The Destructive Heresy of legalism

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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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And I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 15th chapter of Acts.
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Acts chapter 15 and hold your place at verse 1.
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I have for a long time looked forward to arriving at this point in the book of Acts.
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We have already seen some very important moments in church history which have been described for us as we've studied through the first 14th chapters.
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We've seen the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost.
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We've seen the calling of the first deacons.
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We've seen the stoning of Stephen.
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The conversion of Paul.
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The Gospel going to the Samaritans and to the Gentile God-fearers.
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And we've seen the first missionary journey of the Apostle Paul.
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Any one of those could be considered watershed moments of history.
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They all had tremendous significance in the shaping of the early church.
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However, today we have come to a point that I would say is the watershed moment.
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This is the turning point.
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This sets a precedent that will have implications which will be far-reaching and continue to reach even to today.
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In fact, it is hard to imagine an event which could be considered more significant than what we read in Acts 15.
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Because this section deals with what is often identified as the first church council.
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This is the first time that a dispute over foundational Christian doctrine is brought to the apostles and the elders, and they provide a proclamation of truth.
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This is the truth.
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It's the first official pronouncement of Christian dogma after which any teaching would be considered heresy.
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This is huge.
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This is a huge moment in church history.
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The landscape of church history is marked with synods and councils producing creeds and confessions all through history.
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We've seen especially important very early in the church were the early ecumenical councils, the Council of Nicaea which brought about the proclamation of our understanding of the deity of Jesus Christ and understanding from Scripture who He truly is as God in the flesh and the Council of Chalcedon brought the understanding of Christ being not only God in the flesh but fully man and thus He was dual nature.
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He was God and man, fully God and fully man.
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The Council of Orange helped affirm the understanding of man's nature as being sinful, totally depraved.
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So these councils have had far-reaching implications.
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They have had implications that move even down into today.
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And as I said, the most notable and I would argue the most significant of all of these councils in the early church was the one that happened in Jerusalem in Acts 15.
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Now just for history's sake, I want to kind of give you a picture of where this council falls.
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You often hear me say first century this, first century that.
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What is the first century? The first century is all of the years leading up to 99 and then of course at the year 100 you enter the second century.
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So 100s are the second century.
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The first century is all the earlier than that times and Jesus Christ we know was born somewhere around the year 0.
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There was no year 0, that's a joke.
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But He was born about 3 B.C., 3 or 4 B.C.
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according to the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria and all these things.
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And the calendar that we use now is supposed to be based on this is 2016 years after the birth of Jesus Christ.
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Well we know that's not exactly 100% correct.
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So we know this, Jesus would have died somewhere around the year 30 or thereabouts.
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This council is taking place approximately in 48 or 49.
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So this puts this council 20 years after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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So it's been 20 years now.
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And what's interesting if you think about that, that's how far we are in Acts.
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Because Acts begins with the ascension of Jesus Christ.
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So, so far in our study of Acts, it might only seem like we've covered a couple of years.
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We've covered 20 years of history to bring us to this point.
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And now that we have gone 20 years into history, we come to this situation that cannot simply be resolved in the church, local, but is brought to the council.
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And so, we see this important event and we're going to read it in its entirety this morning.
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It's 21 verses, it's a lot more than we normally read.
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But we're going to take four weeks to study this, so don't get too alarmed.
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I'm not going to try to get through all 21 verses today.
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But I want you to read the whole context so that we know what we're studying and where we're going.
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So, as we often do and we continue to do, let's stand to read God's Word.
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Beginning in verse 1 of Acts 15.
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But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.
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So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers.
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When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders and they declared all that God had done with them.
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But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.
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The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter and after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.
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And God who knows the heart bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He had to us.
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And He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their heart by faith.
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Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will.
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And all the assembly fell silent and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
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After they finished speaking, James replied, Brothers, listen to me, Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for His name.
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And with this the words of the prophets agree, Just as it is written, After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen, I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who makes these things known from of old.
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Therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.
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For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues.
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Let's pray.
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Father, this text is so, so important.
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I plead with you to keep me from error.
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Help me to hold my tongue if there is anything that is going to be said that is incorrect.
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Such value, Lord, is in this text.
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And Father, I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to the truth, that you would help us understand it better, and how valuable this is for today.
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The Scripture never becomes irrelevant because it is the Word of God, it is living, it is powerful, it is sharper than any two-edged sword.
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Lord, cut us with it today.
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Show us the truth of the Word today.
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Help keep us focused on you throughout this message.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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When we get to Acts 15, the context is simple.
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Paul and Barnabas have completed their first missionary journey, which in all estimates seems to have been about a two-year ordeal going on the round trip that they did coming back to Antioch.
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Antioch was the church that sent them, and it's the church that they returned to.
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And so, it sort of becomes the base of operations or the home church for the Apostle Paul.
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And we see in Acts 15, that is where this is happening.
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Remember, there are no verse distinctions, there's no chapter distinctions when the Bible was written.
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So if you see in verse 28 of chapter 14, it says, And they remained no little time with the disciples.
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This is talking about Paul and Barnabas in Antioch.
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So when it says in chapter 15 verse 1, But some men came down from Judea.
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Well, where are they coming to? Coming to Antioch from Judea.
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So it kind of gives us a context of the fact that this is a heresy, which is coming into Paul's church.
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And it's coming from a place of very high regard.
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Judea.
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What's in Judea? Jerusalem.
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What is likely the situation is that these believers, these, well, I don't want to necessarily call them believers, these heretics are coming from Jerusalem, they're coming from Judea, and they're coming to Antioch, and they're coming in to set them straight.
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Because that's what the Apostle Paul needed.
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He needed to be set straight, right? They're coming in to bring this truth that has been let go.
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This very important truth that unless you are a Jew first, you can't be a Christian.
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Now, looking at the Jerusalem council, looking at the beginning and what is the reason for the council, and that's the three parts today of the message.
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Well, not today, but as we go through the next few weeks, we're going to look at the reason for the message, we're going to look at the response of the leaders, that's being the elders and the apostles, and we're going to finally look at the resolution.
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What did the council finally determine? But as we look at the reason for the council, I think it's important that we understand that there's another book of the Bible which is also written to deal with this issue.
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The book of Galatians is written on this same issue.
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In fact, if you would just indulge me for a moment, hold your place in Acts 15 and turn to Galatians chapter 1.
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Look at verse 6.
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This is the apostle Paul.
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By the way, who are the Galatians? The Galatians are the people that Paul preached to on his first missionary journey.
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Lystra, Derbe, and all those places, they're in the region known as Galatia.
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So he's writing to these people that he had done the missionary, he had planted these churches.
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And he says in verse 6, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
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Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
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Now, who is it that Paul is talking about in chapter 1 of Galatians? He's talking about the same issue, not necessarily the same individuals, even though it could be, but the same issue that's being dealt with in Acts 15.
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There are people who are distorting the gospel of Christ.
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How are they distorting it? They're adding the requirements of the law which must be met before a person can become a Christian.
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They are, as it were, setting up a vestibule to Christianity.
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You know, here at our church, when you come in through the front door, you have to come in through what we've argued for years what it's called.
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I call it the narthex.
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Some people call it the foyer.
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Some people call it the vestibule.
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That room out there that you have to come through before you get into here, whatever you call it, the hallway, that room is a necessary part of the church.
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You've got to go through it to get into here.
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Now, I know you're probably looking at these doors, you're going to call me a heretic later because I said you couldn't come straight in here.
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But the point is if you're coming the normal way, you go in through the front door, into the vestibule, into the sanctuary.
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And essentially what these people believed was that Christ is where you're going.
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But there's only one door to get to Christ.
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And that door has a vestibule, and it's Judaism.
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To get to the Messiah, you've got to go through the outer room first, and the outer room is the law.
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So they've established now a step.
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They've established a second door.
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Christ is the door, but to get to Him you've got to go this way.
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And the Apostle Paul challenges this, and he says in Galatians 1, that's not the gospel.
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That is another gospel.
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And guess what? There's not another gospel, so that makes it not the gospel at all.
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In fact, there's an interesting historical account because this issue leads to a discussion and a disagreement between the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter.
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Two of the most important men in church history were at odds with one another.
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Turn to chapter 2 of Galatians in verse 11.
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It says, But when Cephas...
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By the way, Cephas is Peter.
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It's just a Hebrew name.
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When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.
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For before certain men came from James...
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Where's James, by the way? In Jerusalem.
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He's the pastor of the church of Jerusalem, so this all kind of fits together.
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These guys keep coming out of Jerusalem.
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They're the problem.
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Later on, we're going to find out that some of them were actually part of the Pharisees that had converted to Christ, but they're keeping their Pharisaical traditions.
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He says here in verse 12, Before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.
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But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
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And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
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So get the picture of what's happening here.
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Peter is all about eating with the Gentiles.
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He's hamming it up.
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That's a bad joke.
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He's eating with the Gentiles.
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He's fellowshipping with the Gentiles.
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He's enjoying the table fellowship with them until these men come from Judea and they come in as their very traditional Jewish background.
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We won't touch a ham sandwich.
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We're going to have Shabbat every week.
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We're going to have our opportunity to celebrate.
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We're going to keep our laws and we're going to maintain our rituals.
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We're going to maintain our customs and traditions.
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And when Peter sees them coming, he backs away from the Gentiles.
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So you can imagine, maybe after church one Sunday, one of the guys comes over to Peter and says, hey Peter, we've got a roasted pig at our home.
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Would you like to come eat? Oh no, can't do that.
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So this is the situation.
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Peter was all about the Gentiles until the Jews came.
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He was all about this fellowship with them until the Jews who were arguing for this absolute consistent hold to the Jewish law came.
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And so what did Paul do? It says in v.
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14, oh by the way, in v.
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13 it tells us he even influenced Barnabas.
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That just shows you how bad teaching can corrupt good teachers.
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And it does.
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Because Barnabas is a fantastic teacher.
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He's an evangelist, he's a missionary, and yet even he was corrupted by this.
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V.
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14, Paul says, but when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like the Jews? You're a hypocrite, man.
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That's a short way of saying what he says in v.
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14.
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Paul called Peter, in front of everybody, a hypocrite.
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You're requiring something of them that you yourself can't even maintain.
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The law didn't save you.
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You were saved by grace through faith, and yet you want to hold them under the law.
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You've become a Christian Pharisee.
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Because what did the Pharisees do? They put bindings and they put weights on men that they themselves wouldn't carry.
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And so Paul is saying this here to Peter.
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He's challenging this wrong behavior.
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Now, some people believe that the Acts 15 portion, the Jerusalem Council, is the same situation as what's happening here in Galatians 2.
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I don't necessarily believe that they're the same.
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I think that they're distinctive.
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The question that I have, and I'll be honest with you, I haven't totally resolved it in my own mind, and maybe you have and you can explain to me later, is which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did this situation with Paul and Peter happen before the Council or after? Pastor Brian Borgman, a man I respect and listen to a lot, he tends to believe it happened before the Council.
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That this issue with Peter and Paul was actually part of the impetus that brought about the Council.
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That makes sense to me.
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There are other people though who believe this is after the Council, that Peter has regressed.
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That even though Peter made this strong proclamation about the Gentiles at the Council, that later he was pushed back.
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We don't know, but this is what we do know.
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When we go back to Acts 15, and everybody turn back to Acts 15 there.
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When Peter speaks at Acts 15, this is the last thing he says in the book of Acts.
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This is the last time he's even mentioned in the book of Acts.
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And the last thing that he has mentioned is saying in Acts is this, the full inclusion of the Gentiles apart from the law.
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So that's just interesting to me.
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No matter when the Galatians 2 thing happened, and as I said, I tend to think it happened before this, but it could have happened after.
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I'm not going to be dogmatic about that, but I'll be dogmatic about this.
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Luke's concern is that we understand where Peter stood on this issue.
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Luke wants us to understand that even if he regressed at the Council, the Holy Spirit speaking through those men spoke truth about the full inclusion of the Gentiles apart from the law.
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So that gives you a historical outline and just a broader picture of the importance of what is happening here.
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So having looked at that, let's now go to chapter 15 of Acts 1.
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And we're going to start going through the text.
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The title of today's message...
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By the way, that was all introduction.
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The title of today's message is The Destructive Heresy of Legalism.
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And we see in verse 1, "...but some men came down from Judea..." We've already talked about the situation.
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These guys are coming probably out of Jerusalem.
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"...and they were teaching the brothers..." That is the brothers in Antioch.
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"...unless you are circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." Now just for a moment, I want you to think like you are there.
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Imagine yourself as a member of the church at Antioch.
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You are a Gentile who has been saved by grace through faith.
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You have not been circumcised.
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You are not obeying the dietary restrictions.
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You have a pastor, an elder, and the Apostle Paul and Barnabas and the other men who were the elders there that we read about back in Acts 13.
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You've already heard the Gospel from them.
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They've been preaching to you for years.
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And now some guys come along and they tell you, you ain't saved.
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Because that's basically what they're saying.
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They walk into the church and they say, hey, if you have not been circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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Which means if you're here and you're not circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you ain't saved.
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You ever had somebody preach something to you and it really challenged your faith? I hope so.
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I hope that when I preach it challenges you.
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I know that I hear pastors, especially men like Paul Washer and R.C.
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Sproul and others who preach, and oftentimes it takes me down several notches and causes me to have to look back up and to see where I am and evaluate myself.
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That's what good preaching does.
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But this situation is different.
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Because they're not coming in and saying, hey, evaluate yourself and your faith.
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They're saying your faith is not genuine.
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They're not saying look at your salvation and wherein you might need to repent.
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They're saying you haven't even repented yet.
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You haven't come in because you're still at the front door.
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You haven't come through the vestibule.
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You're still outside.
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That's a huge deal.
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They've come into a group of Gentile believers.
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And I say believers because this is a church that sent the missionaries.
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This is a church that prayed for the missionaries.
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This is a church that was excited to see the missionaries come home and listen to their proclamation.
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This is a church of Gentiles and they're hearing somebody tell them you're not saved because you don't obey the law that we believe you must obey before you can get saved.
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By the way, that's the heart of legalism.
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If you don't know what legalism is, I want to read a very good definition.
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This is from the Dictionary of Christianity in America.
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This is the definition of legalism.
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And I quote, The act of putting law above gospel by establishing requirements for salvation beyond repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, legalism reduces the broad, inclusive, and general precepts of the Bible to narrow and rigid codes.
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Ultimately, it creates a system that obligates God to bless those who have proven themselves worthy.
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It thus leads to underestimate both the sinfulness of humanity and the holiness of God.
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Now, let me shorten that up because that was a long definition.
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Simply stated, legalism is any time an act of righteousness is demanded before a person can be saved.
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Any act of righteousness.
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Anything that a person must do before God will accept them and save them, any action on their part is legalism in the sense that they have any law that's placed at their feet.
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Now, having said that, I want to define for you what's not legalism.
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Because I've been called a legalist several times.
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You'd be amazed.
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I've also been called a liberal.
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We'll talk about that in a little while.
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I've been called a lot of names.
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But legalist does not mean this.
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Number one, people will say you're a legalist if you believe in repentance.
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You ever heard that? I know I have.
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If you call people to repentance, you're a legalist.
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You don't call people to repentance.
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You just call people to accept Jesus.
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Let me explain something to you that's very simple.
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Repentance is part of the Gospel.
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Repentance is a requirement because repentance means a change of mind which results in a change of action.
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That's what the term means.
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And if you haven't changed your mind, you haven't come to faith.
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And if you haven't changed your mind to the point that it changes your actions, your faith isn't genuine according to James.
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Repentance is a gift of grace.
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According to 2 Timothy 2.25, if you want to look it up, it says that God grants repentance to people.
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Repentance is a gift of grace.
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It is not legalism.
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When I say repentance is required for salvation, what I mean is God must grant someone repentance before they can be saved because that is what God does.
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When God regenerates a heart, He gives them a new life, and a new life is marked by change.
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And these changes don't save us.
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They're subsequent to our salvation, but they are present.
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And if they're not present, we're not saved.
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Simple enough? That has to be understood.
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When somebody tells me, well, you preach repentance, you're a legalist, I say no.
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If that's true, Jesus was a legalist because He went about preaching, repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.
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If Jesus wasn't a legalist, neither am I.
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So just understand that.
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The second thing to consider, if you believe in the lordship of Christ, that does not make you a legalist.
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I've heard that.
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I've heard people...
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I actually read the notes of a pastor who said that if you teach the lordship of Jesus Christ, you teach legalism.
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Let me explain something to you about the lordship of Christ.
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There are people who are legalists who use that term.
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So I'm going to be very, very honest.
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There are people who hold to a type of lordship that does require certain aspects of the Mosaic law and legalism, and they call it lordship salvation.
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So very quickly, there are...
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Guys, but what do we mean when we say lordship salvation? Well, let me explain this very clearly.
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When you come to Jesus Christ and He is your Savior, He is also your Lord.
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You can't have one or the other without having both.
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It's just what the Bible teaches.
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There is a false teaching that became very popular last century, and the idea that you could have Jesus as your Savior, and then later have Him as your Lord.
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Who in the world would call Jesus Savior and not Lord? I haven't met the person yet who told me that was them.
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I haven't met the person who said, yeah, well, Jesus was my Savior, and I'm not ready yet for Him to be my Lord.
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What? I know there are people who believe that.
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I know there are people who teach that.
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I hope that's not you.
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That's not legalism, because this is basically what it's saying is that when we come to Christ, we receive Christ as who He is, not who we demand Him to be.
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And He is Lord.
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We receive Him who He is.
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We don't make Him something.
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I don't make Jesus my Savior.
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I don't make Jesus my Lord.
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He is my Savior.
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He is my Lord.
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I receive Him by faith, but that didn't make Him what He is.
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He is that by nature, not by my making Him that by choice.
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So a belief in repentance and a belief in lordship salvation are not necessarily legalism.
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Now, they can become legalistic.
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They can be misconstrued.
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And I said that already.
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But just understand that there is a distinction that we must make.
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If you believe in the necessity of repentance and lordship of Jesus Christ, then you're not necessarily a legalist.
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A legalist is somebody who believes that salvation comes after you've satisfied some legal demand.
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And if anyone tells you that, then they are teaching a false gospel.
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Now, having defined what is not legalism, it's obvious that these men are teaching legalism.
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We go back to Acts 15 verse 1.
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But some men came down from Judea, were teaching the brothers, unless you're circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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That's obviously legalism.
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I mean, that is the textbook definition.
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I'm going to set this before you that you have to accomplish before God will save you.
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Now, I want to say this, and I'm going to sound...
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The next 10 minutes or so is going to sound really weird.
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So, put your open-minded thinking caps on and don't close your ears to me automatically.
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One thing I'm going to say is it's easy to sympathize with these people, the Jews.
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And by the way, typically, historically, they've been identified as the Judaizers because they believed that you had to become a Jew before becoming a Christian.
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And so, just...
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If you hear me use the word Judaizer, I haven't defined that yet.
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So, just know that when I'm talking about the Judaizers, these are who I'm talking about.
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It is easy to sympathize with them.
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Why do I say it's easy to sympathize with them? Well, the reality is they're the conservatives.
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Now, don't shut me off.
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You listen.
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You can holler at me later.
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In this scenario, the Judaizers are the conservatives in the sense that they hold the position that they would argue is scriptural.
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Remember, the New Testament ain't written yet.
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The first books of the New Testament started being written around the year 45 to 50.
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So, even the first earliest books are just coming into existence at this point.
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New Testament's not written.
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All they have is the Old Testament.
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So, they would say their position is scriptural.
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They would say their position is traditional because it's the tradition for the last 3,000 years.
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So, from the scheme of traditional conservative belief, that's what the Jews are.
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So, what would that make Paul and Barnabas? We don't want to say it.
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Nobody wants to say it.
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They're the liberals because the reality is what's a hallmark of conservatism? Traditional values.
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Tradition, tradition, tradition.
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That's what the Jews are upholding.
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What are Paul and Barnabas upholding? A new understanding.
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I might even use the word progressive.
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They're upholding a different understanding than was understood to this point based on a better and newer understanding of God's revelation.
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Oh no.
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Now, why am I saying this? Why am I pointing this out? Am I just trying to be controversial in a church that I know is a lot of people that like the word conservative? Let me tell you why.
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This is a reminder for us that God is much more concerned that we think like a Christian than we think like a conservative.
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If you can't see the difference, then allow me to explain the difference.
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How many of you know people who are conservatives but aren't believers? Every one of you know people who are strong conservatives morally, socially, financially, politically, and yet they are atheists as long as the day is and they're going to bust hell wide open when they die.
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You know them, and yet they are conservative.
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Some of them are more conservative than you in certain areas.
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Socially, politically, financially.
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Can a person be a conservative and not be a Christian? Yes.
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But I know the argument.
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I always prepare the argument.
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But is it possible to be a liberal and be a Christian? Well, I want you to define in your mind what is a liberal.
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Well, are there not things that people would call you a liberal about? The Amish would say, you're very liberal.
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I've had people say, we're liberal because our ladies don't wear ankle length jeans, skirts, and hair down to their ankles.
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And we wear makeup.
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Oh, for shame.
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I saw Star Wars twice.
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My wife didn't get to go the first time.
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And I know guys who would condemn me to hell for going to see Star Wars.
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Do you really want to talk about liberalism and conservatism or do you want to talk about what the Bible teaches? This is all I'm saying.
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In this situation, Paul is the liberal because he's actually saying that millennial traditions have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ and that the sacred scriptures have been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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And now these things are no longer binding on the conscience of believers.
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And that was a huge deal.
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So I can sympathize with the Judaizers.
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That's all I'm saying.
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I have some sympathy for them in that regard.
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Not at all saying they're right.
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Not at all saying they're correct.
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I'm saying put yourself in their position.
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This is a difficult issue, guys.
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And by the way, on the issue of conservative and liberal, I'm not saying we should be wild-eyed liberals.
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I don't want to hear later how I promoted liberalism today.
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I have not promoted liberalism.
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Most of modern-day liberalism is a celebration of sin and abortion, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity.
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No.
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What I am saying though is we need to construct our thinking biblically, not politically.
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We need to construct our thinking about the mind of Christ rather than the mind of Bill O'Reilly.
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For real.
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We need to quit worrying about the conservative party line or the Republican party line and start thinking about what Jesus cares about stuff.
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And then we can focus on what is really important.
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Now, I want to look at verse 2 very quickly and I just want to mention something because this is going to lead us into our...
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in the weeks to come, it's going to lead us into how this is resolved.
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This is a huge issue.
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This is a dividing line.
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And verse 2 tells us, and after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, this was a huge deal.
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Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and to the elders about this question.
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Why are they going to Jerusalem? Well, that's where they're from.
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I think that the reason why they're going to Jerusalem...
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Presbyterians believe, and I don't want to knock on Presbyterians, but Presbyterians believe that this is the reason why they have a presbytery which is over the local church and that this council is basically the presbytery.
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I think that the reason why they're going to Jerusalem is because this is where those guys came from.
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If a group of people came to this church teaching something and I knew their pastors, guess who I'm going to be on the phone with? If somebody came to my church teaching some nonsense, who am I going to be going to the very next day? I'm going to go to their pastor and say, hey, hey, hey.
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Look at your crazy nonsense that you're sending down here.
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Did you even know that this was happening? So I don't see this so much as a presbytery as I see this as one local church, Antioch, is bringing its issue to the church that brought the problem.
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And we can debate that another time if you want to.
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But ultimately, what we see here is Paul and Barnabas are going.
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And here's the thing, I want to end with this as time has escaped me.
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This issue was not left up to personal or popular opinion.
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Paul didn't say to the Judaizers, hey, you guys have your truth, we'll have our truth.
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You go that way, we'll go this way and everybody will be right.
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No.
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They debated.
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They dissented.
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They argued.
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When they couldn't come to a conclusion, they said, we're going to go to your leaders and figure it out.
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It wasn't about, hey, you have your thing, I have my thing, and we're all okay.
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No.
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We're going to find the truth in this.
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So it wasn't about personal opinion and it wasn't about popular opinion.
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Paul didn't step back and say, well, we'll have a vote.
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And if 51% of the church believes it's justification by grace through faith alone, then that's the way we'll go.
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But if 51% of the church believes it's justification by circumcision and then by grace through faith, then we'll go with that.
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No.
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That is not how truth is determined.
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Truth is never determined by majority vote.
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Truth is never determined by the majority.
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Truth is determined by God.
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Our seeking should always be seeking to discover the truth of God in His Word.
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Now I said I was going to end.
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I'm not.
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I'm going to look at verse 3 very quickly because this is very short.
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Verse 3, So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers.
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Now here's the part I love about verse 3 and we will end at verse 3 because I'm going to end on a positive.
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Paul and Barnabas, they're at the church in Antioch.
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They're having trouble with these guys from Judea.
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The church in Antioch sends them to Jerusalem to deal with the issue on the way they preach the Gospel.
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And you know what the text doesn't say? It doesn't say they talked about the controversy.
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They didn't go to Phoenicia and Samaria building a group of followers.
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They didn't go to Phoenicia and Samaria building up a platform.
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They didn't go as politicians.
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They went as pastors and preachers.
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You know there are things that go on in this church all the time that, praise the Lord, you all don't often know about.
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Because even when there's things going on and there's issues that the elders are dealing with or issues that the deacons are dealing with or issues that individuals are dealing with, it's not necessarily a concern for the community.
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We have a bigger and more important focus.
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And that focus is the Gospel.
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Paul didn't allow this controversy to knock him off his focus.
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And that's why I think verse 3 is often overlooked but very important.
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While he was going to Jerusalem, while I'm sure his mind was focused on this controversy, he didn't allow it to stop him from preaching the Gospel.
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Neither should we.
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We're always going to have controversy.
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We're always going to have problems.
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We're always going to have interrelated problems.
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We're always going to have issues.
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And the elders are going to keep meeting.
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Aren't we, Jack? We're going to keep meeting.
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But guess what? The church will go on.
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The gates of hell will not prevail against her.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the opportunity to preach.
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I pray, Lord, that You've used this and will use this to glorify Yourself.
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And ultimately, that in the weeks to come as we study this text together, that we'll understand the value of justification by grace through faith alone and not of works.
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For a justification by works is not a justification at all.
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And a Gospel which preaches works is not the Gospel.
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Thank You for Jesus.
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Thank You that His work and His work alone and His righteousness alone is that by which we stand today.
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In His name we pray.
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Amen.