something that we as a church together practice.

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All throughout the epistles, what you see in the New Testament, especially in 1 and 2 Paul is constantly referring back to creeds that were in practice in the church, that the church recited, that would summarize key essential doctrines of the faith.

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This isn't something that we've made up in our modern nomenclature within the church. This is something that was present in the church even within its first decades of taking key essential truths and narrowing them down into easy -to -remember phrases that would be recited in the church, referred to as creeds and confessions, so that we would remember those essential truths and cling to them and grow in the knowledge of them.

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This is tradition. It's custom. And the church does it forever. And if you are opposed to those things, then how can you say that you're conformed to Christ who commanded that we follow these things?

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And at the end of our conversation, I really believe that I had him convinced that you cannot be a

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Christian on an island. You are meant to be part of a holy nation.

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A people that has been purified for his own possession and zealous for good works.

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That according to Colossians chapter 3, we would encourage and admonish one another. How can you do that in the body of Christ if you're not with the body of Christ?

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The Bible describes in Ephesians chapter 4 that we are maturing one another. We are growing each other into the head who is

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Christ Jesus. As Tim Challies has put it, sanctification is a community project.

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You cannot sanctify yourself by yourself. If Christ has commanded us that we go and love our neighbor, you can't do that unless you're around neighbors.

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As we have been commanded to love our brother, you can't do that if you're not with the brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.

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We regularly need to be conformed to Christ and we do that together. We don't do that separately and by ourselves.

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Why is church so important? Because Christ commanded you to go to church. But even in church, we grow one another, encourage one another, we strengthen each other.

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At times, we even admonish one another, which means to correct with goodwill. That's necessary even within the body too.

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And so again, I thought I had the young man convinced and I still hope and pray maybe he'll show up here or,

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God willing, maybe he's attending another church. I won't be so prejudiced as to think that he has to come to mine, but I was still hoping that I was going to see him this morning.

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But this is something that as we're growing in sanctification, as we're being renewed day by day, this has to be an activity that we do together with the church.

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It's not something that you can do by yourself. There are certainly things you should be doing by yourself.

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Bible reading, prayer, those things are definitely important. Keeping yourself from evil, bridling your tongue, not even speaking words that are like the words that the world says.

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But in our minds, being conformed to Christ, that would come out in the way that we even talk.

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For Jesus himself said that with the heart, the mouth speaks.

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Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks, and you will be held accountable for every word that you say.

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In James 1, we are told that if a man cannot bridle his tongue, his religion is worthless.

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If he cannot even reflect with his own words a transformation that has happened in his heart, how can he say that he is truly a follower of Christ?

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And so we go through this process of being renewed day by day, which is not an easy process.

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It's hard. It's like a sculptor trying to create a masterpiece.

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You have a great big block of stone, and he's got his hammer and his chisel, and he has to chisel away parts of that rock until he gets to the form that he is trying to create out of it.

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The great sculptor Michelangelo was once asked how he was able to create such magnificent works of art out of stone, and he says,

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I look at a block of stone and I see it. I see what it is I'm trying to create, and I just work it, taking away all the parts that I don't want.

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And that is what Christ sees in every single one of us. He sees in us, or let me put it this way, this is what

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God the Father sees in every one of us. He sees exactly what he wants to make us into, and that's his

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Son, Jesus Christ. And he etches away all of the parts that don't belong. And that's a painful process sometimes.

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If you could think of that block of stone as having nerve endings in it, how it would feel as you chip away parts of that stone to get to the masterpiece that's on the inside.

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And that's what it's like as we are being shaped day by day, being renewed into the image of Christ.

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There are parts that are worldly that need to be taken off of us, and it hurts. Spiritually, it's a painful process.

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But as we're told in Hebrews chapter 12, the Lord disciplines those he loves.

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If the Lord was not disciplining you, you would be illegitimate sons and daughters and not truly the sons and daughters of God.

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So rejoice as you go through the afflictions that the Lord is using to shape you more into the image of Christ, for they are but light and momentary.

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And what God is shaping you into is the eternal picture of his Son, in whom we will be made like according to 1

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John 3, 2. We will be made to be like him because we will see him as he is.

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As the Apostle Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 13, now we see as though through a glass darkly, but soon we will see face to face, and then we will know just as we are fully known.

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In other words, God knows us fully, even the person he is making us into. A day will come when we stand on the other side in glory, when we will see all that work that God was doing was for his majesty and for his glory.

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So we do not lose heart. Though the outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

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And that's verse 16. Point number one, we are being renewed. Point number two in verse 17, for this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

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And this goes right with what we've been talking about in verse 16, we're being prepared. We're being renewed, we're being prepared.

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And it's amazing when you consider what Paul is referring to as this light momentary affliction.

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And I've already given you some examples of this at the start of the sermon and in the prayer.

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Whatever you're going through in life, it's a light momentary affliction. Stubbing your toe, light momentary affliction.

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Cancer diagnosis, light momentary affliction. You can say, brother

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Gabe, you've never had cancer. You don't know what that's like. No, you're right. I don't know what that's like. And praise be to God if I never have to know what that's like.

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But even the sickness that you would endure in your own body is but a light momentary affliction compared to the glory that awaits us.

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Now whenever we hit these trials and these struggles in this life, I know that it's very common to say that, you know, you need to praise

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God, you need to thank God even as you go through this trial. And then the struggle there becomes, how am I thankful for cancer?

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You know, how am I thankful for the death of this loved one? How am

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I thankful for the ramifications that I'm experiencing because of this circumstance that happened in my life that I had absolutely no control over?

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How am I thankful for those things? And it's not that you would necessarily say, praise

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God for cancer. Because the sicknesses that we have in this world, they're a result of sin.

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That's why we get sick and die. It's because the sin of mankind has resulted in the curse of all of creation.

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So we shouldn't necessarily be thankful for death because death is a curse.

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But we're thankful that even though it's what we deserve for our sin, God is rescuing us out of that through the promise of Christ.

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And we're thankful to know that this is but a moment, and then we will join our

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Lord forever in glory when we will not have to go through these things in this world anymore.

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And this becomes a testament to other people that your faith is so secure in Christ, you do not despair no matter how horrible things get.

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I read to you a couple of weeks ago a passage from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. The Pilgrim's Progress is being made into an animated film that's supposed to be coming out in the spring of 2019.

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So we should be seeing an animated version of The Pilgrim's Progress coming out next year.

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I was given a sneak peek. There was a part of a ministry that I follow, and because I follow that ministry, they sent me by email a sneak peek of the film, which was something like 15 minutes long.

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It was a pretty substantial chunk, showed me two parts, one when Pilgrim still had the load on his back, and another part when he was

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Christian, and he and Faithful were trying to get to the Celestial City, and Christian has his armor on.

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And he was in the pit of despair, and the big giants, the ogres that have imprisoned

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Christian and Faithful, that are referred to as despair, he has them in this cage.

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It's even showing this in the animated feature, and the giant is angry that Christian and his friend have not killed themselves yet.

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And said, I've given you everything available to you to do the job yourself, and you haven't even done it yet.

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And then as Christian and Faithful are talking about that, they're wondering, why hasn't he killed us? Why hasn't he done it yet?

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And the answer to that question finally dawns on them, it's because he can't. Despair can't kill you.

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God has not allowed despair to be able to take your life. Though it seems horrible, and the stresses and anxieties you would be under at the time that you're experiencing that depression, though it might feel like death, it nonetheless does not have the power to take your life.

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But there are people who will feel so unable to get out of that pit that they will decide that the only way that I can get out of this is to take my own life.

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And they will resort to suicide. They will resort to what they think is a permanent solution to not so permanent problems.

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But despair has no power to take our life. Even in despair, even in depression, even in anxiety, even these things are but light, momentary afflictions.

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My friends, Jesus experienced depression after the triumphal entry when he went up on the

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And he's overlooking Jerusalem, and he is filled with compassion in his heart for the people who were crying out his name but did not know who he was.

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He says, Oh, Jerusalem, how I've longed to gather you to myself as a hen gathers her chicks, but you were not willing.

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And he is overcome with compassion. I can't remember which teacher it was now that I remember teaching on that particular passage, but the word for compassion there is the same word as getting sick to your stomach.

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Have you ever been so grieved or so depressed over something that it made you sick to your stomach?

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That is the affection and the love that Christ had for those who would call out his name but would not worship him.

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They wanted their sicknesses and their diseases to be healed, but they did not actually want to submit to the

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And Christ in his longing for these people was filled with compassion to the point that it made him sick.

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He experienced depression like that. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the anxiety that he felt to sweat drops of blood, you've not experienced anxiety like that before.

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So we do not go through anything that is more afflicting on the person than what

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Christ has gone through. And furthermore, my friends, my brothers and sisters, I'll tell you, we do not go through anything in our lives that is more afflicting than what the

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Apostle Paul went through either. Consider what Paul is referring to when he says, this is a light momentary affliction.

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Back in chapter 1 at the introduction to the book of 2 Corinthians, Paul said in verse 8,

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We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

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Indeed, we felt that we had received a sentence of death. But Paul goes on, that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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The affliction that you're going through in this life is to make you rely more on God who raises the dead.

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Will he deliver you out of the circumstance that you are in right now? Yes. It may not be the way you want him to deliver you out of it.

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It may not be that he resolves that problem with the happy fairytale ending that you want, but he will deliver you out of your light momentary afflictions, which don't seem so light and momentary right now.

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But he will deliver you out of them. And on the other side in glory, you will be looking back on the things that had so grabbed and consumed your mind and your heart now.

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And you will look at those things and you'll go, wow, that was light and momentary. And now

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I am forever with God, where light momentary afflictions can't touch me anymore.

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My friends, I say to you, though, if you have not repented and come to follow in Jesus Christ, your affliction is not light and momentary.

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If you are not a follower of Christ, the affliction that you are experiencing right now is heaven compared to the wrath of God that will be upon you if you die and stand before him in judgment without the atoning blood of Christ.

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Turn from your sin and follow Jesus, and then you will understand the encouragement that Paul raises when he says, we do not lose heart.

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For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

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And again, I repeat to you even more, the things that Paul went through that he refers to as light momentary afflictions.

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In chapter 11, he says, I've gone through far more imprisonments, countless beatings, often near death.

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Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods.

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Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship, through many sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

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And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

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Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to fall and I am not indignant? If I must boast,

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I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.

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At Damascus, the governor under King Eratos was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me.

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But I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands. My friends, when you leave church today and you go home, are you afraid that there's going to be somebody waiting at your door to seize you and afflict you because of the gospel that you've been proclaiming?

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You are not under that kind of affliction. But that's what Paul went through, all of this and more.

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And how does he refer to it? Light momentary afflictions.

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I'm not saying to you that it's going to be easy. Nor am I mocking you if you feel so afflicted by whatever is going on in your life.

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I'm not the one that's back here going, ah, buck up, rub some dirt on it, you'll be fine. That's not me.

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I'm trying to direct your eyes and your gaze heavenward to Christ so that you not be consumed by the concerns of this world, but you are set free by knowing that in Christ Jesus, you're not going to stay here.

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And you will not waste away in the grave, in this fallen and wasted world.

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But in Christ, you will be transformed into something glorious forever, by the way, forever.

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And you will not be taken from that glory that is promised us in Christ. So this stuff that we go through now is but light momentary afflictions.

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In chapter 12, in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, the Apostle Paul refers to a messenger of Satan that is a thorn in his flesh.

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And three times he cries out to God to take it away from him. But he said to me, this is 2

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Corinthians 12 9, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Therefore, Paul says, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

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For the sake of Christ, then I'm content with weaknesses, with insults, with hardships, with persecutions and calamities for when

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I am weak, then I am strong. There's nothing wrong with praying and asking

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God to take away the struggle that you feel. There's nothing wrong with that. Lord, would you please relieve me of this burden, this thing that I am going through, this stress, this obligation, this responsibility, this thing that has been weighing on me day by day.

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Lord, would you please take me from this? Will you please heal my sickness? Will you please repair my family?

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Will you please restore that person who has been fallen away from the faith? There is nothing wrong with praying those things.

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But I hope that in what you are praying, your steadfastness in your faith is not relying on the outcome of the thing that you are praying for.

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If it doesn't go your way, would you lose faith in God? Or would you hear

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God say to you, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness?

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If you're afflicted with something, there's a possibility that you may never be disafflicted with it all the way to the day that you die.

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I don't know if disafflicted is a word, but I just made it up. But rely on Christ.

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Peter says in 1 Peter 5, place all your cares on Christ Jesus because He cares for you.

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And my friends, by the way, that's not a suggestion and it's not an offering. It's a command.

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Place all your cares upon Him because He cares for you. If at any point you feel like I can take care of this problem by myself, that's prideful.

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That's thinking you can deal with it by yourself and you can't. For only

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Christ has overcome the world. You have not, nor will you ever. So place your cares upon Him who has conquered even death for in Christ Jesus, we will be made alive together with Him.

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His grace that we have in Christ is sufficient for us and His power is made perfect in our weakness.

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As we go through the things that we endure in this life, they are but light momentary afflictions and we are being prepared for the day of glory, an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

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Verse 18, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are seen are eternal.

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And what we're being told here is that we are being promised a day in which we will be with Christ forever in glory.

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We are being renewed. We are being prepared. And if Christ is doing these things in our lives, then we are being promised the day of glory in Christ Jesus.

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As we wrap these things up, as we bring this to a conclusion, let's look at Colossians chapter three, and everybody turn there with me,

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Colossians chapter three, Colossians chapter three.

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This is going to be the summary of point three that we are being promised and we need to fix our eyes heavenwards on the things that are eternal, not being consumed by these things on earth that are transient.

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Colossians three, beginning in verse one, if then you have been raised with Christ. Now read that and understand the weight of that measure.

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We're not just talking about being raised on the day that you die with Christ or being raised on the day that Christ returns and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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We're saying that now, because of your faith in Christ, you have been raised from death to life.

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So if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

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When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

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This is the apostle Paul repeating the truth that Jesus stated in Matthew chapter six. Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow has enough trouble of its own.

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Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the things that you need will be added to you as well.

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Verse five, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

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On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

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Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

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Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythian, slave -free, but Christ is all and in all.

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Put on them as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another.

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And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the

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Lord has forgiven you so you must also forgive. We miss that part at the end of the

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Lord's prayer there in Matthew chapter six, where Jesus says, if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your heavenly father forgive you your sins.

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But if you have been forgiven your sins, you must forgive others their sins.

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And above all, verse 14, above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

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And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

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And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

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Because my friends, if we have this promise of eternity with Christ, how do we have that promise?

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In the word of Christ. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

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Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

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And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the

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Father through him. Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the

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Lord. Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children obey your parents in the

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Lord. For this pleases the Lord. Fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

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Bondservants obey in everything those who are your earthly masters. Not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the

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Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily for the Lord and not for men.

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Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the

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Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong that he has done.

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And there is no partiality. Continuing on into chapter four, masters treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

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Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which

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I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.

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Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.