In Him, We Live

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There was a Muslim man who lived in Africa who converted to Christianity much to the dismay and frustration of his Muslim community.
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Some of his friends, or fellow friends who were Muslim, asked him, Why have you become a Christian? He answered, Well, it is like this.
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Suppose you were going down a road, and suddenly you came to a fork in the road, and there were two directions, and you didn't know which way to go.
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And there at the fork in the road you saw two men, one dead and one alive.
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Which one would you ask which way to go? My friends, this morning we celebrate because we do not worship at the tomb of a dead prophet.
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We do not recite the teachings of a deceased philosopher.
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We do not praise the name of a lifeless saint.
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No, we celebrate this morning because we serve a risen Savior.
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Christ is risen, and that is a truth which is worth celebrating.
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For this morning, I want to read from the book of the New Testament, the history book of the New Testament church, the book of Acts.
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In the 17th chapter of Acts, if you want to open your Bibles with me, it is Acts 17, verse 28.
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In the 17th chapter of the book of Acts, Paul is preaching to the philosophers of his day.
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He is challenging them about their beliefs.
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He is challenging them about their faith.
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He comes there and he first challenges them for worshiping a God they do not know.
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In verse 23 of Acts 17, we see Paul make reference to the altar of the unknown God.
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You see, they had so many gods.
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There was such a plurality of gods that they even set up an altar to an unknown God, just in case they had left one out.
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So they had the altar of the unknown God, and Paul says, this God that you do not know, He is the God that I am going to proclaim to you.
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He is not some unknown deity, but rather He is the true and living God.
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In the midst of his proclamation, he quotes to them a poem.
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In the poem, we see, when we look at it, that it is not a poem from Jewish history.
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He did not quote from Jewish history because he is not talking to Jews.
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He instead quotes from Greek mythology.
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He quotes from a poem which was originally written of Zeus.
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Zeus, of course, being the primary god in Greek mythology.
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And Paul uses the words of this poem to point away from the false god Zeus to the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Acts chapter 17 and verse 28, we read his quotation of that poem.
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He says, for in Him we live and move and have our being.
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Our Father and our God, we come to you in Jesus' name.
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We thank you for this opportunity to hear your word preached.
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I pray, O Lord, that as I seek to preach your word, that you would keep me from error, help me to focus intently upon the truth, and open the hearts of your people to understand your word.
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Help us all to be moved by this message toward a further understanding of who you are and who Christ is and why these words take on special meaning, the words, in Him we live as we celebrate this resurrection day together.
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Thank you, God, for all that you have done and are going to do.
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In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray.
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Amen.
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At this moment in Paul's preaching, he is challenging his hearers because he's taken something from their own custom and he's used it to point to a greater truth.
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You see, it's not in Zeus that we live and move and have our being.
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It's not in Zeus that we find our reason or our purpose.
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Zeus is a false god, much like the false gods of our day.
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We see millions, nay, billions of people who worship at the feet of false gods today.
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So Paul takes this poem written to a false god and he says, the words of the poem are true, but the object that the poem is pointed at is false.
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So he takes the words from the poem and he said, they don't belong to Zeus.
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And I might extend today, they don't belong to Allah, they don't belong to Buddha, they don't belong to Confucius or any other man or any other deity.
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These words belong solely to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who is called Yahweh, the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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This is Resurrection Sunday and we are here to celebrate the risen Savior, Jesus Christ.
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So somebody might ask, and rightly so, Pastor, why are you concerning yourself with an obscure passage in the book of Acts, which is a quotation of an obscure poem which was written by the Greeks hundreds of years before Christ? Beloved, the answer is because this statement says something very important about our God and about our Christ.
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This text tells us that it is in God that we live and move and have our being.
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In short, it says in God we exist.
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If God ceased to be, so too would we cease to be.
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If God chose that we should cease to exist, we would cease to exist because we exist in Him.
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It is in Him we live.
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The thing that makes this so amazing is that when we say in Him we live, we are not just addressing God the Father, we are also talking about God the Son who is Jesus Christ.
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Because in Him we live.
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In Christ we live and move and have our being.
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If you have your Bibles open, turn with me to Hebrews chapter 1.
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And we are going to look at Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 through 4.
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I want to show you how in the book of Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews shows us why and how it is in Christ that we live and move and have our being.
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Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1 says, Long ago at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.
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He, speaking of Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.
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And He, speaking of Jesus, upholds the universe by the word of His power.
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After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
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I want to show you this morning three things from this passage in Hebrews, which relate to our opening text in Acts 17, which says, In Him we live and move and have our being.
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Why is it that we can say rightly that it is in Christ we live? Why is it that we can say in Christ we live and move and have our being? Number one, in Christ we live first because He is our Creator.
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Look at verse 2 in Hebrews 1.
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It says, through whom also He created the world.
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This says something amazing about Jesus Christ.
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It says that this world that we live in, the universe that we exist in, is the creation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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I think people have a problem with the fact that Jesus Christ, the man who walked on this earth, is in fact God incarnate.
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And they have problem seeing the fact that yes, the same hands that were nailed to the cross are the hands that formed this universe.
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He is the creator of all.
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Think of John chapter 1 and verse 1.
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In the beginning was the Word.
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By the way, the Word is Jesus.
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It makes that clear in verse 14 when it says, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
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If you wonder who the Word is, it is Jesus.
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John is very clear.
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He calls Jesus the Logos, or the Word of God.
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And it says in John 1.1, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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He was in the beginning with God.
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All things were made through Him.
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And without Him was not anything made that was made.
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Beloved, do you hear what the text is saying? It is saying Jesus is your creator.
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Jesus is the creator of this universe.
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1 Corinthians chapter 8 verse 5 says, For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, because there are many things people worship, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
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Beloved, everything that is and ever was and ever will be came from the Father through the Son.
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Everything, every molecule of this universe came from the Father through the Son into being.
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Why is it that we can say in Christ we live and move and have our being? Because first, He is our creator.
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Number two, He is also our sustainer.
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Look at verse 3 of Hebrews.
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It says that He upholds the universe by the word of His power.
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Beloved, I think sometimes that we buy into the scientific notion that the world exists in a natural way, in that it follows laws of nature which exist on their own.
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Beloved, that is not the case.
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Yes, there are laws of nature, but the reason why there are laws of nature is because we have a law-giving God who created the world.
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The reason why we can expect that the same experiment we do today will have the same result tomorrow is because the God who created this world is a consistent being.
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And He has created this world with a consistency that we can trust and see.
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This world is sustained by God.
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If at any moment He was to remove His hand of sustenance, it would spin out of control.
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In fact, it would not only spin out of control, it would cease to be.
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Colossians 1 verses 15 through 20 says this.
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Speaking of Jesus, it says, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
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And that word firstborn doesn't mean created.
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Firstborn means preeminent.
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He is the highest.
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He is the absolute top of the created order.
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And He is not created Himself.
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He is the top because He is the Creator Himself.
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And it says, For by Him all things were created.
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That tells you right there He is not a created being.
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It says, By Him all things were created, verse 16, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
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All things were created through Him and for Him.
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Think of what that is saying.
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You were created for Christ.
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Not just through Him, but you were created for Him.
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In verse 17, And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
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So not only did He create the world, He sustains the world.
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In Him we live.
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Why? Because He is our sustainer and our Creator.
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Number three, In Him we live because He is our Savior.
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Hebrews 1 and verse 3 says, After He made purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty, which is on high.
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Beloved, we do not deserve salvation.
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Our sin that we commit is a death sentence.
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The Bible says the wages of sin is what? Death.
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And every one of us is a sinner, both by nature and by choice.
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And as a result, we all have incurred the wage of sin, which is death, the death penalty.
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We deserve that.
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But, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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And by His death, He purified us of all sin.
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God loved us, and so He made the plan of redemption for us.
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The Father sent the Son for His people.
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The Son redeemed those people.
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The Spirit sealed those people.
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And through that, purification was made, and God's people were made right for His Kingdom.
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So we see, when we ask the question, how is it that in Christ we live? In Christ we live first, because He was and is our Creator.
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We live in Him second, because He is our Sustainer.
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And finally, we live in Him, and in Him we live, because He is our Redeemer.
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So it is appropriate this morning that we say, in Christ we live and move and have our being.
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Now I want to provide to you one final thought of consideration for this morning.
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Something that struck me recently, and it was actually the impetus for the writing of this sermon.
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There is great debate within the church and outside of the church as to whether or not faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation.
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If you don't know that that's a debate, just go out and have a conversation about the Gospel with anyone and you'll get a debate right away.
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Why do I need Jesus? I don't understand why Jesus is necessary.
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I heard Oprah Winfrey one time, that great bastion of wisdom that she is, once on television, a lady said, Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation.
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And she said He can't be just as firm as anyone has ever said.
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He cannot be the only way.
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I want to add this thought to the argument.
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When someone says Jesus Christ isn't necessary for salvation, number one, from a biblical standpoint, they have no leg to stand on.
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They've departed from Scripture because Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Me.
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So there is really no debate from Christ's standpoint unless you want to argue that you just don't believe the text.
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And that's fine, but you have to at least admit that you don't believe the text.
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There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved in the name of Jesus Christ.
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You have to say you don't believe that.
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Okay.
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But I want to add a thought to it this morning as we draw to a close.
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The question of whether or not Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation should never enter the mind of the believer because the believer should understand this.
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Jesus Christ is not only necessary for salvation.
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Jesus Christ is necessary for existence.
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Jesus Christ is not just necessary for you to be saved.
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Jesus Christ is necessary for you to even be because in Him we live and move and have our being.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank You for this opportunity that we've had to study Your Word this morning.
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I pray that You would bless us and keep us as we continue this resurrection celebration together.
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Father, I thank You for those who have come to celebrate this morning.
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And I pray that You would encourage us to want to continue celebrating the resurrection throughout the day and in all of our days for it is in this resurrection that we find life.
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We thank You and praise You in Christ's name and for His sake.
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Amen.